Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays 0691063281, 9780691063287

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CHINESE NARRATIVE CRITICAL AND THEORETICAL ESSAYS

CHINESE

NARRATIVE

CRITICAL AND THEORETICAL ESSAYS ANDREW H. PLAKS, EDITOR With a Foreword by Cyril Birch

CONTRIBUTORS

Kenneth J. DeWoskin Eugene Eoyang Patrick Hanan Robert G. Hegel C. T. Hsia Yu-kung Kao

Peter Li Shuen-fu Lin Andrew H. Plaks David T. Roy John C. Y. Wang Kam-ming Wong

P R I N C E T O N U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS P R I N C E T O N , NEW J E R S E Y

Copyright © 1977 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press Guildford, Surrey ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey

TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword CYRIL BIRCH

IX

I. EARLY HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL NARRATIVE Early Chinese Narrative: The Tso-chuan as Example JOHN C. Y. WANG

3

The Six Dynasties Chih-kuai and the Birth of Fiction KENNETH J. DEWOSKIN

21

A Taste for Apricots: Approaches to Chinese Fiction EUGENE EOYANG

53

II. MING AND EARLY CH'ING FICTION Narrative Patterns in San-kuo and Shui-hu PETER LI

73

The Nature of Ling Meng-ch'u's Fiction PATRICK HANAN

85

Chang Chu-p'o's Commentary on the Chin p'ing mei DAVID T. ROY

115

Sui Tang yen-i and the Aesthetics of the SeventeenthCentury Suchou Elite ROBERT G. HEGEL

124

III. MIDDLE AND LATE CH'ING FICTION Allegory in Hsi-yu Chi and Hung-lou Meng ANDREW H. PLAKS

163

Point of View, Norms, and Structure: Hung-lou Meng and Lyrical Fiction WONG KAM-MING

203

Lyric Vision in Chinese Narrative: A Reading of Hung-lou Meng and Ju-Hn Wai-shih YU-KUNG KAO

227

CONTENTS

Ritual and Narrative Structure in Ju-Un Wai-shih SHUEN-FU LIN

The Scholar-Novelist and Chinese Culture: A Reappraisal of Ching-hua Yuan c. τ. HSiA IV.

244

266

CHINESE NARRATIVE THEORY

Towards a Critical Theory of Chinese Narrative ANDREW H. PLAKS

309

List of Contributors

353

Index

357

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The essays collected in this volume represent revisions or rewritings of papers originally presented at the Princeton Conference on Chinese Narrative Theory held at Princeton University on January 21 and 22, 1974. In addition to the authors whose contributions appear here, the participants in the conference included Professor Anthony Yu of the University of Chicago and Professor Richard Strassberg of Yale University, as well as the discussants Professor T'ien-yi Li of Ohio State University, Professor Cyril Birch of University of California, Berkeley, and Professor Frederick W. Mote of Princeton University. In addition to acknowledging here the assistance of Professor Y. K. Kao, who was co-convener of the conference with me, I must record my gratitude to the entire East Asian community of faculty, students, and staff at Princeton, who provided support of many kinds during the conference and the production of this volume. We wish to express our gratitude to the Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization of the American Council of Learned Societies, and to the Program in East Asian Studies of Princeton University for their generous provision of financial and other support that made possible both the original conference and the present symposium volume. A.H.P

FOREWORD CYRIL BIRCH The scholarly studies assembled here testify to the recent surge of interest in Chinese narrative. Various factors underlie this phenomenon, but two are particularly worth noting. First, we must acknowledge the preeminence of fiction among the arts of revolutionary China in this century. Of all civilizations the Chinese has always been the most intensely literary. Sensing the need for revitalized cultural forms to guide the emergence of their country into the modern world, intellectuals from Liang Ch'i-ch'ao on called most insistently for serious new works of fiction. Hand in hand with the creation of new fiction went the study of the indigenous tradition. Lu Hstin was the first and greatest of the creative writers who answered Liang's call in the fertile decades before the war with Japan, and it was no accident that he was also the first to attempt a history of traditional narrative. The study of the origins of storytelling and the novel in China, the searches for early editions and the identifications of authorship, all took their rise in the years following the May Fourth movement of 1919. As the present manuscript goes to press, the promotion of ideological unity in China is being effected by a nationwide campaign, already some months underway, of mass critiques of the fourteenth-century novel Shui-hu chuan. Clearly the national leaders recognize the hold of fiction on the popular mind and are able to exploit its deep-rooted symbolism for contemporary ideological ends. For a second development we must turn to the Western world, which indeed in the late nineteenth century had offered its own burgeoning modes of fiction for the inspiration of Japan and China in turn. In the West the criticism of narrative lagged surprisingly behind its creation. Little was done before the present century to develop the concepts of such self-conscious practitioners as Flaubert and James into systems of critical method. Over the past twenty-five years the theory and practical techniques of criticism of fiction have rapidly gained in sophistication. Scholars in the field of Chinese literature cannot fail to be excited by the prospect of new and sharper tools for analyzing style, narrative method, and modes of structuring. Hopes ride high that with these tools they will succeed in exposing more and more satisIX

FOREWORD

fying layers of meaning in the tales, romances, and historical narratives of China's past centuries. At the very least the critic can intensify, by helping us to understand, that joy that we immediately find in Chinesefiction.Surely we are doing more than merely escape our harsh modern reality when we enter the worlds of the great cyclical novels. We read of Chu-ko Liang of the Three Kingdoms, weeping as he watches thefierymassacre his own clever scheming has brought about. Are we simply being entertained at this point, or are we sharing in a moment of tragic grandeur as the seed is sown for the decline of true nobility? Or when Sung Chiang poisons Li K'uei at the end of the Shui-hu story, tells him what he has done and why, and is lovingly forgiven, are we just being titillated by a novel twist of events, or led to the climax of a carefully structured human relationship of archetypal quality? How are we to account for the passions we commit to the young lovers of the Dream of the Red Chamber, or for our sense of deeper meanings beneath the hilarity of Pigsy's adventures in Hsi yu chil For we in the West are not, after all, in a position so very different from the original Chinese audiences. We, like they, can respond to a work on any one of many levels. We have our peculiar difficulties: we are unduly appreciative of exotic local color, we have more dis­ beliefs to suspend, we may be unduly repelled by moral homilies we wrongly suspect of disingenuity. But on the whole we will settle for simple entertainment rather than work towards fuller understanding. This is when we need the critic's help. He can bring us closer to the position of the great readers of the past, those gifted men like Chin Sheng-t'an, Chang Chu-p'o, or "Chih-yen-chai" who understood the full force of the works they devotedly annotated. We need the critic's help also when we move from aesthetic enjoyment to the contemplation of a work of narrative as a document of man's intellectual history. Chinese stories and novels no doubt belonged to a minor tradition rather than to the central elite culture of historiog­ raphy, philosophical prose, and lyric verse. But the divergence can easily be exaggerated. The long early cycles that seem to have grown like coral reefs by processes of accretion ended by enshrining the moral values and philosophical bases of an entire civilization. In more than one later age the most brilliant minds turned to the writing of fiction or plays for the stage. The insights of thefifteenth-centuryphilosopher Wang Yang-ming and his school are imprinted on the stories of the following century. Read by children or by the semi-educated, orally presented by storytellers or transferred to the dramatic stage, the great χ

FOREWORD

masterpieces of fiction confirmed cultural identity just as surely as the dazzling beauty of the cathedral told the European peasant he was a Christian. One problem is certainly unique to the Western reader. Conditioned by his own culture, he has certain expectations that Chinese fiction will not necessarily meet. The kind of suspense he is used to may not occur. Concluding chapters may give a sense of anticlimax instead of a resounding resolution of the action. Rather than develop, individual characters may appear throughout a work as "whole" as they will ever be. Before we label these characteristics limitations we have the obligation to investigate the laws proper to the Chinese work itself, and these are laws that cannot be imposed from an alien tradition. Even the category of novel as such may be inappropriate to the fiction of China prior to the twentieth century. Here is the value of several of the articles in this book: they carefully distinguish Western-derived critical method, fruitful in application, from a culture-bound critical theory. In the concluding article Andrew Plaks makes a gallant proposal for a critical theory of narrative derived from the specific corpus of Chinese fiction and historiography. The future framers of theories of literature that will truly be applicable on a universal scale will find it impossible to ignore the implications of some of his arguments. The articles of the opening section show patterns in the early history of Chinese narrative very different from those of Europe. The lines between historiography and fiction are hard to draw. In the earliest historical writings we find the structured dialogues that were later to constitute a staple resource for fiction. The art of the biographer as developed by the grand historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien provided illustrious models for the storyteller as well as for the historian of subsequent times. Through the centuries preceding the Sui unification in A.D. 589, strife-riven and politically chaotic, Taoist mystics and magicians and the imported concepts of Buddhism pushed back the bounds of the Chinese imagination. Tales of marvels and demons, ghosts and reincarnations, set up new dimensions for the interpretation of mortal experience from which no later writer ever tried, or wished, wholly to free himself. By the T'ang period two developments of central importance to narrative art were well under way. the practice of oral storytelling and the beginnings of dramatic performance. A most striking feature of the Chinese situation is the sharing of materials and methods between three genres superficially discrete: the vernacular story, the classical-style tale, and the theater piece. These links seem to have been forged well before the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Xl

FOREWORD

the period to which we can attribute the oldest extant specimens of fully-fledged vernacular stories and plays. The literary historian, like the critic, has much to do. One more task must be mentioned, that of the translator. The study of Chinese narrative is greatly inhibited by the lack of adequate translations. With only one or two exceptions the versions of novels to which we must direct our students and our literary colleagues are incomplete, flat, and unreliable; many works of at least the second rank are completely inaccessible in English. David Hawkes's completion of his monumental Story of the Stone, and Anthony Yu's complete rendering of Journey to the West, will be major events, and at the same time indications of how much more is needed before the wealth of traditional Chinese narrative can be fully revealed.

xii

EARLY HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL NARRATIVE

EARLY CHINESE NARRATIVE: THE TSO-CHUAN AS EXAMPLE J O H N C. Y. W A N G

If we may define narrative in its broadest sense, as literature that con­ 1 sists of both a story and a storyteller, then early Chinese literature certainly contains a variety of narrative forms. In addition to the more obvious forms, such as early myths, legends, and historical writings, many of the pre-Han philosophical works as well—the book of Mencius, for example—might be read as "stories" relating what a given philosopher did, said, and thought. A full and detailed treatment of early Chinese narrative so defined would of course require a booklength study, something far beyond the scope of the present essay. What I propose to do here is to select just one such work, the Tso-chuan £4f, and consider it in some detail. The Tso-chuan, as is well known, is one of the earliest and most notable examples of Chinese historical writing and, more important, one that has exerted considerable in­ fluence on later narrative works. 2 A closer look at this work will there­ fore not only enable us better to understand early Chinese narrative, but it will also shed light on the narrative tradition as a whole. Even in limiting myself to the Tso-chuan, I can really do no more than make a few rather tentative and impressionistic remarks based on an initial reading of a very difficult text. As we all know, there are a number of outstanding questions about the book that still await final answers: How did the text come to be composed? Was it written by one man or was it simply compiled from already existing materials, and by whom? 1

The Nature of Narrative (New York, 1966), p. 4. Chin Sheng-t'an ^ffiigl (d. 1661), for example, may be said to be among the first Chinese critics who saw a connection between historiography and fiction writing when he remarked in his commentary on the Shui-hu chuan TKjjfff^, "All the devices used in the Shui-hu chuan are taken from the Shih-chi £ | B ; yet the former surpasses the latter in many places, while all the very best aspects of the Shih-chi can all be found in the Shui-hu chuan" {Kuan-hua fang yuan-pen Shui-hu chuan: Ti-wu ts'ai-tzu shu S^&PK^zkJUrPi: %Έ.3Π-&, Shanghai, 1934 photolithographic ed., vol. 1, 3/3a) and again in his commentary on the Hsi-hsiang cWlf^gfB, "The Tso-chuan and Shih-chi employ this method (i.e., hung yun t'o yueh '$iMiiM—painting the clouds to bring into relief the moon) exclusively; so does the Hsi-hsiang chi" (Hui-t'u Hsi-hsiang chi: Ti-Uu ts'ai-tzu shu feHH^iS: # 5 ^ : } ^ ¾ , Shanghai, 1918 ed., 2/26, No. 17). 1

3

EARLY H I S T O R I C A L AND F I C T I O N A L N A R R A T I V E

What was the nature of the text? Was it meant to be an independent work or was it intended to be a commentary on the so-called Spring and Autumn Annals!3 Since a full study of the Tso-chuan text and of these important related questions would require a far more thorough investigation than I have been able to complete, this essay is intended instead to test a simple analytic scheme for dealing with early Chinese narrative literature. It is hoped that the following discussion may serve to stimulate more systematic study of early Chinese narrative works, leading in the direction of eventually evolving a general theory of Chinese narrative, and thus more meaningful comparisons between the Chinese narrative tradition and narrative traditions in other literatures. The analytic scheme I have in mind is actually one that has been widely used among Western critics. Basically, it involves the breakdown of narrative into its most essential components or elements, which are in turn examined one by one to see how they function and interact in a particular work, or group of works under study. It does not matter exactly which narrative elements, or how many of them, we choose to identify. As a matter of fact, critics often differ in their listing of these essential elements. E. M. Forster, in his still useful study, Aspects of the Novel (1927), for example, discusses the nature of the novel under six headings: story, people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, and pattern or rhythm. Wellek and Warren, in their Theory of Literature, discuss "The Nature and Modes of Narrative Fiction" (Chap. 16) by breaking it down into the elements: plot, characterization, setting ("tone," "atmosphere"), world-view, point of view (how the story is told), etc. The important thing is simply to have such a series of headings. For the moment, the four categories set up by Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg in The Nature of Narrative seem to me to be the absolutely minimal and irreducible elements found in any kind of narrative, anytime and anywhere. These are: plot, character, point of view, and meaning. In what follows, I would like to look briefly at these various narrative elements, and see how each one operates in a work such as the Tso-chuan. 3 My own feeling about these problems at the present time is that the book was probably compiled from already existing materials by one person of the early Warring States Period, but that so much was touched up and added from an oral tradition that it might indeed be called an original work. It was not strictly speaking a commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals, even though its chronology and the listing of major events were for the most part based on the latter work. In other words, I agree with the view that the Tso-chuan should be separated from the Spring and Autumn Annals, and rearranged according to states as Han Hsi-ch'ou ^ffiff has done in his Tso-chuan fen-kuo chi-chu £ ( g frfSMti (Hong Kong, 1966 ed.)

4

EARLY CHINESE N A R R A T I V E 1. PLOT

Plot is the arrangement of a sequence of events, whether mental or physical, that has "followability." Two features immediately stand out in such a definition. First, as a sequence of events, plot necessarily involves a process of change. Change takes place in time. The movement of time thus becomes an integral part in the formation of a plot. The movement of time, however, need not be linear, as we are accustomed to expect, but can be circular, or even vertical. Indeed this is exactly how the late Nicholas Berdyaev has characterized what he considered to be the three basic categories of time-history: cosmic (circular in nature), historical (linear in nature), and existential (i.e., psychological, which is vertical in nature).4 Thus by taking the movement of events in time in a story as a basic frame of reference, it might be possible to distinguish roughly between three kinds of plot: circular (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Dream of the Red Chamber, or other stories involving the rise and fall in the fortunes of an individual, a household, or an entire state), existential (the Hsi-yu pu HMffi, for example, and other stories based on dreams, in which either the time sequence is conflated or a whole series of events take place in no more than a few moments of clock time), and linear (most other stories). A second aspect of this issue is the fact that a mere sequence of events does not in itself constitute a plot. For such a sequence to become a plot the events involved must be arranged in such a way that they become "followable." That is, the reader desires to go on to see what will happen later: what will become of a certain character, a certain situation, whether a crisis is going to be resolved, and in what way, and so on. The degree of followability of the events naturally varies from nar4 See The Beginning and the End, trans, by R. M. French (London, 1952), pp. 197— 213. John Henry Raleigh in his article, "The English Novel and the Three Kinds of Time," describes the three categories as follows: "First, there is cosmic time, which can be symbolized as a circle and which refers to the endless recurrence of things: night following day, season following season, the cycle of birth, growth, and decay; in short the circular character of human and natural experience. Secondly, there is historical time, symbolized by a horizontal line, and referring to the course of nations, civilizations, tribes (i.e., mankind in the mass) through time. Likewise the individual has a linear as well as a circular relationship to life . . . Third, and symbolized by a vertical line, there is existential time, referring to a notion of time somewhat like Bergson's duree, only religious or mystical in nature. This concept of existential time is actually an extreme form of individualism . . . and presupposes the individual's ability to free himself from either cyclic or historical time. Existential time, in effect, denies the validity of time-history." (Time, Place, and Idea: Essays on the Novel, Carbondale, 1968, p. 45).

5

EARLY HISTORICAL AND F I C T I O N A L N A R R A T I V E

rative to narrative. In some cases—such as most of the Chinese crime or "court case" (kung-an ^ ¾ ) stories—the transition from event to event may be so controlled that a causal relationship is produced. In other cases—such as the bare and straightforward chronicles and chronological biographies (nien-p'u ^If)—the relationship between events becomes so tenuous that the only reason the reader would want to go on may simply be because the events or happenings are related to a person or a historical period he happens to be interested in. The important thing, however, is that even in a loosely constructed plot, there remains a certain degree of followability about its structure, without which it would cease to be a plot.5 Plot, therefore, is also a pattern, a design of events taking place in time. At a more technical level this means the specific way incidents or episodes in a particular story are arranged. Thus we can talk about a tightly or loosely woven plot. At a more general level this means the total outlines the main action in a story falls into: the level at which we can talk about broad plot types. We have already mentioned the crime story, the chronicle, and the chronological biography. Other common plot types in Chinese narrative are the biography, the autobiography, the journey, the quest, the romantic story (ts'ai-tzu chia-jen :? ^HiA), and the dramatic story (i.e., stories based on the resolution of a certain crisis). In terms of movement in time, the plot of the Tso-chuan is linear in nature, in that it is a chronological account of the major political, social, and military events from 722 B.C. to 463 B.C., otherwise known as the Spring and Autumn Period. Within the individual episodes, however, especially the more fully developed ones, the linear movement of time is often interrupted by flashbacks and sometimes even anticipations. Flashbacks are usually (though not always) signalled by the character ch'u $U. Sometimes a whole episode, such as the death of Duke Mu W of Cheng in the 3rd year of Duke Hsuan M (606 B.C.), may consist entirely of a flashback. Anticipations are relatively rare, but they do occur. At the beginning of the famous battle at Ch'eng-p'u $M (633-632 B.C.) fought between Ch'u and Chin, for example, we are already informed of the outcome of the conflict. In terms of plot pattern, the Tso-chuan is of course a chronicle: first A happened and then B. Within this overall chronological pattern, however, three other major types or sub-types of plot may be distinguished, all of which exert important influences on later narrative forms: the biographical, the journey, and the dramatic. 5

Cf. W. B. Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (London, 1964). 6

EARLY CHINESE NARRATIVE The emphasis in a biographical plot is obviously on character. Typically it consists of a series of disconnected incidents in which we are shown how one main character acts and reacts. I say "disconnected" because the incidents do not necessarily follow upon each other in any logical fashion or even a strictly temporal sequence. The author's main concern in this kind of plot is to reveal some dominant traits in the character of the protagonist, and the incidents are mere illustrations of these traits. As long as the overall chronology is made clear, the specific order or sequence in which the incidents occur does not par­ ticularly matter. Incident A might come before or after incident B, and it would not make much difference. The best example of this kind of plot is the story of Tzu-ch'an ^f-I=: of Cheng told from Duke Hsiang β 19th year (554 B.C.) to Duke Chao Bg 20th year (522 B.C.). The only, though famous, example of a plot involving a journey in the Tso-chuan—the travels of Ch'ung-erh M 5 before he became Duke Wen 3C of Chin, narrated in the 23rd year (637 B.C.) and 24th year (636 B.C.) of Duke Hsi Ί§—bears some resemblance to the biographical plot, in that it too involves just one protagonist. The important differ­ ence, of course, is that the protagonist here has to be traveling from place to place. As a result, our interest is not only in the protagonist as a person, but also in what he sees and encounters on his journey. The element of action and adventure thus becomes an important con­ sideration. Moreover, the various incidents are no longer simply thrown in haphazardly, as it were, but are connected with each other, even though still loosely, by a journey. Of the three sub-types of plot in the Tso-chuan, the dramatic is the one that conforms most closely to the Aristotelian notion of plot. The emphasis here is clearly on action, which usually involves the buildup and the resolution of a crisis involving two sides of more or less equal strength. As a result, the events in this kind of plot tend to follow upon each other in a more logical and more tightly woven pattern than in the other two: one action leads into another until the conflict is resolved. The best examples are those fully detailed battle engage­ ments for which the Tso-chuan is justly noted. 2. CHARACTER Action requires actors, and stories happen to people. Character there­ fore forms another indispensable element in narrative literature. To some critics, in fact, this is the most important of all the narrative elements. Forster devotes two chapters to a discussion of what he calls "people" while spending just one chapter each on the other elements. 7

EARLY HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL NARRATIVE

Similarly, W. J. Harvey's full-length study, Character and the Novel (1965), aims at correcting what he calls the unfortunate situation of "the retreat from character" in modern fiction criticism. Many things can be discussed under the heading of character. For our purposes here, we shall limit ourselves to two considerations: (1) types of characters, and (2) characterization. Characters can be grouped in various ways. In terms of their social status and moral quality, for example, we find the following major types in the Tso-chuan: the good and capable ruler, the evil and stupid ruler, the wise and loyal minister, the powerful, ambitious, and sometimes evil minister, the pathetic dolt victimized by a literal understanding of some abstract ideals, the selfless and far-sighted woman, the femme fatale, and the lowly and insignificant attendant who is willing to sacrifice his own life to defend even a wicked and good-for-nothing lord. To describe the characters in the Tso-chuan in this way is not to reduce them to stereotypes. The Tso-chuan is of course famous for the many highly individualized characters it has created. Both Duke Wen of Chin and Duke Mu % of Ch'in, for example, belong to the category of the good ruler. But they also differ in significant ways. For one thing, Duke Mu of Ch'in is more stubborn and sometimes fails to accept good advice from his subordinates. But he is always quick to see his errors and is willing to make amends for them. Still, it is useful to set up these loosely defined types as long as we remember that they are meant to be just that and nothing more. Such categorizations will not only help us to see the meaning in the work itself more clearly, but will also make it easier to compare it with later works, especially if we are interested in seeing the evolution of certain basic moral concepts. The two most outstanding qualities of a good ruler in the Tso-chuan, for example, are his willingness to accept sound advice from others, and his concern for the welfare of the people in general. In terms of characterization, two groupings of characters may be distinguished: these are what Forster calls "flat" and "round," or what Wellek and Warren prefer to call "static" and "developmental." One of the striking things about the Tso-chuan, in particular, and Chinese narrative, in general, is the great many static characters we encounter in them. A static character remains the same throughout the entire story. We get to know his dominant traits better as we read on, but he does not make significant changes emotionally, morally, or intellectually. This is true even in the journey plot in the Tso-chuan, where it might perhaps be natural to expect such changes in the hero as he goes through various experiences on his journey. The Prince Ch'ung-erh 8

EARLY C H I N E S E N A R R A T I V E

before the travels and the Prince Ch'ung-erh after the travels remain essentially the same, even though the travels have taken him to eight different states and have lasted altogether no less than nineteen years. In the Tso-chuan, it would seem then, once a character is cast in a certain mold, he usually stays there with very little chance of breaking out. The story of King Ling S of Ch'u provides a rather touching example of how a bad ruler tries to reform himself, but fails in the end. Among this king's many shortcomings was his insensitivity to the suffering of the people caused by his grandiose plans to expand and to dominate the other feudal states of China. Once, however, after being remonstrated by his Prime Minister Tzu-ke -?-¾ he decided to change his wasteful and extravagant ways. For several days on end he could not eat or sleep—so anxious he was to find ways to control himself. But it proved to be too much for him, and in the end he reverted to his former habits.6 The only example I can find in which noticeable changes take place in a character is that of Fu-ch'ai 5M, King of Wu. Significantly, it is a case involving a change from good to bad. After Fu-ch'ai's father died of wounds suffered in a battle against Yueh, he refused to forget his father's death, and had someone stand in the courtyard to constantly remind him of this, until three years later hefinallysucceeded in avenging his father's death by conquering Yueh. Once this was done, however, he changed into a different man. He began to indulge in an easy, comfortable, and licentious life, and refused to listen to his loyal minister Wu Yuan iEj|, until finally his kingdom was again defeated by Yueh and he was forced to commit suicide.7 Characterization is the way in which an author creates or depicts his characters. The most common method of character depiction in the Tso-chuan, as is also true of most later works, is through dialogue and action, and occasionally also comments by other characters. Rarely does the author tell us directly what type of person a character is. Nor are there any direct descriptions of the characters' physical features, such as we find in later works, even though there are occasional descriptions of their clothes. For reasons we shall take up in the next section, psychological penetration into the minds of the characters—another method of characterization common in the West and utilized in later Chinese narrative works—is virtually nonexistent in the Tso-chuan. The only 6 7

Duke Chao 12th year (530 B.C.) and 13th year (529 B.C.). Duke Ting g 14th year (496 B.C.)—Duke Ai τ& 22nd year (473 B.C). 9

EARLY H I S T O R I C A L AND F I C T I O N A L N A R R A T I V E

exception I have come across appears in the form of an interior monologue. Ch'u Ni fill was sent one early morning by the evil Duke Ling B of Chin to murder his loyal minister Chao Tun MM, because he had had enough of the latter's repeated remonstrances. Upon arriving at Chao Tun's residence, however, Ch'u Ni was impressed by the proper and respectful way in which the minister was preparing himself before proceeding to a court audience with the duke. Thereupon he withdrew, as secretly as he had come, and sighed to himself: "He who is not forgetful of his duty [to his prince] is the master of the people. To kill the master of the people is disloyalty. But to disregard the command of one's lord is unfaithfulness. Since either way [I will be accused of a wrongdoing], I had better die." With these words he smashed his head against a locust tree and died. But even here it is possible to argue that Ch'u Ni said these words aloud, and was therefore overheard by someone.8 3. P O I N T O F VIEW

A story has to be told, and the kind of narrator an author chooses, through whose eyes and consciousness the story is to be told, makes a great deal of difference in the kinds of meaning and literary effect he wants to convey to his listener or reader. This brings us to the problem of point of view in narrative art, the element that has received most attention in modern criticism of fiction, especially the Anglo-American brand. Some critics even go so far as to say that the manipulation of point of view is all there is to narrative method. "The whole intricate question of method, in the craft of fiction," says Percy Lubbock, "I take to be governed by the question of point of view—the question of the relation in which the narrator stands to the story."9 Similarly, according to Scholes and Kellogg, point of view is not only the very essence of narrative art but also something quite unique to it—something "that it does not share with lyric or dramatic literature."10 Broadly speaking we may distinguish two major points of view in narrative literature, which for convenience we may simply call the I, or first person, point of view, and the he, or third person, point of view 8

Duke Hsuan g; 2nd year (607 B.C.). Legge's translation of this incident appears in The Chinese ClassicsQiong Kong, 1960), vol. 5, p. 290. It is interesting to note that in the fictionalized version of the stories from this period, Tung-Chou lieh-kuo kushih hsin-pien J|C|tl?IJffl#C$:$riiI (Peking, 1963,2nd printing),vol. 1, pp. 230-231, Lin Han-ta#g|j|i actually has Ch'u Ni tell Chao Tun why he could not bear to kill him. 9 The Craft of Fiction (New York, 1957 ed.), p. 251. 10 The Nature of Narrative, p. 240. 10

EARLY CHINESE NARRATIVE

respectively. As to the I we may distinguish between an eyewitness I—a mere observer or reporter of what he has seen, heard or read about—and a full participant in the action. Similarly, the third-person narrator may also be someone who only functions as a reporter relaying to us what is known to him; but he may also be a truly God-like being, whose omniscience extends to the innermost thoughts and the most private feelings of the characters in a story. Wayne Booth rightly observes that "perhaps the most overworked distinction is that of person . . . . To say that a story is told in the first or third person will tell us nothing of importance unless we become more precise and describe how the particular qualities of the narrators relate to specific effects."11 This is true at a certain level of discussion. However, for an overview of the entire Chinese narrative tradition, the notion of point-of-view enables us to distinguish two different kinds of narrators, and helps to explain the extreme rarity of the narrator as a personal I in traditional Chinese narrative works, and the gradual shift from a he as a mere recorder to a he with unlimited omniscience.12 As one of the earliest narrative texts in Chinese literature, the Tsochuan furnishes an excellent example in which the narrator functions merely as a recorder. Throughout the book he assumes the pose of a ubiquitous third-person eyewitness reporter who reports to us what he has heard or seen, but who himself is not involved in the action thus reported. This is true even though he does not hesitate to offer his own judgment and to comment on certain characters or events at numerous points. (This kind of intrusion on the part of the narrator would become relatively rare if, as some scholars maintain, we take the passages that begin with "the gentleman says" (chun-tzu yiieh S^f-B) as later interpolations.) Seldom, if ever, does he venture into information that would be available only to an omniscient narrator. This explains why, as noted in the previous section, there are no direct psychological penetrations into the minds of the characters. We can hear what other people say and see what they do; but how can we, short of being omniscient beings, know what actually goes through their minds? This largely objective and impersonal manner is further reflected in the straightforward, matter-of-fact, and seemingly emotionless style of writing in the book. For example, when the Chou Emperor sends some 11

The Rhetoric of Fiction (University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 50. For a further discussion on point of view in the Chinese narrative tradition as a whole, see my paper, "The Nature of Chinese Narrative: A Preliminary Statement on Methodology," presented at The Second International Comparative Literature Conference in The Republic of China, Aug. 11-15, 1975. 12

11

EARLY H I S T O R I C A L A N D F I C T I O N A L

NARRATIVE

sacrificial meat to Duke Huan fl of Ch'i, a sequence of four separate actions on the part of the latter in accepting the offer—coming down from the steps, making obeisance to the messenger, going up the steps again, and accepting the meat—is conveyed in just four characters in the text: hsia T (descend), pai M (make obeisance), teng 5£ (ascend), and shou § (accept).13 The author's ability to dispense with non­ essential words in his narrative is admirable. There are very few adjectives and even fewer adverbs throughout the entire book. The total effect thus produced is a mixture of leanness, ruggedness, and raw vi­ tality that is unparalleled in Chinese literature. For a historical work such as the Tso-chuan, the advantage of adopting a ubiquitous third-person eyewitness point of view is obvious. It enables the author to present vivid and dramatic accounts of events without forfeiting the reader's sense of their credibility. The narrator has full authority over his version of the story because he is telling what he has "witnessed" in person. But the adoption of such a point of view can also entail a certain disadvantage for the author. Since the narrator cannot go directly into the minds of the characters, but can only report their actions and words, the reader is sometimes left in doubt as to the real motives behind actions taken by certain characters. The result is an ambiguity in artistic intention that will ultimately affect the reader's ability to ascertain the true meaning in a story. A case in point is the well-known episode about Duke Chuang j£ of Cheng and his mother and brother.14 The commentators I have reviewed are mostly condemnatory in their attitude toward Duke Chuang in this episode. He is sometimes labeled as "treacherous" (yin-hsien ^egSfc), "ruthless" (tu-la %W), and "hypocritical" (Jisii-wei |£β§). 15 But is he really? When confronted by a rebellious younger brother and a stubbornly partial mother, how would anyone else in the same situation act? Duke Chuang has followed his mother's wishes in granting various privileges to his younger brother, until the latter rises up in open rebellion and is about to attack the capital of Cheng with the help of his mother from inside. Not until then does he begin to launch a counterattack to drive his brother away. Although in an outburst of emotion he has his mother moved to another city and vows never to see her again, he immediately regrets this impulsive act, and goes through an elaborate process in order to receive her back again. As brother and son, Duke Chuang may not have 13 14 15

Duke Hsi 9th year (651 B.C.). See Legge, p. 154, for a translation of the incident. Duke Yin H 1st year (722 B.C). See Legge, pp. 5-6, for a full translation. See Wang Li S.ti et al., Ku-tai Han-yu #ft3Si§ (Peking, 1962), vol. 1, p. 8.

12

EARLY C H I N E S E N A R R A T I V E

acted in an exemplary manner, but on the other hand it is also hard to see from the story itself how he can be judged so harshly. His treatment of his mother, in particular, it seems to me, not only does not show his hypocrisy, but instead reveals his true humanity with all its perplexing qualities. Duke Chuang is one of the most real and credible characters I have encountered in the Tso-chuan. That Duke Chuang of Cheng is probably not meant to be an evil character can further be shown in the other passages in the Tso-chuan that also deal with him. In these passages he appears to be a decent man who knows what is right and wrong, and who tries valiantly to be an enlightened ruler. In the 10th year of Duke Yin (713 B.C.), for example, Lu, Ch'i, and Cheng join forces to attack Sung for its disobedience to the Chou Emperor. Duke Chuang of Cheng took two cities from Sung. But instead of occupying them himself he turned them over to Lu, whose ruler was higher in rank than he. These generous acts apparently so impressed the author that he made the following compliment introduced by the expression "the gentleman says:" "Duke Chuang of Cheng can thus be called a correct man. He was punishing a disobedient state under the command of the Emperor. But he did not covet its territory and instead turned it over to someone higher in nobility. This was an example of correctness."16 Even if we take this comment to be a later interpolation, what Duke Chuang did in the incident is anything but the act of a "treacherous, ruthless, and hypocritical" tyrant.17 My point here is not to prove that all the other commentators are wrong in their interpretation of the character of Duke Chuang of Cheng. A good deal of the confusion and misunderstanding could certainly have been avoided had the author chosen to reveal, even slightly, the true motives behind the duke's actions. 4. M E A N I N G

The design of plot, the depiction of character, and the handling of point of view can mean only one thing to the author: how effectively to convey his meaning, or whatever it is that he wants to convey, to the reader. Consequently, for the reader, the discussion of plot, character, and point of view can also mean just one thing: how best to find out what the author is trying to convey. To the author, therefore, the question of 16

See Legge, p. 30, for another translation. Another example in which Duke Chuang is shown as a good, sensible, and realistic man appears in an entry from the following year, i.e., Duke Yin 11th year (712 B.C.). For a full translation of his lengthy speech, see Legge, p. 33. 17

13

EARLY HISTORICAL AND F I C T I O N A L N A R R A T I V E

meaning is largely one of artistic creation, while to the reader it is primarily a matter of interpretation. By "meaning" I here simply refer to the overall purport of a work as it is actually realized in the text. To try to get at the author's meaning in his work is, of course, often easier said than done. In the case of narrative, even the simplest story often involves at least four sets of relationships: author and narrator, narrator and characters, character and character, and author and audience (in contrast with just two in the lyrical situation—author and speaker, author and audience; and three in the dramatic—author and actors, actor and actor, author and audience). Steering through these sometimes intricate sets of relationships in order to see what the author is trying to do in the work can be a very trying experience. The task becomes even more formidable, if not impossible, when we come to works such as the Tso-chuan, whose authorship and nature of composition, as we said earlier, are still largely unknown. Full-length studies have been made on how to go about ascertaining the author's meaning in a literary text.18 But perhaps the most useful thing to remember when it comes to matters of interpretation is that we should try to be as open-minded and as flexible as possible. As long as it will help us to better understand the text concerned, no method is too alien to use and no bit of information, whether or not based directly on the text, is too irrelevant to consult. In general, then, what is it that the author of the Tso-chuan is trying to get across to us? Our first reaction when we begin to read the work is that it is meant to be a vivid and realistic account of the people and happenings of a certain historical period. It does not take long, however, before we begin to perceive the emergence of a certain pattern from what we have read. The pattern seems to become so persistent as we read on that we begin to doubt the correctness of our first reaction. We begin to wonder whether the author is really more interested in giving factual details, or in presenting some moral principles about life in general. Put very simply, the pattern is this: just as the evil, the stupid, and the haughty will usually bring disaster upon themselves, the good, the wise, and the humble tend to meet their just rewards. A dramatic illustration of what happens when good and evil are brought into conflict is the story of Chao Tun and Duke Ling of Chin already referred to earlier. On the one hand, we have a wicked and utterly depraved king whose one pleasure is to shoot people with pellets 18 See, for example, E. D. Hirsch's Validity in Interpretation (Yale University Press, 1967).

14

EARLY C H I N E S E N A R R A T I V E

from his terrace, who would not hesitate to kill his cook when the bear's paw served is not well-cooked. On the other, we have a good, loyal, and extremely conscientious minister who is not afraid to risk his life in trying to put his evil master on the right path. Twice the duke tries to murder Chao Tun; but twice Chao Tun escapes through the help of other people, either because he has helped them before or because they are simply impressed by his upright behavior. In the end the duke himself dies at the hand of an assassin, while Chao Tun continues to serve as a minister in his state even though he is blamed for not having done anything to prevent his lord's assassination. Shall we conclude from this, then, that the Tso-chuan is meant to be, as Burton Watson concludes: "a handbook of moral cause and effect, a system of divination based not upon numbers or omens, but upon the more complex, but infinitely more trustworthy, moral patterns discernible in actual human history?"19 While I would agree with Watson in maintaining that the book is more than just a collection of individual stories and anecdotes, and that there is some kind of general principle running through them all, I would hesitate to characterize the book as a whole on this basis as a moral "handbook," a divination "system." For this would probably make the author more of a moralist than he really intended himself to be. This would mean that he was using history merely as a pretext for illustrating some preconceived moral concepts: in fact, it would make him into an allegorist. But of course the Tso-chuan is anything but a deliberate allegory. The pattern we have spoken of above is not so neat that there are no exceptions to it. While most of the intriguers and murderers seem to have come to bad ends themselves, the book is also full of examples of innocent people being persecuted and killed senselessly: the Princes Chi S* and Shou # of Wei,20 Prince Shen-sheng $ £ of Chin,21 and Hsi Yuan 05¾ of Ch'u,22 to give just some of the more notable examples. Moreover, there is a good deal in the book that can be regarded only as straightforward historical narration. As it is, therefore, it is probably closer to the truth for us to still think of the Tso-chuan as history, though a highly moralized history. The pattern is not preconceived, but rather is something the author simply detected in the events he recounted. In other 19

Early Chinese Literature (New York, 1962), pp. 47-48. Duke Huan ff 16th year (696 B.C). See Legge, pp. 66-67, for a translation of the incident involving the deaths of the two brothers. 21 Duke Hsi 4th year (656B.C). See Legge, pp. 141-142, for a translation of the death of Shen-sheng. 22 Duke Chao 27th year (515 B.C.). See Legge, p. 722, for a translation of the death of Hsi Yuan. 20

15

EARLY HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL NARRATIVE words, it represents his own interpretation of the significance of the events that had transpired. If our speculation about the nature of the Tso-chuan based on its contents is correct, the author's conception of history actually sounds quite modern. To him history obviously meant more than just a listing of a succession of events. Among other things, it also meant an attempt to make connections among the various isolated events so reported, to make some kind of sense and meaning out of an otherwise confusing and incoherent past. Speaking about modern historical writing, Louis Kampf writes in On Modernism: "It has too often been said that the distinguishing mark of modern historical writing is its emphasis on fact. The reverse is closer to the truth: Only as the exclusive emphasis on fact begins to lose its importance will real historical concerns be ready to appear. For only then do we become capable of dealing with the nature of development itself, rather than casually assuming that the listing of a succession of events implies a developmental sequence. Once history stops being a simple recital of political facts, its most urgent concern is likely to be with causality. For history will have to construct a narrative, and thereby connect events which had once stood alone, which had provided their own connection." 23 In large measure this would also seem to be what the author of the Tso-chuan is trying to do in his work. As Kampf goes on to say, "There is no way out of it, we shall have to write and rewrite our histories." 24 The author of the Tso-chuan has simply given us his version and his understanding of that part of Chinese history known as the Spring and Autumn Period. Viewed in this light, even the anecdotal and seemingly "unscientific" way in which the author goes about presenting his material in the book will seem less offensive. For what is history if not another form of storytelling? As W. B. Gallie states in his Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (see note 5 above): "If it is true that in physical sciences there is always a theory, it is no less true that in historical research there is alway a story. In the former case there is always a provisional theory which guides experimental researches, even though these will lead to its replacement; in the latter case there is always an initial or provisional story that acts as guiding thread to the successive assessments, interpretations and criticisms 23 24

(Cambridge, 1967), p. 80. P . 81.

