Critical Readings on Tang China [Volume 3] 9004380191, 9789004380196

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Critical Readings on Tang China Volume 3

Paul W. Kroll - 978-90-04-38019-6 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:21:35PM via free access

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Critical Readings on Tang China volume 3

Edited by

Paul W. Kroll

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962592

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface isbn 978-90-04-28113-4 (hardback, set) isbn 978-90-04-28169-1 (hardback, vol. 1) isbn 978-90-04-28168-4 (hardback, vol. 2) isbn 978-90-04-28167-7 (hardback, vol. 3) isbn 978-90-04-28166-0 (hardback, vol. 4) isbn 978-90-04-38015-8 (e-book, vol. 1) isbn 978-90-04-38016-5 (e-book, vol. 2) isbn 978-90-04-38019-6 (e-book, vol. 3) isbn 978-90-04-38020-2 (e-book, vol. 4) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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Contents Volume 1 Tang Emperors’ Accession Dates and Reign Titles (nianhao 年號) xi General Introduction 1 Paul W. Kroll

History—Political, Intellectual, and Military 1 Wen Ta-ya: The First Recorder of T’ang History 11 Woodbridge Bingham 2 The Rise to Power of the T’ang Dynasty: A Reassessment 17 Howard J. Wechsler 3 The T’ang Imperial Family 41 Denis Twitchett 4 Canonical Scholarship 100 David McMullen 5 Neo-Confucianism and Neo-Legalism in T’ang Intellectual Life, 755–805 163 Edwin G. Pulleyblank 6 The Structure of T’ang Selection 214 P. A. Herbert 7 Decree Examinations in T’ang China 237 P. A. Herbert

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8 The Bureaucratic Apparatus [of T’ang Historians] 267 Denis Twitchett 9 Bureaucracy and Cosmology: The Ritual Code of T’ang China 295 David McMullen 10

Wei Cheng’s Thought [esp. Regarding Government] 346 Howard J. Wechsler

11

Imperial Power and the Ruling Class [under Empress Wu] 367 Richard W. L. Guisso

12

The Chou Dynasty [of Empress Wu] 404 Richard W. L. Guisso

13

The Career of Yang Kuei-fei 455 Howard S. Levy

14

The Flight from the Capital and the Death of Precious Consort Yang 482 Paul W. Kroll

15

Foreign Policy 503 P. A. Herbert

16

The An Lu-shan Rebellion and the Origins of Chronic Militarism in Late T’ang China 518 Edwin G. Pulleyblank

Volume 2 Literature and Cultural History 17

T’ang Literati: A Composite Biography 545 Hans H. Frankel

18

Transparencies: Reading the T’ang Lyric 566 Stephen Owen

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19

The Significance of the fu in the History of T’ang Poetry 584 Paul W. Kroll

20 An Offering to the Prince: Wang Bo’s Apology for Poetry 597 Ding Xiang Warner 21

Tamed Kite and Stranded Fish: Interference and Apology in Lu Chao-lin’s fu 636 Paul W. Kroll

22

A Re-evaluation of Chen Ziang’s “Manifesto of a Poetic Reform” 666 Timothy Wai Keung Chan

23

On Li Po 694 Elling O. Eide

24 Li Po’s Letters in Pursuit of Political Patronage 731 Victor H. Mair 25 Li Bai’s “Rhapsody on the Hall of Light”: A Singular Vision of Cosmic Order 762 Nicholas Morrow Williams 26 Tu Fu 825 Stephen Owen 27

Tu Fu’s Social Conscience: Compassion and Topicality in his Poetry 894 Shan Chou

28 Poems in Their Place: Collections and Canons in Early Chinese Literature 936 Pauline Yu 29 Heyue yingling ji and the Attributes of High Tang Poetry 967 Paul W. Kroll 30 The Formation of the Tang Estate Poem 1001 Stephen Owen

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Volume 3 31

Lexical Landscapes and Textual Mountains in the High T’ang 1021 Paul W. Kroll

32 Historical and Literary Theory in the Mid-Eighth Century 1060 David McMullen 33 The Manuscript Legacy of the Tang: The Case of Literature 1096 Stephen Owen 34 Literary Collections in Tang Dynasty China 1126 Christopher M. B. Nugent 35 A Study of the Jinglong Wenguan Ji 1171 Jia Jinhua 36 The Old-Style fu of Han Yu 1204 David R. Knechtges 37

Another Go at the Mao Ying chuan 1230 Elling O. Eide

38 The Old Men [of the Early Ninth Century] 1235 Stephen Owen 39 The Inscription of Emotion in Mid-Tang Collegial Letters 1281 Anna M. Shields 40 Yüan Chen and ‘The Story of Ying-ying’ 1326 James R. Hightower 41

Nostalgia and History in Mid-Ninth-Century Verse: Cheng Yü’s Poem on “The Chin-yang Gate” 1360 Paul W. Kroll

42 Remembering Kaiyuan and Tianbao: The Construction of Mosaic Memory in Medieval Historical Miscellanies 1441 Manling Luo

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43 The Dancing Horses of T’ang 1476 Paul W. Kroll 44 Falconry in T’ang Times 1504 Edward H. Schafer 45 Public Values in Calligraphy and Orthography in the Tang Dynasty 1540 Amy McNair

Volume 4 Religion 46 The Role of Buddhist Monasteries in T’ang Society 1559 Kenneth K. S. Ch’en 47 Buddhism and Education in T’ang Times 1580 Erik Zürcher 48 Imperial Patronage in the Formation of T’ang Buddhism 1622 Stanley Weinstein 49 Stūpa, Sūtra, Śarīra in China, c. 656–706 CE 1663 T. H. Barrett 50 The Birth of a Patriarch: The Biography of Hui-neng 1714 Philip B. Yampolsky 51

Metropolitan Chan: Imperial Patronage and the Chan Style 1743 John McRae

52 Time after Time: Taoist Apocalyptic History and the Founding of the T’ang Dynasty 1776 Stephen R. Bokenkamp 53 Taoist Ordination Ranks in the Tun-huang Manuscripts 1805 Kristofer M. Schipper

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54 Taoism in the T’ien-pao Era, 742–56 1829 T. H. Barrett 55 Li Po’s Transcendent Diction 1839 Paul W. Kroll 56 Immortality Can be Studied 1875 Jan De Meyer 57

The Worshippers of Mount Hua 1915 Glen Dudbridge Index of Personal Names 1949

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Lexical Landscapes and Textual Mountains in the High T’ang Paul W. Kroll The sinological study of what has been called “mountains and the cultures of landscape” began in earnest nearly ninety years ago with Édouard Chavannes’ monumental monograph on T’ai Shan.1 During the years since then, while important scholarly studies of other discrete peaks have appeared,2 the related but broader issue of traditional China’s