16

EARLY C H I N E S E N A R R A T I V E

which lead the historian to hisfinaljudgment as to what the story really was, or as to what actually happened."25 In a similar spirit Robert Scholes in Elements of Fiction posits what he calls a fictional spectrum with "history" and "fantasy" at the two opposite ends, going on to conclude: "Now only a recording angel, taking note of all the deeds of men without distorting or omitting anything, could be called a 'pure' historian. And only a kind of deity, creating a world out of his own imagination, could be called a 'pure' fantasist. Both ends of the spectrum are invisible to mortal eyes. All history recorded by men becomes fictional. All human fantasy involves some resemblance—however far-fetched—to life."26 This same idea appears again in The Nature of Narrative: "The convergence of the novel with the history, biography, and autobiography has resulted not so much from impatience with the storyteller's fantasy as from a modern skepticism of knowing anything about human affairs in an entirely objective (non-fictional) way. Science seems to have demonstrated that Aristotle's distinction between history and fiction was one of degree, not of kind. All knowing and all telling are subject to the conventions of art. Because we apprehend reality through culturally determined types, we can report the most particular event only in the form of a representational fiction, assigning motives, causes, and effects according to our best lights rather than absolute truth."27 In telling the story of the Spring and Autumn Period, using all the information available to him, the author of the Tso-chuan has in fact given us a history of that period. 5. THE F I N I S H E D P R O D U C T

For the convenience of analysis I have distinguished four most essential elements in narrative and discussed them in the light of the Tsochuan. In actuality, of course, these elements are not always readily separable from one other. As Henry James has said in an oft-quoted remark: "What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?"28 The same could be said of the other elements in relation to each other. Even in our foregoing discussion we have seen that these elements are all closely interrelated, 25

Pp. 72-73. (New York, 1968), p. 6. 27 P . 151. 28 "The Art of Fiction" in The Future of the Novel (New York, 1956), pp. 15-16. 26

17

EARLY HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL NARRATIVE and it was only with some effort that we could concentrate on one element at a time. In more successful narrative works, such as many of the battle scenes in the Tso-chuan, these elements are often so well blended that they form truly dynamic artistic wholes. A brief examina­ tion of the famous battle at Ch'eng-p'u already referred to earlier may help to illustrate the point. The battle at Ch'eng-p'u, fought between Chin and Ch'u in the year 632 B.C., is one of the largest and most important of the innumerable clashes among the various feudal lords of the Spring and Autumn Period. 2 9 At stake was nothing less than de facto control over the North China heartland. Ch'u, isolated to the south of the center of action but blessed with strategic terrain and fertile land, had for generations sought to play a more active and influential role in the shaping of events in the main part of China. With the death of Duke Huan of Ch'i, the powerful leader among the feudal lords directly related to the royal house of Chou, in 643 B.C., the chance for Ch'u to assert its power appeared, and for a few years it seemed as if its ambition was going to be fulfilled. One after another a number of smaller states—such as Ch'en, Ts'ai, Hsu, and Cheng—were forced to offer allegience to Ch'u. As a result of the battle at Ch'eng-p'u, however, Ch'u's effort to extend its sphere of influence into the central plain was again thwarted, and Chin became the undisputed new leader among the feudal lords in the North. A balance of power of sorts between Chin and Ch'u was thus achieved that was not to be tipped until the end of the period, when the new and powerful states of Wu and Yiieh emerged in the south-west. The author was of course fully aware of the significance of this event. Consequently, he marshalled all the skill and art at his command as a storyteller, and produced a masterpiece of its kind unequalled by similar writings of the same period. The methodical, neat, and economical way in which this complicated and momentous event is recounted is rather typical of the narrative style of the Tso-chuan as a whole. The plot of this episode is of the dramatic kind, in that it involves a military conflict between two states of more or less equal strength. The main concern here is therefore action, an action, moreover, that can be neatly divided into a beginning (the various incidents that lead 29 For a full description of the battle and its historical significance, see Ch'un-chiu Chin Ch'u Ch'eng-p'u chan #$Ι®$ϋί?§ΙΚ issued by the Shih-chien hsiieh-she S S P H " of Taipei (1954). For another literary analysis of this episode, see Kao Pao-kuang THMJt, Tso-chuan wen-i hsin-lun ii^XSMWa (Taichung, 1969), pp. 8992. As before, translations in the following discussion are my own. See Legge, pp. 201-202 and 208-211, for a translation of the main part of the battle.

18

EARLY CHINESE NARRATIVE

to a direct confrontation), a middle (the direct confrontation—the battle itself), and an end (the defeat of the Ch'u army and the dramatic rise of the prestige and power of Chin among the feudal states). What is worth noting, however, is that the plot is not just a mechanical linking of a series of isolated incidents, however exciting and dramatic they may be in themselves. Rather, the whole development and outcome of the conflict are shown to be intimately related to the character of the two protagonists involved—Tzu-yu ^BE of Ch'u and Duke Wen of Chin. The outcome of the battle is already foreshadowed when at the very beginning of the narrative we are shown what a ruthless and insensitive commander-in-chief Tzu-yu is. While it takes his predecessor, the capable Tzu-wen ^-¾, only half a day to drill the troops, Tzu-yu takes up a full day and in the process has flogged seven soldiers and pierced the ears of three others. Thus, we cannot but sense the seriousness of Wei Chia's f | H charges, and feel that Ch'u's campaign against Sung is perhaps doomed to failure: "Tzu-yu is obstinate and without propriety, and he cannot [be trusted to] govern the people. Give him over three hundred chariots and he won't be able to come back with them!" Throughout the rest of the narrative these aspects of Tzu-yu's character are driven home by further revealing details. Even at the last moment direct confrontation and disaster could have been averted, were Tzu-yu not so stubborn and conceited as to openly defy the king's orders to lift the siege of Sung. The whole operation has become for him a personal affair: rather than viewing it as a national policy to expand the power and influence of Ch'u, he regards it as an opportunity to show off his military prowess as a commander-in-chief, and to "shut the mouths of my slanderers." So when he arrogantly declares just before the battle that "Today will surely see the last of Chin!" we know the fate of the Ch'u army is sealed, and with it his very own. Perhaps the most telling detail of Tzu-yu's personality is the incident mentioned in a flashback toward the end of the narrative, when he refuses to sacrifice his jade cap to the river god who promises to help him win the battle. This incident dramatizes not so much the stinginess and selfishness that are undoubtedly a part of his character, as his utter conceit—so sure is he of himself that he is not willing to accept help or advice from anyone, not even a god. By contrast, Duke Wen of Chin, Tzu-yu's antagonist, is shown to be an extremely sensitive individual, always ready to listen to the sound advice of his subordinates and always anxious to act according to propriety. His willingness to consult other people and his care for proper 19

EARLY HISTORICAL A N D FICTIONAL NARRATIVE

conduct, however, do not make him a foolish and soft-hearted commanding officer. His decision to execute Tien Hsieh MnH and to demote Wei Ch'ou MW—two brave warriors—when they disobey his orders clearly shows that he can be firm too. For this reason, his generals and advisors on the whole form a remarkably harmonious group, willing to yield to their peers who are more worthy and capable than they. Duke Wen, moreover, is a man of great caution, and is by no means positive about the outcome of the battle. He is reluctant to strike the first blow until he has also maneuvered himself into a superior position on both the diplomatic and moral fronts. Even then, he is worried and uncertain, as is vividly shown by his worry over the meaning of the song of his soldiers and by the horrible dream he has on the eve of the battle, in which the king of Ch'u sucks up his brains. It is hardly surprising, therefore, to witness the well-planned and astonishingly methodical way in which the Chin army demolishes its opponent once the battle has begun. Plot and character in turn give rise to meaning. If Duke Wen is a wise and enlightened ruler, and if the battle turns out in his favor, the moral lesson is only too clear for the reader to draw. Just in case the reader has failed to grasp the significance of the event, however, the author does not hesitate momentarily to cast aside his pose as an objective reporter and to come out at the beginning of the narrative to explain why it is that Duke Wen is bound to succeed in his campaign: "To drive out the guards at Ku 1¾, to lift the siege of Sung, and to become a hegemon in one battle—all this was [the result of] his instructing [the people in proper ways]." Plot, character, point of view, and meaning are thus all mingled in a single piece of narrative, reinforcing each other to form a dynamic, inseparable artistic whole.

20

THE SIX DYNASTIES CHIH-KUAI AND THE BIRTH OF FICTION KENNETH J. DEWOSKIN The forced abdication of the last Han emperor Hsien-ti in A.D. 220 at the hands of Ts'ao P'ei ended China's first prolonged era of unity and centralized government control. During the three and one-half century interregnum that followed, known as the Six Dynasties, dozens of families vied for control, but even the most powerful were unable to hold onto the throne for more than a few decades or to extend their administration beyond a nuclear region. The main territory of China, trisected during the Three Kingdoms Period (220-265), was reunited briefly under the Western Chin (280-307), only to shatter again into a battleground for barbarians from the North, powerful generals and remnant aristocrats in the South. A durable line separated the North of China from the South, and both North and South suffered further segmentation until the end of the sixth century. The political instability and economic chaos that came with the end of the Han brought in their wake radical social changes and radical cultural changes. Buddhism poured in from the West, and other barbarian influences from the North further excited the cultural and intellectual ferment of the times. Out of this climate came remarkable cultural achievements, in philosophy, natural science, literature, graphic arts, and music. The Six Dynasties, often referred to as China's medieval age, China's dark age, was well illuminated by the presence of intellectual and artistic giants. The Ts'ao family tolled the political death of the Han, which staked out a new land for the writer and critic with their own poetry and criticism, and opened the central kingdom to foreign influence by their military actions in the North. For literature, the last century of the Han Dynasty was a period of retrenchment. The early Six Dynasties brought rapid developments in prose and poetry, including the emergence of many new forms of written expression and an explosive growth in permissible subjects for writing. Writing had begun in China with Shang oracle bones, one facet of the supreme oblation of a theocratic state. Its subsequent centuries of development saw a gradual demystification: through religious, then semi-religious; public, then semi-public use. The Six 21

EARLY H I S T O R I C A L A N D F I C T I O N A L N A R R A T I V E

Dynasties saw the first widespread acceptance of writing as a private act, writing as literature, writing as an art. Energy once expended in justifying writing, usually in terms of its public good, was invested in efforts to understand its special workings and its unique aesthetics, and to explore its potential for personal expression and edification. Against this background the chih-kuai SJH developed, a short form narrative often thought of as the characteristic prose of Six Dynasties China. With the chih-kuai, prose evolved toward new forms, embraced new subjects, and edged from beneath the traditional restraints of social utility. The term chih-kuai means something like "describing anomalies."1 Since the Ming Dynasty it has been used to designate a genre of tales and notices that focus on fantastic men, fantastic places, and fantastic events.2 The chih-kuai bear many formal similarities to a number of historical types of writing, but they virtually exclude plau­ sible historical materials from their contents. In the corpus of surviving examples of chih-kuai writing, one finds everything from a one-line comment on a hedgehog to long and carefully structured stories, com­ plete with elaborating description, love poetry, and the "telling"3 presence of the narrator. As a genre, the chih-kuai is difficult to de­ lineate. Bibliographers seem inclined to include in the chih-kuai any narrative items that simply did not fit well elsewhere. The amount of writing transmitted from the Six Dynasties is substantial, but far from infinite. There is, nonetheless, no consensus whatsoever on exactly what works lie within the boundaries of the chih-kuai genre.4 Certain 1 The term chih-kuai hsiao-shuo Sgll/hlS; is synonymous. To my knowledge, the first to use the term to designate a genre was Hu Ying-lin fflMffl of the Ming Dy­ nasty. Chih-kuai does appear much earlier, as the name of several books from the Eastern Chin and later. See the Sui-shu Ching-chi chih Pf H=IgJf ;£, "Tsa-chuan l e i ^ f l i t , " and Chin-shu g # , "Biography of Tsu T'ai-chih WLMZ." Lu Hsiin continued the use of the term, broadening its meaning, in the Chung-kuo hsiao-shuo shihiiieh φ|Β/ΜΘ;ίίΙΙΙ§ (A Brief History of Chinese Fiction), trans. Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1959). 2 The most accessible examples of chih-kuai writing are found in Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, trans., The Man Who Sold a Ghost (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1958; rpt., Hong Kong: The Commercial Press, 1974). 3 "Telling" is used here not only for authorial or editorial comments, but to de­ scribe the continuing conscious attitude of telling a story, of making a structured narration, that is a consistent feature of many chih-kuai. See Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 8. 4 Two articles have been published that purport to be systematic bibliographies of chih-kuai: Fu Hsi-hua flftfa^i, "Liu-ch'ao chih-kuai hsiao-shuo chih ts'un-i," 7^¾¾ ;6ΐδ/Μ8;;έ.#£& Han-hsUeh gg$, 1944 (also entitled Bulletin du Centre FrancoChinois d'etudes Sinologiques), pp. 169-210; and Yen Mao-yuan igigfl, "Wei Chin Nan-pei-ch'ao chih-kuai hsiao-shuo shu-lu fu-k'ao-cheng" ^SS'WkM'bWi^^S # a Wen-hsiieh nien-pao S ^ ^ $ g (Nov., 1940), pp. 45-72. The contents of the two

22

CHIH-KUAl

works are generally accepted as central to the genre, among these the Sou-shen-chi ΜίΦΙΒ of Kan Pao ^ ¾ (Records of Spirits, c. 340), the Lieh-i-chuan ^0¾^ (Tales of Marvels, c. 220) ascribed to Ts'ao P'ei #35, and the Po-wu-chih W%ol& (Records of Strange Things, c. 290) of Chang Hua 35fl.5 Historical and theoretical studies of Chinese narrative often seek the roots of fiction in the Six Dynasties chih-kuai. The usefulness of that association is severely limited by a poor understanding of the chih-kuai themselves, their own roots, and the context in which they proliferated. A comprehensive answer to the many questions surrounding the chihkuai is prerequisite to understanding the distinctive features of later narrative in China, particularly if we seek to do so in comparison with the classical epic, novella, middle epic, romance, novel, and so forth of the European tradition. What one chooses to call the chih-kuai— fiction, proto-fiction, or simply an antecedent offiction—isultimately a matter of deciding what Chinesefictionis, a question that has not yet been subjected to thorough discussion. Avoiding that question, we would probably have agreement from most modern authorities on Chinese narrative that the earliest moments of Chinese fiction far predated the Six Dynasties; they were in fact the earliest moments in Chinese narrative writing itself, the classical histories and certain sections of the classical philosophical works. In ancient Greece, Clio was a muse for both historians and epic poets. Historical facts were thoroughly blended with fictional elaborations in early Greek epic and historical writing, and in much the same way facts andfictionswere blended in the earliest Chinese narratives.6 In theoretical comments on their writing, both lists differ considerably, the former being stricter in choice and including far fewer titles. 5 The title translations here are taken from Lu Hsiin and Yang and Yang. While not necessarily the best, they will permit the reader to identify readily the works being discussed. 6 In Topics in Chinese Literature (Harvard University Press, 1966), Hightower refers to the "converse process of elaborating history into fiction that produced some of the best writing in pre-Han China and brought the art of narration up to the level of expository technique . . . " (p. 14). Narratives have been associated with the oral tradition by a number of people, including P.Van der Loon, who describes the Tsochuan as the richest mine of historical and folkloristic information on the Chou period . . . , a combination of exact facts derived from written sources and details based on an oral tradition . . . " ("The Ancient Chinese Chronicles and the Growth of Historical Ideals," W. G. Beasley and E. G. Pulleyblank, ed., Historians of China and Japan, New York, 1971, p. 26). John Forsdyke in Greece Before Homer (London, 1956; esp. chapters vi, vn, and vm) discusses the relationship between fact and fiction in early Greek narratives, the subject that more recently served as the focus for extensive theoretical discussion by Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg in The Nature of Narrative (Oxford University Press, 1966). 23

EARLY H I S T O R I C A L A N D F I C T I O N A L N A R R A T I V E

Chinese and Greek historians took pains to distinguish fact and fiction, and both expressed the necessity of discarding the latter.7 But in practice, they wrote accounts of people and events so diverse in de­ pendability, at least from our present day perspective, that it is now generally impossible to neatly demarcate historical truths from fictional elaboration in early Chinese narrative.8 Very few historians saw the events they recorded. Their use of sources and the judgments made on inclusion and exclusion are based of course on their sense of the dependability of their texts, their sense of what is plausible, and the conventions of their time on use of sources, on the one hand, and their specific goals in writing a history, the political context in which they were working, and the general understanding of history, truth, and historical truth, on the other.9 Before describing the emergence and development of Six Dynasties chih-kuai from its antecedent and contemporaneous narrative forms, I remind the reader that fiction is not perfectly opposed to fact, its oc­ curence does not preclude the presence of true records, and the apparent historicity or even plausibility of the substance of a work cannot be the sole determinant of whether it is fictional. Further, things widely taken 7 Forsdyke writes, "TheGreeks rejected fiction in principle but in practice accepted much fiction as historical fact." He attributes this to a lack of historical documents, yet a strong desire to have them (p. 160). Yoshikawa Kojiro, who in general com­ mends early Chinese historians for their restraint and objectivity, cites Ssu-ma Ch'ien's own description of the process by which he confronted varying myths and legends about thefiveancient emperors and selected "the most reasonable ones and dropped those which sounded irrational" ("Man and the Concept of History in the East," Diogenes, 42 [summer 1963], p. 18). It is of course an obvious fallacy to rely upon plausibility as the measure of truth in historical records. 8 A survey of the scholarship on early Chinese narratives produces a variety of expressions by which the historicity and fictionality of early narratives have been described, most of which speak to distinctions of degree. In chapter πι of Topics, entitled "Early Narrative Prose: History, Fiction, and Anecdote," Hightower uses "pseudo-history," "fictionalized history," "euhemerized history," "fictionalized biography," "historical fiction," "imaginary oratory," "invention," "fiction treated as history," "genuine history with an admixture of fiction," and "anecdotes." Specialized studies occasion the coining of specialized terms. James Crump in The Intrigues: Studies of the Chan-kuo-ts'e (University of Michigan Press, 1964) describes the inventions of that work as "fiction of a particular class which I have called 'per­ suasion' " (p. 76). 9 Many studies have addressed themselves to the question of ideals and patterns in traditional historical writing. See Charles S. Gardner, Chinese Traditional His­ toriography (Harvard University Press, 1961); Han Yu-shan, Elements of Chinese Historiography (Hollywood: W. M. Hawley, 1955); Van der Loon, cited above; A. F. P. Hulsewe, "Notes on the Historiography of the Han Period," in Beasley and Pulleyblank; David S.Nivison, "Aspects of Traditional Chinese Biography," JAS, 21:4 (Aug. 1962), pp. 457^163; Arthur F. Wright, "Sui Yang-ti: Personality and Stereotype," Confucianism and Chinese Civilization (Atheneum, 1965), pp. 158-187.

24

CHIH-KUAI

to be historically true did not necessarily happen. The simplest definition of fiction—something made up or imagined—obliges us to consider the process by which a work came into existence, rather than its content, to be of germinal importance. The description of that process can be variously articulated as what the author did, what he thought he was doing, his allegiance to specific records as opposed to general beliefs and to specific circumstantial truths as opposed to general truths. Additionally in the case of China, one must be aware that narrative reached a high level of refinement by the period of the earliest well-preserved texts, and this established orthodoxies of form and content that constrained subsequent narratives to an unusual degree. Writers, dedicated to an ideal of fullness in historical record, cast an ever widening net for whatever texts and fragments might improve their understanding of things past and for contemporary materials that might serve the needs of future generations. The pursuit of this ideal led to the inclusion of descriptions of foreign peoples, descriptions of popular practices and customs, and then transcription of foreign and popular lore as matters of record. The new topics were explored and expressed within the old formats. Ssu-ma Ch'ien describes the curiosities of Ta-yuan, records the ways of the Hsiung-nu, and recounts tales of harsh officials and wandering knights with the same lieh-chuan JiJKt format that served for the detailed biographies of the great officials. How were future generations to interpret the historian's excursions beyond his usual domain ? What effect had the authority of the historian's office on the acceptability of the fiction in his writings and on the evolution of comparable fictional material in private texts ? There are two perspectives on narrative, the writers and readers, the origin of the material and the nature of its acceptance in the tradition, between which resides the most profound complexities in the emergence of literary fiction. Construing chih-kuai as fictional, as I have done here, is justified primarily by the writer's view, but qualified by the reader's. Finally, in considering both the origins and subsequent meaning of a text, it is important to bear in mind that no narrative is a pure example of history or fiction, as commonly defined, but that all narratives fall between the two. We should appreciate the complexity of choice facing the early writers of narrative as they selected and refurbished the historical materials transmitted to them for transmission to those who followed. In my definition of fiction the contribution of sources remote from the writer, as well as proximate, must be taken into account. Fictions preserved by a culture long enough, suitably garbed, can achieve a sense of historicity and appeal powerfully to the most punctilious chronicler. 25

EARLY H I S T O R I C A L A N D F I C T I O N A L N A R R A T I V E

In Ancient China, the singular continuity and durability of the written tradition and the written language promoted innumerable texts, whose contents range from the great myths of prehistoric cultures to the com­ monplace fictions of itinerant healers or entertainers, to positions of importance and influence, namely to the cheng-shih IEife (orthodox dynastic histories). Furthermore, during the pre-Ch'in period, the meanings of the words themselves coalesced within the firm confines of specific model usages, exact loci classici. The lexicographers of the day were the commentators, most explicitly in the Ku-liang chuan W^kW and Kung-yang chuan S ^ W , rendering definitions of terms only in situ. Study of the language necessitated study of the texts, i.e., the substance of the texts, irrespective of the quality of their information. With the high tide of wen-tzu-hsiieh ~%^φ during the Han Dynasty, dictionary makers like Hsu Shen fFti in his Shuo-wen chieh-tzu WL~5cM ^r progressed toward providing regularized definitions of characters, in relative isolation from specific contexts, and arranged in a synthetic order. Even so, in the Shuo-wen chieh-tzu the presence of the classics is felt with every twist of phrase. It is clear that the narratives of ancient China had found their way to Hsu Shen's, as well as Ssu-ma Ch'ien's, desk. The virtual gallimaufry of narrative texts that survived to the Han from ancient China—and a good measure of forgeries—were subjected to intense scholarly examination, wide dissemination among the literate, and thoroughgoing discussion and exploitation by the writers of the day. The need to classify texts, classify them with critical evaluation, was felt, and prompted Liu Hsiang S1J[P] to compile his Ch'i-liieh chih -fcRfrig (Bibliography of Seven Parts). Be that as it may, the interests that brought scholars to the ancient texts were diverse, as were the standards by which they selected texts, and the manner in which they contributed to their continued survival. With even a cursory examination of the chih-kuai texts that we now have, their affinity with traditional historical writing is obvious. Most collections are entitled "records," "accounts," "biographies." A number of known works attributed to the Han Dynasty with distinct chih-kuai qualities give clues to the conceptual bridge from the classical narrative forms to the Six Dynasties chih-kuai; the Shan-hai ching | 1 ] $ β (Classic of Mountains and Seas), Shih-chou-chi -HWfE (Account of Ten Con­ tinents), Han Wu-ti ku-shih !£3¾¾?¾¾? (Tales of Emperor Wu), and I-chou-shu iiiiJSilf (Lost Records of Chou) are but a few of the many written. Throughout the Han and early Six Dynasties the conception of narrative writing itself was, of course, not to be divorced from the only known narratives, namely the Tso-chuan IEW, Shih-chi Stffi, 26

CHlH-KUAl Chan-kuo-ts'e KHfR, and similar classical works. It is not surprising that many of the formal features and writing conventions of the chihkuai are borrowed from these works, either directly or through the mediation and adaptation of the Han narrative collections. As early as the Han narratives, two structural schemes emerge as favorites from the many used in earlier histories: organization of curious items along geographical lines, according to a list of rivers and mountains in known areas or strange and distant places, or organization along biographical lines, around the names of prominent mystics, emperors, conjurers and the like. A chronicle pattern was rarely employed and appeared only sporadically during the Six Dynasties.10 Topical organization such as that in the collective biographies of the Shih-chi, or the essays popular in late Han collections (e.g., Feng-su t'ung-i M.W&M and Lun-heng f^ft) all but vanishes during the Six Dynasties, until the chih-kuai are amalgamated into lei-shu 1 ¾ beginning from the sixth or seventh century. The commentary pattern, appending expanded versions of incidents onto the skeleton of a known text, was not favored by chihkuai authors, but fortunately reemerges in the late Six Dynasties with P'ei Sung-chih SMS;£. (comp. San-kuo-chih-chu =.WM^) and Li Tao-yuan 113¾¾ (comp. Shui-ching-chu ^ ¾ ¾ ) , two commentators with an enormous appetite for chih-kuai materials, and to whom the preservation of much Six Dynasties narrative writing is to be credited. If fiction is said to have cohabitated with genuine historical writing from the beginning in China, when we designate a genre or a period as the birth of fiction we are in fact describing the divergence of fiction and history from each other. Such a divergence has something to do with the purification of each type of narrative with respect to its own distinctive internal demands, increasing sophistication of author and audience with respect to the qualities and functions of each type, and, finally, the recognition and articulation of precise generic features by bibliographers and theorist-critics. In seeking distinguishing features in the texts themselves, we will necessarily have to turn from considering the historicity or even plausibility of the contents, and focus on the 10 Two examples of chronicle structure in early chih-kuai should be mentioned: Wang Chia's 3E^ Shih-i chi f&MlB and the sixth and seventh chUan of the twentychapter Sou-shen-chi. The latter lists in almost exact chronological order strange occurrences that are linked through wu-hsing I f f and yin-yang (¾]¾ interpretations to major events in the empire. The first of these two chapters appears to be quoted verbatim from the Han-shu and Hou Han-shu, and their authenticity as part of the original Kan Pao text has not been firmly established. See Nishitani Toshichiro Sih^-fclB "Gogyoshi to nijukanbon Soshinki i i f i g t —+S^gEiftfB," Hiroshima-daigaku bungaku-bu kiyo fMBsJZ^X^UsfSg-1 (April 1975), pp. 116-27.

27

EARLY HISTORICAL A N D FICTIONAL

NARRATIVE

internal literary features, conventions of the narrative, patterns of interests and ideals, traces of the creative process with respect to the sources. 11 With many factors bearing on the event, dating the birth of fiction in China is problematic. Even if we decide on the particular genre of chih-kuai during the Six Dynasties, we still have a long and complex process, not a point, to describe. The relationship between the chih-kuai and the tradition of historical writing did not end with a parturition early in the Six Dynasties. In the centuries following the Eastern Chin Dynasty (317-420), chih-kuai, chih-jen12 , and other patently non-historical works clung assiduously to their classifications as types of history in the dynastic history bibliographies, 13 appeared time and time again as explicit sources in highly respected histories and commentaries, 14 and, in the early T'ang, were still being criticized as mediocre history by historiographer Liu Chih-chi in his Shih-fung

At least one modern scholar has recently echoed the sentiment of pre-Sung bibliographers, stating that the chih-kuai are in fact a branch of the history tradition. "On the basis of common sense, the hsiao-shuo are clearly not history. But the hsiao-shuo of the Wei, Chin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties—whether we are discussing content or form—all were influenced by pre-Ch'in and Han histories and are in fact a branch of the history tradition." 1 5 The Eastern Chin was a period hospitable to literary production, 11 Work on the last of these has begun in the context of magical practices in various localities. See WangYao "Wei Chin hsiao-shuo yii fang-shu " Hsueh-yiian 2-3 (March 1949). pp. 85-110, esp. p. 109. Also included in Chung-ku wen-hsuen ssu-hsiang (Hong Kong: Chung-liu ch'u-pan-she , 1973). " "Describing people"—collections of tales and anecdotes about extraordinary men, the most famous example of which is the Shih-shuo hsin-yii __ _ of Liu I-ch'ing (403-444), translated by Richard Mather as A New Account of Tales of the World (.University of Minnesota, 1976). 13 Most of the chih-kuai works known were classified under Tsa-chuan-lei (Miscellaneous Biographies) by the Sui-shu, compiled in 635, and the Chiu T'angshu, compiled in 945. Only in 1061, with the compilation of the Hsin T'ang-shu bibliography, were chih-kuai removed from the history section. 14 P'ei Sung-chih , in his annotations on the San-kuo-chih of Ch'en Shou quotes the Sou-shen-chi for at least eleven items, some of which are quite lengthy. The Shui-ching chu of Li Tao-yiian quotes the Sou-shen-chi at least six times. Both P'ei and Li use a large number of chih-kuai works as sources. (For a list of P'ei's sources, see the Index to the San-kuo-chih chu in the HarvardYenching Indexes. For Li's sources, see Ma Nien-tsu , Shui-ching-chu yinshu k'ao in Ma-shih ts'ung-shu [Shanghai: Chung-hua shu chu . 1930].) 15 Liu Yeh-ch'iu Wei Chin Nan-pei-ch'ao hsiao-shuo (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chii 1961), p. 21.

28

CHIH-KUAI

perhaps striking a balance between the disruptive, albeit stimulating, chaos of most of the rest of the Six Dynasties, on the one hand, and the personal and political security of life in the Han Dynasty, on the other. Authors of monumental works, like Ko Hung^lgi: (ca 280-340; Pao-p'utzu i^th^f-, Master Embracing Simplicity), were able to spend at least some time living in relative peace, in proximity to other intellectuals, and in economic circumstances conducive to extended literary produc­ tion. After a lapse during the Three Kingdoms, the Chin witnessed a renaissance of interest in history writing. This was in part a genuine rebirth of a sense of history, coming with a restored sense of social commitment after the ch'ing-t'an era. It also certainly stemmed in part from a desire to imitate the administrative-institutional trappings of the Han Dynasty.16 Ch'en Shou RIP wrote the history of the preceding period; Kan Pao was appointed official court historian to Emperor Yuan (317-322) to transcribe the Chin-chi ##E (Annals of Chin). An abundance of historical records was amassed and reprocessed during the Six Dynasties, the final fruit of which was to become the Chin-shu #11 with its appendices on the Sixteen States.17 Was it then in the spirit of Chin historiography that the chih-kuai gained popularity, thaumaturgical histories to preserve the record of and interpret the press of the supernatural and bizarre on everyday life? Kan Pao wrote the Sou-shen-chi, Ko Hung the Shen-hsien-chuan pfiljff (Biographies of Spirits and Immortals), Chang Hua 3SI| the Po-wu-chih W^lS; Tsu Ch'ung-chih M'$>2. the Shu-i-chi SiMiS (Accounts of Marvels), a Mr. Lu gft the I-lin J&# (Forest of Marvels), and there were a considerable number of others. The term "chih-kuai" itself emerged, as a book title. A number of prefaces and autobiographical notes are extant from the Chin Dynasty, and they make clear not only the affinities between chih-kuai and history in the authors' minds, but also a burgeoning awareness of the need to separate and classify the two. Ko Hung writes in his autobiography: "In all, I have composed Neip'ien ftif in 20 scrolls, Wai p'ien ^1-K 16 Emperor Yuan established the Office of History for the Eastern Chin in response to a memorial by his Privy Councillor Wang Tao (see Chin-shu, chapters 65, 82). Wang spoke of the tradition of having such an office and its value in establishing a durable dynasty. 17 T'ang T'ai-tsung commissioned the compilation of the present Chin-shu in 646, under the direction of Fang Hsuan-ling ί § £ ϋ ; and Ch'u Sui-liang ^ ¾ ¾ . The Sui-shu bibliography lists eight different texts entitled Chin-chi and a great number of other records and accounts dating from the Chin Dynasty itself and the subsequent southern dynasty, the Liu Sung. During the century after the fall of the Eastern Chin, these records were gathered into a number of histories, more than a dozen of which bear the title Chin-shu.

29

EARLY H I S T O R I C A L A N D F I C T I O N A L N A R R A T I V E

in 50; inscriptions, lauds, regular and free poetry in 100; Chiin shu hsi i %%W$I> and Chang piao chien chi ^iSUfE in 30. I also compiled a book on those figures who are not normally listed, which became the Shen hsien chuan in 10 scrolls; I did the same for those who out of idealism do not enter public office, which became the Yin-i chuan HJS flf, also in 10 scrolls. I further extracted from the Five Classics, the seven histories, and the philosophers, all they had to say on military matters, recipes and arts, miscellanea, and extraordinary phenomena; this grew to 310 scrolls plus a table of contents. My Neip'ien telling of gods and genii, prescriptions and medicines, ghosts and marvels, transformations, maintenance of life, extension of years, exorcising evils, and banishing misfortune, belongs to the Taoist school. My Waip'ien giving an account of success and failure in human affairs and of good and evil in public affairs, belongs to the Confucian school."18 This is a rare document, in which a Six Dynasties man of letters not only describes the generic divisions by which he cast his various writing, but also comments on their intellectual affinities. The preface to the Shen-hsien-chuan, which may not have been written by Ko Hung, but only recorded a legend that adhered to him, further describes the circumstances of that book's composition. "I wrote the twenty Nei-p'ien [of the Pao-p'u-tzu] to discourse on deities and immortals. A disciple Shen Sheng asked, "Master has said that by becoming a hsien one can achieve immortality, and the means by which people became hsien in ancient times can be studied. Were there really such people?" I answered, "Several hundred were recorded by the minister of Ch'in, Juan Tsang, and more than seventy were re­ corded by Liu Hsiang. But deities and immortals are mysterious, secluded, flowing apart from the ordinary world. In this world, one hears of only one in a thousand." So now I am copying and collecting again stories of ancient immortals."19 Whereas Ko Hung describes special motivation for his chih-kuai, other prefaces relate a more ordinary response to the historian's urge to preserve ancient records. "For generations, my family has collected and passed on Taoist texts, trying to assemble and analyze what was compiled and edited by former sages and ancient worthies. The quantity of such writing is inexhaustible, more than a thousand chambers could house or ten thousand chariots carry. Some charge that these texts are vacuous 18 James R. Ware, trans., Alchemy, Medicine, Religion in the China of A.D. 320 (Cambridge, 1966), p. 17. (SPPY Wai-p'ien, 50. 6bj. 19 Translated from the Lung-wei pi-shu Β | ^ § } # edition.

30

CHIH-KUAI

and fanciful, not in accord with the needs of order and proper educa­ tion. In the words of the classics and in the records of events which historians transcribe, they are accordingly deleted without a trace. And so it happens that remote countries and strange places are simply not to be found in the records. "I say that these remnants from ancient times cannot come into our hands and just be discarded. This is even more true when one considers the situation with Han Emperor Wu, a ruler of singular vision and talent. [His minister] Tung-fang Shuo depended precisely on this kind of humor, this "vacuous and fanciful" talk, to correct and censor the emperor. Tung-fang extended his understanding of things through the Taoist teachings, and he made clear and comprehensible the profun­ dities of the most obscure tracks. "Here I am compiling what former historians did not record, putting together as best I can what I have seen or heard to make a book for this school of thought, the Tung-ming-chi ίΜΚΙΞ in four chiian. I hope that gentlemen whose understanding extends beyond the familiar will embrace the work and marvel at its contents. Because Emperor Wu bore an expressed desire to learn all he could of spirits and immortals, unknown frontiers and untraveled lands made tribute of their precious and marvelous things, and furthermore, men practiced in the Taoist arts prospered under the rulers during the Han. For these reasons I am gathering and organizing these materials." Written by Kuo Hsien $|5J8E of the Eastern Han. The Tung-ming-chi is dated by traditional bibliographies as a Han work, attributed to Emperor Wu himself in some cases, to Kuo Hsien or simply Mr. Kuo in others. The body of the work has been judged by Yen Mao-yuan on the basis of its language to be of Wei or Chin au­ thorship (p. 59), but the preface may be of even later origin. Emperor Wu and his minister Tung-fang Shuo were to become major figures in the birth of fiction (according to traditional bibliology) and resourceful thaumaturgists (according to popular lore and literature). The insist­ ence on the association of the two with fiction here, particularly in connection with popular Taoism, is redolent of the defenses of late Six Dynasties Taoist chih-kuai writers, reacting to the proprietary interest shown in chih-kuai techniques and tradition by Buddhist au­ thors. 20 The question of authorship aside, the preface is valuable in 20 For another case of a suspicious preface ascribed to Tung-fang shuo, see the Pai-tzu ch'uan-shu W i f s l f version of the Shih-chou-chi +#HfB (Taipei: Ku-chin wen-hua ed. "S-T - Ub, vol. 15, p. 17). Here, too, a reference is made to popular Taoism.

31

EARLY HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL NARRATIVE

that it documents not only the historian's impulse to preserve records in danger of being lost, but also reveals something of the process. The contents of this collection were said to be in the private holding of Kuo Hsien's family, worked, reworked, and preserved by them as a family enterprise. Writing of cheng-shih was comparable, in that it too was a family enterprise, proceeding sometimes with, sometimes without, official sanction or commission, but it was distinct in that its materials were in the public's, or at least the government's, possession. If during the Six Dynasties writing as a private act won widespread acceptance, then the proper moment was also provided for books and records in private hands to be brought forth to the literate public, for publication. A family would likely have in its private library records and writings related to its own particular geographic and social background and pieh-chuan SOflf biographies of prominent ancestors. The impact of these texts on the mainstream of intellectual and literary activity would likely be related to the access a family enjoyed to the centers of power, both political and cultural. The chronic institutional instability of the Six Dynasties promoted family after family into positions of such access, and from the time of the Ts'ao family on, one after another arose to impress something of its own mark on the mainstream of literary activity, in some cases revitalizing, in some cases dissipating, the culture of the court. The details remain to be explored, but it is apparent that chih-kuai materials in particular were the private preserve of some families for generations before coming public attention. Kan Pao was born into a family that knew only two generations of government service, and that in minor posts. He rose to hold the most exalted post available to a historian in the Eastern Chin court, and his Sou-shen-chi (hereafter SSC) was perhaps the most influential and widely imitated chih-kuai ever written. The SSC preface, preserved in the Chin-shu, merits the most careful examination. "Even though we examine ancient fragments in the written documents and collect bits and pieces which have come down to the present time, these things are not what has been heard or seen by one person's own ears and eyes. How could one dare say that there are no inaccurate places? Note Wei Shuo's losing the country. The two commentaries are at odds in what they have heard. Note Lu Wang's serving Chou. In the Shih-chi there exist two stories. Things like this occur time and time again. From this standpoint we can observe that the difficulties of hearing and seeing have come down from ancient times. "Even in writing the set words of a funerary announcement or following the manuals of the official historians, one finds places where 32

CHIH-KUAI

it is difficult to write accurately. How much more difficult then is looking back to narrate events of a past one thousand years ago, writing down the characteristics of distant and peculiar ways of life, stringing together word fragments between textual faults and fissures, questioning the old people about thing in former times! If one must have historical events without any discrepancies, have the words in every text agree, and only then regard them as veritable, then this point will surely seem a defect of previous historians. "Nonetheless, the state does not eliminate the office charged with writing commentaries on historical documents, and scholars do not cease in their recitations of the texts. Is this not because what is lost is inconsequential and what is preserved is vital? "As for what I am putting together now, when they are items gotten from previous accounts, then the fault is not mine. In the event they are recent happenings which I have collected or found out, should there be errors or omissions, I would hope to share the ridicule and condemnation with scholars and worthies of the past. "Coming now to what these records contain, it is enough to make clear that the spirit world is not a lie. On this subject, the countless words and hundred differing schools are too much even to scan. And what one perceives with his own eyes and ears is too much to write down. So I have lumped together something satisfying my purpose of expressing the eight lueh. It will make some trivial accounts and that is all. "I will be fortunate if in the future there come some curious men who enjoy these things, take to heart the basic import, and find something in them with which to enlighten their hearts and fill their eyes; and fortunate too if I am not reproached for this book." 21 The supernatural, particularly the supernatural in the medium of popular culture, had already attracted considerable attention from court literati during the Han. Wang Ch'ung and Ying Shao wrote dissertations to debunk popular beliefs, but even so gave in with literary fascination to some of the more appealing stories.22 By the Chin there appears to have been open intellectual dispute over the existence 21 The identical excerpt from the preface is found in the Chin-shu if ff "Biography of Kan Pao" and in numerous Ming Dynasty ts'ung-shu, one of which, the Pi-ts'e hui-han %&j$imWi, contains the oldest known version of the twenty-chapter Soushen-chi. The preface is apparently incomplete, which suggests that the reconstructed Ming editions of the work took it verbatim from the Chin-shu. Only editions of the Sou-shen-chi in the tradition of the Pi-ts'e hui-han contain the preface, with the exception of one early Ming version of the eight-chapter text. 22 Note in particular chapter nine of the Feng-su t'ung-i MM-MMk "Kuei-shen

lei" .SJ1UI-

33

EARLY HISTORICAL AND F I C T I O N A L N A R R A T I V E

of ghosts and such, with the inheritors of the ch'ing-t'an traditions, e.g., Liu T'an, taking a rather lofty transcendental view of extra-human existence in direct contrast to the ghosts and genii of Kan Pao and Ko Hung.23 Ko Hung's arguments about the existence of hsien in the Pao-p'u-tzu suggest that the chih-kuai authors had no reservations about the credibility of their materials. "Since men of our day do not believe in them and are even highly critical of the idea that they exist, God's Men become angry and conceal themselves all the more. Further, just as the superior sort looks down upon the things that appeal to common people, so man in his highest form places no value on the things that ordinary folk esteem. Just as illustrious scholars and those of rare talent nurture their overwhelming vitality and take no pleasure in seeing inferior folk, so, all the more, why should gods and genii yearn to have mere puppets know that they exist? Why do we expect that we should think it odd never to have known them? From a distance of a hundred paces the eye cannot see too clearly; thus, when we wish to consider that which we see as existent, and that which we do not see as nonexistent, there will most certainly be a great many things that do not exist in the world! It is like saying that the sea is no deeper than the depth we can sound with a finger! Can an ephemeror judge the age of a great tortoise, or a hibiscus reckon that of the great ch'un tree?"24 Apart from the question of credulity, we might ask how the chih-kuai authors collected materials outside of family and local documents, particularly stories that appear to have been rooted in a non-literate tradition. In earlier periods there are important notable examples of the elevation of folk literature into the literary fold in the earliest periods; the ascension is always rationalized by corollary myths. Confucius edited the Odes because they had been collected by petty officials to gauge the spirits of the common folk. Ch'u Yuan transcribed the Ch'u-tz'u (Songs of the South) because he found himself cast among those people in exile from his native culture. While "broad knowledge" ^ P (po-hsiieh) becomes the primary criterion for intellectual eminence in the early Six Dynasties, recited as a virtue time and again in the biographies and anecdotes about outstanding men like Ko Hung and Chang Hua, we find no myths that account for their having "broad knowledge," no records that detail the course of training or accidents of birth. The chih-kuai themselves attest powerfully to the 23 Nishino Teiji H f f ^ ¾ , "Soshinki-ko" g|ijff33f, Jinbun kenkyii A t I ? E 4-8 (Osaka-shiritsu daigaku ^BKrfrSE;*:^, 1943), p. 8. 2 * Ware, p. 39.

34

CHIH-KUAI

fact that some men knew an extraordinary amount about things that fell outside the purview of traditional learning; some showed such an easy familiarity with the folk literature and legends of even non-Chinese cultures as to appear virtually bicultural. The Eastern Chin court was a southern court, the first significant concentration of literate Chinese culture to be transplanted in the South. Emperor Yuan established the Eastern Chin Dynasty in what is now the city of Nanking atop the ruins of the weakling Wu state of the Three Kingdoms. Wu's major problem in consolidating itself politically and militarily was that its territory was largely populated with the autochthonous Yao, Tai, and Yueh, whose cultures differed radically from that of the new ruler from the Central Chinese Plain. 25 The Eastern Chin literati were no more comfortable in their new home than were the Wu, regarding the South as an uncivilized colonial outpost. 26 In a political sense, the Eastern Chin fared no better than the Wu state; its forty-two year life was forty-two years of war between rival gentry cliques, spiced with vicious court intrigues and fought with armies of rebellious locals. But there was an important difference between the situations of the Wu and the Eastern Chin, in that the latter was obliged to deal not only with the Yao, Yiieh, and Tai, but also with a set of earlier Chinese immigrants, the remnants of the Wu ruling class. They were nearly a century in that location and had amassed considerable land wealth and other capital. These earlier immigrants, although a political thorn for the Eastern Chin, provided an important bridge in the cultural sense, to the local customs and beliefs. Many of the most enthusiastic devotees of the supernatural in the Chin court had ancestral roots in the South, specifically in the Nanking area, and, we might surmise, had either a period of residence there during their youth, had partially acculturated family remaining in the South after the demise of Wu, or perhaps even had barbarian women in their families who functioned as bearers of an alternate cultural tradition. The Chin-shu tells us that Kan Pao's father was from Tanyang, which was on the site of presentday Nanking, and that his grandfather had been an official in the Wu court. Lu Chi BW. (261-303), known for his Wen-fu >ijffi, is credited with the authorship of a lost chih-kuai, the Yao-lan USS. He was a native of the South, and both his father and grandfather were high officials in the Wu government. 25 Wolfram Eberhard, A History of China (University of California Press, 1966), pp.111. 26 Eberhard, p. 152.

35

EARLY H I S T O R I C A L AND F I C T I O N A L N A R R A T I V E

The writings of many chih-kuai authors show a comfortable familiarity with the local culture, which prompts the notion that they were mediating intellects between the imported high culture of the Chin court and the indigeous southern ones to which they were bound by family ties. This then was an ideal time and these men were the ideal men for a revitalization (or rebarbarization) 27 of the Chinese narrative tradition. The massive infusion of folk, possibly oral, materials here— what might be called the substance of a subliterary genre of narrative— could have been the conception of a new literary genre, if one calls the chih-kuai the birth of fiction. The process itself was noted by Liu Chih-chi $\\%M. in the Shih-t'ung & S , "Although they took this talk from the ordinary people, in the end it was to be seen among the literati!" 28 The absorption of popular materials into the literary tradition was not limited to narrative. Cheng Chen-to discusses the influence of folk songs on the Six Dynasties yiieh-fu, stating that one of the two major classes of influential folk poetry was that of the Wu region. 29 Chih-kuai stories themselves frequently call attention to their southern origins. One of the Sou-shen-chi stories most reliably documented as Kan Pao's original work describes the death of Sun Ts'e, general of the Three Kingdom's Wu. "Sun Ts'e was about to cross the Yangtze River and attack the prefecture of Hsu [present-day Honan Province]. Yu Chi was traveling with him. This was just at the time of a great drought, and the place they were in was scorched by the heat. Sun Ts'e was pushing his generals and their troops to draw their boats quickly across the river they faced. He would sometimes come out early in the morning to press them on. Once he noticed his officers and troops clustered in great number aound Yu Chi. Sun Ts'e upon seeing this flew into a rage, "Is it that I do not measure up to Chi, that you first run to him?" Sun had Yu Chi arrested immediately and brought before him. He railed, "There is a drought and no rain. The route is extremely difficult. Who knows when we will get across. Because of this, even I have been going out early, but you do not seem to share these concerns, just sit in a boat, doing your devilish postures. You are demoralizing my 27 The process by which primitive or subliterary genres are elevated and the effect they have on a written tradition is discussed in Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1942), p. 226. The term "rebarbarization" is cited by the authors from MaxLerner and Edwin Mims.Jr., "Literature," Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1933), ix, pp. 523-543. 28 From the Shih-t'ung, "Ts'ai-chuan p'ienjRglM," cited in Wang Yao, p. 106. 29 Cheng Chen-to MUffl, Chung-kuo su-wen-hsueh shih $>Wfe3M%. (Peking, 1954; rpt. Taipei: Commercial Press, 1965), n, p. 87.

36

CHlH-KVAI troops, so I should just get rid of you now." He had his men bind Yu Chi and stake him outside to the ground, exposed to the sun. If he could move the heavens to make rain in the course of the day, he would be pardoned. If he failed, he would be executed. "Suddenly clouds began to gather, and before the sun was even overhead, a tremendous rain burst forth. All the waterways swelled to overflowing, and the soldiers were exuberant. They were certain that Yu Chi would be forgiven and rushed forward to congratulate him. But Sun Ts'e just went ahead and killed him. "The troops were inconsolable and took charge of his body. During the night, once again, clouds gathered and enveloped his corpse. In the morning when they went to look it was not to be seen. "From right after the time Sun Ts'e killed Yu Chi, whenever he sat alone he seemed to see Yu Chi all around him. This was a tre­ mendous irritation, and Sun appeared to be seriously losing his bear­ ings. Later when wounds he was nursing were about to heal, he picked up a mirror to take a look at himself. He saw Yu Chi in the mirror. Sun Ts'e turned around to see but Yu was not visible. This happened again and again, till he smashed the mirror with a great scream. His wounds all burst open and before long he died." (San-kuo-chih chichieh H H S ^ f i ? [hereafter SKC], Er-shih-wu-shih —+ΞΕ&, 46. 33a36b; SSC 1/22). Yu Chi, his punishment and his powers, are an example of what Schafer has termed "ritual exposure," the stripping bare of a shaman or shamaness for the purpose of invoking rain. 3 0 The practice was wide­ spread in China by the Six Dynasties, but its roots were clearly in the region of the Ch'u-tz'u. The Yu Chi story itself, particularly as told by Kan Pao and quoted by P'ei Sung-chih, represents a synthesis of a southern religious practice and its contingent legends with the sen­ sibilities and form of the dynastic history tradition. Yu Chi's origins, the historicity of the events themselves, and the precise form in which the materials came to Kan Pao's hands present problems yet to be solved. But we can begin to see something of the ethnographer in the complex make-up of the chih-kuai writer. We can also see from the story the anti-establishment bias that informs many of the chih-kuai themes, not suprising in light of the colonial nature of the Eastern Chin situation. An analogy to field anthropology is suggestive. A foreign culture is recorded with a set of tools and in a context alien to that culture; 30 Edward H. Schafer, "Ritual Exposure in Ancient China," HJAS, 14: 1-2 (June 1951), pp. 131-184.

37

EARLY HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL NARRATIVE the product of the study is a reflection of both cultures. The Shih1 ching, the CKu-Iz U, and many of the chih-kuai are ancient ex­ amples, each in a unique but comparable way. Bringing order and permanence to the substance of a barbarian culture must be counted as a major desire motivating the chih-kuai writers, and the worth of 31 their work in this sense has been well proved. In addition to the Yu Chi story, other Sou-shen-chi items that have been persuasively linked to local southern practices by modern scholars include the P'an Hu 32 legend and the Weaver Girl legend. The Sou-shen-chi includes two items on the peculiar potion ku U, made by letting a number of poi­ sonous reptiles and insects devour each other until there is only one, the most poisonous, alive. Chinese cultural geographers turned to Kan Pao as early as the sixth century for his information on ku, and by the T'ang Dynasty the usefulness of his records on southern barbarian cultures was already being praised by historians. 3 3 I have described the chih-kuai writer as believer on one hand, as objective ethnographer on the other. Much of the Sou-shen-chi predated Kan Pao, some by a millenium, and was surely roundly "mysticized" by a long period of ferment in the popular memory. 3 4 Much is quoted directly from previous accounts, already part of the written culture, with little or no contribution from Kan Pao. But a definitive portrait of the chih-kuai writer must account, too, for the numerous contem­ poraneous accounts, equally mysterious and supernatural, the historic­ ity of which simply could not have undergone corrosion in the hands of the populace. These include not only descriptions of practices in other cultures, but also tales of famous Chinese contemporaries, stories 31 Monumental works on traditional Chinese society that have depended heavily on the chih-kuai as sources include J. J. M. DeGroot, Religious System of China (Leiden: Brill, 1892-1910) and Wolfram Eberhard, The Local Cultures of South and East China (Leiden: Brill, 1968). The virtues and pitfalls of using these materials are discussed in Katsumura Tetsuya i^it^til, "Rikucho Zui To no haishi shosetsu no seiri ni kansuru oboegaki" Λ $11½¾ ©?•$&, / H f t © g S ! f c M 1 - 5 * # , Eitani Sensei koki kinen W§-%&.-£1ffiB& (Bukkyo-daigaku $ 5 ¾ * ¾ 1972). 32 For translations of the P'an Hu story, see Yang and Yang, pp. 28-29; for the Weaver Girl, p. 11. Both of the items are discussed in the context of local myths in Eberhard, Local Cultures, pp. 44ff. and 183ff. respectively. 33 Ku Yeh-wang SilfEE (519-581) quotes Kan Pao's items on ku in a discussion of its magic found in his Yu-ti-chih 11¾¾. The Ti-li-chih i$MJ& (Treatise on Geography) in the Sui-shu refers to the usefulness of Kan Pao's recording and analysis of local customs. For the history of ku research and the relevant traditional documents, see John K. Shryock and H. Y. Feng, "The Black Magic in China Known as Ku," JAOS, 55 (1935), pp. 1-30. 34 The process referred to here is described by Mircea Eliade in Cosmos and History (Harper and Row, 1954; rpt., Harper Torchbooks, 1959), pp. 42-43.

38

CHIH-KUAI

related from personal experience, even news items of particular interest. Having looked at the general background of chih-kuai, we can at this point make some summary assertions that have a bearing on the important literary questions in our study of them as fiction: (1) The techniques by which they were created seem to be those of the historian in the main, the systematic collection and arrangement of material from a variety of sources. Note the frequent appeal to sources, the specificity about time and place. This is not writer as fictor, a fact that has ramifications for virtually all of Chinese narrative to come later.35 Chih-kuai writers were not, however, as a rule historians by profession, though historical study as an avocation was almost universal among literati. Excepting Kan Pao, Wu Chun 4¾¾ (469-519, Hsu Ch'i-hsieh-chiflWlffE),and Hou Pai ^ S (Sui Dynasty, Chingi-chi JiJ^fE), the writers of chih-kuai from Liu Hsiang's time on tended to be more philosophically than historically oriented in their other writings.36 (2) The affinity for history notwithstanding, the chih-kuai were recognized as something different by their authors and were set aside in special works or in special sections of larger works. In a number of prefaces written to chih-kuai, the authors hint strongly that their materials may be faulty in a historical sense. (3) To judge from extant examples, we can safely generalize that the chih-kuai were not burdened with discourse and argumentation, but were records of events set forth in plain, unencumbered narrative style. This contrasts to Han records of supernatural events, to other writings by Six Dynasties chih-kuai authors, and to the prefatory materials often attached to chih-kuai works. (4) In at least one important regard, the recording of anomalies had a legitimate precedent and precise formal model in the dynastic 35 Confucius' comment in the "Shu-erh" =¾]¾ is echoed by Ssu-ma Ch'ien describing the responsibilities of the historian as those of transmission and classification, not that of creation (Shih-chi, 130). The hold that this concept had on creative writers is discussed by Jaroslav Prusek in "History and Epics in China and the West," Diogenes 42 (summer 1963), p. 30. Related points are made in an examination of the historian's methodology employed by a writer who is not an official historian; see Arthur F.Wright, "Hui-chiao's Lives of Eminent Monks," Jinbun-kagaku-kenkyUsho Silver Jubilee Volume (Kyoto, 1954), pp. 387-392. 36 Aristotle, of course, made the point that the writing of literature was more closely related to philosophy than history, in allegiance to general truths rather than to specific circumstantial facts. Takeda Akira made the observation about chih-kuai writers in "Shosetsu 'bM." ChQgoku-bunka-sdsho φ Β ^ Ί β ϊ ϊ Ι Ι , vol.4, Bungaku-gairon iC^ffiffe, Suzuki ShOji $;^jg$., et al., ed. (Tokyo: TaishOkan ^ H , 1968), p. 220.

39

EARLY H I S T O R I C A L AND F I C T I O N A L NARRATIVE history tradition. The Grand Historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien and his father Ssu-ma T'an were first and foremost court astrologers, charged with the responsibility of observing ordinary and extraordinary phenomena in nature and interpreting them as they bore on the emperor's ad­ ministration of government among men. 3 7 In addition to the chih-kuai texts themselves and to the miscellaneous comments by chih-kuai authors, there is a great wealth of secondary material that provides other perspectives on the relationship between history and fiction during the Six Dynasties. The evolution of early narrative types, including the chih-kuai and a number of proximate writings, can be studied from the official bibliographies, particularly the Sui-shu Ching-chi-chih WitiKfgS; and the Chiu Tang-shu Chingchi-chih β β ^ β Κ ί β · Early lei-shu, e.g., the I-wen-lei-chu W&CMSfc and the Ch'u-hsueh-chi $]1^!E, can be analyzed to determine the at­ titudes of editors in various periods toward the chih-kuai. Histories and historical commentaries that incorporated quotations from the chih-kuai can be studied to reveal changing attitudes toward historical sources. I will attempt to illustrate below what can be found in the secondary sources and to draw some tentative conclusions relevant to a general theory of Chinese narrative. To do this with some coherence, I will concentrate on the Sou-shen-chi. The SSC survives in four versions, ranging from two to twenty chapters. 3 8 Each version has some claim to legitimacy, but the long­ est text is probably the best representation of Kan Pao's actual writing. The extant version in twenty chapters contains 464 items, varying from brief notices on omens or curious events of no more than a few dozen words, to polished and sophisticated tales of heroic exploits or great love affairs. With only a few exceptions, the items are concerned with the supernatural, the zone of intercourse between human and non-human evidenced in spirit manifestations, weird births and transformations, dreams, possessions, and other aberrant phenomena. Many of the character types familiar in later fiction and drama are found in the SSC—filial children, devoted lovers, ingenious magistrates, and crooked or bungling officials—as are many of the plot conventions—wronged spirits finding peace only after vengeance and the self-sacrificing miraculously rescued and rewarded, to name a few. Most of the longer items in the SSC are apparently 37

Hulsewe, p. 35. I use the term "survive" here with qualification. The Sou-shen-chi is not extant in its original form, but has been mostly if not completely reclaimed from works that quoted it. For a detailed discussion of the history of the text, see my dissertation, The Sou-shen-chi and the Chih-kuai Tradition: A Bibliographic and Generic Study (Columbia University, 1973; University Microfilms 74-28,487), esp. chapter 3. 38

40

CHIH-KUAI

influenced formally by the lieh-chuan of the Shih-chi and Han-shu Slli, and typically they begin by reciting the name, tzu ^ , birthplace, official position, and special talents of the subject.39 It was with the support of the powerful Chin minister Wang Tao ΈΜ that Kan Pao, otherwise without influence, reached the apotheosis of his career as Head of the Office of History.40 During his tenure in that office, he compiled the Chin-chi (Annals of Chin), and it is probable that much of the material he included in the SSC was collected at the same time.41 The SSC preface translated above is largely a conven­ tional description of the historian's labors, echoing Pan Ku's descrip­ tion of the writing of the Han-shu: "After the T'ai-ch'u Period (104— 101 B.C.) there is a gap, there being no recordings. Therefore [I] have searched among the previous records and I have strung together and collected what I have heard, and thus I have related 'The Texts of the Han [Dynasty].' " 4 2 But in Kan Pao's description of the process, there is the hint of a disclaimer of responsibility for the reliability of the material, the clear sign of its relegation to a distinct category of writing, historical leftovers. In both Kan Pao's and Pan Ku's comments, there emerges the concern about the gaps, the fear that those small pieces which remain of ancient texts will perish without a concerted effort on behalf of their preservation. This effort is to be made irrespective of their reliability as historical accounts, a reflection of those precise conditions which Forsdyke describes as inclining historians to accept "fiction as historical fact." Other writings of Kan Pao have been examined by modern scholars, particularly fragments of the Chin-chi and his annotations on the Book of Changes. Emerging consistently is Kan Pao's belief in what was called T'ien-jen shuo ^AtS (Heaven-man Theory), that approach to understanding which placed the utmost importance on the study of the relationship between human action and heavenly phenomena.43 39

In addition to Yang and Yang, pp. 11-54, translations from the Sou-shen-chi are scattered abundantly throughout DeGroot and also form the substance of an article by Derk Bodde, "Some Chinese Tales of the Supernatural," HJAS 2 (Feb. 1942), pp. 338ff. 40 Kan Pao's official biography is in Chin-shu 82. There is little else known about him. The biography of Wang Tao is Chin-shu 65. 41 Following Wei Cheng's description of chih-kuai in the Sui-shu, Takeda Akira refers to this as yu-shih j^Sfc (leftover history). Takeda speculates about the relation­ ship between the compilation of Kan Pao's Chin-chi and Sou-shen-chi in "Kan Po Shiron: Shinki to Soshinki no aida ^pgfiffe, THSSJ k&Ws&nTel," Tokyo Sina-

gakuho yUff^Wmm ll (1965), pp. 23-36. 42

Han-shu 100B translated in Hulsewe, p. 37. Nishino describes Kan Pao as an intellectual conservative, his commentaries reflecting the interpretations of the I-ching graphs developed by Ching Fang ;RJ§ of the Han Dynasty (p. 8). 43

41

EARLY HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL NARRATIVE Alchemy, conceived as a reenactment of cosmic processes reduced to a human scale, embraces T'ien-jen shuo, and hence the connection between the alchemists and chih-kuai writers. Less than a century after the SSC was compiled, P'ei Sung-chih used it and a considerable number of similar works to elaborate on the terse accounts in Ch'en Shou's San-kuo-chih ΈΕ.ΜΊ&. P'ei used SSC material in a variety of ways. In one place he quotes it to document and interpret the ascension of the Ts'ao family to power (SKC, 2.38 a-b; SSC 8/234). This is an example of the most common function of supernatural materials found in serious historical writing throughout the ages, the wu-hsing 3Uf? (five phases, or elements) interpretation of omens. In another place, P'ei quotes the SSC for details about a carved stone that mysteriously appeared during the Wei Dynasty (SKC 3.37 a-b; SSC 7/179). This too was an omen. In a third example, the SSC quotation explains the probable source of huo-huan-pu tkJ^a (as­ bestos) presented to the court by a messenger from the West (SKC 4.2a-b; SSC 13/336). Half of the quotations from the Sou-shen-chi in P'ei's commentary are about the wu-hsing, and they would have been digestible by official histories up until the Ch'ing Dynasty. The others are no more credible to us as historical fact but rather more enchanting as narratives. 44 In addition to the Yu Chi tale, some of the other out­ standing examples are: "Mi Chu, styled Tzu-ch'ung, was a native of Chu prefecture in Tunghai. His family had been merchants for several generations, and their fortune was vast. Once when he was returning from Loyang and was still several dozen Ii from home, he saw a beautiful young lady by the roadside who was beckoning him to give her a ride. They traveled what could have been just a bit more than twenty Ii, when she thanked him, about to take her leave. " I am a messenger of heaven, on my way to burn down the house of Mi Chu of Tung-hai. I am grateful for your having given me the ride, so I am telling you this." Mi Chu pleaded with her to relent. She said, " I absolutely must burn it down. But even so, you could hurry along and I will go leisurely. But by noon, the fire must begin." Mi Chu rushed right back. At the instant he arrived home, he moved all of his treasured possessions outside. That noon a great fire broke out." (SKC 30.10a; SSC 4/87.) "Chu-ko K'o of Wu returned from a campaign in Huai-nan. He was 44

The Yu Chi story and the group of examples from the Sou-shen-chi that follows are particularly important because they are the oldest known extensive borrowings from the text with explicit attributions and are therefore most unimpeachable as to authenticity. 42

CHIH-KUAI

to have an audience in the morning. The night before he felt wide awake, tossed and turned, and could not sleep at all. In the morning when he finished dressing and was about to go out, his dog grabbed onto his robes. "Doesn't he want me to go out?" KO said, going back in and sitting down. "After a short wait, he got up again, but the dog once more grabbed his robes. KO had a servant pull the dog off. When he appeared for his audience, he was of course killed. "His wife in her room at home said to the maid, "Why do you smell of blood?" She replied, "I don't." In a little while, however, the stench became stronger. His wife asked, "Your eyes are goggled and staring. Is something wrong?" The maid leapt up with a start. Stretching her neck toward the ceiling, shaking her arms, and grinding her teeth, she said, "Master Chu-ko has been killed by Sun Chun!" With this, everyone learned of Chu-ko's death, and before long, guards came to the house." (SKC 64.166; SSC 9/246.) "Sun Chun of Wu murdered Chu Chu and buried her in Shih-tzukang. Sun Hao, after ascending the throne, wanted to change her burial spot. However, with a large number of graves all together, he was unable to distinguish Chu Chu's. But there was a palace girl who clearly remembered what she was wearing when she died. So Sun Hao had two sorceresses sit in separate spots and await her spirit. They were just to spy on it but not to approach it. After a long wait, both claimed that they had seen a girl, perhaps slightly over thirty years old. Her hair was tied with blue brocade. She was draped in white and purple robes and was wearing silk slippers. "She emerged from a mound in the upper part of Shih-tzu-kang, leaned against a rattan tree with her hand, and paused for a breath. She stayed there for but a moment, began to climb back up the mound, then stopped and paced back and forth for some time. Suddenly, she disappeared. "The two sorceresses did not consult with each other, but their stories concurred completely. The graves were opened, and the clothing was found to be as described." (SKC 50.96; SSC 2/47.) Three of these four longer stories quoted from the Sou-shen-chi by P'ei Sung-chih center around the Wu region. P'ei is willing and unskeptical in his use of SSC material, a fact made particularly clear by the circumstances surrounding the inclusion of the Yu Chi story. P'ei compares the first part of the SSC version, Yu's arrest and execution, with a different account from the Chiang-piao-chuan iHlflF. 45 "The 45

A book written by Chin Dynasty official Yu P'u W& (Chin-shu 82). 43

EARLY H I S T O R I C A L AND F I C T I O N A L NARRATIVE accounts of Yu Chi in the Sou-shen-chi and the Chiang-piao-chuan are different, and I am not clear which is correct" (SKC 46.33b). For the last part of the story, recounting Sun Ts'e's death, an alternate version is quoted from the Wu-Ii £M of Hu Ch'ung ϊ$ was sixty-three when he wrote these lines, an age we would consider close to retirement. He had completed a successful literary and official career; his poetry was read by literati and sung by the common people. By his own estimation, he had risen higher in the official hierarchy than many poets before him; yet his songs were sung by proud (and expensive) prostitutes.2 Behind these lines and their concern with literacy and illiteracy lies an implicit recognition of the disenfranchisement of the unlettered and of the importance of the written word. Command over spoken language is not enough; only mastery over pen and ink will insure success. What I should like to consider below is the other side of the ledger: the deprivations in literature resulting from neglect of oral tradition. The prevailing attitude toward fiction in China through the years is well known. Among the literati, it was defensive when it was not condescending. Hsiao shuo /J>!£, "small talk," seems to put fiction in its place. Yet there are occasional comments that are not entirely patronizing. Su Tung-p'o ^ ¾ ¾ writes, for example: "Wang P'eng once told me that when children are naughty and their families cannot stand them they would toss them some money and make them sit in a flock to listen to old stories. When tales of the Three Kingdoms are told and the children hear of Liu Pei's defeat they frown or even snivel, while when they hear of Ts'ao Ts'ao's defeat they cry out for joy. This * This paper was originally prepared for presentation as an Eberhard Faber Memorial lecture, and was delivered at Princeton University on November 3,1973. 1 2

nmr^^m^^CXm,

Ch'iian Tang SMh 7(7)/30/12a.

Arthur Waley, The Life and Times of Po Chu-i (New York, 1949), pp. 45, 100.

53

EARLY HISTORICAL A N D FICTIONAL NARRATIVE shows that good and evil men leave their mark in history for hundreds of generations." 3 The didactic strain in these comments suggests that, at least in this instance, "small talk" was not without redeeming social value. Indeed, unfashionable and naive as the suggestion may be, one's childhood experiences in oral culture are no less—perhaps even more—formative than the extensive literary training that one receives later in one's education. When oral stories shape and mold the moral sensibility of an audience by re-creating events of the San-kuo chih Ξΐϋ;δ, they perform the same role that Ssu-ma Ch'ien I M S , the Han historian, saw for the Shih chi j£fE: to censure evil and to exalt virtue. Far from being morally frivolous, the popularizations of history were effective means of teaching the untaught, of instructing the illiterate. The pleasure these narrations gave to unsophisticated au­ diences made them perhaps suspect to the literati, who disdained nar­ rator, narration, and audience as worthless. Yet, it is from these uneducated sources that much of the inspiration and strength of a good deal of classical literature (in the narrow sense) springs. It is no coincidence that the first masterworks of literature in the West and in China, the Iliad and Odyssey, identified with Homer, and the Shih Ching f#$g, identified with Confucius, were originally products of oral genius (however resourceful literate commentators have been in annotating the works since). An appreciation of the oral factor is not only an extension of the bounds of literature beyond the written word: it also enables us to recognize clearly the contributions made by word of mouth to words on paper. There are some exceptions to the neglect among scholars of fiction: the hsiao shuo were mentioned in Pan Ku's Han shu S S i H i t (History of the Former Han Dynasty); the conversations and anecdotes recorded in the Shih-shuo hsin-yu ttlftfrln (New Talks of the Town) of the Six Dynasties period; the pien-wen ££% texts of Buddhist narrations of the T'ang dynasty; the hua-pen IS^: of the Sung dynasty; the p'ing-hua ^Pfg of the Yuan. In addition, there are works that have become so familiar a part of "literature" that one overlooks their oral provenance. The Lun-yii fnfa of Confucius, for example, are, one should not forget, conversations involving Confucius, which the translation "Analects" almost totally obscures in English.4 (In the West, a parallel instance occurs with 3

Quoted by Lu Hsiin, A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, translated by Gladys and Hsien-yi Yang (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1959), p. 166. 4 The Lun-yii quotes Confucius as saying i*M^FlWiiMM~&, which might be paraphrased as: "To transmit (by word of mouth) rather than invent (with the pen), I trust in, and love, the ancients" (,Lun-yii, 7: 1). 54

A TASTE F O R A P R I C O T S

Plato's Dialogues, which, despite their importance to philosophy and literature, were first and foremost oral discourses.) It is not until we reach the early seventeenth century, in Ming times, that we have a definitive outline of the problem in China: Feng Meng-lung ϋ |£f|, in his preface to his Ku-chin hsiao-shuo "S^/htft (Stories Old and New) writes: "To such a high stage of advancement have the arts been carried under the aegis of our Imperial Ming, that there is no school but has flourished, and in popular literature the writing has often reached a standard far above that of Sung. Those who reject the style of such work as unfit for comparison with the writings of the T'ang period are making a mistake. The eater of peaches need not reject the apricot."5 The tendency of the Chinese critic to concrete distinctions, so often criticized for having no analytical or abstract power (for not being, in short, a typical modern Western critic), is here most in evidence. The metaphor of belles-lettres to the peach, and of colloquial fiction to the apricot, is a homely comparison, and intuitively right: but, like many intuitive truths, it leaps over the steps by which one arrives at the con­ clusion. My effort, in this paper, will be to explore—analytically—what Feng Meng-lung so succinctly recognizes. We will examine the par­ ticular characteristics of the colloquial genre, establish its mode of existence, and suggest appropriate criteria for evaluation. We will try to show how an inadequate grasp of these notions distorts our image not only of oral narrations but of literary fictions as well. We will, in short, taste the apricot. THE P R O B L E M S

To isolate the problems clearly, let us examine an article on Chinese fiction written almost twenty years ago by a distinguished sinologist. For in its sympathies toward colloquial fiction and its apologies on its 6 behalf, John Bishop's piece on "Some Limitations of Chinese Fiction" is worth re-examining, not only for what it so knowledgeably tells us about oral storytelling, but also for the critical attitudes expressed. At the outset, Mr. Bishop concedes that his procedure of judging Chinese fiction by the standards of the West may be ill-starred: "I must admit," he writes, "to taking arbitrarily the fiction of the West as a standard 5 Translated by Cyril Birch, Stories from a Ming Collection (Indiana University Press, 1958), p. 7. 6 Far Eastern Quarterly 15 (1956), pp. 239-247; reprinted in Studies in Chinese Literature (Harvard-Yenching Institute Studies xxi), edited by John Bishop (Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 237-245.

55

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against which to measure works in a wholly unrelated literature, a questionable procedure if used merely to arrive at a value judgment, but a justifiable method if used to localize and appraise the different development in comparable genres of two distinct literatures."7 If by this, Mr. Bishop is suggesting a comparative history of fiction in China and the West, stressing descriptive and not evaluative concerns, there can scarcely be any objection—though one may wonder at the invidiousness of his title: "Some Limitations of Chinese Fiction." But a glance at the critical comments indicates that something more than dispassionate description is involved. Bishop observes, "Probably the most notable influence of its early origins on the novel and one most disturbing to the Western reader is the heterogeneous and episodic quality of plot."8 Moreover, he argues, "The reader of fiction, unless he confines himself to the watered-down and sugar-coated imitations which inevitably swarm in the wake of those original works that appear like revelations, wishes not only to be diverted by 'lies like truth' but to be edified by a personal vision of truth seen through the medium of lies or fictions. If we accept this concept of fiction, it seems to me that the traditional colloquial fiction of China is limited in two respects: the one a limitation of narrative convention, the other a limitation of purpose."9 The burden of the argument is that Chinese fiction is not original: the implication is that it is confined to "watered-down and sugar-coated imitations," and has no "original works that appear like revelations." Lack of originality aside, Chinese fiction is also criticized for its "curious absence of personality," and damned for "a monotonous preoccupation with 'story' rather than with an individual mode of telling the story." And,finally,there is one last animadversion, which seems most dated now: Mr. Bishop takes issue with Chinese fiction for its ambiguous moral purpose. "Much of the traditional material is frankly pornographic or immoral in nature." I have examined some of Mr. Bishop's remarks in detail because they show how a student of Chinese fiction, intimately familiar with and well-disposed toward the subject, yet feels compelled to proclaim its "limitations." It is not Mr. Bishop's sinology, for which every student of Chinese fiction must be grateful, but his critical assumptions about literature with which I take issue and that I would like to reconsider. Briefly summarized, his assumptions about the limitations of Chinese fiction center around three basic questions: (1) the notion of unity; (2) the value of originality; and (3) the definition of audience. 7 8 9

Far Eastern Quarterly 15 (1956), p. 239. Ibid., p. 242. Ibid., p. 240. 56

A TASTE FOR APRICOTS The word "unity"—for what may first appear a simple and unmistakable concept—has acquired a complex of different meanings. Far from being a designation of the "unit-ness" of something, in modern criticism, it refers to an organic, integrated, and coherent oneness, which presumes a state of perfection that would be violated by excisions or additions. In some works, particularly those using closed forms, like the sonnet, the notion is a useful one, and may serve to elucidate the meaning and complexity of the structure. But when it is elevated to a critical canon, and becomes the sine qua non of value in literature, then it becomes a mischievous fiction that misleads more often than it helps. The assumption of an ideal integrality cannot properly explain the value of the great "unfinished" works, like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Spenser's Faerie Queene, or Wordsworth's Prelude; nor will it prove effective in approaching such discursive authors as Cervantes, Rabelais, or Sir Thomas Browne. These notions of unity really assume what might be called post-Gutenberg integrity: the coherence of a work between the covers of a book, or on the printed page. As a result, the Bible as book is ascribed a unity inappropriate for what essentially is a composite anthology of pieces spanning three languages and ten centuries. In pre-Gutenberg times, the unit was something else, and in oral narrations the most important unit was the storytelling session itself. Chinese colloquial fiction reminds us of this, for each unit is called a "hui" (IH])—a "turn," a round, a session. These units form an interlocking sequence, a serial aggregate, much like the links on a chain. Each is tied to the preceding and the succeeding "turn." These then form larger cycles that may comprise a very loose, non-contingent plot. But the continuity between chapters is an accident of recording or of redaction, for no storyteller allowed the audience to do what the modern reader does without thinking: to turn the page to the next chapter. The simple but necessary concern to compel the attention of the audience exists at the base of every story, whether a lengthy novel, a mystery ("I couldn't put it down"), or an oral narration, but the units are different: in the novel, it is more often than not, as Joseph Frank has demonstrated, a spatial unity; in the mystery story, a psychological or logical unity; and in the oral narration a temporal unity. To describe colloquial fiction as episodic is responsible scholarship, but to disdain it as episodic is dubious criticism. Chinese fiction is unitary, but not unified: it follows no canons established by critics reading in the con-text of the book, but responds to the no less demanding, but very different requirements of the actual and present audience. In this century, few books are more admired for their "originality" 57

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than James Joyce's Ulysses. Yet, one is inclined to forget that behind the modern fiction is the Homeric story, and that Joyce's originality is not absolute—full-blown out of the author's head—but rather springs from a close reading of a classical work. If Joyce had written it in the age of Pope and Dryden, Ulysses would, no doubt, have been called an "imitation." This is not to minimize Joyce's undoubted contribution to the art of fiction; but the point may be that his contribution lies as much in being derivative as in being original. No student of Eliot will misconstrue the statement that the most original author is also the most traditional. For these ambivalences, it seems to me, lie at the heart of every great Chinese and Japanese author, from Ch'u Yuan BM to Wu Ch'eng-en ^ ¾ ¾ , from Lady Murasaki to Yasunari Kawabata. The contribution of each storyteller, each poet, is not to start something totally new (Cassirer wrote: ". . . thus no content of experience can ever appear as something absolutely strange"); originality lies in the ability to renew and refresh a living tradition. That tradition, because alive and organic, was and is best sustained in the fluid medium of oral discourse. The text preserves much that would be otherwise lost (and we are grateful for our repositories), but the text also stultifies, it fixes what is in process and yields extant evidence, but it distorts the original experience. The text is analytical: it takes apart into segments to facilitate study, but it fails to preserve the immediate reality of the process itself. The literary text is a follower of Parmenides, for it insists on being as the reality, and not becoming. We are, in this sense, heirs of Parmenides, and children of the written word, when we say something is "realized" and mean thereby that a tangible, concrete manifestation has been achieved. But oral narrations follow Heraclitus, and see reality as becoming and not being, see it as the process and not the recording of that process. For this reason, the text of the colloquial story is the least reliable resource, even if the most accessible. But one must not confuse accessibility with value. History is whimsical about what she leaves "extant": we are given fragments that should not be mistaken for wholes. As footprints on the sand to a frolic on the beach, the text of oral works give but an inkling of the life and verve of the event itself. Finally, we must consider—or reconsider—the word "audience." For our literate bias has very quickly induced us to forget the metaphor behind the word when we refer to reading audiences. The metaphor is handy, but inaccurate, for the reading audience is not a witness to the story, except in a special, abstract way, and it hears—actually—nothing. In Susanne Langer's terms, the reading public is a "virtual audience," 58

A TASTE FOR A P R I C O T S

one that is real not in actual terms, but in the imaginative act of reading. The book is realized intrinsically in the mind: the story is heard in melodies of no sound. The printed piece of fiction does not depend on actual sounds being pronounced to achieve their effect: the sounds are on the page. If this seems commonplace, it is because readers in phonetic languages tend to associate meaning with identifiable sound, and the graphs that denote these sounds also denote the visible word. In Chinese, the sounds are not visible on the page, and it is possible to read a text that one cannot begin to pronounce accurately.10 (Recent studies have, however, begun to explore the syntactical traces of dialects in certain works.) This situation is familiar, it appears, to a growing generation of educated students who read in more languages than they can effectively speak. In considering oral fiction, then, it is the literal, and not the metaphoric, sense of "audience" that one must keep in mind. For if the colloquial fiction fails to please the modern reader, the fault lies in the reader's failure to recreate imaginatively the actual experience of the original audience, for whom the narration was intended. I am making no apologia for colloquial fiction: I do not believe it needs one; nor am I vaunting oral narrations as qualitatively superior to literary fictions. I am merely asking that the special and different qualities of each be appreciated on its own grounds, and with the criteria appropriate to its original mode of existence. Nor am I suggesting that the two modes are entirely separate and equal, for, as I hope to show at the end of this discussion, the two—the literate and oral modes offiction—arenot always autonomous, but stem from the same trunk, although they have produced different fruit. I ask only that as responsible scholars and students of literature, we do not project our limitations onto the genre we study, before we have all the evidence necessary for a fair evaluation. And I am suggesting that as modern "audiences," weaned from oral fixations, and trained on written literature, we must develop a "taste for apricots." ILLUSTRATIONS

Some of the "apricots" of the past have been—miraculously—preserved for us in scrolls discovered at Tun-huang 1¾¾ at the turn of the century, in texts called pien-wen by scholars, though both the term 10 The inadequacy of even phonetic languages to record sounds, or to transmit meaning, was the concern of so prolific a master of the colloquial as Robert Frost. See his essay, The Constant Symbol (New York: The Spiral Press, 1962), and Richard Poirier, "Robert Frost: The Sound of Love and the Love of Sound" (The Atlantic Monthly, April 1974, pp. 50-55).

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pien and pien-wen occur on the actual manuscripts themselves. 11 I shall not submit these as great works of literature before they have been properly assessed, but they do offer representative examples of medieval Chinese oral fiction. On two scrolls, preserved on roughly complementary fragments, there is a story of the Emperor Shun # , one of the legendary monarchs in Chinese history, the paragon of filial piety and imperial rectitude. The story is a Cinderella story, with a hero instead of a heroine. Shun's mother dies; his father Ku-sou ϋ § | remarries, and has a son by his second wife; father, stepmother, and stepbrother then proceed to torment the ill-fated young Shun, but, despite ample provocation, he refuses to waver in his piety toward his parents and toward his unregenerate stepbrother. His virtues attract the attention of the sage emperor Yao ϋ , who offers him the throne (ironically, in preference to his own unworthy son), as well as two daughters in marriage. In the version found at Tun-huang, there is one motif that probably appealed to the illiterate and semi-literate audience congregated around the narrator. After each attempt, Shun is described as scurrying to the library to recite the Confucian classics; and, after each attempt, Shun's stepmother accuses him of being unfilial. In the first attempt, the step­ mother accuses Shun of putting prickly rods under her feet when she climbed a tree to pick fruit. Shun is duly punished, even though it is the stepmother who has pricked her own foot, and falsely accused her stepson. Indra heals Shun's wounds, and then the storyteller says: "So Shun went quietly to the library, where he first recited the Analects of Confucius and the Book of Filial Piety and then read the Book of Songs and Book of Rites." (Waley, 68.) In the second attempt, the stepmother tricks Shun into repairing the roof, and sets the barn on fire. Filial as Shun is, he is not completely stupid, because he asks for two wide-brimmed hats before he ascends the roof. When the fire is set, Shun flaps the wide-brimmed hats with his arms, and glides to safety. Shun's stepmother is beside herself, and feels that more vilification is called for. "Ever since you went away to Liao-yang [she tells her husband], leaving me in charge of the affairs of the house, your child by your first marriage has behaved in a most unfilial way. He has done nothing but swill wine in the eastern court­ yard and has never once set foot in the library in the western courtyard. Night after night he has gone off roystering with evil companions, 11

Cf. Wang Chung-min E i g ] et al., Tun-huang pien-wen chi ffcggXft (Peking, 1957), and my dissertation, Word of Mouth: Oral Storytelling in the Pien-wen (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1971).

60

A TASTE FOR APRICOTS

never once coming home." 12 (Waley, 69.) These accusations are the more ludicrous because the storyteller has just told us that Shun "went home to the library, where he first recited the Analects of Confucius and the Book of Filial Piety, and then read the Book of Songs and the

Book of Rites" (mm^m^m,

*&!&»#«, mm^mmm- The

effect of Shun returning to the library after each injustice, as if in penance, both reading and reciting the Confucian texts, must have been amusing to the Buddhist storyteller and his audience. Several characteristics are worth noticing in the story: first, the psychology is not very deep, the young Shun seems more a cog in the comedic machine than a real person; second, there appears to be great narrative economy, the repetitions are devices that do not yield their full effect without elaboration by the performer; third, the structure of the storytelling is serial, one scene leading to an almost identical scene, like indistinguishable links. There is no roundedness, no sense of contingent structure: rather, there is a horizontal thrust, the ongoing narration proceeding forward according to the storyteller's skill and the audience's interest. The functional criterion of oral storytelling is not an overall unity, but an elasticity of structure that accommodates the contingencies of the moment. The story is, as it were, cut to order: the chain is broken off at any length, or continued as the occasion requires. In Aristotelian terms, this would be devastating: no beginning, middle, or end, no sense of the part to the whole, and—in the root and figurative sense of the word—no integrity. Yet it should be evident that the mode of discourse—or "radical of presentation" as Northrop Frye would phrase it-—has more pressing concerns than structural integrity. There is the requirement of retaining the disparate, immediately pressing audience and, perhaps most difficult, of accommodating constantly shifting listeners. On many of the scrolls found at Tun-huang, there are texts of the ya tso wen (ff J$X), short verse introductions intended to settle the audience into their seats. With such little control over the comings and goings of the listeners, the narrator had to shape his story in such a way that a fragment would be as absorbing as a whole. Indeed, the fragments became wholes, strung together for the duration of the story session. In sum, then, the form that most fits the structural requirements of oral narration is linear rather than spatial, unitary rather than unified, compatible rather than integrated. 12 Arthur Waley, Ballads and Tales from Tun-huang (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1960), p. 69.

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The Buddhist saint, Maudgalyayana, Mu-lien g'Min Chinese, is the figure of several pien-wen versions preserved on scrolls at Tun-huang. A close examination of these manuscripts indicates that more than textual variants are involved: each text, in fact, represents a narrative variant. The Mu-lien story occurs on eight different scrolls,13 in addition to a version called "Mu-lien yuan-ch'i" HSijgfcfB (The Retribution Story of Mu-lien") and another titled "Mu-lien ching" @ jjgiR (The Mu-lien Sutra).14 Briefly, the story recounts Mu-lien's search for his sinful mother in the underworld. Filial to the point of naivete, Mu-lien refuses to believe that his mother has committed any sins. His wanderings take him through numerous chambers and compounds, but before the storyteller yields the final confrontation between pious son and impious mother, he takes Mu-lien (and us) through one compound after another. The first establishes the model. Mu-lien inquires about his mother, and then, ". . . the jailor went up onto a high tower in Hell, waved a white banner and beat upon an iron drum. "Is there a Lady Ch'ing-t'i in the first compound?" he asked. In the first compound, there was no one."15 (Waley, 229.) The same sequence is then repeated for each of the succeeding compounds, except that for each there is a banner of a different color: in the second compound, it is black, in the third, yellow. In every instance, the exact words are repeated, except for the change in the number of the compound and the color of the banner. Only the concluding sentence of the sequence varies: "In the first compound, there was no one"; "In the second compound, also, there was no one." When we reach the third compound, the final sentence is abbreviated to, simply: "Also, no one." The sequence is too involved for slavish repetition, at least in this instance, beyond the third compound, and the storyteller collapses his narrative even more: "At the fourth compound, there was also no one. Then he went to the fifth compound, they also said no. At the sixth compound, they also said there was no one by the name of Ch'ing-t'i."16 The repetition is curtailed, the motif of the variously colored banners is abandoned: the formula is varied, but with 13 Four fragments (P2319, P3485, P3107, P4988)are to be found in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris; three (g#^ 76; K ^ 85; H ^ 89) are to be found in the National Library at Peking; and one (S2614) is at the British Museum in London. 14 The "Mu-lien yuan-ch'i" is on P2193 in the Bibliotheque Nationale; the "Mulien ching" fragment is on S2564 at the British Museum. 15 Waley, Ballads, p. 229. 16 Unfortunately Waley may have conflated the Stein 2614 version with the PeIliot 2319 version here. I translate theS2614 text consistently here and will render the p. 2319 version later. Cf. Word of Mouth, pp. 71-72.

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maximum economy and fluency. Then, at the seventh compound, the sequence is picked up in full once again, and developed with a flourish: "The jailor went on to the seventh compound. He waved a grey banner and beat on an iron drum. "Is there a Lady Ch'ingt'i in the seventh compound?" Now Lady Ch'ing-t'i was in the seventh compound, her body clamped down onto a bed of iron by forty-nine long nails. She dared not answer. The jailor asked again, "Is there a Lady Ch'ing-t'i in the seventh compound or not?" Then at last came the answer, "If you are looking for Lady Ch'ing-t'i, I, wicked sinner, am she." "Why didn't you say so before?" "Jailor, I was afraid that you were going to take me to fresh torments in another place. That is why I did not dare to answer." 17 The narrative sequence has been expanded to accommodate an inspired elaboration, one that fully conveys the sense of terror and dread that the denizens of hell feel. The middle sections, covering the fourth to sixth compounds, were somewhat abbreviated versions: the narration has "collapsed" the sequence to speed up the storytelling. In a written work, when an exact repetition of a sequence does occur, the motif of the colored banners would certainly not be quite so casually discarded. There are no shortcuts in symbolism. But this technique is ideally suited to the oral mode. With one audience, the storyteller could conceivably go through all seven compounds, inventing a new color for the banner at each compound; with another audience, he might be hard pressed to get by two without straining the patience of those present. The "collapsing" of the sequence by the elimination of certain details is not textual excision, but narrative discretion, allowing the storyteller to adjust according to individual circumstances. On any given occasion, there may be more or less "collapsing." And, indeed, we have scroll evidence to prove this. The preceding version of the Mu-lien story derives, for the most part, from a scroll in the British Museum, Stein 2614, which is also the basis of the text in the Tun-huang pien-wen chi 1¾;¾!!¾¾, which in turn is the basis of Arthur Waley's translation in his Ballads and Stories from Tun-huang. There is, however, another scroll, in Paris, Pelliot 2319, which though physically the more nearly complete, is narratively the less elaborate. Let us examine the same scene in the Pelliot scroll. Mu-lien, you remember, inquires after his mother, whereupon: ". . .the jailor went up to the high tower in Hell, and waved a white banner, beat an iron 17 Following Waley's translation {Ballads, p. 229), except for "Ch'ing-t'i" (Waley: "Leek Stem") and "jailor" (Waley:/"gaoler").

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drum: "Is there a Lady Ch'ing-t'i in the first compound?" In the first compound there was none. He went to the second compound, and then to the third, the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth; there was also no one. The jailor went to the seventh and saw Lady Ch'ing-t'i with forty-nine long nails in her body nailing her to a bed. He shouted up: "Are you Lady Ch'ing-t'i?" "Yes." 18 The differences between the two versions cannot be ascribed to scribal editing, for this version is not fragmented, or abruptly broken up. It has its own smoothness and fluency. The variants are narrative, differences in the presentation of the same story on two occasions. They cannot be conflated like texts to provide a single authoritative story, for each version is an authentic presentation of the Mu-lien tale in its own right, with no concern for "superior" or "inferior" texts. Each version is original and derivative at the same time: there is no previous version to be faithful to, no one and no way, if the previous versions are oral, to check narrative fidelity. Even if it were possible to follow another text exactly, fidelity to a previous version would be, for the oral narrator, scant compensation for an uninspired recreation. Absolute originality in the oral mode is as specious as complete derivativeness. Only with fixed texts and copyright laws do questions of originality and plagiarism become paramount; actually they are the concern more of the book-merchant and the book-publisher than of the literary critic. We come to the definition of the "audience." The modern image of the writer as a solitary figure, remote, aloof, or reclusive, fending off admirers with exquisite Jamesian tact, or with crude Jonesian brusqueness, owes something no doubt to the Romantics, but I think it stems ultimately from the separation of the storyteller, the story, and the audience that began with the advent of print. For no oral story ever developed, no oral storyteller ever survived, without an audience. The audience was, in part, the collaborator in the oral narrative, extending or limiting the stories the teller would be able to evolve successfully. The interchange between narrator and audience was immediate, vital, and protean. The contrast between the image of the contemporary writer, plagued by writer's block, alienated from society, agonized about his waning power, and the image of the popular singer, thriving on and exhausting himself with his audience, is instructive. Orpheus, after all, lost his life amid a crowd of frenzied Maenads, not in splendid isolation. 18 For a facsimile of this part of the P2319 scroll, see Word of Mouth, Appendix C l , p. 309.

64

A TASTE FOR APRICOTS Shelves and shelves of remaindered books, not to mention hosts of disappointed authors, are apt and wasteful testimony to the separation between the story and the audience. The modern author must take his cue from the ecologists: he must recycle not only his books, but his stories as well. Publishers are the first to admit that it is impossible to gauge accurately the demand for any title. The consumption for oral fiction was at once much more efficient and much more ruthless: the storyteller learned his craft or he lost his audience. 19 There was no publisher to convince, and no posterity to court. The storyteller accommodated his audience, no matter how fickle, strange, or mixed. One of the most familiar and touching legends of the Han dynasty, celebrated in countless poems, is the saga of Wang Chao-chun EEBgg, the concubine who was sent to the Hsiung-nu -¾)¾ tribes as surety against invasion. The concubine was, one recalls, so beautiful that she refused to bribe the court painter, the infamous Mao Yen-shou ^MM, whereupon, with petty vindictiveness, he painted her less flatteringly. On the basis of this portrait, the Han emperor, Yuan-ti 71¾ selected her as the most dispensable when the barbarians proposed an alliance by marriage. The pathos for Wang Chao-chun centers on her most unenviable plight: a Chinese lady, of beauty and breeding, living out her life with a barbarian. Needless to say, she does not survive, and her death is celebrated as a noble sacrifice, showing love of country and loyalty to the emperor. We may quote Li Po's $ θ chueh-chu #6'¾ poem on this theme as typical: Chao-chun dusts off the jeweled saddle, Mounts her horse with tears on her flushed cheeks; Today a lady of the palace of Han, Tomorrow, a barbarian's wife.20 The outlook is decidedly from the Chinese point-of-view. At Tunhuang, a scroll was found largely intact, which is probably a pien-wen, though we are not entirely certain, since the opening segment with the title is missing.21 All the elements of the traditional story are here: the trip to the barbarian lands, the lament for the exiled beauty, her death, even that charming detail of legend that describes the tumulus 19 "We are all like Scheherazade's husband," E. M. Forster wrote in Aspects of the Novel. The primitive Neanderthal audience listened to stories, Forster speculates, and the "novelist" of those times "droned on, and as soon as the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him" (Aspects of the Novel) (Harcourt Brace, 1927; Harvest Books edition, 1966), pp. 26-27. 20 Ch'uan T'ang Shih 3(4)/3/3b. 21 P2553 in the Bibliotheque Nationale: cf. Tun-huangpien-wen chi, pp. 98-107.

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in which she was buried as being green all year round. There is, how­ ever, one remarkable difference: the portrayal of the ch'an-yii ψψ chieftain, which is extremely sympathetic. This is a sample of the characterization: "The Ch'an-yii did not know her misery, and did not return until nightfall. Although she returned to the tent, she could not sleep, and, as a result, she became ill, and grew more and more ema­ ciated. Though the Ch'an-yu was a barbarian, he did not neglect his conjugal duties. He inquired often after her." Indeed, life with the ch'an-yu is anything but dull. For her diver­ tissement, he arranges a lavish hunt: "The Ch'an-yu saw she was not happy, and dispatched another message by arrow, announcing to the assembled tribes to lose no time in preparing a hunt, encircling Mount Yen-chih with Chao-chun at the center, spreading themselves out for miles and miles, with hundreds of troops stalking the prey. Chao-chun mounted the lofty peak, her grief rising, and pointing to the sky, sighed to heaven." The narrator then continues in verse: Ch'an-yu has summoned all his tribes, That they should deploy around this northern peak. On the left, nothing but breastplates of gold, On the right, nothing but a profusion of brocade. Brown yaks, wild horses, hit by scattered lances; Deer after deer, pierced by a stream of arrows. This lavish production does not divert the Chinese princess, who says, haughtily, "These strange melodies do not dispel my sorrow; the amusement of other lands does not entertain me." And, a little later, "My heart starts: What's that? The lowing herd. My head aches. How I hate yak milk and sheep smell." 2 2 What is peculiar to this version of the story is the extremely knowl­ edgeable account of barbarian customs, and of local geography. But the sympathy for the barbarian is perhaps the strangest anomaly. In order for the story to achieve its full force, the barbarian chieftain must behave like—well, a barbarian. But this is a strangely civilized, solicitous character, cordial, considerate, respectful—in short, a true gentleman, a chun-tzu M-f~In the ninth century, when this piece was transcribed, the northwest corridor of the present province of Kansu ΉΊΪ in China, where Tunhuang is situated, was a crossroads of many races. Indeed, in the pieces found at the site are texts in Khotanese, Sogdian, Uighur, and Tibetan; there is even a Manichaean treatise. There are also census accounts that give us a very accurate picture of the town as an international 22

For a complete translation, see Word of Mouth, Appendix A.5, pp. 275-296.

66

A TASTE FOR APRICOTS

center. And, it was this mixed audience that the storyteller in that city in the ninth century was trying to accommodate. He could not so freely offend the barbarians as he might have in the capital of China, Ch'angan 5:¾. There was another way in which this story particularly suited this place and this time. We know from other sources that marrying off "princesses" to barbarian chieftains as a ransom for peace was a frequent practice in late T'ang times. 23 Indeed, one researcher has discovered that out of twenty "princesses" so married off, only three were authentic. The Japanese monk Ennin, whose diary tells us so much about ninth-century China, relates the story of a princess married off to an Uighur king, but unlike her predecessor Wang Chao-chun, she kills her intended. The demand for such a story at a border town like Tun-huang in the ninth century must have been considerable, but the storyteller has a problem: he has both Chinese and barbarian in the audience. So he tries to accommodate both. The strain in this attempt at tact may be seen by these touching attempts at elegant parallelism. At the funeral scene, there are these lines: Although the Han think separation in life is hard, Even the barbarians don't take death and burial lightly. And we remember the implicit tact of: "Though the Chan-yu was a barbarian, he did not neglect his conjugal duties." What we have in this version of the Wang Chao-chun story is what the folklorist, C. W. von Sydow, calls "oicotypes," or local variants of stories transmitted from outside. CONCLUSION

The principle of accommodating the audience should not be construed as indicating the lack of artistic integrity that one associates with "crowd-pleasing." For herein lies the very heart of the matter, the dissociation of narrator and audience has created in the minds of the critics the notion of the "contemptible crowd." Crowds listened to oral stories in Homer's time, in the medieval period in Europe: they were discovered clustered around Huso in Yugoslavia by Albert Lord. Crowds have often contributed, as performing artists will admit, to a particularly inspired performance, as well as to a dismal showing. Crowds may be benevolent or malevolent, whether student groups or learned societies, rabble or congregations, but we ignore them at our 23 Kuang P'ing-chang Jg2FIf, "T'ang tai kung chu ho ch'in" UftSifaSft, Shih-hsiieh nien-pao i £ | l ^ $ L published by the History Society of Yenching University, it, ii (September 1935), pp. 23-60.

67

EARLY HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL NARRATIVE peril. Indeed, it is the communication that is so much in demand, not in the merely technical sense, but in one's responsiveness to another. Our present state of fiction is the result of an alienated audience as well as an alienated author. The audience has changed: from a largely illiterate congregation listening to an illiterate or barely literate storyteller, to a smaller group listening to a literate reader reciting from the text, and finally ending with a single individual responding silently with his own imagination to the fiction created by the unuttered word on a page. The process has become—despite the specious camaraderie of book clubs—a singularly solitary and silent experience for both the audience and the author. Wolfgang Iser has recently considered the question of collaboration between author and audience. He cites the importance of the audience in every successful literary fiction and quotes Laurence Sterne's remarks from Tristram Shandy: ". . . no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader's understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself. For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my own." 24 It is this reconciliation between author and audience that prompted Dickens to regard his readers as co-authors. Perhaps the best example of the "amicable" respect between author and reader may be found in Chapter 89 of Moby-Dick, in what might appear a most unlikely discourse on proprietary rights at sea: Melville is discussing the question: "To whom does a harpooned whale belong?" The unwritten law of the sea, he tells us, stipulates that "A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it," and "A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it." The chapter ends with a sequence of metaphors illustrating "Loose-Fish." "What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World," Melville asks, "but Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish?" And then he ends with a twist that brings the reader up short: "And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?" The basic prerequisites of storytelling are never out of fashion: to haul in the loose fish and hold them fast. In this essay, I have been concerned mainly with oral narrations, 24

"The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach," New Literary History 3:2 (winter 1972), p. 280; quote from Tristram Shandy (London, 1956), n, Chap. 11, p. 79.

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A TASTE FOR APRICOTS but it is clear that what I have said applies in part to literary fiction as well. As in so many respects, Joyce is the pivotal figure, for he advances literary fictions at the same time that he reverts—with phonetic, aural puns—to the older oral narrative tradition. Beckett must be judged as much by what he does not say, by what is not in the text, as by what is. Our study of oral narration makes clear our own myopia—a typical bookworm's ailment. It points out the unrecognized dangers of excessive reliance on literacy. The current flock of mumbling, inarticulate students desperately in need of a dose of classical rhetoric—for they resemble Demosthenes in only one respect: they talk with pebbles in their mouths—is perhaps one of the signs that pure literacy may be a mixed blessing. If the dissociation of the author and the audience is not to go beyond irreparable limits, we need to be articulate in both the spoken and the written word. If literature is a part of the humanities, it cannot be conceived of as the private enclave of the literati. The faith between the narrator and the audience must be restored, even in the medium of print. We must, as students of fiction, not forget our oral patrimony; as historians of literature, we cannot overlook the oral origins of literary fictions. And the role of the audience—whether present or posterior— must be recognized once again. It is an understanding of this audience, actual or tacit, that is crucial to a clear understanding of the modes of fiction. Only with such an understanding can one begin to appreciate that a work is as good as its audience allows it to be. In this sense, fictions composed on paper enjoy a multiplicity of choice: they can appeal to a present audience or to a future posterity, a la Stendhal. The oral storyteller had perhaps a more difficult and no less exacting task: to entertain and to edify the audience at hand. An integrated theory of Chinese fiction must first recognize the different criteria at work in oral fictions, and must arrive at different bases for evaluation. Only in this way will we truly develop a catholicity of taste in fiction. I began this essay with the consideration of Feng Meng-lung's metaphor of vernacular fiction, and I wish to end with a quotation from another champion of the demotic in literature. In his Thirteenth Canto, Ezra Pound considered the value of Kung-tzu (Confucius) in apaideuma that he was in the process of constructing. His last lines, by a curious coincidence, might be applied to my enterprise in this essay: The blossoms of the apricot blow from the east to the west And I have tried to keep them from falling.25 25

The Cantos (New Directions, 1965), p. 60.

69

MING AND EARLY CH'ING FICTION

NARRATIVE PATTERNS IN SAN-KUO AND SHUI-HU* PETER LI San-kuo yen-i and Shui-hu chuan are the earliest examples of extended prose-fiction (ftJS'hlft) in China. The appearance of these works in the latter part of the fourteenth century is an unprecedented literary event that deserves our special attention. This essay, however, will not be concerned with the long period of "gestation" that must have preceded their appearance, but will present only some preliminary reflections on the organizational patterns of these narratives. No attempt is made to relate these patterns to sociopolitical and ideological structures, or to other cultural complexes that lie outside these works. My main concern will be to examine San-kuo and Shui-hu together, side by side, to see how these long prose-narratives, though diverse in nature, are held together as unified, coherent wholes. Although limited in its purview, such an approach is justified on the ground that too often studies of these works have tended to dwell on the portrayal of unforgettable heroes and their historical counterparts, the exploration of these works as manifestations of class struggle and intra-class rivalry, or detailed argumentation on their historical developments, but have not focused sufficient attention on the problem of overall structure and organization. In one of the most critical and thorough studies of Shui-hu chuan, Richard G. Irwin remarked, "San-kuo yen-i and Shui-hu chuan suffer from the structural weakness and rudimentary characterization typical of such pioneering efforts. The limitations of San-kuo yen-i derive from its factual basis and from a lack of selection, while the demands of an artificial mold make for the uneven narrative quality found in Shui-hu chuan."1 In this statement Irwin has pointed out the crucial issues in San-kuo and Shui-hu criticism. How should the critical matter of the * This study was made possible by a grant from the Research Council of Rutgers University which supported this research and the author's forthcoming partial, annotated translation of San-kuo yen-i. The editions of the texts used in this essay are the San-kuo yen-i (Peking: Tso-chia ch'u-pan she, 1959) and the 120-chapter Shui-hu ch'uan-chuan (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsueh ch'u-pan she, 1954). 1 Richard G. Irwin, The Evolution of a Chinese Novel: Shui-hu chuan (Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 5. 73

M I N G A N D EARLY C H ' I N G F I C T I O N

tension and division between the whole and its parts be handled?2 How should the critic deal with San-kuo's extensive reliance on historical facts? Chang Hsueh-ch'eng's now famous line, "San-kuo yen-i is seven parts fact and three parts fiction . . ."3 has plagued students of Chinese literature who wish to treat San-kuo as literature rather than as popular history. Shui-hu, on the other hand, according to Irwin, "is not even a romanticized version of history, but merely a collection of tales, some of them legendary. . . ."* It has been rejected from the genre of the historical novel by another critic.5 There is enough disturbing truth in these statements to cause concern. Therefore, this essay will examine some of the methods and principles of organization used in these works; it will contrast these works with the short story, to determine whether they can truly be regarded as extended prosefiction, or whether they are merely a number of short stories linked together mechanically. In considering the organization and structure of traditional Chinese fiction, we cannot afford to neglect the two great masters of traditional criticism, Chin Sheng-t'an and Mao Tsung-kang.6 Their observations on thefinestructure of San-kuo and Shui-hu have given us many insights for understanding these works. On the other hand, it seems that they have in general taken forgranted the overall structure and have dwelled only on the fine structure, or, to borrow a term from Chinese drama criticism, "textural linkages."7 Some examples of these are the art of planting narrative threads, various methods of emphasis by contrast, techniques of creating suspense, ways of building up and rounding out a high point, etc.8 In other words, their observations have been mostly on the level of the smaller units of narration, such as the single 2 See Patrick Hanan, "The Early Chinese Short Story: A Critical Theory in Outline" in HJAS 27 (1967), p. 200. 3 Chang Hsiieh-ch'eng 1$£gsW., Ping-cKen cha-chi HMiflJK in Liu Shih-heng, ed. SlJtBrTfT. Chu-hsHeh-hsuan Ts'ung-shu g g g f r & S , vol. 16, p. 63b (Taipei, 1970). * Irwin, Evolution, p. 23. 5 Y. W. Ma, "The Chinese Historical Novel: An Outline of Themes and Contexts" in JAS, xxxiv, 2 (Feb. 1975), p. 278. 6 Chin Sheng-t'an (ca, 1610-1661). For his biography and literary theory, see John C.Y.Wang, Ching Sheng-t'an (Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1972). Mao Tsungkang (fl. 1979). Professor Winston Yang of Seton Hall University has Kindly furnished the flourishing date for Mao Tsung-Kang. 7 Mi-chen-hsien 5£tf 1¾. lit· fine-stitching. See K'ang-i Sun Chang, "The Structure of Ming Drama: P'i-p'a chi and Mu-tan t'ing" (unpublished paper prepared for the CLTA Panel, at the AAS Annual Convention, Toronto, 1976), p. 20. 8 See Wang, Chin Sheng-t'an, pp. 68-74; and "Tu San-kuo-chih fa 8 1 = 8 ¾ ¾ " in Ta-tzu tsu-pen San-kuo-chih yen-i ^^ffiJfCHBSI^e (Shanghai: Ch'un-ming shu-tien #1¾¾¾, 1948), pp. 4-16.

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event or incident, the structure of the incident, and occasionally the interconnection between incidents. Their overall approach can be summarized in this succinct statement of Chin Sheng-t'an: "What is the essence of good writing? It is the careful selection of words, construction of sentences, arrangement of the composition, and organization of sections." 9 (fsjfflfjfu? ^ ¾ ^ ¾ ; , ^ * - ¾ ¾ , ¥W*ffi, β Β * β ? δ S-&.) The traditional Chinese critics have brought to our attention the importance of the small scale logical connection between events, and the close interweaving of narrative strands. These we cannot afford to lose sight of in our search for larger structural patterns. THE C O N F L I C T - R E S O L U T I O N PATTERN O F SAN

KUO

In Mao Tsung-kang's introductory essay entitled "How to Read the San-kuo chih" ( ¾ = ¾ ¾ ¾ ) , there is a section that begins with the statement, "Within the grand beginning and the grand conclusion, there are six beginnings and six endings." 10 (βΙΒΜίΚέ,Φ, XW/^®^ jjg.) He goes on to explain, "In narrating the reign of Hsien-ti, the line of action begins with Tung Cho and ends with Ts'ao P'i's usurpation. With regard to the region of Hsi-shu, the line of action begins with Liu Pei's proclaiming himself emperor and ends with the defeat of ShuHan at Mien-chu. As for the relationship of Liu Pei, Kuan Yu, and Chang Fei, it begins with their sworn brotherhood in the Peach Garden and ends with Liu Pei's death. Chu-ko Liang's career begins with Liu Pei's three visits to the thatched hut and ends after his sixth expedi­ tion across the Ch'i Mountains. As for the state of Wei, it begins with the changing of the reign title to Hung-ch'u and ends with the Ssu-ma family assuming the throne. As for the state of Wu, it begins with Sun Chien's hiding of the imperial seal and ends with Sun Hao's sur­ render." 1 1 In my translation of this passage I have inserted the term "line of action," which is not in the original but is clearly implied in it. These lines of action, or sequences of events, are important unifying threads in the narrative and shall be the focus of my attention in this section. Perhaps too obvious to need mentioning, the traditional Chinese critics did not point out the three principal lines of action centered about the three protagonists in San-kuo, Ts'ao Ts'ao, Liu Pei, and Sun Ch'iian, 9 "Sheng-t'an wai-yen SMft-Έ" (Shanghai, 1896). 10 "Tu San -kuo-chih fa," p. 7. 11 Ibid.

i n

T'u-hui Ti-wu Ts'ai-tzu shu H B B i S I i ' i ·

75

MING A N D EARLY CH'ING FICTION

which form the central narrative threads in San-kuo. These sequences I shall trace out in detail, not only because of their intrinsic significance, but also because their interaction and interweaving give rise to the close-knit structure of San-kuo. Run A: Ts'ao Ts'ao's political career can be described in a sequence of eleven steps. It begins with his moving of the capital from Loyang to Hsu-tu, which marks the beginning of his rule as hegemon in the north, and ends with his death in 220. I have not included those incidents before Hsu-tu because they are preparatory and peripheral to the main action I am considering here. The following events are functionally significant in his rise to power: 1. he moves the imperial capital to Hsu-tu (Chapter 14) 2. he arranges the royal hunt at Hsu-t'ien (Chapter 20) 3. he routs Liu Pei in the Wang-yang Mountains (Chapter 24) 4. he defeats Yuan Shao at Kuan-tu (Chapters 30-31) 5. he routs Liu Pei again in a minor skirmish (Chapter 31) 6. he is defeated at the battle of Ch'ih-pi (Chapters 43-50) 7. he is stalemated by Sun Ch'uan at Ju-hsu (Chapter 61) 8. he wins Han-chung (Chapter 67) 9. he stalemates Sun Ch'iian at Ho-fei (Chapter 68) 10. he allies himself with Sun Ch'uan to take Ching-chou (Chapters 75-77), and 11. he dies (Chapter 78) Run B: Liu Pei's political career can be described in a series of fourteen steps. His rise to power is the most dramatic of the three. It begins with his signing of the emperor's secret "sash-belt" decree when he was a powerless man of forty without any power base, and ends with his death as emperor of the Shu-Han kingdom. The following events mark his rise: 1. he signs Hsien-ti's secret "sash-belt" decree (Chapter 20) 2. he is routed by Ts'ao Ts'ao in the Wang-yang Mountains (Chapter 24) 3. he seeks shelter with Yuan Shao (Chapter 24) 4. he is routed by Ts'ao Ts'ao in a minor skirmish (Chapter 31) 5. he seeks shelter with Liu Piao after Yuan Shao's defeat (Chapter 31) 6. he seeks out Chu-ko Liang (Chapters 37-38) 7. he retreats from Hsin-yeh to Hsia-k'ou (Chapters 40-41) 8. he allies himself with Sun Ch'uan to defeat Ts'ao Ts'ao at Ch'ihpi (Chapters 43-50) 9. he occupies Ching-chou (Chapter 51) 76

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10. he takes Hsi-ch'uan (Chapter 65) 11. he takes Han-chung from Ts'ao Ts'ao (Chapter 72) 12. he loses Ching-chou to the allied forces of Sun Ch'uan and Ts'ao Ts'ao (Chapters 75-77) 13. he leads an unsuccessful punitive expedition against Sun Ch'uan and meets with defeat at Hu-ting (Chapters 81-84), and 14. he dies at Pai-ti-ch'eng (Chapter 85) Run C: Sun Ch'iian's political career can be described in seven steps. His rise to power begins with his assumption of power after the death of his elder brother Sun Ts'e and ends with his uneventful death in Chapter 108. His career is probably the least dramatic of the three, yet he tips the balance in any conflict that involves the three antagonists. 1. he succeeds to power after the death of his elder brother (Chapter 29) 2. he allies with Liu Pei to defeat Ts'ao Ts'ao (Chapters 43-50) 3. he stalemates Ts'ao Ts'ao at Ju-hsu (Chapter 61) 4. he attacks Ts'ao Ts'ao at Ho-fei (Chapter 68) 5. he allies himself with Ts'ao Ts'ao to recover Ching-chou (Chapters 75-77) Year 196

Run A: Ts'ao

Run B: Liu

1 Hsii-tu 2 Hsii-t'ien

1 "Sash" 2 3 Yuan

3 Wang-yang . . . 200 202

208

4 Kuan-tu 5 skirmish

4 5 6 7 8 9

6 Ch'ih-pi

Run C: Sun

1

Liu Piao Chu-ko retreat 2 Ching-chou

7 215

219 220 223

8 9 11 10 11

10 Hsi-ch'uan

Han-chung Ho-fei Han-chung Ching-chou Death

4

252 77

12

5

13 Hu-t'ing 14

6 7 Death

M I N G A N D EARLY C H ' I N G F I C T I O N

6. he defeats Liu Pei at Hu-t'ing (Chapter 85); and 7. he dies (Chapter 108). The interrelationship between events and sequences are numerous and intricate. Let me cite one example; the royal hunt at Hsii-t'ien leads to the emperor's issuing of the secret "sash-belt" decree that leads to Liu Pei's signing of the decree that commits him to opposing Ts'ao Ts'ao; this adversary relationship between the two then leads to Ts'ao Ts'ao's numerous subsequent attempts to eliminate Liu Pei, and so. on. Some of the more important interconnections between the runs I have indicated in the table on page 77. In this table, we can trace the course of the points of major conflict: Kuan-tu, Ch'ih-pi, Ching-chou, and Hu-t'ing. The dotted lines indicate secondary or minor encounters. The major points of conflict follow a pattern of development that I have labeled a conflict-resolution model.12 There are four stages in this model: (1) a point of contention, (2) confrontation among the opposing parties, (3) open conflict, and (4) the resolution. The first major conflict is between Yuan Shao and Ts'ao Ts'ao at Kuan-tu. The point of contention is the imperial capital at Hsu-tu, which has been the envy of Yuan Shao for some time. As early as Chapter 18, Ts'ao Ts'ao has known of Yuan Shao's designs, and Kuo Chia (one of Ts'ao Ts'ao's advisers) has predicted his master's ultimate victory over Yuan Shao. But the major outbreak does not take place until after several intermediate stages in which the four other major contenders for power have been put out of action: Lu Pu, Yuan Shu, Sun Ts'e, and Liu Pei. After thefirstthree have been disposed of, there are left only Liu Pei and Yuan Shao, the weakest and the strongest of the contenders, respectively. Ts'ao Ts'ao decides to first subdue Liu Pei and then attack Yuan Shao; but after he has quickly routed Liu Pei, Liu joins forces with Yuan Shao, and a battle ensues between Yuan and Ts'ao in which Yuan nearly emerges victorious. The final outbreak occurs in Chapter 30. Yuan Shao, finding Ts'ao Ts'ao's bestowing of the title of commander on Sun Ch'iian unbearably presumptuous, mobilizes 700,000 men to attack Ts'ao Ts'ao. Yuan Shao, however, even with his vastly superior force, is defeated and dies two chapters later. Ts'ao Ts'ao's victory marks his rise to sole hegemony in the north and the passing of the old aristocratic order symbolized by Yuan Shao. Even though the death of Yuan Shao ends the conflict, it is not the final resolution. With his position secure, Ts'ao Ts'ao now plans his southward expansion. 12

See John W. Keltner, Interpersonal Speech Communication (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1970), p. 221. 78

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The second major conflict is the battle at Ch'ih-pi, in which the combined forces of Liu Pei and Sun Ch'iian face Ts'ao Ts'ao. With Yuan Shao out of the way, Liu Pei becomes Ts'ao Ts'ao's prime target. In the meantime, Liu Pei has enlisted the help of Chu-ko Liang. But even with the aid of Chu-ko Liang, Liu Pei must make a series of strategic retreats and the huge force of Ts'ao Ts'ao advances southward threatening Wu, which then becomes the point of contention in this new conflict. As Ts'ao Ts'ao's huge army approaches, Sun Ch'uan is first provoked and then threatened by Chu-ko Liang into forming an alliance with Liu Pei to resist Ts'ao Ts'ao. Then preparations for the battle take eight chapters, although the battle itself is short. In the final outbreak, Ts'ao Ts'ao's force of nearly a million men is quickly defeated by a much smaller allied force of Liu Pei and Sun Ch'uan. Ts'ao Ts'ao's defeat marks the end of the conflict, but again the resolution is not complete. His thirst for revenge persists. The third major conflict is between Sun Ch'uan and Liu Pei over Ching-chou. After Ts'ao Ts'ao's defeat, Liu Pei stakes his claim over the strategic region of Ching-chou, which is equally coveted by Sun Ch'uan. Sun Ch'uan tries repeatedly to take it away but without success. This on-and-off confrontation over Ching-chou continues for twenty-six chapters. The decisive open conflict occurs when Ts'ao Ts'ao decides to ally his forces with Sun Ch'uan, on the one hand to ward off" Kuan Yu, and on the other to help Sun Ch'uan recover Ching-chou. Kuan Yu, who has been enjoying repeated victories and growing overconfident, suddenly finds himself confronted with shrewd and scheming opponents who bring about his defeat, death, and loss of Ching-chou. The fourth and final major conflict is between Liu Pei and Sun Ch'uan over the death of Kuan Yu. Liu Pei mobilizes a force of 750,000 men to avenge his sworn brother's death. The campaign lasts over one and a half years, with many initial victories for Liu Pei. But Sun Ch'uan's newly appointed commander Lu Hsiin waits patiently for Liu Pei's tactical error before launching the fatal attack. Again Liu Pei with his superior forces is defeated and he retreats to Pai-ti Ch'eng to die. This is the last major conflict in the narrative, but it does not mark the end of the story. Liu Pei's grander mission of restoring the Han dynasty is carried forward by his worthy military counselor and generals. These four major events in the central section of San-kuo are closely linked together in a series of conflict situations. The point of contention is different in each case, and there usually follows a long confrontation period during which schemes and stratagems are made, minor clashes 79

M I N G A N D EARLY C H ' I N G F I C T I O N take place, and tensions mount. These lead up to the final show of force when the major battle is fought, usually short and straightforward. After the decisive battle, the conflict is temporarily—but never com­ pletely—resolved. In fact, it is the incomplete resolution of the preced­ ing conflict that leads into the subsequent one. THE LINKED-PLOT S T R U C T U R E O F SHUI-HU In contrast to San-kuo yen-i, which roughly follows the conflictresolution model both in its overall pattern and internal structure, the internal structure of Shui-hu chuan is markedly different. Instead of having lines of action that follow the career of individual heroes, the fundamental pattern in Shui-hu is a cyclical chain or, more accurately, a sequence of cycles in each of which a different hero is featured. There is much controversy over the organization and unity of Shui-hu. While Cheng Chen-to, who has written a detailed textual study of the evolu­ tion of Shui-hu chuan, says that the close-knit organization of this work is water-tight, 13 Richard Irwin believes, as mentioned earlier, Shui-hu is "merely a collection of tales. . . . " 1 4 Perhaps the most balanced view is that of Patrick Hanan, who has characterized the cycles noted above as systems of linked plots, which are further linked together to form the story of Shui-hu chuan. Then, above all this, there is a "superstructure" that governs the operation of these systems. Hanan discusses this pat­ tern in detail with regard to the Wu Sung cycle :"But although the Wu Sung chapters form a system of linked plots, they are themselves linked to other systems, for example the chapter that deals with Sung Chiang. There is a master link between the two systems, in this case the recurring motif of the chance confrontation that ends in firm friendship. Therefore, in the Shui-hu chuan and in certain other works, there is a level of organization above the kind we have been speaking of [the system of linked plots], a superstructure. . . in this work the assembling of the heroes, the birth and death of the rebellion . . . which controls 15 the various systems of linked plots." The first seventy chapters of Shui-hu chuan are dominated by eight story cycles each with its own system of linked plots: (1) Lu Chih-shen (Chapters 3-7), (2) Lin Ch'ung (Chapters 7-12), (3) Yang Chih (Chapters 12-13, 16-17), (4) Ch'ao Kai (Chapters 14-15,18-20), (5) Sung Chiang 13 Cheng Chen-to MMS, "Shui-hu chuan ti yen-hua TkgHfctoSMl! (The evolu­ tion of Shui-hu chuan) in Chung-kuo wen-hsiien yen-chiu φ 03CiJIiFBS (Studies on Chinese Literature) (Hong Kong: Ku-wen shu-chii, 1961), vol. i, pp. 112-113. 14 Irwin, Evolution, p. 23. 15 Hanan, "Critical Theory," pp. 183-184.

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(Chapters 21-22,32-42), (6) Wu Sung (Chapters 23-32), (7) Hu-yen Cho (Chapters 54-58), and (8) Lu Chun-i (Chapters 60-70). This cyclical chain is interspersed with collective raids, rescue missions, and organized campaigns. It must be acknowledged, however, that the system of linked plots is fundamentally a weaker and looser form of organization than that of the interweaving of narrative strands, even though these cycles are part of a larger process of "the assembling of the heroes." The overall unifying elements must be sought on a higher level. Let us for the moment turn to the cycles themselves. The individual cycles, besides displaying the aristeia of a particular hero, follow this general pattern. The hero first demonstrates his gallantry with a feat of bravery that, unfortunately, is a violation of the law, and he takes flight. But his flight is shortlived; he is captured and branded. Then he is sentenced and exiled to a distant region to serve his term. Usually, being sent into exile is the beginning of the hero's adventures. He is escorted by two incompetent and unscrupulous guards who invite trouble. But the hero does arrive at his destination and begins to serve his sentence. Soon, however, unbearable conditions force him to escape again, and this time he becomes a permanent fugitive from the law. These permanent fugitives eventually and inevitably gravitate towards Liang-shan-po, the geographic center that serves as the rallying point for all those whose actions and thoughts run counter to the government. In these story cycles then, each of the individual heroes proves his manhood and moral worth. This cyclical pattern ends at the high point in the work in Chapter 71. All 108 heroes have gathered on Liang-shan-po, and they receive the Heavenly Tablet with the inscription of their names and the phrases "Carry out the Will of Heaven" and "Fidelity and Loyalty Complete." This tablet consolidates the heroes' relationship as a group, gives them a common goal, and, above all, reveals that they have been banded together not merely by chance but by heavenly predestination. The six middle chapters (75-80) have a different structure; the cyclical chain dissolves into a quick succession of five battles. In the first, there is a magnificent display of the collective prowess of the band in their "Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Maze," which totally overwhelms its enemies. If there exists a second high point in the work, this must be it. In the remaining battles, individual heroes display their skill and prowess until the opposing forces, along with their specially recruited members, are completely subdued. In Chapter 82, Sung Chiang surrenders voluntarily to the throne after his triumphant victory over the two evil ministers. The forty odd chapters that follow Sung Chiang's surrender revert 81

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to a cyclical pattern. These chapters describe an interminable number of battles in four major campaigns in which the heroes fight against (1) the Liaos (Chapters 83-90), (2) T'ien Hu (Chapters 91-100), (3) Wang Ch'ing (Chapters 101-110), and (4) Fang La (Chapters H i l l 9). The pattern follows no particular logic other than that of repetition. One more or one less campaign does not make much difference, except for the last one in which 81 of the 108 heroes die. In the final chapter Sung Chiang and Lu Chun-i, the leader and the second in command, both die. This is essentially a tragic ending, but it is precisely Sung's tragic death that preserves his heroic stature after his surrender to the government; for it is as a rebel leader with moral righteousness on his side that he has acquired his reputation, and this he retains when he dies as a victim of the immorality of his time. Although the conflict-resolution model is not applicable to the internal structure of Shui-hu chuan, it does seem to fit the overall pattern well. The opposing groups in the conflict are the righteous fugitives from the law, on the one hand, and the morally corrupt and abusive government, on the other. Chapters 1-70 make up the long period of confrontation in which tensions build as the number of outlaws grows and their organization becomes strong. The group achieves "critical mass," as it were, when its number reaches 108. Shortly after this, the government forces, first under T'ung Kuan and then under Kao Ch'iu, force the issue and large-scale conflict breaks out. In Chapters 75-80, the Liang-shan band deals two defeats to T'ung Kuan and three defeats to Kao Ch'iu, both leading major forces (the former 100,000 and the latter 130,000 men). A resolution of the conflict is reached in Chapter 82, when Sung Chiang decides to surrender to the throne. But the story does not end here. Poetic justice demands that the heroes revel a bit longer in their new-found glory, and there follows an aftermath in which the heroes wage four major campaigns against various rebel groups. The final resolution comes when Sung Chiang himself succumbs to the evil machinations of Kao Ch'iu and T'ung Kuan. CONCLUSION

In this analysis we have briefly considered San-kuo and Shui-hu on different narrative levels, beginning with the basic literary unit of the event or incident and moving on to the larger unit of sequences of events or lines of action that form the narrative strands in the works; then we have examined the interaction among the narrative strands that gives the text its intermeshing quality. Moreover we find in Shui-hu 82

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that the narrative strands form only a system of linked plots within a cycle and do not run through the entire narrative. This led us to go beyond the level of interrelationship between strands to seek a superstructure that gives direction to the shorter systems of linked plots. In San-kuo yen-i, after tracing the three main narrative strands, we examined the interaction among the strands at four major points of conflict: Kuan-tu, Ch'ih-pi, Ching-chou, and Hu-t'ing. The mere size of the forces involved reveals the importance of these events: At Kuantu it is Yuan Shao's force of 700,000 against Ts'ao Ts'ao's 70,000. At Ch'ih-pi it is Ts'ao Ts'ao's close to 1 million men against a much smaller force of Liu Pei and Sun Ch'iian. At Ching-chou it is the combined forces of Ts'ao Ts'ao and Sun Ch'iian against the smaller force of Kuan Yu with no exact figures. And at Hu-t'ing it is Liu Pei's force of 750,000 against Sun Ch'uan. Furthermore, the conflict-resolution model is useful at this level of interpretation to enable us to see the interlocking of conflict situations. This model is roughly applicable to the external pattern also, though not with the same forcefulness. The conflict is among the three contenders for the throne. There is a long and colorful period of confrontation that does not end until the very end of the narrative in Chapter 120 when a fourth party resolves the conflict by overcoming the others and uniting the country again. The application is not ideal because the stages in the conflict are not clearly defined. In the case of Shui-hu chuan the cyclical chains and repetitive sequences give it a rather weak internal structure. The system of linkedplots is basically loose compared to the unitary plot structure and the interweaving of numerous narrative strands. Therefore, we turn to other unifying elements. We find that Liang-shan-po serves as a geographic center for rallying the fugitives from the law. Common motivation of the heroes is another unifying theme. The conflict-resolution model also serves formally as a mold for holding the work together. Most important, probably, is the bond that holds the 108 heroes together as symbolized by their receiving the Heavenly Tablet on Liang-shan-po in Chapter 71. This point serves as a "nucleus" 16 from which the action can proceed in both directions, backward to the very beginning of the narrative with Commander Hung's releasing of the evil spirits, and forward to the end of the story with the dissolution of the Liang-shan band. In these two earliest examples of extended prose-fiction in China, we 16 See Chang's excellent paper "The Structure of Ming Drama," pp. 17-18. The term used by Li Yu is Ii chu-nao : U I S , translated by Chang as "setting up a nucleus." I believe this is going to be an extremely important idea in Chinese fiction criticism.

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find that unity and continuity are achieved with a variety of devices on different levels of narration. The author or authors were conscious of the fact that they were creating works of great length and complexity, and they must have had at their command a variety of narrative techniques and conventions to which they can turn. To the exclusion of many other alternative approaches, I have focused my attention only on a combination of an internal structure and an overall external pattern. San-kuo yen-i has a tightly knit internal structure made up of a number of interrelated conflict situations. But its overall pattern is comparatively weak because the period of confrontation is disproportiately drawn out and the final resolution is cursory and anticlimactic. On the other hand, the systems of linked plots in Shui-hu chuan give it a comparatively weak internal structure that is compensated for by a strong external pattern brought about by a combination of elements. Thus, it is the combination of, among other things, an internal structure and overall pattern that gives these works their sense of unity and coherence.

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THE NATURE OF LING MENG-CH'U'S FICTION PATRICK HANAN If Ling Meng-ch'u's WM^] (1580-1644) fiction* evokes any image at all in our minds, it is a vague one. The most prolific writer in the history of the Chinese short story, he has been avidly read but only rarely and inadequately appraised. His critics have concerned themselves mainly with the questions of how he reflected the social reality of his time and whether he was on the side of history's angels.1 He has been blamed for an obsession with the metaphysics of fate, for his mundane values, and for the sordidness of his world, and praised for his enlightened views on social relations, including marriage, and for his exposure of the judicial system. One cannot object to the direction of this criticism, as distinct from some of its particulars, because Ling himself asserts, in the preface and introduction to his first collection, that the scope of hisfictionis observable reality and its purpose "moral admonition." The objection is that the criticism is incomplete and therefore deceptive. What it lacks is the other hemisphere of criticism: the side of art or craft or technique. At the least, we should expect an * Textual references are to the P'ai-an ching-ch'i (the work is also romanized as P'o-an ching-ch'i) tt^KW.2 vols., Hong Kong, 1966, and the Erh-k'e P'ai-an chingch'i ^ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ - , Taipei, 1960, both edited by Tien-yi Li. The former was first published in 1628, the latter in 1632; together, they contain seventy-eight different vernacular short stories. Individual stories are here referred to by the collection in which they appear (ι, n) and by their position within it (1,2, etc.). The short English titles given are for mnemonic purposes; they do not necessarily reflect anything in the actual titles. Other collections of short stories are abbreviated as follows: Hung Liu-shih chia hsiao-shuo iK-f-^'hsfk, commonly known as Ch'ing-p'ingshan-t'ang hua-pen ^f2P UliMS^, compiled by Hung P'ien $fcfg in the middle of the sixteenth century KC Ku-chin hsiao-shuo iif-#"/h|&, compiled by Feng Meng-lung between 1620 and 1624 TY Ching-shih t'ung-yen ^tftSW. compiled by Feng Meng-lung and published in 1624 HY Hsing-shih heng-yen HHftflW, compiled by Feng Meng-lung and published in 1627 1 See, for example, Wang Ku-lu's ΞΕΐ"# introductions to the Ch'u-k'e P'ai-an ching-ch'i and the Erh-k'e P'ai-an ching-ch'i, both published in Shanghai in 1957; and also the history of Chinese fiction entitled Chung-kuo hsiao-shuo shih-kao φ JB 'MSiWB. by a collective authorship (Peking, 1960, 300 ff.).

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appraisal of Ling Meng-ch'u to unite his Active world with his art or technique. It is not difficult to see why his fiction has received no distinctive criticism. The natural object of comparison would have been the San yen E f , the example that inspired Ling's work in the first place, but the San yen is a haphazard mixture of short stories that span several hundred years; without a preliminary estimate of their dating and authorship, comparison must have been inhibited. Again, the Ling story is a more complex form than that of the San yen, and not as easy to assess. Typically, it consists of a highly opinionated introduction, a very short story (here called a prologue or prologue story), and a main story of some length. The prologue often differs from the main story; it may be a fabliau or an apologue, while the main story is a serious action; or it may be a fantasy, while the main story is realistic. The introduction is designed to direct the angle of our attention to both prologue and main story. Finally, Ling is beholden in many cases, and possibly in all, to written sources, and although his work is vastly more original than that of William Painter and others like him who adapted the novella into English, it is still not quite creative in the modern way. Only this last point offers any serious hindrance to characterizing Ling's fiction. Anyone who has compared the process of Ling's composition with that of Feng Meng-lung '#1£#| or X, Feng's anonymous associate,2 will have noticed how much closer Ling keeps to his sources. At times, he appears to be almost controlled by them. This may seem unimportant, since the initial choice of the source was Ling's, and since it was he who matched it with a prologue story, and he who wrote an introduction to focus our attention on a single aspect of it. But if the main story's source is a play or a full-fledged work of narrative fiction, it will have exerted a distinct influence upon the story that is sometimes plainly detectable by the reader. As might be expected, the stories based on plays differ structurally from the rest, but the point is easier to demonstrate in terms of theme. The idea of an irreversible fate is Ling's most cherished tenet; the handful of stories that disregard that tenet, that show a hero earning a new fate as the reward for good conduct, prove mostly to be based on plays.3 Again, Ling's moral examples are nearly all negative; the few stories that offer positive 2 See Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Short Story (Harvard University Press, 1973). X stands for an associate of Feng Meng-lung's who wrote the majority of the stories in Hsing-shih heng-yen HHftfill". 3 1.20,1.35,1.38, and n.15 are examples of such stories, all of which appear to have been based upon plays. Sometimes the fact of the derivation is declared in the story itself. See Wang Ku-lu's introductions for details.

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examples of virtue in serious, not comic, actions, are drawn disproportionately from the long Classical tale. 4 But although the alien allegiance of some of Ling's fiction will inevitably qualify our inquiry, it need not prevent it. We must merely be ready, if necessary, to regard these stories as "adaptations" as compared with the rest of Ling's fiction. A SIMPLE COMPARISON WITH THE SAN

YEN

Two aspects that immediately suggest themselves for comparison are the principles that, above all others, appear to distinguish the narrative method of the short story from that of the Classical tale—its formal realism and its "simulated context." A third aspect, mode of characterization, seems to distinguish the later story in the San yen from the earlier. Needless to say, the piecemeal conclusions that result from these comparisons cannot be expected to form a coherent view of Ling's fiction. What they can do is indicate where such a view may be found. "Simulated context" means the context of situation in which a piece of fiction claims to be transmitted. In Chinese vernacular fiction, of course, the simulacrum is that of the oral storyteller addressing his audience, a pretense in which the author and reader happily acquiesce in order that the fiction can be communicated. It is not only a "mimesis of direct address," 5 it is also a mimesis of direct reception. In fact, it imitates a complete linguistic situation. We are not concerned with its origins in oral literature, where it is reality, not pretense; we are concerned only with its functions in written literature. It is an aspect from which every Chinese author needs to be examined, for each made his own accommodation with it. We should not make the mistake of thinking it a crude invention that was quickly refined into a uniform method. A linguistic situation, real or simulated, complete or partial, will inevitably affect the voice or style that is used. In Huckleberry Finn, this does not need demonstrating. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald's artistic solution lies not merely in making Nick the center of consciousness, but in having him tell the story in his own words to some imagined listener, thus permitting the sonorous rhythms of Midwestern moralizing to dominate the novel's style, particularly at its beginning and end. Whereas the Chinese novel uses the single simulacrum of a 4 For example, 1.19, 1.27, and n.24. The last two are based upon the Chien-teng hsin-hua «ijgfrfS· 5 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays (Princeton University Press, 1957) p. 250.

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generalized storyteller and a generalized audience, endlessly modified to suit each writer's requirements, the European novel adopted a variety of simulacra, partial or complete, almost all of them individualized. (The complete, yet generalized simulacra that come first to mind are all in children's fiction, such as the Just So Stories, and we note that children's fiction is the only place in our society in which oral storytelling is still alive.) In the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales, complete, individualized contexts exist within the frame story. The eighteenth-century English novelists were obviously concerned to establish simulated contexts, as we may see from Fielding with his magisterial narrator, Richardson with his epistolary novel (each letter a separate context), and Defoe with his variety of devices, diaries and the like. In addition to this fiction, and destined eventually to supersede it, was a far more conventional method, with no explicit context at all, a method that derives from, and perhaps simulates, the oldest form of prose narrative, that of the chronicler or historian. But the explicit context never lost its attraction, and it has returned to full favor in this century. In the short story of the early period (through early Ming), sheer fictional values, peripeteia, were stressed over thematic values, and the use of the simulated context was relatively simple. Problems for the modern reader arise only when there is too little direction of his sympathies, as in The Jade Kuan-yin (TY 8). In the middle period, the predominant type was the "folly and consequences" story,6 with a structural principle based originally upon a moral conception. The narrator's moralizing sets the stage for dramatic irony, since it informs the reader what consequences will flow from the actions he is being warned against. This kind of story achieves a natural unity of structural principle, theme, and simulated context. A more complex use of the narrator prevails in the story of the late Ming. The narrator is no longer easily related to the implied author ("the author's second self created in the book"). 7 He is increasingly at variance with the story's main meaning, sidetracked, his Poloniuslike saws and instances more and more incongruous. This is true in some degree of several of the best late-Ming stories in the San yen, including The Pearl-sewn Shirt (KC 1). No ironic use is made of the narrator's platitudes, and the reader is led to accept, perhaps uncon6 See Hanan, "The Early Chinese Short Story: A Critical Theory in Outline" Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 27, 1967), pp. 194-196. 7 Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago University Press, 1961, pp. 7176, 137).

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LING MENG-CH'U sciously, a certain duality of vision.8 As if to signal the narrator's reduced importance, introductions and prologues are sometimes frivolous, only tenuously connected to the main story. The most notable exceptions in the San yen are the stories in which Feng Meng-lung treats his favorite themes of heroism and morality in public life. Here the commentary becomes relevant and an individual voice makes itself heard. Ling Meng-ch'u does more than merely restore the narrator's posi­ tion, he gives him power over the story's interpretation such as he had never had before, and grants him a distinct personality. In part, this follows naturally from the kind of story Ling was writing. It is avowedly a story of "moral admonition," and appeals to a clearcut moral judg­ ment on the part of the reader. In such a story, even the traditional wise saws of the narrator need not be out of place. But it also results from a basically different relationship between commentary and narrative action. In the typical Ling story, the narrator's commentary, principally by means of the introduction, controls the angle from which the main story is viewed. The prologue story is usually a kind of apologue that reinforces the point made in the introduction. On its own, the main story might be susceptible to several different kinds of emphasis, of which the introduction and prologue select one. For example, The Old Tutor (π. 26) might have been seen as illustrating filial ingratitude, or a parent's spoiling his children, two themes stressed elsewhere in Ling, but instead it is presented as what I shall later call a "comedy of fortune," with sudden good fortune descending upon the hard, penu­ rious life of the teacher. So powerful is Ling's commentary that he can even flout the sympathies he has induced in the reader, a rare thing indeed in the short story. In The Victim's Return (i. 30), the swashbuckler-turned-ofncial has to dance attendance upon the frontier general and his hectoring son, and then, at the latter's whim, is sen­ tenced to death. But we can expect no miraculous deliverance, despite our natural sympathies, for this is a story of ghostly justice, and we soon learn that the swashbuckler had killed a man in his youth, and that the dead man is now reincarnated as his unspeakable accuser. Ling's introductions are disquisitions, miniature essays, on subjects of social concern: ambition, fate, marriage, choosing a son-in-law, female suicide, autopsy, luck in the examinations, the arrogance of the 8

See Hanan, "The Making of The Pearl-sewn Shirt and The Courtesan's Jewel Box" (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 33, 1973), p. 138.

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recent graduate, bandits, prostitutes, assorted follies, vices, and prob­ lems. The argument is lively, humorous, using the techniques of the debater rather than of the moral philosopher. It can be best illustrated by a few examples: Here is a part of Ling's introduction to The Gambler (π. 8) on the psychology of gambling: "Some people will object to this. They will say, "I stop while I'm ahead, and so I never lose." This may sound plausible, but which one of us has the self-control to bring it off? Some gamblers, with winnings of one thousand, will want ten thousand, and people never stop until they're satisfied. Others are on a winning streak and assume it will go on forever; they are so fired up they won't stop. And still others are afraid they will be derided as cheapskates; they feel positively com­ pelled to go on gambling." Here is part of Ling's introduction to The Hunter (i. 37), an ex­ emplary story warning against the killing of animals: "But the argument of greedy people fond of slaughter, like that of unworldly scholars and students, runs as follows: "Heaven created animal life for our sustenance, hence it is no sin to eat meat." Now we don't know if the Lord of Heaven told them this personally, or whether they are simply announcing it on their own authority. But if our ability to eat animals is to be ascribed to Heaven's interest in our sustenance, does that mean that, because tigers and leopards are able to eat human beings, Heaven created us for their benefit? We get stung by mosquitoes and flies. Does that mean that Heaven created us for their consumption? If tigers, leopards, mosquitoes, and flies could speak and write as we can, and were to make this case, I wonder if people would let themselves be persuaded by it? Wise and virtuous men have exhorted us throughout the ages not to kill, and their writings are far too voluminous for me to relate to you. I am just taking this opportunity to sup in these free, lighthearted remarks, to provide you with a laugh or two, and to allow you to decide for yourselves whether I am right or not." Against Autopsy (n. 31) shows Ling's own convictions more clearly than perhaps any other story, although it is still not without an element of comic rhetoric. After describing the law allowing an autopsy in the case of people who have apparently been beaten to death, Ling men­ tions the adage "each new law breeds new corruption," and continues: "The moment an official gives permission for an autopsy, the local functionaries who put up the facility need their building money, and the yamen servants, the guards, the sedan-men and the musicians all need their handouts. The coroners want money for operating, and for 90

LING MENG-CH'U washing up afterwards. At the official's yamen desk, they need money for incense and for ink, brushes, inkstones, and felt cushions, all of which must be provided by the accused. Then there are the unscrupulous lower officials; you have all kinds of food and drink to provide—I can't list it all. And even if your name emerges from the autopsy as pure as driven snow, you'll still be minus three quarters of your worldly goods. What help will it be if the plaintiff is found to have brought a malicious suit? That is why a blackguard with a grudge against someone regards a homicide as a rare stroke of good fortune. How simple it is for the official, with a stroke of his pen, to give the order "autopsy!" He thinks it perfectly proper in a case of homicide. He has no inkling whatever of the damage it can cause." In addition to its wit, the argument is frequently oblique. In the introduction to An Encounter with Brigands (i. 8), for example, the narrator argues with apparent seriousness that there are good and bad among bandits, precisely as there are good and bad among officials, scholars, and the like. And when he undertakes to prove, in a number of introductions, that success in the examinations is entirely a matter of predestination, we may also infer that he is making a similar satirical attack. The narrator's wit also appears in his commentary on the action. He is fond of puns, humorous similes, and assorted bons mots—so fond, indeed, that he sometimes repeats them. Thus, when the beauti­ ful girl offered herself to her dead sister's fiance, he was "like a boy lighting a firecracker, excited and petrified all at the same time" 9 (i. 23). Of a promiscuous woman, he remarks, more than once, "She was not someone you would want to erect a chastity arch to." And the hero, approaching his beloved, "melted with desire, like a snowman next to a fire." Typically, the narrator's commentary gently mocks its object, calling attention as much to the speaker's wit as to the action described. It is a step away from the ordinary business of the realistic novelist. Ling's introductions and commentary define an individual narrator, as distinct from the generalized narrator of most previous fiction. In the anti-Chu Hsi story, for example, π. 12, the narrator reflects in his introduction upon the morality of the stories he has told so far. In other words, he is equating himself with the author, in the sort of comment we might expect to find in a preface or in the author's own editorial notes. The narrator's references to the source of the story he 9

Vol. 2, p. 458.

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is telling, a feature not found in the previous story, have the same significance.10 In his introduction to one of the cony-catching stories, π. 14, Ling has his narrator introduce subjects with phrases such as chi-te | E # " I remember" and t'ing shuo MM " I have heard," which resemble the formulae of a more personal kind of literature. Remarks like that in the introduction to The Man Who Tried to Reclaim His Bribe (n. 4), "every word of this goes right to the heart of our present ills," are more frequent in Ling than in Feng Meng-lung's or X's stories. Where other authors use digressions as a means of providing general information, or for solidifying the social context of the story, or for both reasons, Ling's narrator uses digressions solely in order to drive home his own ideas. In The Sutra Manuscript (n. 1), when a disastrous flood occurs, and the cost of necessities soars, the narrator intervenes at some length, to attack the usual method of handling such crises, that is to say, pegging food prices. 11 This is an impractical idea based on abstract principles, typically Confucian, he claims. (One of the connotations of "Confucian," i.e., ju #g, for Ling's narrator is "impractical.") It simply drives all goods off the market. His argument is the familiar argument of classical economics: let demand force prices up until goods are attracted in from other parts of China and bring prices down again. This explanation is of no particular importance in the story; what it does is assert the narrator's individual personality and associate him with the author. We can never say that Ling equates the narrator with the "implied author," for the two have different functions, but at least we feel no incongruity between them. Like the power and co­ herence of the commentary, this is a feature of Ling's writing that seems to anticipate a major trend of fiction-writing in the seventeenth century. The second broad aspect for comparison is "formal realism," Ian Watt's term for the bundle of qualities that, at least in their degree of concentration and intensity, distinguish the eighteenth-century English 12 novel from its predecessors. Ling's fiction has markedly fewer of these qualities than the San yen, or has them in a more attentuated form. As Ling's narrator has become an individual personality, his charac­ ters have become more generalized. Many of his chief characters are not even fully named, and naming is the basic symbol of individualizing. The hero of The Rich Man and the Alchemist (i. 18) is surnamed P'an, but we are never told his personal name. In fact, he is generally referred to not even as P'an, but asfu-weng S H , "the rich old man," that is, by 10 11 12

E.g., in 1.19, 20, 25, 28, n.12, 17, 37, etc. P. 3. The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley, 1957), pp. 13-34. 92

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the social category to which he belongs. Furthermore, when a charac­ ter's actions or motives are explained, it is usually with reference to his social type. In The Jealous Wife (π. 10), for example, we are told that the head of the family, Mo, who, incidentally, is given no personal name either, "had the mentality of a rich man," and hence loved sex, that his wife was a classic jealous woman, and that the noodle-seller who was only too glad to marry his pregnant maid, "had the mentality of a petty tradesman and sought a petty gain." Almost every story contains references to the mentality (hsin-hsing ^14) or experience and knowledge (chien-shih MM) of social types. This practice indicates a fundamental difference of approach to characterization. In contrast with the San yen authors, Ling presents morality and psychology through the social type. He tends toward the presentation of types rather than individuals, of variations on "the typical rich man," "the typical tradesman," and so forth. There is some resemblance here—it is by no means the only resemblance, as I shall show later—to the practice of the neo-Classical writers in Europe, who aimed to present, not the particular, but the typical or the universal, and who even attempted to ground their practice in the philosophical theory of universals. Ling's treatment of time and place also appears to depart from the practice of the San yen, in a direction away from formal realism. He pays far less attention to the needs of durational realism. In The Double (i. 2), the reader has to deduce from the context that two years have passed. In The Theft of the Family Silver (n. 20), twenty years pass in a single sentence. In The Monkey-spirit (i. 24), the girl grows up in a flash. In The Jealous Wife (n. 10), we are simply told: "One day Mo suddenly took ill and died. We need not tell how the family grieved for him." At the same time, Ling shows a remarkable flexibility with time. Several of his stories are built around a single incident that is related again and again from the different points of view of each of its par­ ticipants. In The New Year's Kidnapping (n. 5), we hear about the kidnapping and subsequent events three times from three different points of view—the servant's, the little boy's, and the kidnapper's. Ling is relatively unconcerned about visual effect. Indeed, on some occasions, his stories have less visual quality than the Classical tales that served him as sources. Dialogue is often not set in a specified scene. He uses set pieces sparingly, and when he does use them it is often for a significance beyond that of their visual effect. In The Double (i. 2), the merchant is described in all his finery not simply in order to present him to the reader's imagination, but for psychological reasons; it is 93

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this finery, and the good taste and the life of leisure and luxury it im­ plies, that turn the head of the abducted woman and induce her to be­ come his mistress. In The Insoluble Murder (π. 21), there is a single set piece, describing a handsome young monk seen coming out of a temple. There is no reason whatever to describe him at this point. The reason becomes apparent only later in the story, when the monk proves to be the murderer, the set piece serving, in detective story fashion, to imprint his presence on the reader's mind and make the denouement a little more credible. In general, if we ignore the commentary, Ling's story is simpler in structure than that of the San yen, and an efficient instrument for his largely thematic purpose. It has fewer narrative foci, is set in fewer places, requires less elaborate coincidence and authenticating detail, and is much freer in its management of time. Finally, the treatment of character. The reader's sympathetic ap­ prehension of a character is part of his complex reaction to the work, and cannot be attributed to isolated features of its technique. But for our immediate, practical purposes, we can distinguish at least one feature that certainly plays a part in determining the reader's reaction. This is detachment, or, more strictly, the range from detachment to involvement. No comparative use can be made of the techniques of detachment until we have some measure of the character's moral standing. A villain will generally be treated with greater detachment than his in­ nocent victim, and it would be futile to compare one with the other. The appropriate moral measure is that of the work's author, which is one meaning of Booth's "distance," defined as a character's distance from the moral and intellectual norms of the implied author. 1 3 Detach­ ment and distance are not always used in direct proportion to each other, and the relation between them is an effective criterion of certain trends in literature. The late-Ming story of the San yen shows a remarkable rise in the techniques of involvement as compared with the earlier story, in The Pearl-sewn Shirt (KC 1), Yu-t'ang-cWun ~S.^M (TY 24), The Courtesan and the Oilseller (HY 3), and others. (Plain innovation has a part in this rise; involvement is a prime area of technical development, in Chinese fiction as in European.) No such development is found in Ling Meng-ch'u's fiction. In fact, his technique consists in treating his char­ acters with detachment, and often with a degree of sardonic amusement. 13

The Rhetoric of Fiction, pp. 157-158.

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We have noticed how his satirical remarks are, even when mild, made at the character's expense. In The Old Tutor (π. 26), the old man is gently mocked: "old men like to dress up in their regalia on ceremonial days," and "old men tend to cry easily." Ling's generalizing tendency, of which these are examples, serves the end of detachment. The heroes and heroines of his love stories are also presented quizzically, in a manner that deters involvement. Inside views are not uncommonly used, but are restricted to describing a calculation, or the immediate motive for an action, as in the earlier short story, rather than as a means of general understanding. Ling excels in his unsentimental treatment of character, in his ascription of cynical motives, but the weakness of his method becomes apparent when he attempts to explain in detail a major change of heart. The seduction of the abducted wife in The Double (i. 2), for example, cannot compare with the seduction of The Pearl-sewn Shirt or The Courtesan and the Oilseller. In accordance with his use of the techniques of detachment, Ling scrupulously avoids pathos, either by technical means or simply by avoiding pathetic in­ cident. In The Lost Daughter (π. 7), we do not hear of the daughter's harrowing experiences, or even of the fact that she has been lost, until after she has been recovered, and then only briefly, in her own words. There are many more crime stories in Ling's fiction than in the San yen. In both, the villain's character combines the greatest distance with the greatest detachment. But Ling's victims are neither innocent nor pathetic. They are guilty of folly or worse and, in many cases, are merely lesser rogues falling foul of a greater rogue. There is no story of Ling's to compare, even remotely, with The Chaste Widow (TY 35), which, although a crime story itself and based upon a Ming kung-an •&% story, still presents us with genuine pathos. Like the writer of the traditional English detective story, Ling cannot afford to have pathos subvert his main concerns, and hence he diffuses the guilt between crimi­ nal and victim. The principal exceptions to this statement are those few intended victims who turn the tables and exact their own vengeance, inspiring admiration rather than pathos. In general, Ling's crime stories present a moral wasteland of folly and vice, unrelieved except by the narrator's humor. Even the upright judge, so familiar a figure in the kung-an of stage and fiction, is rare in Ling's stories. The agent of justice is generally an impersonal Principle of Heaven (T'ien-li ^M), and most of the judges are bumbling or corrupt. Ling's crime stories are clearly related to the "folly and consequences" story of the middle Ming. He does not adopt its structure, but his world is similar, and he makes copious use of the verbal formulae it employs 95

MING AND EARLY C H ' I N G F I C T I O N

to show causation, chih yin AES, yu fen chiao M5}%.·, wan-shih chieh hsiu H^-IfWs and so forth. A few excellent San yen stories are based upon the idea of the "folly and consequences" story, notably The Quarrel Over a Copper Cash (HY 34), but Ling Meng-ch'u is the true successor. His crime story is still a development from it, however, for his sardonic or humorous commentary places the story in a different light. COMIC AND SATIRIC ATTITUDES

One's initial impression of Ling Meng-ch'u's fiction is of its comic and satiric elements. The features we have just noticed, which complement each other to a remarkable degree, confirm and deepen that impression, demonstrating how comedy and satire have broadly determined Ling's technique. In so far as there is a prevailing attitude or tone in his work, we may say that it is comic or satiric. Comedy or satire, by any standard definition, will include most of the properties we have mentioned. Bergson, for example, asserts that comedy suppresses the reader's sympathies and appeals to his intelligence rather than to his emotions, that it acts as a social corrective, and that it deals with social types rather than individuals.14 Paulson, attempting to distinguish the satire from the typical novel, says it chooses the second term in each of the following antinomies: justice versus law, subjectivity versus objectivity, immersion versus detachment. 15 (Ling Meng-ch'u's restricted treatment of a character's motivation is what Paulson calls "legalistic") Even the author's massive intrusion of personality into his work is a common feature in comedy and satire. 16 Ling is always thought of as a moralist, not as a satirist, although the two terms do not exclude each other. But we have only to glance at true moralistic fiction, at the Yii-mu hsing-hsin pien MSM'H-M, say, or, among English writers, at the short stories of Hannah More or Maria Edgeworth, to see the extra dimension in Ling Meng-ch'u. His few positive examples represent shrewdness rather than morality, good sense rather than mere goodness. He does not appeal to his readers' sympathies; his whole satiric effort is spent in the ridicule of folly and vice. There is an element of comic exaggeration in even his 14

Henri Bergson, Le Rire (1900), translated in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher(Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956). 15 Ronald Paulson, Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (Yale University Press, 1967), pp. 1-8. 16 See Gilbert Highet, "Satura" (Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd. ed., 1970), p. 953. 96

LING MENG-CH'U

most serious story, Against Autopsy, as we have seen. If, in its classic definition, satire unites art (or wit or fantasy) with morality, Ling is eminently a satirist. 17 Even the objects of his satire, some of them, have a faint, familiar ring: alchemists, shamans and their dupes; rich men and their "humors;" women, especially widows and second wives; even a mild, Chinese example of the miles gloriosus (The Braggart, i. 3). In vastly different societies, the satiric temper evidently sought out roughly similar objects for attack. It is the exemplary nature of Ling's stories, presumably, which has prevented him from being taken as a satirist. Each story is a moral fable that rewards folly and vice with humiliation and punishment. But although punishment is, of course, admonitory, it is also a satirical device. In satirical fiction, an act is judged objectively, by its conse­ quences, and, as Paulson notes, punishment is merely its most extreme consequence. It is a "way to present the psychological reality of the vice," "a rhetorical stance transformed or objectified into an image of evil." 1 8 In The Hunter, for example, the hero is one of those rich young men whom Ling Meng-ch'u loves to satirize. Having squandered his patrimony, he takes to hunting and rustling in order to make a living. (His hunting and gourmandizing are presented to us as a social aber­ ration, a ρΊ-hsing l^tt·) Summoned to Hell, he is confronted with the whole population of animals he has killed in a lifetime of bloodsports, now grown to menacing size, with pigs and sheep as large as horses and oxen, and horses and oxen as large as rhinoceroses and elephants. He returns home to spend the rest of his life writing out sutras in his own blood. As the story is told by Ling Meng-ch'u, it is impossible to miss the element of comic, even farcical, exaggeration in all of this. The story may plausibly be taken as a moral satire, but not as a true exemplum. Even if this story, like others of Ling's, is ultimately related to the typical exemplum of the shan-shu # # , it is still worlds apart from it. Ling's morality is normative, like the morality of most comedy and satire. A number of his stories deal with deviations from the norm, typically by an obsession that often resembles the "humor," or ruling passion, of European neo-Classical comedy. Ling's is a centripetal ethic, seeking the norm, unlike the centrifugal ethic more characteristic of realist fiction, that honors personal aspiration, self-change, and the transcendence of social norms and conventions. It is also the kind of practical morality that depends on good sense and experience. 17 Expressed most notably by Dryden in his "A Discourse Concerning the Origins and Progress of Satire" (1693). 18 The Fictions of Satire (Baltimore, 1967), pp. 10-14.

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Talk of Ling's morality quickly slides off into this somewhat different area of "good sense and experience," but, again, this is a common fea­ ture of comedy and satire. In Ben Jonson's comedy, according to L. J. Potts: "It is not the virtuous man, but the resourceful, clever man who prospers.. . . This does not mean that the hero of a comedy cannot be virtuous, but only that he is a comic hero not because of virtue but because of his good sense." 1 9 The weight of praise or criticism in Ling's stories is placed more often upon practical wisdom or folly than upon goodness or wickedness as such. This could even be demonstrated at the verbal level. Adjectives like lao-cKeng 3£f$ and nouns like chien-shih ^M, stud his commentary; conversely, women, regularly seen as inexperienced, foolish, and impulsive in Ling's fiction, are routinely described as tuan-chien $s|L, "short-sighted." He values worldly wisdom, even expertise, and sometimes seems to appreciate it in amoral people. His wise man knows the ways of the world, and, knowing his own limitations also, acts only when he can act effectively. His highest praise for wisdom is given to the eldest son of the Mo family in The Jealous Wife (π. 10), a man who finds a way out of the family's difficulties that is not only right but also efficacious, since it avoids a ruinous lawsuit. Another example is the husband of The Nun's Intrigue (i. 6), who counsels his wife against committing suicide after she has been raped (it would look as if she had done something shameful and, besides, it would ruin his career!) and plots instead an elaborate revenge on the rapist. On occasion, the morality of the commentary is decidedly opportunistic. When the student of The Ginger Merchant (i. 11) is blackmailed for a homicide he believes he has caused, the narrator suggests that if he had been a little more experienced, he would have burned the body at once, and so prevented further blackmail. And some of the confidence tricksters we find in Ling's stories are treated very leniently, as if in silent tribute to their finesse. The intellectual position that sustains his fiction is, again, one that is common to certain kinds of satire and comedy. It is a preference 20 for the pragmatic, for practice over theory. Ling is scornful of Chu Hsi ^ ¾ (π. 12), precisely because he considers the neo-Confucians impractical theorizers. In the stories attacking alchemical Taoism, he does not go so far as to say that the art itself is absurd—he has too much respect for ancient authority—but only that the authentic tradition has been lost and that all its present-day practitioners are quacks. The subject has lost all its practical significance. 19 20

Comedy (1957), (Capricorn Books ed.), p. 124. See Anatomy of Criticism, pp. 226-227.

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Ling's morality is linked to his metaphysics but is not dominated by it. Despite the stress he places on predestination and the Heavenly Principle, it would be absurd to regard his stories as primarily about metaphysical issues. On the other hand, it would be a gross mistake to consider the beliefs, trite though they may be, as mere packaging, to be discarded after the stories have been unwrapped. At the very least, they provide a certain philosophical underpinning for his morality and, in general, they do a great deal more; although not themselves inherently comic or satiric, they condition the comic and satiric attitudes of Ling's fiction. Belief in predestination, expressed often and at length in Ling's introductions, is summed up in a ubiquitous cliche derived ultimately from the Chuang Tzu, "one sip, one p e c k . . . " - 1 ¾ - ¾ . According to the belief, everything is foreordained, and it is pointless, even positively harmful, to pine or strive. The prologue to Ling's first story, The Tangerines and the Tortoise-shell, tells how a thrifty merchant who has scrimped all his life saving money for his sons is finally prevented from giving it to them; it is not in their destiny, and the money simply marches off from under the old man's mattress the night before it is to be handed over. The story is a well-known folktale, recorded in many parts of southeast China. 21 The main story tells of an indolent but charming young man who is taken along, as a penniless neophyte, on a merchant voyage to the South Seas. He is destined to become rich, and in a series of fantastically lucky strokes, he makes his fortune in the single trip. On one or two occasions in his stories, Ling faces the question of the effect on the human will of the knowledge of predestination. Will it make the merchant's son lazy, for example? In the introduction to this story, he follows his theory to its conclusion, like a true doctrinaire; if a family has a lazy son, he replies, then it is because that family is destined to decline. The mechanism of predestination, however, is not made clear. It may be karmic, but, if so, the causation is not mentioned by the narrator, let alone exploited in the story. All one knows is that accurate knowledge of one's fate is available through the physiognomer. It is noticeable that the idea of predestination is invoked only about the objects of human desire: riches, marriage, sons, rank. This, in fact, is how the apparent contradiction with the belief in a Heavenly Principle is handled; the Principle is active in a separate field, that of crime and punishment, and so no direct clash ever occurs. 21 Wolfram Eberhard, Typen chinesischer Volksmarchen, FF. Communications no. 120 (Helsinki, 1937), and Volksmarchen aus SUd-ost-China, Sammlung TsOo Sung-yeh, FF. Communications no. 128 (Helsinki, 1941). The tale is no. 177 in the first work, no. 114 in the second.

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Predestination is in part a fictional device, freeing the author from some of the elaborate coincidences and stratagems of the previous story. (In the case of the love story, one supernatural convention simply replaces another.) Its depreciation of the will, and the sense of human limits that it implies, match Ling's normative, centripetal morality and even his psychology of social types. It also deeply conditions his comedy. Although a doctrine of predestination might conceivably have resulted in a grim naturalism, in Ling it is almost always comic. Conversely, the comic story in Ling is almost always associated with predestination. Belief in the Heavenly Principle is summarized in a similar cliche, Tien-li pu Jung ^ 8 ^ ¾ ? , "The Principle of Heaven would not tolerate it." In Ling's stories, the Principle is a popular notion, yet still connected with the austere Principle of the neo-Confucian philosophers. It is a force immanent in nature that, by subtle means, marshalling coincidences, sees that injustice is brought to light and crimes punished. (Sometimes it is completely undetectable, and the slogan means little more than "crime does not pay.") The Principle is the agent of perfect law, the sublime enforcer of society's moral code. Like predestination, it is a useful fictional device, allowing the author to explain his coincidences simply, and, like predestination, it limits and diminishes human nature. Most important of all, it provides the clear, simple standards of objective justice that Ling Meng-ch'u the satirist needed. The Principle is almost always invoked in Ling's darker satires. Thus far, in discussing comic and satiric attitudes, it has been possible to avoid distinctions. But when we come to the subject of comic and satiric structures, the artistic resultants of those attitudes or tones, it is essential to make distinctions. Unfortunately, the definition of comedy and satire is in a state of comic disarray worthy of a satirist's attention. Like rival countries claiming the same territory, writers on comedy and satire have painted the map in their own colors. Oddly, the territory mainly in dispute— the comedy of the "social corrective"—is not peripheral, but is regarded as central to both comedy and satire, since it best exemplifies the remarks of Aristotle from which all comic theory—and much satiric theory—begins. Since there are no entirely acceptable distinctions ready to hand, I shall propose instead a set of simple, practical distinctions based upon a moral gradation in the Aristotelian spirit. And since comedy and satire are concerned with social judgments, the gradation will relate to the effect the moral act has upon society, rather than to its own intrinsic goodness or badness. 100

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Comedy (i.e., the comic structure) deals with a benign stratagem or some stroke of good fortune that has a socially beneficent effect, frequently that of marriage. Satire of the first stage, lighter satire, deals with a folly, a self-inflicted harm caused by some abnormality or misperception on the part of the hero and from which he alone suffers. In cases where the hero is cheated by rogues, he is actually falling victim to his own avarice or lechery. Satire of the second stage, darker satire, deals with a crime, a grievous harm to society that must be exposed and punished. In terms of Frye's principle of social inclusion and exclusion,22 comedy unites society, lighter satire chastises the foolish man and then reclaims him for society, and darker satire excludes the wrongdoer from society. According to this scheme, romantic comedy in general, including Shakespearean comedy, would be regarded as true comedy; Classical and neo-Classical comedy, the comedy of Aristotle's definition, as well as the satires of Horace, would be regarded as lighter satire; and the satires of Juvenal would be regarded as darker satire. Ling Meng-ch'u's fiction covers this entire range. C O M E D I E S OF F O R T U N E

About one third of Ling's fiction, some twenty-five stories, are to be classed as comedies, that is to say, as comic structures. The most numerous kind is the romantic comedy, culminating in the festivity of marriage, a seemingly universal form that also fits the definitions of European romantic comedy. In China, romantic comedy has its roots in the T'ang, blossoms in the Sung, and runs rampant through the rest of Chinese literature, in fiction as well as drama. But there are other kinds of comedy as well, comedies of luck or reciprocation, in which different objects of social desire are attained. Searching for a phrase to describe most of Ling's comedies, one settles on "comedies of fortune," implying three senses of the word "fortune"—fate, luck, and success. Most of the comedies, as I have explained, are based upon the idea of predestination, which serves as a handy fictional device and also conditions the quality of the comedy. No less than eight of the romantic comedies have introductions that dwell at length on the notion of predestination in marriage (yin-yuan MW- [H^]). Their heroes are the passive, unheroic recipients of a good fortune they have done little, if anything, to earn. They are the living embodiment of Ling's advice 22

Anatomy of Criticism, pp. 163-165. 101

M I N G A N D EARLY C H ' I N G F I C T I O N

to accept your fate, whatever it is, and not to strive unduly to achieve a particular ambition. The comedies include most of the exotic stories, set in strange lands, and also most of the fantastic stories, of fox-fairies and goddesses. (I do not say supernatural, for that depends on one's standpoint, and the ghosts of the dead, visits to Hell, and the actions of the Heavenly Principle all belong to the world of Ling's realistic fiction.) In comedy and romance, as Frye remarks, "the story seeks its own end instead of holding the mirror up to nature." 23 There is an undeniably operatic quality about many of these stories, appropriately reflected in the fact that several of them are derived from plays.24 Of all Ling's stories, they are the closest to the folktale. Their morality is sometimes freed from social norms, like the morality of romance. In The Chess Cham­ pions (π. 2), for example, the hero is concerned solely to take the girl to bed with him, while she is ready to cheat and deceive in order to hold onto her title as chess champion of the Liao. There is a level of ribald comment that would not be used of approved characters in more "serious" stories than the comedies. Although they possess many of the qualities of the romance, Ling's comedies retain an astringent humor. In the prologue to The Chess Champions, we are told that, while the nominal purpose of the annual village festival was for sacrificing, its actual purpose was to let everyone have a good time. The village elders end by getting drunk on the sacrificial wine, "and this was the annual pattern of events."25 In the best of the comedies, The Imperial Decree (i. 10), the problems of a penniless young hsiu-ts'ai %"% in getting a wife are sympathetically described. This is followed by a stroke worthy of Gogol. A decree of the Chia-ching emperor is mistaken in the provinces as referring to a new draft of single women for the imperial palace. The rush is on, and the previously untouchable hsiu-ts'ai is besieged with offers. (A satirical touch, reflecting Ling's scorn at the changes in Chinese society—the best match is with a pawnbroker's daughter!) There is a wildly comical passage describing the panic in the village, in which even seventy-yearold widows scramble to get married. Ling's romantic comedies, like their European counterparts, are basically about young love triumphing over parental opposition. In China, the writer of fiction generally needed some kind of supernatural 23

A Natural Perspective (New York, 1965), p. 8. * For example, n.3 and n.9 are apparently based upon tsa-chu by Yeh Hsien-tsu

2

" p. 16. 102

LING MENG-CH'U sanction to permit an action that, in social terms, must have been barely conceivable. There are stories in which lovers of wit and brilliance succeed in arguing their cases before a friendly magistrate, but they are not common. 2 6 In the San yen, the standard convention is that a betrothal is sacrosanct once the parents have given their permission; if the parents then back out, the lovers may call upon the gods for help. This justifies the children's defiance of their parents, but only at the cost of adopting a very restricted formula. Ling's usual recourse is to his favorite doctrine of predetermination, but since he does not explain or exploit the causality, his predetermination is really, for practical purposes, sheer luck. Thus many of his comedies _are about fantastic chances, jests and the like, that lead to unexpected but suc­ cessful love and marriage. It is a game of which he never seems to tire. Of course, as a convention it also exacts its price; his characters, the sport of what amounts to a blind fate, are less than interesting individuals. Romantic comedy in Europe has been predominantly dramatic, and one can readily see why. It depends on the piquancy of a few scenes full of dramatic irony. The point is less true in Chinese literature, in which it is also an important type in the Classical tale. There are a few good comedies in the San yen, many more in Ling's fiction, and a number in Li Yii's short stories. It is significant that Feng, Ling, and Li were all dramatists as well as writers of fiction, and there is pre­ sumably some correspondence between their romantic comedies in the two genres. Ling has one surviving romantic comedy, and two lost plays of his have the word yin-yiian in their titles. 27 The characteristic romantic comedy of Ch'ing fiction is the ts'ai-tzu chia-jen ί " ί ( ί Λ novel, an inferior type written in stilted language, in which parental opposition has been replaced in the plot by that of a blocking character with political power. Let us briefly sample some of Ling Meng-ch'u's romantic comedies, i. 5 enlists the supernatural, not merely to see that the right people get married, but to see that the groom gets to the wedding on time. It has an introduction on predestination and the futility of striving, i. 9 has an introduction of the same kind; the main story tells of the girl's parents' reneging on her marriage, of her death and resurrection. I. 10, The Imperial Decree, has a similar introduction, but the main story, which is down-to-earth and satirical, ends in the magistrate's court, i. 12 also 26

For example, TY 29. See Fu Hsi-hua f i l f ^ . Ming-tai tsa-chu ch'uan-mu l3J3ftgt$j^g 1958), p. 180. 27

103

(Peking,

MING AND EARLY CH'ING FICTION has an introduction on fate, and tells of the coincidence by which a young man runs off with a girl who intended to elope with someone else. i. 23 has an introduction on fate, and tells the story of a girl who dies, then takes possession of her sister's body and elopes with her fianco. Despite the theme, it is pure comedy, i. 25 is a somewhat similar story. I. 34, which is again predicated on yin-yiian, shows how ribald romantic comedy can be. It is a nunnery story, and nunnery stories usually end in disgrace and punishment, after the author has exploited the theme for all it is worth, but not in the romantic comedy, i. 29, ii. 35, and H. 17 are all comedies, but without reliance on fate. The first two are settled in the magistrate's court. The last, with its heroine dressed as a boy, is romantic comedy at its most extreme. Three stories involve love with a supernatural being, n. 29, n. 30, and H. 37. The young man of n. 29 believes he is being visited nightly by a girl he admires. In fact, it is a fox-fairy impersonating her. When the young man begins to ail, his friends conclude he has a venereal disease. (The sardonic touch is characteristic of Ling.) Exposed, the fox-fairy agrees, for old times' sake, to further his romance with the girl. π. 37, The Goddess, tells how a sea goddess falls in love with a travelling merchant. In Ling's wry comedy, the merchant remains a merchant at heart, and uses the goddess's tips to make a fortune in the commodities market. Ling's other kinds οι comedy make more use of the paradox of fate. His first story, The Tangerines and the Tortoise-shell, tells of a young man who, after failing persistently in his own enterprises, makes a fan­ tastic fortune out of the blue on a merchant voyage to the South Seas. It might be thought a little insipid, were it not for the touches of the exotic: the evocative description of the tangerines, lovingly described because of their later importance in the story, the foreign port with buyers clamoring for goods, the desert island, the Persian buyer's reception for the returning merchants. The theme of the story, stressed in the introduction, is Ling's standard advice that it is useless to try to shape your own fate. (The carpe diem motif is also mentioned in the introduction, but briefly; it is rare in Ling, who advocates quietism rather than hedonism.) But its central comic strategy is the paradox of fate or fortune. At each stage, the efforts of the young man—such as his ingenious, but slightly dishonest, attempt to create a vogue for autographed fans in Peking—come to nothing, while his unpremeditated actions—such as going along on the merchant voyage, or buying tangerines—bring him a fortune. The raillery of his companions, serious merchants all, who welcome him on the voyage simply for the 104

LING MENG-CH'U sake of his company, since he is a merry fellow, turns to admiration as stroke after stroke of fortune descends upon him. It is a story of luck, related to a universal folktale archetype, but handled with great sophistication. And it has a final paradox that seems to reflect Ling's satirical view of his society. After making his fortune, the hero, who is an educated man, does not even consider the "ladder of success," but settles down to the leisurely life of the master merchant, letting others go out on sea voyages for him. The Herd-boy (n. 19), which claims to be based on the Chuang Tzu, illustrates the vanitas vanitatum theme of Taoist thought. It is an account of the herd-boy's days and nights, hard work in the mountains by day, success and glory in the world of his dreams at night. The two lives reflect each other, but inversely, so that success in one life betokens disaster in the other, and the comic strategy consists of the relationship between the two. Thus, in the simplest form of the joke, he marries a princess in his dream life, and then, in his waking life, is given a donkey to ride and feed, with big ears, a long face, and mincing steps, just like the princess. In his dream life, in his capacity as a statesman, he suggests a plan to get two neighboring countries to withdraw their troops: he would give hostages to both. Ling ridicules him as a Confucian, interested in moral suasion rather than practical matters like defense and counter-attack. The two countries are reflected in two dangers, a tiger and a swollen river, which carry off the beasts he is supposed to be watching. I have mentioned The Old Tutor (n. 26), a story of good fortune descending upon the penniless old teacher, rejected, like Lear, by his married daughters. There is a characteristic satirical touch about the way fortune comes. The teacher is discovered by a former pupil, now a censor, and appointed to his staff. After only six months of dispensing favors, he has made enough money to retire. The prologue also shows Ling's satirical approach to social values. A young graduate is appointed to a teaching post in a remote port in Kuangtung, where the young men want no instruction, are not interested in the classics, and are already literate enough to pursue the jobs they have, which are, in any case, far more remunerative than anything they could get with a classical education. However, they are touched by the teacher's coming, take up a quick collection among themselves, and raise enough money to set him up for life. Other comedies are stories of reciprocation, like 1.4 and 1.8, in which some trivial act like buying a meal for a penniless stranger saves your life or makes your fortune when the stranger turns out to be a bandit 105

MING AND EARLY CH'ING FICTION chief or a magical swordswoman. Others, like 1.15,1.16, n.27, and n.39 are plots of cleverness. The last is about a brilliant thief with a heart of gold. Honorable thieves and bandits are a common element in Ling's exotica, and are often contrasted favorably with officials. There is also a story or two on the frolics of Taoist Immortals, such as 1.7. SATIRES OF FOLLY, SATIRES OF CRIME Ling's satires, light and dark, match his avowed aims and methods better than do his comedies. He asserts, in his preface to the First Collection, that although his stories are concerned with strange events, they are grounded in observable reality, in a world "within the range of our eyes and ears," and this gives a far better description of his satires than of his comedies. In his introduction to the same work he apologizes for the supernatural elements in his fiction, but claims in his defense that they are at least close to credibility, a statement that seems to refer to the ghosts, etc., of his satires rather than to the sheer fantasy of some of his comedies. His purpose as a writer, he declares, putting the matter beyond doubt, is "moral admonition." Clearly, in describing his stories, Ling had his eye fixed mainly upon the satires. His satires fuse his methods with his aims, that is to say, they fuse the realistic with the exemplary, the mimetic with the rhetorical. Their mode may perhaps be entitled satiric realism, provided we remember that the Ling Meng-ch'u story is a composite form, made up of monologue as well as narrative, and that his realism does not explore reality for its own sake, but serves an exemplary purpose instead. A satiric attitude is dominant in much of the earliest realistic fiction in Europe, from Petronius to the picaresque novel. The association of satire with realism springs, in the general opinion, from the classical theory of decorum in literary forms and subjects, which tended to equate the real with the low. Although the same assertion cannot be made of Chinese vernacular fiction, there are satiric elements in the early and middle short story as well as in the Chin P'ing Mei 4¾¾¾. The story of folly and consequences of the middle Ming is most nearly satiric, with its cynical, pejorative view of human nature and its apparent moral purpose. The Chin PHng Mei is an extraordinary mixture of satiric and nonsatiric realism; some characters belong entirely to the mode of satiric realism, others—very few—belong entirely to non-satiric realism, while others again, including some of the main characters, move uneasily from one mode to the other. The novel begins in the mode of the story 106

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of folly and consequences, and then develops in the direction of nonsatiric realism. The technical problem for the writer is one of detach­ ment and involvement. Even if it had been the Chin ΡΊ/tg Mei author's intention, which I am not suggesting, satire could not have long survived the close exposure, the inside views, of his technique. Satiric realism seems to be a volatile mixture, with the satiric component tending to modify purely realistic techniques, and the realistic component tending toward techniques of involvement that are inimical to satire. If satiric realism dominates a work, as distinct from merely constituting one of its modes, as in the Chin P'ing Mei, it tends to seek the shorter forms, like Ling Meng-ch'u's stories, or the episodic forms, like the Ju-Un wai-shih § | # ^ · "As a mimetic art," Paulson writes, "satire imitates a vice or a folly. . . . Like comedy or tragedy, satire is a form which gives a compelling poetic representation of a certain area of experience . . . explaining man's lower potentials in relation to the limits of society, custom or his own nature." 2 8 Human nature in Ling's satires is not innately evil, merely weak and infinitely corruptible. Human reason tends to be blinded by the emotions to such an extent that objective judgment is rendered impossible. In the great option concerning human nature that classical Chinese thought presented to the writer, Ling took the lower alternative, as a satirist of his kind must do, and associated it in his work with the characteristic stance of the satirist: practicality, trust in experience, prudence, good sense, and clear judgment. Certain social relations are favored over all others by the satirist. Satiric realism from Juvenal to Jonson focuses on the relation of fool and knave. In Ling's fiction, the knaves are of wide variety—shamans, alchemists, priests, cony-catchers of many kinds, money-lenders, officials, almost every class and profession in society except for the most obvious predators robbers and bandits. His fools, on the other hand, are from a narrow stratum. They are predominantly rich men, usually young, never officials. It is the rich man's avarice and stubborn self-deception that make him vulnerable to the knave. Satirists have always been fascinated by the rich bourgeois, and perhaps Ling's interest is to be explained by some of the usual reasons—the rich man's rapid rise in society, his social power unaccompanied by a sense of traditional restraint, his crash course in the manners of the aristocracy. But the idea should be severely qualified. The fact that the rich man is young is as important as that he is rich; he fits the Chinese stereotype of the 28

The Fictions of Satire, pp. 7-8.

107

MING AND EARLY CH'ING FICTION prodigal son. Furthermore, Ling's rich man is generally not a nouveau riche, and the reader has little sense that he is condescended to simply because he is not a scholar or official. Ling was fully as critical of scholars and officials as he was of merchants and the landed gentry; they just happen not to be at the center of his fiction. Authorial distance was our main criterion in distinguishing the satires of folly from the satires of crime. Jonson, making the same distinction in the prologue to Everyman in his Humour, says that Comedy . . . would show an image of the times And sport with follies, not with crimes. Ling's satires of folly and crime may be seen as different forms of the knave-fool relation. The former throws the emphasis on the fool, and largely ignores the knave, apart from tacitly admiring his gall and his skill. The latter throws the emphasis on the crime the knave commits. A certain sympathy has to be conceded to the fool, despite the satirist's general detachment. The harm the fool does is inflicted mainly on himself. He is an absurd figure, prodigal, avaricious, offending against all the pieties that prudence dictates, without any natural sense of fitness or modesty, who is fleeced unmercifully by the knave. The satires of crime, by contrast, display as much sympathy as a police blotter. In the folly satires, the knaves are skilled professionals, and seem to be accepted as one of the natural hazards of Chinese life, past which the wise practical man ought to be able to steer his course. ("This is how we operate," say the confidence men in The Rich Man and the Alchemist (1.I8) when they are exposed,29 and then promptly proceed to pull the same trick again, in a more sophisticated form.) But the knaves in the crime satires are different. They are not professionals, preying on the credulous, but amateurs abusing the power or opportunities that come their way. Whereas the professional knave seems to be acting in an expected social role, the amateur's crime is a dangerous departure from the social norm and must be condemned as such. About ten stories can be called satires of folly. They are built around an obsession that is something like the "humor" of Jonson's description: . . . when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man that it doth draw AU his affects, his spirits, and his powers, 29

Vol. 1, p. 380.

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LING MENG-CH'U In their confluxions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour. (Everyman out of his Humour, Induction) The rich man of The Rich Man and the Alchemist (1.I8) is "a highly educated, articulate and thoroughly likable man," 30 who is obsessed with alchemy. In his state of obsession, his intelligence and learning are a handicap rather than a help, for alchemy, Ling tells us, is a folly to which the intelligent are particularly susceptible; in moments of discouragement, they can always turn to the ancient authorities to sustain their faith. The obsession, of course, is more than a mere misperception of reality; it is also prompted by avarice. The rich man is anxious to get the secret of alchemy in order to put it to his own use, and is quite prepared to seduce the alchemist's concubine into the bargain. Although a mild obsession, it is hardly a generous one, as we see from Ling's commentary in the prologue: "But these greedy men of our day, surrounded by their beautiful women, always seeking to extend their property, ruining others to enrich themselves, always calculating every penny—what appetites they have! What a preposterous hope, that by meeting up with a crew of debased Taoists they will be able to transmute metals, live a life of luxury and then bequeath their wealth to their children!" 31 The obsession may be gambling; or hunting, together with the sophisticated savagery—as Ling sees it—of gourmet cooking; or prodigality, the absurd posture of the rich young man who is bemused by the heroic ethic and scorns his possessions; or lust; or boasting; or the vanity and emotional bias that warp objective judgment. It is an obsession rather than the kind of intellectual hypocrisy we find, alongside genuine obsessions, in Moliere and the Ju-Un wai-shih. The obsession places the hero at odds with reality and at the knave's mercy. It cannot be appeased; as Ling puts it, satisfying an obsession is "like trying to fill a well by stuffiing it with snow." 32 The structure of the story is based on repetition. "The principle of the humor," in Frye's words, "is the principle that unincremental repetition, the literary imitation of ritual bondage, is funny." 33 One might amend this, in the case of Ling's short story, by noting a crescendo in the repeated pattern until some kind of climax is reached. The climax is a 30 31 32 33

P. 365. P. 364. P. 122. Anatomy of Criticism, p. 168.

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MING AND EARLY CH'ING FICTION disaster that works to purge the obsession. The comic strategy is largely that of dramatic irony, as in all "humor" fiction and drama, since the reader is able to see the gap between the hero's perceptions and the reality. In many of Ling's stories there is also a wise man, perhaps an uncle or a friend, whose good advice the foolish hero spurns. The Rich Man and the Alchemist (1.I8), the best of the folly satires, has been mentioned several times. It consists of an elaborate confidence trick played on the rich man by a self-styled alchemist and his concubine, a trick that ends with the pair departing not only with the silver used to "seed" the experiment, but also with a large sum that the rich man has paid in reparation for sleeping with the concubine. The hero emerges from the incident still believing in the alchemist's powers, blaming himself for the failure of the experiment and congratulating himself on having escaped so lightly. But, although he is an obsessed figure, he is not inhuman. When the alchemist pretends to discover that the rich man has been sleeping with his concubine, and is about to take his whip to her, the rich man intercedes and offers money enough to buy another concubine. (The money is accepted, not because the alchemist needs it, but solely that the rich man shall be "taught a lesson.") The scenes between the alchemist and the rich man, and between the concubine and the rich man, are brilliantly handled, with full use of dramatic irony. The Gambler (11.8) is another rogue and gull story. Gambling, like alchemy, offends Ling's ideas on predestination, which were found to underlie most of his comedies; it amounts to taking an unauthorized part in your own fate, thus upsetting the prescribed order. A different principle of definition might have included these stories with the comedies. The Braggart (i.3) has been described as having a mild version of the miles gloriosus theme. It is concerned with the folly of selfglorification associated with the hsia ethic, which offends the sense of proper modesty, the acknowledgment of one's limitations, that is advocated by the satirist. The Spendthrift (n.22) is about a prodigal, but a prodigal obsessed with the heroic ethic and its contempt for money. He is a magnanimous person whose obsession puts him in conflict with reality. Like so many foolish heroes, he has a wise and experienced (lao-ch'eng) relative who explains to him the way his father, a high official, made his money: "Your late father, the Minister, did not acquire the family fortune solely through his official earnings; most of it came from sound, thrifty management of his finances. I have seen him myself, working from early in the morning until late at night, his abacus, scales, deeds and 110

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account-books always at hand. If anyone was short by so little as a penny, it would show up in his figures, and then his face would darken and he would give the man a frightful tongue-lashing. But if he made the slightest profit, he would fairly beam with delight." 34 The spendthrift's friends, knaves all of them, have no trouble rebutting the advice, quoting Li Po on the heroic ethic. The Hunter (i.37) has already been mentioned. It would be wrong to take the story literally, as a grisly warning, and miss its comic exaggeration and satire. As often in Ling's fiction, the commentary tips us off. The narrator in his introduction admits that people do not believe in the existence of Hell, thus raising an initial question in our minds. At the end of the story, when the hero tells his old nurse about his experiences, the narrator says she "loved to hear such stories," 35 implying that it is something of an old wives' tale. The Wife-swapper (i.32) shows how Ling's delight in ribaldry tends to reshape and distort his satire. The Cheat (n.16) is about a rich man who tries to cheat his brothers out of their share in the patrimony, a favorite theme of Ling's, and is then cheated in his turn by his partner in deception. The Biased Judge (11.12) relates two stories in which Chu Hsi, in his capacity as an official, is shown up as either incompetent or biased. The prologue shows him using his deductive powers to arrive at the obvious solution to the case. But the rogues have made precisely this calculation, and have arranged the evidence accordingly. The main story, developed from an item in the I-chien chih 11¾¾, 36 shows Chu Hsi's objectivity upset by pique and impulsive judgment. Ling was greatly concerned with objective judgment, a characteristic of the classical satirist; he regularly notes and comments upon occasions in which the emotions distort objective thinking. Clearly, there is an extra point in making Chu Hsi the butt of this story, quite apart from his idealized reputation; as a philosopher, he was a natural object of derision for the practicalminded satirist. The satires of crime, of which there are about twenty, focus neither on the character of the fool nor on that of the rogue, but on the situation in which they meet—the crime, its causes and consequences, detection and punishment. The fool is here too minor a character upon whom to structure the story, and the rogue is, by his nature, at too great a distance and treated with too much detachment to serve as a central 34

P. 344. P. 803. 36 Chih keng :¾¾, chiian 10, 4b-5a, in the Commercial Press edition (Shanghai, 1927). 35

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MING AND EARLY CH'ING FICTION figure. The satires thus have a less distinctive shape than the folly satires, and may, at first glance, look very like the kung-an or detective story. There is a clear distinction, however, from the early kung-an story, such as Hung 2, TY 13, or HY 13, in which the emphasis is really on detection. Detection is one element, but certainly not the main element, of the Ling stories. I have already mentioned the difference between Ling's satires and the detective story of the San yen, which is a matter of distance and detachment. Ling's victims are neither entirely innocent nor pathetic, and most of his judges are less than admirable. The satires are studies in different shades of folly, vice, and crime. The Wife Who Eloped (n.38) tells of a woman whose husband finds out about her adulterous affairs and makes life difficult for her. She decides to run off with one of her lovers, but reveals the secret to another, a cousin of hers, when she is drunk. The cousin takes the other man's place, and she does not find out until too late. The other man is accused by the husband of abducting her, and thrown into jail. The cousin, having tired of her, sells her into prostitution. She is rescued some years later, and the judicial tangle is finally sorted out. Each character is either a fool, or a rogue, or something in between. Even The Ginger Merchant (i.ll), the best of Ling's stories of detection, diffuses guilt between the rogue and his victim to a small degree. The victim has a hasty temper that causes him trouble on two crucial occasions in the story. Secondly, he is a student and therefore, in Ling's eyes, naive, with the folly of inexperience, incapable of dealing resolutely with the blackmailer. The Filial Son (I.13) has a more serious tone than most of Ling's stories; it is about the murder of a father, like two other relatively serious stories, 1.19 and Against Autopsy (n.31). But even here the parents are guilty of outrageously spoiling their monstrous son. There is a pervading cynicism in these satires about human motives. The Theft of the Family Silver (n.20) warns against trusting even one's relatives. Its rogue is a rich, retired official who cannot resist the temptation to steal the family heirlooms from his naive young woman relative. Any victims, or intended victims, who are not, in some measure, to blame, prove to be positive figures who find ways of outwitting or avenging the rogues—the eldest son in The Jealous Wife (n.10), the husband and wife in The Nun's Intrigue (i.6), and the precocious child in The Taoist Priests (I.17) who bedevils his mother's affair with an obliging priest. Pathos, where it is not avoided altogether, is kept at arm's length, as in A Lost Daughter (n.7). The basic strategy of satire is that of reduction, or belittling. It attempts to make folly ridiculous rather than pathetic, and evil squalid 112

LING MENG-CH'U rather than terrible. The fool's chastisement, the villain's punishment, from this point of view, are merely the final satiric touch, the reductive coup de grace. Since there are few people who inspire sympathy and admiration in Ling's satire, so there are few villains who inspire fear and awe. (One or two wicked officials, perhaps, are partial exceptions, such as Crazy Yang in The Man Who Tried to Reclaim His Bribe [n.4].) But although Ling's world is reduced for satiric purposes, it is still a moral world. His satire, although it appears negative on occasion, does not negate moral principles, but is actually predicated upon them. In addition to the satires on crime already mentioned, we may note the following. The Double (i.2) makes an attempt to explain the abducted wife's change of loyalty, in Ling's most extended psychological account. The Insoluble Murder (n.21) is a detective story of traditional type. The Kidnapped Bride (n.25) is one of Ling's weakest stories. The Woman's Head (n.2%) is an excellent story, in Ling's most cynical mode. The Seduction of the Seraglio (n.34) is a ribald, savage comedy, or is intended as such. The Ghost's Possession (1.14) illustrates how comic elements infiltrate even Ling's grimmer satires. The dead man's ghost has possessed a woman's body in order to bear witness against his murderer, but, when the trial is over, it is reluctant to leave, having "no home to go to," and only departs when the official threatens to beat the body it is investing. It is a bit of a knockabout stage comedy that Ling has introduced into the story. Death by Aphrodisiac (n.18) combines the folly satire of a man devoted to Taoist nostrums with a crime story.

A sketchy exploration like this can point out some of the main features of Ling's work, but not map it in detail. About two thirds of the stories have been mentioned, most of them from a single aspect. Half a dozen others may be ignored as "adaptations," comparatively speaking, since they reveal all too plainly their indebtedness to the drama or to the Chien-teng hsin-hua jjfJ8$f!S. Among the remainder, it would be possible to classify this one or that without using procrustean methods. But there is little point. The purpose of the exploration was not to prove that there are watertight divisions among Ling's stories—there are not—but only to show where his genius as a writer lies. From our usual historical perspective, Ling Meng-ch'u appears to be an anomaly. If we trace the growth of particularistic realism, with 113

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its increasing use of the techniques of involvement, through the Chin P'ing Mei to the San yen, we are bound to be perplexed by Ling, who claims to have been inspired by the San yen and yet discards these very developments. His realism reflects the typical rather than the individual; he reverts to the techniques of detachment; he revives the narrator, a droopingfigurein some of the San yen stories, and turns the short story into monologue as well as narrative; he rejects the newer, more flexible values in favor of the older, categorical ones; social aspiration becomes for him social hubris; he insists on objective judgment; his fiction excludes all possibility of tragedy or pathos. But, anomaly or not, Ling discarded these developments, not from obtuseness or incompetence, but because he was writing a different kind of fiction. The center of his art was comic and satiric, and the features we have listed belong to the group of techniques, attitudes, beliefs, and values that sustain that kind of art.

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CHANG CHU-P'O'S COMMENTARY ON THE CHINFING MEI DAVIDT.

ROY

In 1644 Chin Sheng-t'an &SM (d. 1661) published an edition of the Shui-hu chuan 7RiIf flf, the text of which was accompanied by his own critical commentary. 1 Although rudimentary commentaries on works of vernacular fiction had appeared as early as the second half of the sixteenth century, this work of Chin Sheng-t'an eclipsed all its predeces­ sors in popularity and established a vogue that resulted in the produc­ tion of commentaries for all the major novels. As a result, from the late seventeenth century until the 1920's the most popular works of ver­ nacular fiction were nearly always published with accompanying commentaries, and it is safe to assume that the way in which they were read was influenced by the viewpoints the commentators expressed. This large body of practical criticism must have exercised a considerable influence not only on the way in which existing works of fiction were understood and appreciated but also on the way in which new works were created. Despite this fact, however, with the exception of Chin Sheng-t'an's work 2 and the Chih-yen Chai ^ΨΜ comments on the Hung-lou meng £Ett|?, 3 none of the commentaries on the major novels has been seriously studied. 4 I am convinced that this sizable body of neglected criticism deserves our serious attention. If we are not simply to impose the critical concepts that have evolved from the study of Western literature on works that are the product of an alien tradition, it is incumbent upon us to learn as much as we can of the critical concepts that have informed the in­ terpretation, and influenced the composition, of Chinese fiction in the past. One of the most important works in this neglected tradition is 1 See Richard Gregg Irwin, The Evolution of a Chinese Novel: Shui-hu-chuan (Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 87-94. 2 See ibid., and John Ching-yu Wang, Chin Sheng-t'an (Twayne, 1972), pp. 53-81. 3 See Wu Shih-ch'ang, On the Red Chamber Dream (Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 1-102. 4 There is a preliminary critical survey of Chang Chu-p'o's jjiittiS commentary on the Chin p'ing mei &$BM in Paul Varo Martinson, "Pao Order and Redemption: Perspectives on Chinese Religion and Society Based on a Study of the Chin P'ing Mei," an unpublished doctoral dissertation presented to the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, 1973, pp. 19-42.

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MING A N D EARLY CH'ING FICTION 5 Chang Chu-p'o's commentary on the Chin p'ing mei 6 written sometime between 1666 and 1684, which has not hitherto attracted any scholarly attention. The following remarks should be regarded as a preliminary progress report on my continuing exploration of this perplexing but rewarding subject. Who was Chang Chu-p'o? We are not even certain of his identity, for Chu-p'o is a courtesy name rather than his formal given name. All that we know about him is that he is alleged to have been a native of P'eng-ch'eng , 7 an old name for Hsii-chou in northern Kiangsu, and that he may have been the son of an elder half-brother of Chang Ch'ao , 8 a native of She-hsien in Anhwei, who resided in Yangchow during the last decades of the seventeenth century and who was a prominent author, patron of letters, and connoisseur of the arts. 9 Among Chang Ch'ao's many publications there is an entertaining collection of his own aphoristic remarks on the art of life to which he gave the title Yu-meng ying or Quiet Dream Visions. This work was circulated in manuscript among his friends before it was published, and he solicited their comments on it. His circle of acquaintances included many of the best-known writers, artists, and connoisseurs of the day, and, when the Yu-meng ying was published, their comments on his original aphorisms as well as on each others' re5

The edition I shall refer to is one recently reprinted in Hong Kong, entitled Liang-chime Chu-p'o p'ing-tien-pen ho-k'an t'ien-hsia ti-i ch'i-shu Chin p'ing mei (Hong Kong, Hui-wen-ko Shu-tien, 1975), hereafter abbreviated as TICS. 6 For the date 1666, see Chang Chu-p'o's "Chin p'ing mei tu-fa TICS, section 36, p. 14b, where he mentions having recently seen the Ti-ch'i ts'ai-tzu shu This is an edition of the P'i-pa chi with a commentary by Mao Tsung-kang the preface to which is dated 1666. See Aoki Masaru Shindai bungaku hyoron shi (Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 1950), p. 299. For the date 1684, see P.D. Hanan, "The Text of the Chin P'ing Mei" (Asia Major, N.S., vol. ix, Part i, 1962). p. 55. 7 See Liu T'ing-chi Tsai-yuan tsa-chih as quoted in Wang Hsiaoch'uan „, Yuan Ming Ch'ing san-tai chin-hui hsiao-shuo hsi-ch'u shih-liao (Peking, Tso-chia Ch'u-pan-she, 1958), p. 262. 8 Chang Chu-p'o refers to Chang Ch'ao as his father's younger brother in one of his comments in Chang Ch'ao, Yu-meng ying , in Yang Fu-chi comp., Chao-tai ts'ung-shu pieh-chi 1849, ch. 4, p. 13a. Chang Ch'ao's father, Chang Hsi-k'ung (b. 1606, chin-shih of 1649) wrote a work entitled Chiahsiin (preface dated 1669), in which he states that his wife was unusually virtuous in that she was able to treat the son of a concubine as though he were her own. See Chang Hsi-k'ung, Chia-hsun, in Wang Cho 31 and Chang Ch'ao, comps., T'an-chi 1695, ch. 18, p. 6b. This leads me to the hypothesis that Chang ts'ung-shu Chu-p'o may have been the son of an elder half-brother of Chang Ch'ao. 9 On Chang Ch'ao, see Shih Kuo-chu et al., comps., She-hsien chih (Shanghai, 1937), ch. 7, wen-yuan p. 1 la. 116

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marks were included in it. 1 0 Eighty-three of these comments, more than twice the number contributed by anyone else, are by someone named Chang Chu-p'o, who once refers to Chang Ch'ao as his father's younger brother.11 These comments are clever, indicate a familiarity with, and appreciation for, vernacular fiction, and express attitudes toward life that are consistent with those expressed in Chang Chu-p'o's com­ mentary on the Chin p'ing mei. There is no reason to doubt that they are by the same person. In fact, there is some more conclusive evidence. At one point in the Yu-meng ying, Chang Chu-p'o remarks: "To write a commentary on a book is not difficult in itself. What is difficult is to get Heaven to provide one with the security and leisure, the time and the place, needed in order to write a commentary on a book." 12 Later on he says, "I have had the experience of getting into trouble for printing a book." 13 This surely refers to his edition of the Chin p'ing mei, which was generally regarded as a pornographic work. In 1687 the Emperor K'ang-hsi M$& issued an edict strictly prohibiting the publication of pornographic novels,14 and it may well have been as a result of this edict that he got into trouble. We do not know Chang Chu-p'o's exact dates, but he tells us that he wrote his commentary at the age of twenty-six.15 Since the firstknown reference to his work is dated 1684,16 we can assume that it was completed by the early 1680's, which would mean he was probably born in the 1650's. The only other information we have is a statement written between 1712 and 1715 by Liu T'ing-chi SJgSI, who tells us that Chang Chu-p'o unfortunately did not live for long, and that after his death the printing blocks for his edition of the Chin p'ing mei were turned over in repayment of a debt to a man named Wang T'ien-yu BE5c^, who burned them.17 Fortunately the work was already widely enough known so that this wanton act of destruction did not prevent its continued circulation. 10

See note 8 above. A substantial selection of the aphorisms and comments in this work has been translated into English in Lin Yutang, The Importance of Under­ standing (World, 1960), pp. 36-74. 11 See note 8 above. 12 See Chang Ch'ao, Yu-meng ying, p. 20a. 13 See Chang Ch'ao, Yu-meng ying, p. 33b. 14 See Wang Hsiao-ch'uan, Yuan Ming Ch'ing san-tai chin-hui hsiao-shuo hsi-ch'u shih-liao, p. 22. 15 See Chang Chu-p'o, "Ti-i ch'i-shu fei yin-shu %—%s%W&W {TICS), p. 2a. 16 See note 6 above. 17 See note 7 above. Liu T'ing-chi refers to Wang T'ien-yu by his courtesy name as Wang Ts'ang-fu ΞΕ3?^. For this identification, see Shih Kuo-chu, She-hsien chih, ch. 5, p. 10b. 117

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Chang Chu-p'o's commentary on the Chin p'ing mei is a work of practical criticism distinguished from the work of other Chinese commentators by its emphasis on the structural integrity of the work rather than on the explication of allegory, the moral evaluation of subject matter, or the subjective appreciation of literary effects. We are fortunate to have Chang Chu-p'o's own statement of how he felt his approach differed from that of his most influential predecessor, Chin Sheng-t'an. In the introduction to his commentary he says : "The bulk of Chin Sheng-t'an's commentary on the Shui-hu chuan consists of short subjective comments. After several tens of chapters of my commentary had been published, someone mentioned this to me. I laughed and said, 'The Shui-hu chuan is a successful composition in which the large structure is completely explicit. Each of the one hundred and eight characters has his own biography, and although these are interwoven, their sequence is perfectly clear. Therefore, Chin Sheng-t'an merely commented on individual words and phrases. In the Chin p'ing mei, on the other hand, the fine points of the large structure are concealed amid a welter of details. If one were to confine oneself to analyzing the subtleties of individual words and phrases, one would lose sight of the fine points of the large structure.' " 1 S In another place Chang Chu-p'o tells us something about his motivation for composing his commentary and the way in which he approached his task. He says : "Why have I written a commentary on the Chinp'ing meil I was impressed by the way in which the thousand stitches and ten thousand threads that make up the hundred chapters of this vast work are constituted from a single strand, and yet despite a thousand twists and ten thousand turns not a single thread is exposed to view. As I sat in solitude by my lonely window, reading the histories and standard authors, I occasionally took the time to glance at it and said to myself, 'If someone does not divulge the golden needle by means of which such a superb work of literature was wrought, will people not fail to do justice to the infinite pains expended by the author.'" "Some time passed during which I was afraid to undertake the task, not daring to take up my pen in haste. The details of this book are as fine as the hairs of an ox, which are numbered by the thousands and tens of thousands, yet all belong to a single body and are sustained by the same circulatory system. Although the needle-work is concealed, even widely separated elements are interconnected. Though I had certain insights I was deterred by the magnitude of the task." 18

See Chang Chu-p'o, "Fan-li / L W TICS, p. Ia. 118

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"More recently, oppressed by poverty and grief, and goaded by 'heat and cold,' when time weighed heavily on my hands, I came to regret that I had not myself composed a book about the way of the world in order to relieve my depression. Several times I was on the point of setting pen to paper but was deterred by the amount of plan­ ning which the over-all structure required. And so I laid aside my pen and said to myself, 'Why don't I carefully work out the means by which this predecessor of mine constructed his book on "heat and cold"? In the first place this task will relieve my depression; and, in the second place, my elucidation of the work of my predecessor can count as an equivalent for my own planning of a book in the present. Although I may not have created anything of my own, will I not be required to do as much in order to ascertain the means by which this book was created in the past ?' Thus I have created a Chin p'ing mei for myself. How could I spare the time to write a commentary on the Chin p'ing mei for anyone else?" 1 9 The most succinct statement of Chang Chu-p'o's critical views is found in his essay in one hundred and eight numbered sections, en­ titled "How to Read the Chin p'ing mei," which comprises the bulk of the prolegomena to his commentary. In the pages that follow I will select some of the more interesting passages from this work and let him speak in his own words. To begin with, Chang Chu-p'o does not choose to concern himself, as so many others have done, with speculation as to the identity of the author of the Chin p'ing mei or with attempts to interpret it as a romanά-clef. He says: "Hearsay in such matters is generally apocryphal and not to be taken seriously. . . . Therefore I shall ignore the theory that Hsi-men Ch'ing HP6IlIE was intended to represent Yen Shih-fan ,¾¾¾ [d. 1565], whose pieh-hao BiJSS was Tung-lou %^ and whose childhood name was Ch'ing-erh 11!¾. As for the person who wrote the book I shall simply refer to him as the author. . . . Recently, I have seen a work called Ti-ch'i ts'ai-tzu shu j g - f c z j ^ i ['the seventh work by and for men of genius:' an edition of the P'i-pa chi HSfB with commentary by Mao Tsung-kang ^ T R B ] 2 0 which is full of speculation about Wang Ssu ΞΕΕ3. [There is a theory that the P'i-pa chi was written to satirize a certain Wang IV since the characters for p'i-pa contain four examples of the element wang 5Ξ.]21 Although every commentator 19

20

21

See Chang Chu-p'o, "Chu-p'o hsien-hua WgMfS" (TICS), pp. 4ab. See note 6 above.

On this theory, see Chiang Jui-tsao ^ ¾ ¾ Hsiao-shuo k'ao-cheng >b1&MW. (Shanghai, Ku-tien Wen-hsueh Ch'u-pan-she, 1957), pp. 22ff. 119

MING A N D EARLY C H ' I N G F I C T I O N

is entitled to his own views, I wonder if the time spent on these inconclusive speculations might not better be devoted to appreciation of the literary techniques embodied in the work." 22 Chang Chu-p'o's comments are not directed to the casual reader of fiction, the seeker after entertainment or diversion, but to the actual or potential practitioner of creative writing as a serious form of art. Here are a few of the things he has to say on this subject: "The Chin p'ing mei should not be read in a desultory fashion. If you read it that way, you will read only the obscene passages. Only if you take several days and read it all the way through will you perceive the single thread of continuity upon which the author has strung his succession of rising and falling actions." 23 "If you try to imagine how the author conceived of this wealth of individually structured episodes you will come to realize how much planning, interweaving, and tailoring was required." 24 "If you read the Chin p'ing mei as a description of actual events you will be deceived by it. You must read it as a work of literature in order not to be deceived by it." 25 "If you read the Chin p'ing mei as a work of literature by the author you will be deceived by it. You must read it as though it were a work of your own in order not to be deceived by it." 26 "Though you should certainly read it as though it were a work of your own, it is even better to read it as a work that is still in its early planning stages. Only if you start out with the assumption that you will have to work out every detail for yourself in order to avoid being deceived, will you avoid being deceived."27 "There is no feature of the art of writing that is not illustrated in the Chin p'ing mei."28 "How can anyone say that there is a single instance of irrelevant writing in the Chin p'ing meiT'29 "Even the jokes and songs are all pertinent to the occasion and contribute to the desired effect. They may reveal something of the meaning of the chapter in which they occur, develop something from a previous chapter, or divulge something about the chapters to come." 30 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Chang Chu-p'o, "Chin p'ing mei tu-fa" (TICS), section 36, pp. 14ab. Ibid., section 52, p. 20b. Ibid., section 39, p. 15b. Ibid., section 40, p. 15b. Ibid., section 41, p. 15b. Ibid., section 42, p. 15b. Ibid., section 50, p. 19b. Ibid., section 15, p. 4b. Ibid., section 49, p. 19b. 120

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"The marvelous quality of this book lies in the skill with which the arteries that connect widely separated elements of the plot are concealed. The author never resorts to the facile introduction of narrative developments for which the reader is unprepared." 31 "In reading the Chin p'ing mei one should pay attention to the points of articulation in the structure, the episodes that are linked or correlated with each other. The novice who learns how to do this will be able to appreciate the Tso-chuan 1£M, the Kuo-yti WWi, the Chuang-tzu I E i , the histories, and the philosophers." 32 "In reading the Chin p'ing mei one should pay attention to the points where the author takes special pains. Only if one understands why the author takes special pains at the points where he does is one fit to read the Chin p'ing mei, or to say that he knows how to read literature." 33 "If a person who writes indifferently to begin with does not write any better after reading the Chin p'ing mei, he should burn his writing implements and take up the plow for his enjoyment. There is no longer any need for him to trouble himself with trying to write." 34 As these quotations indicate, the whole thrust of Chang Chu-p'o's criticism is informed by the desire to demonstrate the thesis that the work as a whole is an organic entity that has been constructed with great care and to which every detail, however insignificant in itself, makes a necessary contribution. He insists that the author's achievement cannot be fully appreciated unless the reader attempts to work out for himself the functional contribution that each detail of language, incident, and structure makes to the intended overall effect. The critic's task is thus a creative one, requiring nothing less than the re-creation of a work of literature through the process of analyzing its constituent elements, ascertaining the functions they perform, and demonstrating how the particular way in which they are integrated into a larger whole contributes to the impact of the work considered as a totality.

Space does not permit more extensive quotation from Chang's prolegomena or the commentary itself, most of which is concerned with the specific details of the Chin p'ing mei, with which the reader may not be familiar. I will, however, list below some of the constituent 31 32 33 34

Ibid., section 26, p. lib. Ibid., section 69, p. 22b. Ibid., section 70, p. 22b. Ibid., section 74, p. 23b. 121

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elements, functions, and integrating devices about which he has interesting things to say. Among the constituent elements are words, names, puns, metaphors, symbols, motifs, themes, poems, songs, jokes, dramatic performances, dialogue, characters, foils, settings, situations, episodes, chapters, sub-plots, and the plot as a whole. The functions of these elements include those of introduction, preparation, prefiguration, prediction, revelation, development, transition, summation, conclusion, characterization, and commentary. Among the integrating devices are: the treatment of time, the spatial and temporal distribution of the characters, the juxtaposition or interweaving of two parallel or contrasting episodes in each chapter, the dovetailing between the individual episodes, the incremental repetition of significantly correlated motifs, situations, or episodes, and the distribution of contrasting motifs in patterns of periodic alternation.35 Chang Chu-p'o says of his own work: "Although I would not be so presumptuous as to say that I have succeeded in getting to the bottom of the author's mind, I have been motivated to write, despite my own inadequacies, by the desire to defend him against all the undeserved calumnies that have been heaped upon him. I would also like to open the drowsy eyes of aspiring writers to the author's achievement while at the same time making some small contribution to literary theory myself. Who can say that this is not worthwhile?"36 I hope that what has been said above is sufficient to indicate something of the nature and importance of Chang Chu-p'o's work. I plan to publish in the near future a complete translation of his essay entitled "How to Read the Chin p'ing mei," which is the closest thing that I know of in the Chinese language to a poetics of the novel. Although his interpretations may sometimes seem wrong-headed, forced, or overly ingenious, I believe that his approach is fundamentally sound, and that his commentary on the Chin p'ing mei, taken as a whole, is the most illuminating critical analysis in depth of any Chinese novel with which I am familiar in any language. It has often been pointed out that the Hung-lou meng shows the influence of the Chin p'ing mei.31 I would like to suggest that Ts'ao 35

Ibid., sections 1-108, pp. la-30a, passim. Ibid., section 82, p. 26b. The Chih-yen Chai commentator on the Hung-lou meng compares passages in that work with the CAw p'ing mei at least four times. See Chao KangffipSl,Hunglou meng k'ao-cheng shih-i $£83?¾'!¾}¾-¾ (Hong Kong, Kao-yiian Ch'u-pan-she, 1963), p. 34. For three articles claiming to demonstrate the indebtedness of the 36

37

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Hsueh-ch'in Wff?r was not only more indebted to the Chin p'ing mei than has generally been acknowledged, but that he almost certainly read it in Chang Chu-p'o's edition, and was significantly influenced in the composition of the Hung-lou meng by what Chang Chu-p'o has to say about the craft of fiction. Every constituent element, function, and integrative device to which Chang Chu-p'o calls attention in his commentary on the Chin p'ing mei alsofiguresprominently in the Hung-lou meng. The degree of congruity is too great to be fortuitous. I think I have discovered some corroborating evidence for this hypothesis and plan to pursue this line of inquiry further in the future. If this hypothesis is correct, then Chang Chu-p'o's commentary on the Chin p'ing mei is not only the best critical study of that work and the closest thing we have to a Chinese poetics of the novel, but also contributed significantly to the making of what is universally regarded as the culminating masterpiece of traditional Chinese narrative fiction. It is my hope that when this neglected work receives its just due, it will earn Chang Chu-p'o a significant place in the history of Chinese literary criticism. Hung-lou meng to the CAm p'ing mei, see Yao Ling-hsi WcMM-, P'ing-wai chih-yen WMQM (Tientsin, T'ien-chin Shu-chu, 1940), pp. 68-99. See also C. T. Hsia, TAe Classic Chinese Novel, (Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 259.

123

SUI ΓANG YEN-I AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SUCHOU ELITE* ROBERT G. HEGEL Chinese historical novels fall into four distinct categories, according to Sun K'ai-tifflflHW,:those which narrate the events of a specific period of time, usually the duration of a single ruling house in imitation of the coverage of individual dynastic histories; those which narrate the career of a single historical individual or of a single family, rather like the biographies {lieh-chuan ^W) in the dynastic histories; those which narrate a specific event, e.g., the restoration of a ruling house or the fall of a dynasty; those which narrate events of past and present rather like a Chinese general history.1 Sui Tang yen-i WJHrSSji (Ro* Portions of this paper have appeared in Chinese under the title "Sui Tang yen-i: ch'i shih-tai, lai-yiian, yii kou-tsao," ^Brpft, 315¾!¾¾¾ Yu-shih yiieh-k'an (Taipei, English title: Youth Monthly) #jfL3flJ 40: 3 (September 1974), pp. 30-34. 1 Sun K'ai-ti, Chung-kuo t'ung-su hsiao-shuo shu-mu ΦΒ2#?'Μ£1Ι@ (Revised ed., Peking: Tso-chia, 1958), p.4. In an article that appeared during the final prep­ aration of this paper, "The Chinese Historical Novel: An Outline of Themes and Contexts," Journal of Asian Studies 34: 2 (February 1975), pp. 277-294, Y.W. Ma identifies two major themes in such works: dynasty building (interregna, the founda­ tion of dynasties, national exploits abroad, the restoration of a declining house) and national security (external aggression, internal revolt, etc.). He separates from these two groups novels that cover entire dynasties or other convenient periods of time, into which category Sui Tang should logically fall. Concerning this dynastic chronicle theme, Ma comments: "The overall scheme with its panorama of events spreads the attention thinly, with too many possible climaxes to be elaborated and too many dramatic purposes to accomplish. The dependence on the official dynastic histories, with their easy and tempting availability, also means the possibility of woodenness in characterization and dryness of facts in the hands of mediocre writers. This is not to say that there should be any necessary conflict between a presentation of historical facts and the achievement of artistic ex­ cellence. But structurally speaking, the dramatic highlights of history are discolored by the mechanical desire for complete coverage and the instinctive tendency to transcribe. It is almost inevitable that many of the novels of this theme should be episodic in structure, with scenes poorly related to each other and connections be­ tween adjoining incidents often fortuitous or nonexistent. This weakness in structure is, in part, due to the lack of focus over a wide scope. The action may seem fleeting and undeveloped because there are diverse interests to distract the attention" (see pp. 285-286). As I shall demonstrate here (although by using a different classification scheme) 124

SUI T'ANG

YEN-I

mance of the Sui and the T'ang,2 hereafter Sui T'ang), compiled by Ch'u Jen-huo HASI (ca. 1630 to ca. 1705) in the 1670's and published in 1695,3 belongs to Sun's first category; it narrates events which occurred during the Sui and the first half of the T'ang periods, roughly A.D. 570 to 770. Although it was never considered a masterpiece, Sui T'ang is one of China's favorite traditional novels, having appeared in at least a dozen editions (including recent Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei reprints).4 No subsequent editor has seen fit to revise Ch'u's text; except for variant forms of individual ideographs, all versions are virtually identical to the original. Given the ordeal of repeated revision through which many of old China's better-known novels have had to pass,5 this fact in itself testifies to the enduring appeal of, hence the need to study, this work. In order to elucidate this work and its importance in the development of Chinese fiction, I will outline significant features of the work itself and then examine the context in which it appeared. Neither section of this paper will be exhaustive in any regard; the following is intended to be only a brief overview. I will concentrate, first, on structuring devices and on aspects of the author's relationship to his material that are readily discernible in Sui T'ang and, later, on their analogues as discovered in works by Ch'u Jen-huo's contemporaries. As I will demSui T'ang is a virtual anthology of such themes and is not dependent upon the dynastic histories, completeness in coverage of significant historical events is not central to Sui T'ang and, furthermore, attention is not focused here on individual dramatic moments but instead on the juxtaposition of such moments. In short, Sui T'ang is not a novel on the dynastic theme, by Ma's definition. Determination of whether Sui T'ang is truly unique or whether Ma's generalizations require revision must await further research on individual historical novels. 2 By translating this title as "Romance . . ." I do not mean to imply any necessary parallels between it and European prose narratives so designated. I am merely following the precedent set by C. H.Brewitt-Taylor in translating the title of San-kuo chih yen-i as Romance of the Three Kingdoms. 3 As indicated by Ch'u Jen-huo in his preface to Sui T'ang; see my doctoral dissertation (of which this paper is an extension). Sui T'ang yen-i: The Sources and Narrative Techniques of a Traditional Chinese Novel (Columbia University, 1973), pp. 6-10. 4 For a list of extant editions, see Hegel, pp. 15-18. The Shanghai Ku-tien wenhsueh ch'u-pan-she edition of 1956 was photographically reprinted in Taipei by Shih-chieh shu-chii in 1962 and 1963 and by Hsueh-lin shu-tien in Hong Kong in 1966. Moreover, there have been Kuang-wen and Kwong-chi editions from Hong Kong and a Li-ming edition from Taipei in the last twenty years. 5 See, for example, the evolution of Shui-hu as described by R. G. Irwin in his The Evolution of a Chinese Novel: Shui-hu-chuan (Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 43-51 and 61-94, of Hsi-yu chi by G. Dudbridge in his "The Hundred-Chapter Hsi-yu chi and Its Early Versions" (Asia Major N.S. 16:2, 1969), pp. 141-91, and of P'ing-yao chuan by P. D. Hanan: "The Composition of the P'ing yao chuan" (HJAS 31, 1971), pp. 201-219. 125

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onstrate, both internal and external evidence strongly suggest that Ch'u was fully conversant with the fashions of his day in both writing and criticism, and that he was writing self-consciously to meet their demands.

Sui T'ang is relatively long, compared to other Chinese novels, 100 chapters and nearly 800 closely printed pages in the most readily avilable modern edition. Its contents may be outlined as follows: I. The rise and reign of the Sui imperial house (Chapters 1-3, 19-20, 27-31, 34-36, 39-40, 47-48) II. The adventures of Ch'in Shu-pao ^ i X H and other warrior heroes (Chapters 3-4, 6-18, 21-26, 31-33, 37-39, 41-46) III. The rise of the Li ^ family until consolidation of T'ang power (Chapters 4-6, 46, 48-60) IV. Love affairs between young warriors (Chapters 60-63) V. The reign of Li Shih-min $ # S as T'ang T'ai-tsung %.hWti%WMWtfni& compiled by Chiang Jui-tsao j$]ftg£ in the fall of 1918.3 Chiang Jui-tsao's book is basically a collection of notes and comments by late Ch'ing and early Republican writers on drama and fiction. In the passage I have not quoted, the author describes The Scholars as the best example of "pure pai-hua" gfg (vernacular) literature, which, he thinks, should be relatively free from slang, Mandarin, or classical Chinese. He recommends the kind of "pure pai-hua" found in The Scholars for use throughout China and as a medium for writing literature.4 These arguments suggest that the two anonymous passages might have been written around the Literary Revolution of 1917, when progressive Chinese intellectuals advocated the creation of a new realistic literature in the vernacular in accordance with Western theories. It is not impossible that the anonymous author wrote the above passage under some direct or indirect influence of the Western concept of the novel. Moreover, his objection to the structure of The Scholars probably reflects the general critical attitude of new intellectuals toward traditional Chinese culture around the time of the Literary Revolution. It is interesting, then, to note that his criticism of The Scholars was shared by several leading figures in the Literary Revolution whose assimilation of Western ideas was unquestionable. Hu Shih ^ ¾ (1891-1962), one of the most eminent leaders and theorists of the Literary Revolution, for instance, expressed on several occasions his dissatisfaction with The Scholars in strikingly similar 2 Chiang Jui-tsao MtiiaM, Hsiao-shuo k'ao-cheng hsii-pien shih-i 'bM^^MWSaM. (Shanghai: Shang-wu yin-shu kuan, 1922), pp. 61-62. 3 Chiang Jui-tsao's colophon indicates that the compilation of the Hsiao-shuo k'ao-cheng hsii-pien was completed on August 24, 1918. The exact date when the shih-i volume was compiled is not immediately certain, however. 4 Chiang Jui-tsao, ibid., pp. 62-63.

245

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terms. 5 Commenting on the great influence of The Scholars on late Ch'ing satirical novels, he wrote in 1922 in his famous article "Chinese Literature of the Last Fifty Years": "The Scholars does not have a structural framework. It is entirely a series of short stories lumped together. When such a book is broken down, each section becomes one story. When stories are strung together, a book can become endlessly long. This form is the easiest to learn and is also the most convenient to use. Therefore, this fictional form which is made up of short stories without an overall structure has become the general pattern for recent satirical novels." 6 The popularity of The Scholars as a fictional model in late Ch'ing is seen here simply as a function of the convenience of its form. In using this form, an author does not have to concern himself with structural framework but can ramble on from one episode to the next. The imposition of Western concepts on this view is revealed in a later section in which Hu Shih discusses the works of the late Ch'ing novelist Wu Wo-yao (1867-1910).7 Hu Shih thinks that Wu Wo-yao is superior to his contemporary writers precisely because all his novels have some framework and organization. To illustrate, Hu Shih argues that, although Wu Wo-yao's Eyewitnessed Strange Phenomena of the Last Twenty Years still contains numerous short stories, it has a structural focus because the whole book uses " I " as the main character and his experience as the structural outline. He notes that Wu Wo-yao was able to incorporate this structure because he had been influenced to some extent by Western fiction. Actually, these ideas of Hu Shih concerning the influence of The Scholars on late Ch'ing fiction and the problem of its narrative structure had already appeared in an open letter to Ch'en Tu-hsiu editor of Hsin CKing-nien or New Youth, in May 1917, when Hu Shih was completing his doctorate in philosophy at Columbia University. 8 This letter was essentially a reply to an earlier open letter 5 Hu Shih has commented on the structure of The Scholars at least in: (a). "Again to Ch'en Tu-hsiu in Reply to Ch'ien Hsiian-t'ung" 1919); (b). "On A Constructive Literary Revolution" 1918); (c). "Chinese Literature of the Last Fifty Years" 1922); (d). "Preface to Flowers on the Sea" _ . . . . . . 1926). ine first two items can be

found in Chao Chia-pi ed., Chung-kuo hsin-wen-hsueh ta-hsi: chien-she li-lun chi (Shanghai: Liang-yu t'u-shu yin-shua kung-ssu, 6 1935) thewen-ts'un, last two in Huir,Shih, Hu Shih This wen-ts'un (Taipei:published Yiian-tung Huand Shih Vol. pp. 233-234. essay was originally in shu-chii, 1961), Vols, n and chi-nien in respectively. Shen-pao wu-shih chou-nien (Shanghai, 1922). 7 Ibid., p. 237. 8 Chao Chia-pi, ibid., pp. 60-62. 246

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WAI-SHIH

from Ch'ien Hsiian-t'ung $3¾!¾ to Ch'en Tu-hsiu in which Ch'ien Hsiian-t'ung discussed Hu Shih's famous essay "A Modest Proposal for a Reform of Literature." 9 Both letters contained a brief discussion of several traditional Chinese novels. While Ch'ien Hsiian-t'ung merely evaluated the thematic aspects of these works, Hu Shih was able to pay attention to the problem of form. Although he did not mention Western fiction in this initial analysis of the structure of The Scholars, his implicit acceptance of the Western novel as the norm can be detected. Considering the context from which Hu Shih's ideas evolved, there is no reason to doubt that he derived his prejudice against The Scholars from his experience with the Western mode of thought and with the monolithic plot structure of the Western novel. 10 His prejudice in fact goes beyond The Scholars into his interpretation of all of Chinese fiction, as he continues in the same article "Chinese Literature of the Last Fifty Years": "By and large, there is no structural framework in the fiction of the last thousand years. For instance, in Chin P'ing Mei and Dream of the Red Chamber, the more outstanding of these works, although they take the history of a family as the framework and are not too deficient in integration, their structure is still very loose: This year Hsi-men Ch'ing has an affair with P'an, the Fifth, and next year, with Wang, the Sixth; in Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chrysanthemum Poetry Society is organized here and then an Autumn Cherry-Apple Poetry Society is set up there; in this chapter, Grandmother Chia has her birthday party, and in the next, Hsueh Pao-ch'ai has hers . . . it is really somewhat detestable that the incidents shift back and forth like this. Strange Phenomena seeks to use the framework of Dream of the Red Chamber to control the materials of Exposure of Bureaucracy. Thus its main character T moves about, and once he has arrived in Nanking, Shanghai, and Canton, he sees and hears about many events there. In actual fact, the novel has very loose organization, contrived control of materials, and a very unnatural framework. Strange Murder of Nine Lives is quite different. He [Wu Wo-yao] uses the techniques of Chinese satirical novels to write about family life and the bureaucracy, and the 9

Both items can be found in the above work. In his Ssu-shih tzu-shu 123+¾¾ (Shanghai: Ya-tung t'u-shu-kuan, 1933), Hu Shih mentioned that he was a voracious reader of traditional Chinese fiction in his early teens. His serious reading of Western fiction did not begin, however, until he came to study in the United States. In his Ts'ang-hui shih cha-chi^M^gIJlH (Shanghai: Ya-tung t'u-shu-kuan, 1936), which consisted of diaries and random notes about his life as a student in the United States, he frequently mentioned works of Western fiction. 10

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techniques of northern Chinese bandit novels to write about bandits and their military advisers. But he also uses the framework of the Western detective novel for his overall structure. All superfluous ele­ ments are trimmed, branches and leaves pruned, and what is left is the central theme, the rise and fall, or the cause and result, of a great murder case. Thus the reader naturally can maintain his interest from the beginning to the end without growing tired. Strange Murder of Nine Lives, therefore, can be said to be perfect in its technical aspects."1 x This is indeed an astonishing passage, and a very informative one as well. Hu Shih's observation of the transformation of traditional nar­ rative structure in late Ch'ing novels under Western influence is per­ ceptive, and merits further investigation. In Strange Murder of Nine Lives he finds that the murder case constitutes the plot, which in turn resembles the structure of a Western detective novel. Hu Shih is keenly aware of the disparity between the structure of the traditional Chinese novel and that of the Western novel. But, instead of pointing out the distinctiveness of Chinese narrative structure, he simply regards the Western novel as the norm and concludes that the traditional Chinese novel lacks an integrative framework. For all his brilliance and vast learning, and for all the theoretical contributions he made to the creation of modern Chinese literature, Hu Shih apparently failed to appreciate the intrinsic value of the structure of traditional Chinese novels. His failure illustrates the predisposition toward finding fault with Chinese culture, a predisposition so widely shared by intellectuals during the May Fourth Period (1917-1921) of modern Chinese history. Even in an authoritative work like Chung-kuo hsiao-shuo shih-liieh ^WhHrLtiiyfe (A Brief History of Chinese Fiction), the greatest modern Chinese writer and scholar of fiction, Lu Hsun #ffl (1881-1936), remarked: "Although [The Scholars] is called a long work, it is really like a group of short stories."12 Convincing as they may at first seem, such simplistic views, which clearly reflect implicit or explicit imposition of Western norms, cannot adequately account for the unique modes of structure found in The Scholars. To apprehend the unique patterns of integration in The Schol­ ars, we must first free ourselves from these biased views created by early twentieth-century Chinese scholars under the sweeping impact of Western culture and thought. I hope to show in this preliminary investigation that Wu Ching-tzu is no less self-conscious about giving 11

Hu Shih wen-ts'un, Vol. π, pp. 239-240. Lu Hsiin fttB, Chung-kuo hsiao-shuo shih-liieh ΦΗ·,Μ6ί£Ι§' (n.p.: Lu Hsun hsien-sheng chi-nien wei-yiian-hui, 1930), p. 231. 12

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order and integrity to his work than the author of a well-wrought Western novel. As we shall see below, Wu Ching-tzu has effectively used the element of Ii Wt (ritual) as the central integrative principle in his novel. The first thing we must remember here is that in the history of Chinese narrative, as the last long quotation from Hu Shih has indicated, The Scholars is not unique in having no integral plot structure. As a matter of fact, all traditional Chinese novels generally reveal a "heterogeneous and episodic quality of plot."13 This phenomenon has been associated with the influence of the narrative conventions of the storytellers of the Sung and Yuan periods, and with the accretive nature of the early Chinese novel.14 This is, generally speaking, a valid description. Yet the theoretical foundations of these conventions still remain to be examined. Morevoer, the episodic quality is also commonly shared by other genres of traditional Chinese narrative, such as the historical narrative, the biography, the classical tale (ch'uan-ch'i fflf-gj·), and the vernacular short story. Therefore, we must regard this structural peculiarity as one of the salient features of traditional Chinese narrative. The episodic orientation we are describing is in fact ultimately related to the traditional Chinese world view, already developed as early as the I Ching (The Book of Changes). Several modern authorities have noted the distinctiveness of this world-conception in contrast to other conceptions. A concise and precise review of the implications of the Chinese world view can be found in Frederick W. Mote's article "The Cosmological Gulf Between China and the West" and in his book Intellectual Foundations of China.1 s Unlike many other peoples, the Chinese are somewhat unique in believing that the cosmos and man within it are not created by an external force or ultimate cause. Instead, they see the cosmos as a self-contained, self-generating, dynamic process, with all of its parts interacting in one harmonious, organic whole. Man is seen as participating in the creative process of the cosmos, forming the triad of heaven, man, and earth. This man13 John L. Bishop, "Some Limitations of Chinese Fiction," in Studies in Chinese Literature (Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 240. l * Ibid. 15 Frederick W. Mote, "The Cosmological Gulf between China and the West" in Mote and Buksbaum, eds., Transition and Permanence: Chinese History and Culture (University of Washington Press, 1972). Frederick W. Mote, Intellectual Foundations of China (Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), Chap, n, "The Beginnings of a World View," pp. 13-28.

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MIDDLE A N D LATE CH'ING FICTION centered, organismic conception of an uncreated cosmos has had a profound impact upon various aspects of Chinese civilization. Of particular relevance to our inquiry here is the connection be­ tween this world-view and the conceptual deemphasis of causality in the Chinese scheme of things. The concept of causality, so characteris­ tic of Western thought, demands that events be subsumed under one another in a mechanistic chain of cause and effect. Tight, centralized plot structure is possible when this special causal point of view is accepted. In this linear, and basically temporal, type of structure, either the element of character or that of incident is singled out to be­ come the "prime mover" or the dynamic, sequential factor in the narrative. 1 6 The traditional Chinese point of view, however, militates against this sort of causal explanation. Instead of arranging events in a linear causal chain, the Chinese view them as forming one vast, interweaving, "reticular" relationship, or process. 17 Events are no longer described as causally linked: they are simply connected or juxtaposed side by side as if by coincidence. Thus the temporal sequence of the cause-and-effect relationship is instead spatialized into a dynamic pattern of juxtaposed concrete "incidents." Within this "synchronistic" 1 8 conception, it is impossible for one specific component to become the prime mover, as all the other com­ ponents theoretically have the same potential to affect the whole process. Discussing the Chinese cosmic process, Joseph Needham says: "[The] universe itself is a vast organism, with now one and now another component taking the lead—spontaneous and uncreated it is, with all the parts of it cooperating in a mutual service which is perfect freedom, the larger and the smaller playing their parts according to their degree, 'neither afore nor after other.' " 1 9 It is not surprising that under the influence of this cosmological orien­ tation the writers of traditional novels seldom, if ever, selected one char­ acter or incident to assume a unifying role in their works. The usual pattern is to let now one and now another character or incident take the 16

Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg define "plot" as "the dynamic sequential element" in narrative. See The Nature of Narrative (Oxford University Press,1966), p. 1207. 7 Mote, Intellectual Foundations of China, p. 27. 18 In his "Foreword" to Gary F. Baynes's English translation of Richard Wilhelm's German translation of The Book of Changes (New York, Bollingen Foundation, 1950), C. G. Jung uses the term "synchronicity" to describe the Chinese mode of thought. 19 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge University Press, 1956), Vol. π, pp. 288-289. 250

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lead in the sequence of narrative. Traditional Chinese novels very rarely focus on a single character development or one social phenomenon but depict instead a vast world of men in their complex interrelationships.20 This intriguing tendency toward a kind of "moveable" rather than "fixed" focus can also be found in Chinese landscape painting, where a singular perspective is usually absent. In both, the implications of the Chinese cosmological orientation cannot be questioned. Each chapter of The Scholars, in turn, concentrates on one character or a few and involves some secondary characters, constituting a particular "social situation."21 But in the next chapter this main character or group of main characters immediately retreats into the periphery of action or vanishes from the scene entirely. Only when the reader has gone through the whole book does he have a total picture of the vast world of scholars. Furthermore, characters appear, meet one another, vanish, and reemerge almost at random, as if entirely governed by mere chance and coincidence. Even in the classical tale or the vernacular short story, in which there is one central character, the narrative still consists of a series of seemingly contrived, miraculous incidents. The frequent use of terms like "it happened that" (shih M or hui # ) , "it happened to be the time of" (shih-yii MM), "it happened to be just the time when" (cheng-chih lEH), ". . . was just about to . . . (when). . ." (ch'iieh-tai £p#), and "if there were no coincidence, there would be no story" (wu-ch'iao pu-cKeng shu iB^^fiK·) as devices to link incidents, clearly illustrates this point. The mode of structure is too typical and characteristic of Chinese narrative to be interpreted as lack of concern with overall design. There is no doubt that the Chinese have paid more attention to what C. G. Jung has called the "non-causal dimensions of human experience."22 We must not be misled, however, into thinking that the ancient Chinese did not have any notion of causation at all. Rather, the "cause" of a certain action or event is interpreted as a spontaneous conjunction. The miraculous incidents in the classical tale and the vernacular short story are precisely such spontaneous happenings. In the traditional Chinese novel, the transition from one chapter to 20 T'ang Chiin-i 11¾¾, Chung-kuo wen-hua chih ching-shen chia-chih φ Β ^ ^ έ . it#fif[(Taipei: Cheng-chung shu-chu, 1953), p. 248. 21 Wu Tsu-hsiang gjfcfliHfl, "Ju-Un wai-shih te ssu-hsiang yii i-shu" fpftfl-StOij SiS^SSIr in Ju-Un wai-shih yen-chiu lun-chi ffi$f;fl-£ff?Efra^ (Peking: Tso-chia ch'u-pan-she, 1955), p. 38. 22 Ira Progoff, Jung, Synchronicity, and Human Destiny: Non-Causal Dimensions of Human Experience (New York: The Julian Press, 1973).

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the next is another perfect example of this particular sense of causation. In The Scholars, as a case in point, with the exception of the prologue and the epilogue, each chapter concludes with an interesting happenstance that opens up another sequence of events in the next. At the end of each happenstance, there is the following formulaic phrase: chih-yin che-i-fan, yu-fen-chiao A H i i - # , ^"#|fc ("for this incident alone there is the opportunity for it to cause . . ."). This phrase is then followed by a verse that summarizes what is going to happen next. To be sure, this technique, designed to create suspense at the end of each chapter, has derived from the oral storyteller. But its implication as a striking explanation of events cannot be ignored. We might object to such a connection between a sequence of stories as tenuous, but that would be to misunderstand the dynamism and freedom inherent in Chinese cosmological thinking. I hope that by now my contention is clear that the view of The Scholars as a series of loosely connected short stories is based on a conflict between two fundamentally different modes of thought and ways of explaining events. The point is that narrative structure is not merely an arbitrary literary technique—quite significantly, it is also a way in which men view life and the world. We shall examine below the relationship between the Confucian ritualized world-view that underpins the moral vision of The Scholars, and the corresponding integrative framework of the novel. Suffice it to say, at this point, that it is no accident that attacks on the structure of The Scholars began at a crucial time when the traditional Chinese way of life and thinking was being thoroughly challenged by modern Chinese intellectuals. One is reminded also that li-chiao W$L or "the teaching of ritual or propriety" was one of the targets of bitter criticism for radical writers like Lu Hsiin, Wu Yu ^ ¾ and Hu Shih. 23 More important, the harshest criticism of The Scholars came from Hu Shih, an exemplary figure of his time, who believed that "wholesale westernization" was the answer to China's problem of modernization. 24 Traditional critics such as 23 Lu Hsiin's famous story "Diary of a Madman" (1918) is an attack on the Chinese family system and the "teaching of Ii." Following Lu Hsiin's ideas, Wu Yu §k$£ wrote several essays attacking the Confucian teaching of Ii. See Wu Yu, Wu Yu wen-lu ^kMJCUsIi (Shanghai: Ya-tung t'u-shu-kuan, 1921) and Hu Shih's preface to this work. I am grateful to Dr. Ming-chin Chou for drawing my attention to Wu Yii's work. 2 * Hu Shih used the term "wholesale westernization" in an article written in English on the cultural conflicts in China and published in the Christian Yearbook (1929). I have not been able to get hold of this article. In 1935 Hu Shih wrote a brief essay entitled "Sufficient Internationalization and Wholesale Westernization"

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(16107-1661), Chang Chu-p'o

„ , Mao

Tsung-kang and Wo-hsien ts'ao-t'ang (fl. late 18th and early 19th centuries), who did not have to confront the problem of transforming China under the overwhelming impact of Western civilization, and whose aesthetic judgment was thus not affected by Western norms, were all able to appreciate the structure (chieh-kuo or pu-chti in their reference) of the classic Chinese novel. 25 Our problem, therefore, is certainly not to argue that one mode of structure is decidedly superior to the other as Hu Shih has done; rather, it is to recognize and to describe objectively the distinctive character of the traditional Chinese novel. Joseph Needham, following Marcel Granet, Helmut Wilhelm, and other authorities, has termed the divergent ways of thinking in China and the West "coordinative thinking" and "subordinative thinking," respectively. 26 In the Chinese coordinative thinking, things are "parts in existential dependence upon the whole world-organism; they [react] upon one another not so much by mechanical impulsion or causation as by a kind of mysterious resonance." 27 It is obvious that, in the coordinative scheme, the coherence of the whole is maintained not by subordinating all parts to an external primal cause, but by correlating them through internal harmony, balance, and correspondence. This sense of non-causal and non-linear ordering is naturally difficult to detect in The Scholars, as well as in other traditional Chinese novels, since the elements are spread not simultaneously within an enclosed space, as in a painting, but in a consecutive framework of time. The (Ch'ung-fen shih-chieh hua yu ch'uan-p'an hsi-hua in which he criticized his previous use of the term "wholesale Westernization" as imprecise and recommended "sufficient internationalization" to substitute it. However, he maintained in that essay that his attitude toward the problem of "Westernization" had not changed. See Mai Fa-ying , Ch'uan-p'an hsi-hua yen-lun san-chi (Canton: Ling-nan University, 1936), pp. 79-84. 25 See Chin Sheng-t'an "How to Read the Fifth Work of Genius" (Tu ti-wu ts'ai-tzu shu fa in Chin Sheng-t'an ch'i-shih-i huipen Shui-hu chuan, 24 chiian (Shanghai: Chung-hua shu-chu, 1934); Mao Tsung-kang "How to Read San-kuo-chih yen-i" (San-kuo-chih yen-i tu-fa in Ti-i ts'ai-tzu shu (n.p., Preface dated 1644). For Chang Chu-p'o's criticism of the Chin P'ing Mei, read Professor David Roy's essay above. Wo-hsien ts'aot'ang has provided very useful notes on The Scholars, many of which are concerned with structural matters. His comments can be found in the Ju-lin wai-shih, 8 vols., which contains a colophon by Chin Ho dated 1869 and another colophon by T'ien-mu-shan-ch'iao dated 1873. His comments appeared originally in a 56-chapter edition of the Ju-lin wai-shih in 1803, a facsimile of which was published in four volumes by Jen-min wen-hsiieh ch'u-pan-she in 1975. 26 Needham, p. 280. 253 27 Ibid., p. 281.

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apparent episodic framework is precisely the product of this attempt to create a self-contained, interlocking organism within a linear medium, language. Previous misunderstandings of modern Chinese scholars about the novel's structure are due in large part to their failure to recognize this basic attempt. Therefore, in discussing the structural modes of the traditional Chinese novel, we must take into account both the synchronistic and essentially "spatial" conception of relationships among events, and the essentially "temporal" nature of a literary work. Having examined the cosmological issue, we may now examine more closely the structural design of The Scholars itself. As the full title An Unofficial History of the Scholars indicates, the novel is intended by its author to be modeled after an historical narrative. The story takes place in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), spanning a long period of time from 1487 to 1595. The prologue chapter actually goes much further back, to the end of the Yuan dynasty (1277-1367), to depict the ideal character in the book, the hermit-artist, Wang Mien. Apart from the two dates, 1487 and 1595, which mark the beginning and the end of the story, the novel contains only two other precise dates. One of them appears in Chapter 20 when the recluse-poet Niu Pu-i dies on the Third Day of the Eighth Month in 1530; the other is indicated in Chapter 35 when the great recluse Chuang Shao-kuang arrives at the Central Court in Nanking on the First Day of the Tenth Month in 1556 to have an audience with the Emperor. These dates divide the narrative sequence into large sections and serve to provide a certain historical framework. With the exception of the portrait of Wang Mien, however, the novel does not draw upon history as a source of materials. As is well known, many of the characters are modeled upon the author's own friends and other contemporaries. It is clear, then, that the temporal coherence of the novel does not rely on the chronology of a few historical dates that merely establish a tenuous relationship with history. The work is historical narrative only in that it is essentially a chronicle of man's overt acts and public events. 28 This public nature of the work is, as we shall see later, behind the use of// or "ritual" as an integrative principle in the structure. Here let us first take note of the very special time scheme adopted in the work. As H. C. Chang has observed: "Ju-Un wai-shih adopts a historical framework and certain firm historical dates, but adjusts its time scheme to the life cycles of individuals. Its waves of characters and events reflect the ebb and flow of the Chinese universe, in which days and months may be carefully noted 28 This aspect of the novel has been briefly discussed in Professor Yu-kung Kao's essay.

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but the true measure of time is the generation. Its unity is the unity of the handscroll, a succession of durations, varied and full of pleasant surprises, and seemingly unending, with neither climax nor anticlimax. Its subjective time, which gives the work cohesion, must be regarded as a greater technical achievement than even its satire and parody."29 Wu Ching-tzu is indeed innovative in using this scheme of "subjective time" to write a "history" of an entire century of scholars. Although the events are introduced chronologically, the novel as a whole does not depend upon an objective chronology of historical events for structural coherence. Rather, it adopts a scheme of time that is concretely experienced by the string of characters. Chang's comment on the similarity between the unity of The Scholars and that of the handscroll is an extremely perceptive and useful one. The analogy brings out both the "temporal" and the "spatial" dimensions of the novel's structure. The work reveals the author's total vision of a vast panorama of traditional Chinese life and society. Our apprehension of this total vision, however, can be only a gradual process of becoming familiar with all the components and their interrelationships. The problem of integrating the "succession of durations" into a harmonious total vision, therefore, still remains for us to solve. As a comprehensive pattern, The Scholars follows a thematic design. Wu Ching-tzu has indicated at the beginning of the prologue that his novel is focused on the theme of man's quest for "riches, rank, success, and fame." All the ills and vices of traditional Chinese society are exposed and satirized in terms of these basic human desires. Various characters and events are arranged in larger units to reveal different aspects of the issue in a manner resembling variations on a theme in music. In this respect, The Scholars is probably the most comprehensive description, if only in satirical terms, of traditional Chinese life and society in one book organized around a single idea. The sense of the totality of the work is produced not only by what Chang has termed the "subjective time," but also by complex patterns of internal harmony and correspondences among larger units of stories. It should be noted here that numerous smaller units or correspondences, such as those between individual characters or incidents, can be discerned throughout the entire work. The reader can easily identify, for example, the interesting parallel among such pairs of characters as the Lou brothers, the Yen brothers, the Tu cousins, and the Yu brothers. These smaller parallels constitute a large portion of the narrative texture as the 29 H. C. Chang, Chinese Literature: Popular Fiction and Drama (Edinburgh University Press, 1974), pp. 20-1.

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incidents unfold.30 But since our concern is overall structure, we shall focus only on the larger patterns that give the work its closure and wholeness. C. T. Hsia has observed that "The Scholars has a discernible structure of three parts flanked by a prologue and an epilogue (Chap. 55)."31 In the coordination of these structural units, the element of Ii emerges as the central integrative principle. Since Ii is central not only to the structure of the novel but also to the moral vision of the author as well, it is important that we first know something about this crucial concept. The concept of Ii denotes one of the cardinal virtues in Confucian ethics. It has the root meaning of "religious sacrifice" or "sacred ceremony," but, as an ethical concept, it also has the derivative meaning of "propriety" or "a sense of ritual correctness."32 As used by Confucian thinkers, Ii has a wide range of implications. The following, for instance, is Frederick W. Mote's brief summary of the meanings of Ii as used by Hsiin Tzu, who is probably the most articulate and systematic interpreter of the concept: "Li, in the thought of Hsiin Tzu, became a comprehensive idea, involving ceremonies, rituals, the rules of social conduct, the norms of political behavior, and the private standards by which one governs his own emotions and actions. In society at large, the Ii sets reasonable limits to the satisfaction of desires. The ceremonies and rituals of Ii refine and purify the emotions and senses of the persons participating in them, or observing others perform them."33 From this description we can see that Ii is the principle, or norm, that regulates virtually all aspects of human behavior ranging from selfcultivation to ordering the entire society. It includes not only religious rites and ceremonies such as capping, marriage, funerals, mourning, and ancestral worship, but also formalized patterns of behavior, of human relationships, and of social intercourse as well. In Confucian philosophy, Ii is also conceived as something that contributes to maintaining harmony within the entire cosmos. Despite its vast implications, ritual can be simply defined as the norm governing the relationship between the self and the other.34 It is 30 The correspondence of individual characters or incidents is not unique to The Scholars. Mao Tsung-kang, for instance, has pointed out in his "How to Read the San-kuo chih Yen-i" many examples of such correspondence as device of structure. 31 C T . Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel (Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 224. 32 Wei-ming Tu, "Li as Process of Humanization," Philosophy East & West, Vol. XXIi, No. 2, p. 190. See also Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: the Secular as Sacred (Harper Torchbooks, 1972), pp. 6-7. 33 Mote, Intellectual Foundations of China, p. 64. 34 Wei-ming Tu, p. 190.

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rooted in human relationships and puts emphasis on rigid distinctions. But distinctions are created for the sole purpose of achieving harmony— what is regarded by the Chinese as an essential quality of music. Hence ritual and music become two mutually complementary principles. Here we must ask how harmony is to be achieved if //' or ritual imposes strict ordinances on distinctions in human relationships? Ritual works to bridge the dichotomy between the self and the other through a sense of reverence and mutual respect. To establish a genuine relationship, the two parties must cherish this sense of reverence for each other. The forms of a ritual are nothing but the outward embodi­ ment of one's inner sense of reverence. Without an attitude of reverence, therefore, the ritual can be said to be meaningless. Furthermore, the forms of a ritual that have evolved from tradition and convention must be integrated into one's personality so that one can perform them spontaneously and effortlessly in a given ceremonial situation.35 In Confucian thinking ritual is what governs the entire continuum from a man's inner self to his outward expression. Among all the Confucian virtues, ritual probably best expresses the Confucian ideal of civilization. H. C. Chang discusses the point in his interpretation of ritual in Hsiin Tzu's thought: "[Ritual] also asserts the dignity of man, as is evidenced by its recognition of the worth of his feelings and even his desires. These, ritual sets out to cultivate and beautify, not merely to regulate, and this cultivation and beautification of crude nature is, in its beginning, the process of civilizing. They bring about moral order in the world (distinctions in human relationships); they also bring about moral order within (reverence), but the result is something more. There is not only the satisfaction of desires, there is also refinement and elegance; beyond the expression of feelings, there is also beauty. Ritual thus includes within itself the ideal of 36 civilization." A thoroughly ritualized man is thus undoubtedly a virtuous person who can actualize virtue in his behavior, and who also has refinement and elegance of bearing. Such a man will be able to live in harmony with himself as well as with his fellow men. It is therefore inconceivable in the Confucian context that a man become truly human without going through the process of ritualization, a process of fusing social norms with his own original crude nature. 37 Ideally speaking, when every man has submitted himself to ritual, and thus recognizes his proper 35

Fingarette, pp. 8-9. H. C. Chang, Allegory and Courtesy in Spenser: A Chinese View (Edinburgh University Press, 1955), p. 218. 37 Fingarette, p. 7, and Wei-ming Tu, p. 198. 36

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position in society and is able to coordinate with other men, the world will necessarily be in perfect harmony. This brings us to the ultimate ideal in Confucian philosophy: "Human life in its entirety finally appears as one vast, spontaneous and holy Rite: the community of man."38 This ideal constitutes the ultimate concern of Confucian humanism and elevates man's secular life to the realm of the sacred. The vision of this perfect world is clearly that of "an ordered harmony of wills without an ordainer,"39 in which all the parts participate cooperatively in a self-regulating organic whole. This noble idealized vision of a ritualized world underpins The Scholars, if only as an ultimately unapproachable ideal. The significance of this vision is illustrated in that the structural apex of the novel is the rite of worship to T'ai-po, to which all the more idealized eminent scholars in the book are devoted. T'ai-po, the eldest son of a legendary ancestor of the Chou dynasty, renounced the throne in favor of his younger brother and fled to the lands of Wu and Yueh, bringing civilization to the "barbarian" people. The symbolic function of building a temple in honor of this ancient sage is indicated in the following statement by Ch'ih Heng-shan: "The worthiest man Nanking has produced, past or present, is T'ai Po, who founded the Kingdom of Wu. Yet there is not a single temple dedicated to him, though you find temples to the God of Literature and the God of War everywhere. I want to persuade some friends to contribute enough to build a temple to T'ai Po. Then in mid-spring and mid-autumn we can sacrifice with the ancient ceremonies and music. In this way people will practice ceremony and music, and that should help to produce some genuine scholars who will be able to serve the government well."40 By a ceremonial act, this group of idealistic scholars hope to revitalize the teaching of ritualization, now crumbled under the impact of the Ming civil service examination. But most scholars, whose vision has been fossilized by the examination system, which prizes those who master the "eight-legged essay," can only pursue "riches, rank, success, and fame." Even the Chia-ching Emperor (1522-1566) is described in the novel as being aware of the problem. When he summons Chuang Shao-kuang to the court, he says to the scholar-recluse: "We have 38

Fingarette, p. 17. Needham, p. 287. Wu Ching-tzu, The Scholars, tr. by Hsien-yi Yang and Gladys Yang (Grosset and Dunlap, 1972), pp. 425-26. 39

40

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reigned for thirty-five years. During that time, thanks to heaven, earth and our ancestors, the world has known peace and there have been no disturbances within our borders. But not all our subjects are warmly clad and well-fed, while even gentlemen have been unable to act in accordance with the principles of ceremony and music. We have summoned you all this way, sir, to ask what is of first importance in educating the people. We hope you will do your best to outline a plan for us." 4 1 But in a world so corrupt and decadent as portrayed in the novel, the efforts of the Chia-ching Emperor and of these eminent scholars must fail. The ceremony at T'ai-po Temple is immediately followed by the appearance of the swordsman and charlatan Iron-armed Chang, who attempts to deceive Tu Shao-ch'ing. After the sacrifice to T'ai-po, the author immediately introduces the term fei-li # ϋ ("improper or un-ritual") to comment on several incidents of improper and vulgar conduct. This contrasts with the concern with li-yiieh ftlg or "ritual and music" in Chapters 33-37. Toward the end of the book, the T'ai-po Temple has already collapsed, becoming an object of recollection in the minds of later scholars. The harmonious and holy ritual of worship to T'ai-po, which is what a society should be like, is even seen by the cynical and petty-minded scholars as another fraud to obtain fame. In the last analysis, the only thing a truly ritualized scholar can do is to become a hermit-artist like Wang Mien. Returning now to the problem of narrative structure, we must ask: how does the element of ritual, which is so central to the moral vision of the book, serve as an integrative principle? Ritual essentially has two structural functions in The Scholars. First, it functions to bring together a group of individual episodes to form a larger integral unit. Second, it functions to coordinate the larger units into a monumental whole. Previously we noted the public nature of the work. It is quite appro­ priate therefore that Wu Ching-tzu uses ritual, which is essentially a public, ceremonial performance, as the central integrative principle. The prologue, which is separated from the main story by more than a hundred years, fulfills a special purpose. It states the theme and at the same time presents a frame-story containing a skeleton of the main story. The frame-story is a biography of the model scholar Wang Mien, whose integrity and cultivation are to be used to measure every other character in the book. In this biography, the ritualized behavior of Wang Mien is carefully documented. He is portrayed as an ideal 41

Ibid., p. 444.

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Confucian gentleman, a man of vast learning, moral integrity, and artistic accomplishment. Virtually no other character in the book can measure up to his stature. Nevertheless, Wu Ching-tzu also offers two other biographical sketches, that of ΥϋΥϋ-te in Chapter 36, and that of the four eccentric artists at the end, to correspond to the prologue as portraits of exemplary figures. Wang Mien's ritualized conduct is set against the obsession with "riches, rank, success, and fame" of Wei Su, Bailiff Chai, and Magistrate Shih. The scene on the idyllic Ch'imao Lake on a summer day after rain is particularly significant. At the same time that Wang Mien is moved by the beauty of nature to decide to become a painter, three anonymous scholars are enjoying a picnic and chatting about fame and wealth. Wo-hsien ts'ao-t'ang is correct in saying that these three anonymous people are the prefigurations of most of the scholars in the rest of the novel.42 In Part I, the three important public events, that bring together three groups of schol­ ars, all take place beside a lake. There is no reason to doubt that Wu Ching-tzu does this consciously to create internal balance and cor­ respondence. In addition to being an introduction to the book, the frame-story about Wang Mien provides a structural outline for us to understand the main story. Here Wu Ching-tzu is quite in keeping with the long tradition of oral storytelling which utilizes the prologue as an essential device of structure. Part I (Chapters 2-30) concentrates on satirizing two types of schol­ ars : those who try to acquire riches, rank, success, and fame by passing the civil service examination and those who pretend to reject outright the examination system in favor of the life of the recluse. The first group commit themselves to perfecting the eight-legged essay and despise the second group for adhering to poetry they regard as "miscel­ laneous learning" [tsa-lan HSK). The second group in turn consider the poet-recluse as their ideal and despise the former group as su $§• or "vulgar." Divergent as they are in their convictions and life-styles, both groups of scholars remain the same in their unscrupulous pursuit of wealth and fame. The first of the three public events in Part I appears in Chapter 12, in which an outing is held at Oriole-Throat Lake. The outing brings together eight "famous" scholars who are mainly self-imposed recluse figures. The general tone of the outing is one of contrived elegance and eccentricity. 42 Wu Ching-tzu, Ju-Un wai-shih (n.p.). This is the Chinese edition that contains colophons by Chin Ho and T'ien-mu-shan-ch'iao. The particular comment can be found in Vol. I, Chap. 1, p. 8b.

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The second major event takes place in Chapter 18 when four recluses and four compilers of model examination essays hold a poetic gathering on the West Lake. All the participants, including K'uang Ch'ao-jen, who has never studied poetry before, write poetry after the occasion is over. As opposed to the first public event, there is not much description here about the outing on the West Lake itself, and the dominant tone seems to be one of pedantry and lack of authentic cultivation. The third important event comes from Chapter 30, in which Tu Shen-ch'ing, cousin of Tu Shao-ch'ing, organizes a contest for actors at Carefree Lake. Nine scholars, a monk, a Taoist, and the opera teacher Pao Wen-ch'ing are invited to observe the splendid occasion. Although the nine scholars are also targets of Wu Ching-tzu's satire, they are depicted as unconventional personalities with some genuine sense of elegance and refinement. Several of them in fact are good enough to take part in the grand ritual at T'ai-po Temple. These few episodes that culminate in the contest of actors serve as a transition from the previous scholars and pseudo-scholars of minor stature to Part II, which is focused on the more unusual and eminent scholars. The tone of increasing elegance (ya-yiin !ftift or "refined resonance") prepares the necessary mood for the great ritual at T'ai-po Temple. Each of the three public events is a ceremonial act on the part of the scholars to rejoice in good fellowship among themselves and, above all, to acquire fame. Literary gatherings of the kind described in the first part of the novel have long been an essential part of the social life of Chinese literati. But the application of the literary gathering as a structural device, as we see in The Scholars, is related to what H. C. Chang has termed the "banquet pattern in fiction," which is discernible in the novel Shui-hu chuam TkSi1W (Water Margin)—in which the "banquet" is used as an effective device to introduce and bring together one hundred and eight heroes from all over the empire—and recurs in a number of other traditional Chinese novels.43 As The Scholars progresses into Part II (Chapters"31-37a), the tone shifts from the satiric to the realistic.44 In actual fact, this shift has already taken place in the preceding few chapters. The whole of Part II is focused on the preparation and consummation of the dedication of T'ai-po Temple. Although each of the previous public events has one particular dominant quality, the second and third events are more inclusive in terms of the types of people participating in them. The 43 44

H. C. Chang, Chinese Literature: Popular Fiction and Drama, p. 19. Professor Yu-kung Kao has observed this shift in his essay. 261

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grand ritual at T'ai-po Temple, however, involves the largest number of people in it. It brings together twenty-four scholars, musicians, and thirty-six children who perform the traditional yi ft ritual dance: a total of seventy-six people. Under the leadership of the sagely Dr. Yu, all these people are integrated into one harmonious ritual. The twentyfour scholars are all familiar to the reader by now, since they have appeared in the preceding chapters, and several of them have also participated in the previous three occasions. The four public events focus on four different things and, in this regard, they serve to unify four corresponding units of characters and events. But they can also be considered as forming one progression, with each event growing more inclusive than the one before until they finally culminate in the all-embracing ceremony at T'ai-po Temple. The perfect vision cannot last for very long, however. Once the holy ritual is performed, it fades into memory right away. The sacrifice at T'ai-po Temple has brought no positive effect on the society at large, as those few leading figures had hoped. Thus, in Part III we are given a series of miscellaneous and fragmentary stories. Although there are numerous individual rituals and ceremonies, none of them stands out as having the same integrative function as those four public events we have just examined. The focus of narrative in thisfinalpart of the novel has shifted from the world of the scholars to the society at large. Although several outstanding scholars appear on the scene, they obviously are no longer the center of importance. This section is chiefly concerned with unusual personalities seen against the background of immense corruption and vulgarity. Unlike most of the eminent scholars whom they look back on with nostalgia as their models, these unusual characters, although often provincial and stubborn, are all able to translate virtues prescribed by ritual into concrete action. The apparent diffuseness of Part III is not at all a decline of the author's creative energy. The narrative diffuseness is, on the contrary, designed to indicate the total failure of the ideal vision of a perfectly ritualized world so cherished by the central characters in the book. We might consider, therefore, the entire third part as one vast unit corresponding, if only in an antithetical way, to the sacred ceremony at T'ai-po Temple. It is possible to view the three main parts of The Scholars as consisting of two cycles, with the dedication of T'ai-po Temple marking the dividing line. This becomes clear when we consider the correspondence of several significant elements between the two parts flanking the grand ceremony. The first half begins with the account of two old scholars whose passing of the civil service examination symbolizes the 262

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ascension of the ladder of success. It contains a few marriage ceremonies that, of course, suggest the beginning of new life. At the beginning of the second chapter, the prophetic dreams of success shared by Mei Chiu and Wang Hui are introduced. We also have incidents of scholars consulting a fortune-teller about their fate with regard to their fame and wealth. In contrast, in the second half of the book, starting with Chapter 44 not long after the grand ceremony, we begin to read about funerals, a farewell party for Dr. Yu, the enshrining of virtuous women, visits to the ruins of T'ai-po Temple, etc., which prepare us for the ending. Toward the close of Part III, the four important public events emerge in the confused memory of two minor characters, Ch'en Ssujuan, son of the fortune-teller Ch'en Ho-fu, who appeared in the opening chapters of the novel, and Ting Shih, and become the topic of their quarrel. In Chapters 53 and 54, fortune-telling and dreams return to the story again. The courtesan P'in-niang dreams that she will become a nun; she consults a fortune-teller, who confirms this. At the end of Part III, the foolish scholar Ting Shih offers his poems to P'in-niang, in striking contrast to the two old scholars' ascension to fame and wealth through the civil service examination. After a violent quarrel with a pimp over Ting Shih's visit, P'in-niang shaves her head and becomes a nun, just as her dreams and the fortune-telling had predicted. By enveloping the three main parts of the novel in fortunetelling and dreams, Wu Ching-tzu powerfully evokes the illusory nature of "riches, rank, success, and fame." As a whole, the main story of The Scholars reveals a rhythm of ascension, climax, and decline. The correspondence and antithesis of the two large cycles further enhances the coherence and totality of the main story itself. We finally come to the epilogue, in which the idealized portraits of four eccentric artists are presented. The portraits immediately remind us of the biography of Wang Mien at the very beginning of the book. Has the narrative indeed come full circle? Although they are idealized characters, artist-hermits, the four eccentrics cannot measure up to the refinement and cultivation of Wang Mien, or even of the eminent scholars in Part II. Where Wang Mien had acquired a comprehensive knowledge of the entire field of classical Chinese learning, each of the four eccentrics masters only one of the four traditional leisure arts of the literati—lute playing, chess, calligraphy and painting. With their obstinate and intolerant natures, the four eccentrics actually resemble more closely the unusual characters found in the latter part of the novel. They are undoubtedly driven into eccentricity by the declining and vulgarized society. To be sure, correspondences of elements do exist between the first 263

MIDDLE AND LATE CH'ING FICTION and the second halves of the book, and they establish the internal harmony of the work as a whole. The reappearance of the figure of the artist-recluse and of the form of idealized biography is more than simply a structural device, however. The novel is after all conceived by its author as a kind of "history" that involves distinct stages of development. While The Scholars can be taken to be Wu Ching-tzu's one vast totalized vision of traditional Chinese society in decline, it is also a description of a long historical process, with no two points exactly parallel. Chapter 54, which precedes the epilogue, concludes with the following verse: The wind drifts, clouds disperse, Worthies, heroes, talents and beauties alike are no more. The old firewood burnt, the flame continues into the new, Even artisans and marketeers have some measure of resonance.45 Tersely expressed in this verse is the sense of the end of an era. This feeling is picked up and expanded in the opening section of the epilogue: "By the twenty-third year of the Wan Li period, all the well-known scholars had disappeared from Nanking. Of Dr. Yii's generation, some were old, some had died, some had gone far away, and some had closed their doors and paid no attention to affairs outside. Pleasure haunts and taverns were no longer frequented by men of talent, and honest men no longer occupied themselves with ceremony or letters. As far as scholarship was concerned, all who passed the examinations were considered brilliant and all who failed fools. And as for liberality, the rich indulged in ostentatious gestures while the poor were forced to seem shabby. You might have the genius of Li Po or Tu Fu and the moral worth of Yen Hui or Tseng Shen, but no one would ask your advice. So at coming of age ceremonies, marriages, funerals, or sacrifices in big families and in the halls of the local gentry, nothing was discussed but promotions, transfers and recalls in the official world. And all impecunious scholars did was to try by various tricks to find favour with the examiners. Among the townsfolk, however, some outstanding figures emerged."46 Corresponding to the opening passage (following the prologue poem) of the introductory chapter, which sets forth the theme of the novel, the above passage serves as a summary of the entire book. It indeed presents an extremely gloomy picture of a world dominated by scholar-officials. The teaching of Ii has by now completely lost its sway 45 6

Wu Ching-tzu, Ju-Un wai-shih, Vol. vra, Chap. 54, p. 8a. * The Scholars, tr. by Hsien-yi Yang and Gladys Yang, p. 676.

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and the scholar-officials, who are supposed to be the bearers of Ii, can do nothing but shamelessly pursue fame and wealth. The novel thus ends appropriately on a solemn and tragic note, brought forth by the tailor Ching Yiian's lute. Nevertheless, as C. T. Hsia has observed, there is an optimistic implication in the epilogue which contrasts sharply with the pessimistic tone of the prologue.47 The epilogue, in fact, expresses the Chinese notion: "When Ii is lost (among scholar-officials), one seeks it in uncultivated places" (Ii shift er ch'iu chu yeh SS^ Wn :& SJ if). The outstanding people who have emerged from the humble townsfolk are able to manifest cultivation (yiin, "resonance or refinement") and, above all, submission to ritual in their everyday lives, thus carrying on the teaching of ritualization. Even though the Confucian idea of a ritualized world is the target of Wu Ching-tzu's satire, it is still the only measure of value in his world. Furthermore, as we have seen, the structure of The Scholars reflects the Chinese "synchronistic" world view that dominated traditional Chinese ways of life and thought. Wu Ching-tzu lived at a time when the Ch'ing Empire was at the peak of its strength and prosperity, a time before the Chinese began to lose confidence in their civilization under the onslaught of foreign invasion and the crushing impact of the West. Therefore, he could not have challenged the traditional ways of life and thought as did the intellectuals of the May Fourth Period. IfWu Ching-tzu sensed the decadence of Chinese civilization in his time, he saw this phenomenon chiefly as the malfunction of an irreplaceable ideal of a ritualized world. 47 C. T. Hsia, "Foreword" to the above paperback edition of the translation, no page number.

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THE SCHOLAR-NOVELIST AND CHINESE CULTURE: A REAPPRAISAL OF CHING-HUA YUAN C. T. HSIA

I.

In this essay I propose to discuss Ching-hua yuan 1 1 ¾ ^ (Flowers in the Mirror) as a ripe example of the scholarly novel and what that term implies in our understanding of its thought and structure. Chinghua yuan is best known for its wit and humor, its erudition and wide coverage of miscellaneous information; but, far more intrinsically, it is an allegoric romance in total support of Confucian morality and Taoist wisdom. If it is, as has been enthusiastically proclaimed by modern scholars of the May Fourth era, a satire of women's position in traditional Chinese society,1 it is far less ambiguously a celebration of feminine virtue and talent in strict accordance with traditional morality. The scholarly mind that perceives the need for reform nevertheless endorses all the traditional precepts for women without critical protest. Li Ju-chen $$r3# tries his hardest to entertain, but he sees the reiteration of conventional moral and religious sentiments as the essential part of his entertainment. Structurally, the novel in Li Ju-chen's hands has become the most hospitable of literary forms, allowing him to express himself on all subjects of interest; yet in compensation for this liberty, he feels all the more need to make use of an allegoric framework for rigid support. If Ching-hua yuan can no longer 1

The most influential essay in this regard has been Hu Shih's "Ching-hua yuan ti yin-lun" (1923), originally serving as an introduction to the Ya-tung edition of the novel and subsequently collected in Hu Shih wen-ts'un, π (Taipei, Yiian-tung t'ushu kung-ssu, 1953). Tien-yi Li, Chinese Fiction: A Bibliography of Books and Articles in Chinese and English (Yale University, Far Eastern Publications, 1968), while fairly adequate in its bibliographic coverage of the novel, fails to mention Lin Yutang, "Feminist Thought in Ancient China," Tien Hsia, i, No. 2 (Shanghai, 1935), which, together with Hu Shih's two English articles on Ching-hua yuan (listed in Li's book), was instrumental in calling Western attention to its importance as a feminist satire. Under the influence of the women's liberation movement, present-day scholars have continued to prize Ching-hua yuan as a feminist novel. See Pao Chia-lin, "Li Ju-chen ti nan-ηϋ p'ing-teng ssu-hsiang," Shih-huo ifc;K, n.s., i, No. 12 (Taipei, 1972).

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entirely please us, it is as much an indication of its failure to break loose from its allegoric bondage as a reflection on the mind of Li Juchen himself, which, for all its intelligence and humor, is ultimately complacent and dull in its unquestioned support of traditional culture. In the West we habitually associate the intellectual or erudite novel with a critical, satiric intelligence; for all its reputation as a satire, Ching-hua yuan is not satiric enough. Before the novel is half over, Li Ju-chen has long abandoned his role as satirist to engage in a fullscale celebration of the ideals and delights of Chinese culture. Li Ju-chen, of course, is as much a scholar as a literary man. The latter label, however, is much more inclusive since, thanks to Patrick Hanan and W. L. Idema, we now all recognize the all-important role played by the literary men of Ming-Ch'ing times in the making of col­ loquial fiction.2 Idema actually goes to the length of dividing that body of fiction into the broad categories of "literary novels"—i.e., novels and short stories by literary men—and the less refined "chapbooks." In thefirstcategory he puts the six so-called classic novels, "the writings of Feng Meng-lung and Ling Meng-ch'u," and indeed "the great majority of the works usually discussed in histories of Chinese colloquial fiction," while consigning to the second all swordsmanfiction(wu-hsia hsiao-shuo), most historical novels, and "some works on religious and legendary themes."3 Although Idema claims to have made several kinds of linguistic and socio-economic tests to arrive at his classification, the net effect of his rather superficial investigation, I am afraid, would seem to sanction the literary importance of those works which have always commanded a degree of critical respect and confirm our in­ difference to so many others not fortunate enough to have received critical scrutiny.4 The existing histories of Chinesefiction,then, would seem to be both adequate in their coverage and reliable in their critical judgment. 2

Cf. Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Short Story: Studies in Dating, Authorship, and Composition, (Harvard University Press, 1973), and W. L. Idema, ChineseVernacular Fiction: The Formative Period (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1974). 3 Idema, p. xi. 4 I would have to write a separate essay to show how dangerously misleading it is to maintain even a "broad" distinction between "literary novels" and "chapbooknovels," as Idema does in his "General Introduction." By his own linguistic criterion many works that he would confidently dismiss as chapbooks are actually "literary novels." He maintains on p. xi that "countless novels" in the chapbook tradition are "written in a most stereotyped language, better characterized as simplified wen-yen than as real pai-hua, a dreary, repetitive and monotonous'novelese,'" citing Sanhsia wu-i Ξί#Ι:£|§ as "probably the best known example" of the type. But since San-hsia wu-i is assuredly written in a vivid colloquial style that deserves the appella267

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In actuality, of course, the literary novels vary as widely in quality as do the chapbooks. And even if we agree that all reputable Chinese novels are by literary men (since I do not see how we can deny their hand in the best chapbooks),5 then these same men would have to be tion "real pai-hua," one wonders if Idema has ever read the novel cited in support of his thesis concerning the stylistic dreariness of the chapbooks. Though he excepts Sui-T'ang yen-i as a literary novel by a known scholar, Idema lumps all other novels "on the founding of the T'ang dynasty" as chapbooks of little or no literary distinction. I have recently argued, however, that Sui-shih i-wert Pf s£ ig;£, an indisputable work of the storytellers' tradition as edited by the scholar Yuan YU-iing St^p-^·, is one of the finest Chinese novels, a far more moving and coherent work of art than Shui-hu chuan or Chin P'ing Mei. See my preface to the new edition of Sui-shih i-wen (Taipei, Yu-shih wen-hua kung-ssu, 1975). Read also "The Military Romance: A Genre of Chinese Fiction" in Cyril Birch,ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres (University of California Press, 1974) for my attempt to discriminate among many novels in regard to their literary excellence that Idema would indifferently identify as "chapbooks." Faced by Idema's confident dismissal of so many novels of the chapbook tradition, I can only reiterate here the alarm sounded by Edward H. Schafer in his review-article on Perspectives on the T'ang (JAOS, Vol. 95, No. 3, 1975, p. 473), that "few students of Chinese literature seem greatly concerned with the problem of detecting good writing—which is presumably what it is all about" because they are "preoccupied" with applying "popular academic doctrines" to the study of that literature. Idema seems so contemptuous of chapbooks as literature that he does not express horror over Chinese Communist scholars' unconscionable alteration of the texts of such novels as Ying-lieh chuan 3£^pf, Shuo T'ang WtM, and San-hsia wu-i so as to purge them of "feudal morals and superstitious ideas." Apparently, he agrees with them that such works are mere "t'ung-su tu-wuMfS^S^(popular reading materials)." It is true that mainland scholars have edited and annotated a few classic novels, i.e., the most prestigious of Idema's "literary novels," with scrupulous care. But along with the scholarly editions, they have also seen fit to provide readers with bowdlerized versions of Hung-lou meng and Shui-hu chuan. And what about Chin P'ing Mei, a certified "classic novel," since the government has not reprinted it in any form that I know of? It is surely banned not so much for its "feudal morals and superstitious ideas" as for its graphic pornography. 5 Idema believes that literary novelists are to be sharply distinguished from the authors of chapbooks by reason of their superior literary education. "Where known, the authors of the literary novel turn out to belong to the highly literate group, even if they did not always have brilliant official careers.... And when the author of a literary novel was unknown, it was attributed to some famous scholar [whereas] the authors of the chapbook-novels are practically without exception anonymous, and nobody bothered to find out who they were" (Idema, p. Hv). I would maintain, however, that, whatever their connections with the storytellers' tradition, the chapbook-novels, with the exception of those hastily prepared by publishers to capitalize on the popularity of a certain title or type of novel, could only be prepared by men of literary education. Pseudonymous authorship is not identical with anonymous authorship, and the so-called literary novelists are as shy about disclosing their full identity as the literary men responsible for the less wellknown novels. The fact that modern scholars have been primarily concerned with the authorship of Shui-hu chuan, Chin P'ing Mei, Hsi-yu chi, Feng-shen yen-i, Hunglou meng, and the San-yen tales indicates more than anything else the prestige these 268

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ranked according to merit and classified with reference to the kinds of novels they actually prepared. A wealthy retired official may publish at his own expense a sumptuous edition of his novel, with glowing prefatory endorsements and commentaries by his friends. This may assure the novel's respectability in the eyes of the buying public, but certainly does not guarantee its intrinsic literary worth.6 It is in recognition of this need for further classification that I would propose the term "scholar-novelist" to designate a special class of literary men who utilized the form of a long narrative not merely to tell a story but to satisfy their needs for all other kinds of intellectual and literary self-expression. In his Brief History of Chinese Fiction Lu Hsiin has earlier cited four Ch'ing works—Ching-hua yuan along with Hsia Ching-ch'u's 5ffc?6 Yeh-sou p'u-yen ^¾¾¾ - , T'u Shen's g#$ Tan-shih ¢¢¢, and Ch'en Ch'iu's Κϊ£ Yen-shan wai-shih ffiikftS&—as examples of a type of novel distinguished for its erudition and/or literary elegance (.¾:¾'*¾).7 Of the four, Ch'en Ch'iu and T'u Shen works have enjoyed in recent decades. In time, I am sure, scholars will be paying increasing attention to the authorship of the less prestigious works. In Chinese Popular Fiction in Two London Libraries (Hong Kong, Lung Men Bookstore, 1967), Liu Ts'un-yan has already made some headway in identifying the authors of lesser novels. Thus, Idema to the contrary (p. xviii), Liu has already affirmed the role of two literary men of probably the official class as the final shapers of the San-hsia wu-i text that got published in 1879. 6 Another criterion adopted by Idema to distinguish the literary novel from the chapbook is the cost involved in publishing them. So far as the literary novels and story collections are concerned, "quite often the edition is large in size, and the type is bold, clear, and nicely c u t . . . . There can be no doubt that such editions were costly deluxe publications, intended for a well educated, high-class public." The chapbooks, on the other hand, were cheaply printed. "Badly cut characters crowd the pages, and there are few extra materials, mostly no more than a two-page preface" (Idema, p. lxi). While it is certainly true that a handsome first edition reflects the worth of a novel in the eyes of its author, sponsor, or publisher, there is no strict correlation between the cost of a book and its literary value. If a book became really popular, it would have to come down in price to meet the demand of the public, as Idema readily notes in the case of such literary novels as San-kuo, Shui-hu, and Hung-lou meng. Lu Hsiung's B^g Nii-hsien wai-shih ^cillj^t-St (I 7 H) certainly enjoyed one of the most luxurious first editions ever put out during the Ch'ing; for a listing of commentators included in that edition, see Liu Ts'un-yan, p. 278. But that edition did not catch on, and the novel has remained practically unread to this day. Availing herself of a rare set of the first edition at Columbia University's East Asian Library, Catherine Swatek has made a pioneering study of the novel in her M.A. essay. 7 In giving important mention to such novels as T'an-shih, Yeh-sou p'u-yen, and Hsi-yu pu S &4A in his Brief History, Lu Hsiin must have been influenced by Huang Mo-hsi's $iMW Hsiao-shuo hsiao-hua /blg/heS, first serialized in Hsiao-shuo Un ' M S # (1907) and now collected in A Ying, ed. Wan-Ch'ing wen-hsiieh ts'ung-ts'ao: Hsiao-shuo hsi-ch'ii yen-chiu chiian (Peking, Chung-hua shu-chii, 1960). An editor of 269

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are undoubtedly scholars deeply versed in classical literature, but as novelists their claim to fame lies solely in their stylistic innovation— Ch'en's happy choice of parallel prose to go with his sentimental love story and T'u's far less defensible adoption of a terse ku-wen style to narrate the fantastic proceedings of his military chronicle. Like the great majority of Chinese novelists, they are entertainers who saw little need to diversify their narratives with other forms of discourse that would more readily convey the pleasures and concerns of a traditional scholar. Hsia Ching-ch'u and Li Ju-chen, on the other hand, are true scholar-novelists despite their violent contrast in temperament and philosophic outlook. They both chose the novelistic form for the convenience it afforded them in displaying their learning and wit and articulating their wide-ranging concern with the state of the society and culture they lived in. It would appear that most literary novelists, professionals and amateurs alike, wrote primarily to amuse themselves and their friends. Whatever their commercial motive, professionals like Feng Menglung and T'ien-hua-tsang chu-jen 3£ifEil±A would not have written prolifically without getting a sense of immense satisfaction from their creative and redactorial labors. 8 This, of course, is even truer of the scholar-novelists since most would spend years over a novel without actually overseeing its publication in their lifetime, while what they may have produced in the line of belles-lettres and scholarship did not seem to receive as much loving care. Despite their classical education and ostensible moral intent, it would seem best to regard the ordinary literary novelists as providers of narrative entertainment, though this description does not mean that they could not reach heights of artistic excellence if they are gifted narrators. The scholar-novelists would appear far less content with plain storytelling in their fuller exercise of Hsiao-shuo Un, Huang was also a professor at Soochow University; see PaoT'ienhsiao QJi%, Ch'uan-ying-lou hui-i-lu Sl|^^[H]tii| (Hong Kong, Ta-hua ch'upan-she, 1971), p. 114. Because of Lu Hsiin's influence, subsequent historians of Chinese fiction have all felt it their duty to mention T'an-shih. It is, in my opinion, an unreadable book. Despite his Confucian orthodoxy, Hsia Ching-ch'u (c. 1681-1740?) has a licentious imagination and places his hero Wen P a i ^ t g tzu Su-ch'en ^ | £ , a supreme genius in all civil and military arts, in every kind of improbable adventure. For a psychoanalytic study of the author and his novel, see Hou Chien ^ $ | , " Yeh-sou p'u-yen ti pien-t'ai hsin-li," Chung-wai Literary Monthly, n, No. 10 (Taipei, 1974). During the early forties in Shanghai, the famous actor Chou Hsin-fang^ff^ played the hero in a succession of feature-length Peking operas entitled Wen Su-ch'en. 8 For information on T'ien-hua-tsang chu-jen, see Liu Ts'un-yan, op.cit., pp. 314318. 270

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their role as scholars and literary men. In addition to Hsia Ching-ch'u and Li Ju-chen, this group would certainly include Wu Ch'eng-en, Tung Yueh, Wu Ching-tzu, and Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in, to name only those whose novels are familiar to all.9 These novelists avoided competition with historians as a matter of principle because the mere recital of history or pseudo-history would offer them least scope for the expression of their sensibility and scholarship. Yu Wan-ch'un HiM^, who wrote several unpublished treatises on military and medical subjects, is disqualified as a scholar-novelist because, although his pseudo-historical novel Tang-KOu chih H S S J is designed as a tract against banditry, the social criticism as such is fully assimilated in the narrative texture, leaving no room for authorial digressions on contemporary issues.10 In rejecting plain narration of history, most scholar-novelists would diversify their novels with allegories and myths of their own fabrication. While Wu Ch'eng-en, the first scholar-novelist in point of time, had still to adapt a received legend, the later ones as a rule made up their own stories for the better exemplification of their ideals and beliefs. In choosing the contemporary scholars themselves as the main objects of his observation, Wu Chingtzu could almost dispense with allegory in attending to his dual task of cultural affirmation and social criticism, but even he employs a good deal of dialogue that, while inconsequential in terms of the plot, provides a showcase for his learning and wit and a forum for his ideas. In comparison with the plain narrators, the scholar-novelists would appear more playful toward their medium but at the same time more innovative and experimental because they were not writing to please a large public and could indulge their every creative whim as they composed. All these tendencies toward allegory, talkiness, and playful innovation are consciously exploited by Li Ju-chen as the last scholar-novelist of the line. More than any other group of novelists, the scholar-novelists have claimed attention as thinkers in their own right. In Communist China the fashion has been to hail a number of them for what seems progressive or revolutionary in their thought while deploring what seems backward or reactionary because of their inescapable ties with the 9 Scholars are not agreed as to whether Wu Ch'eng-en was the author of Hsi-yu chi, but Liu Ts'un-yan's biography (T'oung Pao, Vol. 53,1967) gives us an excellent portrait of a scholar who could have written this long novel. Hsi-yu pu may be regarded as a sport among the scholarly novels in that it is a short work of only sixteen chapters and Tung Yiieh (1620-1686) wrote it when he was only twenty-one sui old. 10 The author's son lists his father's unpublished works in a biographical note appended to the novel. See Liu Ts'un-yan, op.cit., p. 290.

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M I D D L E A N D LATE C H ' I N G F I C T I O N feudal tradition. Even to non-Communist readers accustomed to the terrifying honesty of modern literature, it may seem regrettable that not even the best of these novelists are "modern" enough to provide a radical critique of their society, not to say of the human condition 11 itself. This is so because they are so firmly rooted in their tradition that they would have felt repelled by that characteristic theme of modern literature so ably defined by Lionel Trilling as "the disenchantment of 12 our culture with culture itself." However disapproving they may be of their age and society, the scholar-novelists are nevertheless enchanted with their cultural heritage. Living in a world of insular tranquillity where Chinese values held undisputed sway, they could not have felt the need, as did the writers of the May Fourth era, to challenge the major premises of their own civilization. Making all due allowance for their cultural conservatism and unsystematic thinking, we may say that Wu Ching-tzu, Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in, and Li Ju-chen definitely shared with certain leading thinkers and scholars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a wide-ranging humanitarian sympathy and a distaste for the kind of pseudo-learning and narrow morality usually identified with the examination system and orthodox Neo-Confucian thinking. 1 3 But even Tai Chen, the boldest philosopher of that age, 11 Hung-lou meng may constitute the only exception. In The Classic Chinese Novel (Columbia University Press, 1968), I have examined it as a philosophic novel that provides a radical critique of the human condition, while the Communist critics have always praised it for its radical critique of Chinese feudal society. But one must remember that for readers of the Ch'ing period and even for afficionados of the present day the primary appeal οι Hung-lou meng has always been its full expression of a traditional literary and artistic sensibility. See Phillip S u n ^ ^ g ^ , "Hung-lou meng ti ch'uan-t'ung i-shu kan-hsing," in Ch'ien Mu hsien-sheng ρα-shih-sui chi-nien lunwen chi (Kowloon, Hsin-ya yen-chiu-so, 1974). 12 Lionel Trilling, "On the Teaching of Modern Literature," Beyond Culture (Viking Press, 1968), p. 3. Trilling goes on to say, "It seems to me that the charac­ teristic element of modern literature, or at least of the most highly developed modern literature, is the bitter line of hostility to civilization which runs through it." 13 I have in mind such eminent personages as Yuan Mei 3¾¾ (1716-1799), Tai Chen IKjR (1723-1777), Chi Yun £P5 (1724-1805), and Yu Cheng-hsieh ϋ ϊ Ε £ (1775-1840). In "Feminist Thought in Ancient China," Lin Yutang regards Yuan, Yu, and Li as the only champions of female rights China has produced in pre-modern times. In their pi-chi fiction, both Yuan Mei and Chi Yun, despite their belief in moral retribution and supernatural happenings, share with Wu Ching-tzu and Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in a delight in making fun of the narrow scholars and moralists of the Ch'eng-Chu school. It may be of interest to note that, of the three non-Marxist major thinkers of the May Fourth era, Hu Shih champions the thought of Tai Chen, Chou Tso-jen claims Yu Cheng-hsieh as one of his three intellectual heroes from China's past (the other two being Wang Ch'ung ΞΕ3Ϊ and Li Chih ^ ¾ ) , and Lin Yutang admires the honest hedonism of Yuan Mei, among other late-Ming and early Ch'ing figures. Yet, despite their modern appeal, I would maintain that these

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did not defiantly oppose his individual thought to the tradition: he saw himself as a true disciple of Confucius and Mencius and wanted above all to restore that tradition to a condition of purity the two sages would have approved.1* Despite the "progressive" strands of their thought, Wu Ching-tzu, Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in, and Li Ju-chen are therefore quite incapable of being disloyal to their cultural tradition. They prescribe a simple Confucian code of morals for the betterment of society and may additionally stress the importance of Taoist enlightenment for select individuals, but these twin goals have always been the major ideals of Chinese civilization.15 Theoretically, Taoism distrusts or negates all society and civilization; yet as an alternative life-style cultivated by Confucian scholars through the ages, it has been in the course of time purged of its subversive character and made quite compatible with a life of culture. Thus, even if we grant full intellectual seriousness to the Taoist vision of life prominent in Hung-lou meng and Ching-hua yuan, we should be struck by their authors' positive delight in the arts and pleasures of the cultivated life and their implicit or explicit endorsement of Confucian morality for everyday conduct. Whereas the modern writer of Trilling's description is self-consciously alienated from society and scornful of traditional wisdom and morality, the Chinese scholar-novelist is ultimately little differentiated from the common man (and the commercial novelist) in moral outlook if not in religious faith. His classical education notwithstanding, he often appears in modern eyes quite unintellectual, in his childish gaiety as well as in Ch'ing intellectuals, like the scholar-novelists, were still the product of their age. For one thing, they could not survey the Chinese scene from a radically new angle through their lack of exposure to Western thought. See n. 14 and n. 46. 14 It is possible to view the Ch'ing scholar-novelists as the precursors of Liu B §>ij H, who, with his new apprehension of the national doom, unequivocally blames the cruel and enervating morality of Neo-Confucianism for China's decline. But Tai Chen has long anticipated Liu E in equating the Ii (principle) of Neo-Confucians with the fa (law) of harsh officials as an instrument of murder (sha-jen). See his powerful indictment of the "later Confucians" (hou-ju) in a letter reprinted in Hu Shih, Tai Tung-yiian ti che-hsdeh WiMi^-ffO^^ (Taipei reprint: Commercial Press, 1967), pp. 1-3, following p. 157. But in his major philosophic work Meng-tzu tzu-i shu-cheng 3 ^ ^ ¾ ¾ ! ! . he does not express himself so bluntly but keeps up the pretense of merely explicating certain Mencian terms. His immediate influence upon fellow intellectuals was that of a scholar and philologist. 15 Except for theCh'an variety, Buddhism has fallen out of favor with the scholarnovelists of the Ch'ing. Hsia Ching-ch'ii attacks Buddhist and Taoist orders with undue vehemence. For Ts'ao Hsiieh-ch'in and Li Ju-chen alike, Ch'an Buddhism ii practically identical with Taoism. While they may adopt Buddhist modes of allegory, they no longer believe in the Western Paradise or salvation through the intervention of Bodhisattvas. 273

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his didactic solemnity. Aside from considerations of literary talent, if we feel closer to Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in and Wu Ching-tzu than to Li Juchen, it is because we sense their greater personal disenchantment with their society. They are certainly more bitter or sardonic in their depiction of certain senseless aspects of traditional Chinese life. Despite his remarkable satiric ability, Li Ju-chen appears, on the other hand, a person of genuine good humor truly enchanted with his culture, and his novel cannot but turn from a social satire into a celebration of that culture. II.

Li Ju-chen (c. 1763-1830) wrote his novel in retirement, after serving some eight years in government and producing an important study of phonetics, Yin-chien ^rU (1810).16 The nation was then at peace, and the intellectual climate was all in favor of philology and evidential research. To judge by his novel, Li Ju-chen would appear a quite remarkable scholar of his age, actively interested in all forms of learning and amusement. He could have gathered his opinions and findings into a book of miscellaneous notes; it must be his connoisseurship of the novel that led him to incorporate his erudition in the form of a novel. It is generally believed that it took him more than ten years (1810-1820) to complete the novel, but I tend to agree with H. C. Chang 31'fruf that he "probably went on reshaping and polishing the work" until its actual publication in 1828.17 For Ching-hua yuan is one of the most carefully wrought novels in the Chinese tradition. I find in it no contradictions in the story line, no oversights of the kind that mar most traditional novels, and almost no unintentional anachronisms, which is indeed remarkable for a novel set in the period of Wu Tse-t'ien.18 16 For a life of Li Ju-chen embodying research into little-known sources see the Introduction to "The Women's Kingdom" in H. C. Chang, Chinese Literature: Popular Fiction and Drama (Edinburgh University Press, 1973). The introduction also lists the strange lands visited by the Chinese voyagers and gives background information for the proper enjoyment of the Women's Kingdom episode. Chang has earlier translated the concluding episode of the Storming of the Four Passes in Allegory and Courtesy in Spenser (Edinburgh University Press, 1955). 17 Allegory and Courtesy in Spenser, p. 6. 18 As a rare example of anachronism, T'ang Ao, in discussing the pronunciation of a certain character from The Analects in Chapter 18, alludes to Chu Hsi as "a great scholar of that time whose ancestral home was Hsin-an." Since it is the intention of the novelist to rectify Chu Hsi's pronunciation, he cannot but refer to the Sung commentator, but he cunningly minimizes the shock of anachronism by refraining from calling him by name or title. Ching-hua yuan (hereafter CH Y) (Taipei, Shihchieh shu-chii, 1955), p. 69. See also n. 31.

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Li Ju-chen did not live to see the Opium War of 1839-1842. After that war, the Chinese scholar could no longer have the necessary composure and self-assurance to celebrate the multifarious aspects of his culture. It is symptomatic of this change in cultural outlook that no scholarly novels comparable in design and ambition to Ching-hua 19 yuan were produced during the remainder of the nineteenth century. When the satiric novel came into fashion in the last decade of the Ch'ing dynasty, we find that the traditional scholar had assumed the role of a journalist, probing all signs of national decay in the major cities as well as in the provinces. The new satirist still affirms the basic Confucian values, but he would be in no mood to entertain the Taoist idea of immortality as Li Ju-chen did, or comment lovingly on all the arts and graces that customarily delight the scholar. As the kind of life celebrated in Ching-hua yuan has become more remote with time, the modern approach to the novel has always been to praise the portions that still appeal to our critical sensibility (mainly the comic and satiric episodes in the first forty chapters) and more or less disregard the rest. The truncated Ching-hua yuan, in the eyes of its modern champions Hu Shih and Lin Yutang, becomes a Chinese version of Gulliver's Travels whose wit and humor are particularly directed against the traditional subjugation of women in China. The Communist critics have clung to this view, though they admit that much of the work is neither artistically satisfactory nor ideologically sound. 2 0 So far as I know, the only critic to break away completely from this 19 Wen-k'ang's 3CgJi Erh-ηΰ ying-hsiung chuan φ:^Μί$!^, most probably com­ pleted in 1854 (cf. Liu Ts'un-yan, op.cit., p. 331), is the conspicuous example of a novel written after the Opium War fully endorsing conventional Confucian morality and the official establishment. Though its dialogue contains some learned discussion, it is debatable if this work of p'ing-hua fiction could be called a scholarly novel as I have defined it. Highly praised for its colloquial style and some chivalric episodes involving one of its heroines, it has been customarily deplored for its fulsome celebra­ tion of the official ideology, especially by Hu Shih in his preface to the novel in Hu Shih wen-ts'un, in. Recently, Hou Chien has put up a spirited defense of the work on both artistic and ideological grounds. But by dissociating himself completely from the modern tradition that Hu Shih represents, Hou Chien, though much more so­ phisticated in his use of the comparative method, appears an academic living in total detachment from his age and rather nostalgic about the values the novel celebrates. Hu Shih's critique of the novel is of one piece with his intellectual position. Does Hou Chien seriously want us to believe that he has disavowed all the values implicit in Western romanticism and individualism, or is he playing an academic game ? His article, "Erh-ηϋ ying-hsiung chuan shih-p'ing," nevertheless, is extremely stimu­ lating; it can be found in C. T. Hsia, et al.,Wen-jen hsiao-shuo yd Chung-kuo wen-hua JCX'bWkMtf'Wi'Xik» Taipei, Ching-ts'ao wen-hua shih-yeh kung-ssu, 1975. 20 See, for example, the article by Li Ch'ang-chih $ft;£. listed in Tien-yi Li, p. 169, and all the multi-volume histories of Chinese literature issuing from mainland China.

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modern attitude of partial endorsement is Yiieh Heng-chiin t&ffijW-, an associate professor of Chinese at National Taiwan University. In a recent article she dismisses Ching-hua yuan for its total lack of contemporary relevance: "I believe that at a time when even readers of Hung-lou meng are dwindling in number, the general public will absolutely not want to read Ching-hua yuan. . . . This fate seems to hint that it can no longer be of service to an understanding of the problems with which mankind is concerned. It belongs to an age which has irrevocably gone by."21 While I share MissYueh's sense of gloom that traditional Chinesefictionnow has little appeal for Chinese youths in Taiwan and overseas nurtured on modern literature, it seems to me that, with all the justice of her observations about the tediousness of Ching-hua yuan, she is quite unfair in dismissing the work mainly by reason of what seems to her the discredited and outworn Taoist philosophy and Taoist vision of life. Miss Yiieh appears a modern Chinese alienated from traditional culture judging a work almost in full support of that culture. But she is sounder than the earlier critics in that she at least makes an honest critical response to the total design and world view of the novel. In attempting a fairer description of the world of Ching-hua yuan, we may say first of all that its main plot isfirmlybuilt upon a celebration of three major ideals: loyalty to the sovereign (chung ,¾), filial piety (hsiao # ) , and the quest for Taoist fairyhood or immortality (hsien f(l|). Without going into the ambivalent character of Wu Tset'ien for the present, we observe that the good scholars of an earlier generation are all T'ang loyalistsfirmlyopposed to Empress Wu. Their numerous male scions, with the aid of their wives and friends, finally succeed in restoring the T'ang house and thus vindicate the principle of chung. A disaffected scholar remotely connected with an earlier abortive uprising against the usurper, T'ang Ao ltffc goes to the seas with two companions, his brother-in-law Lin Chih-yang # £ # and an old helmsman called To Chiu-kung ^%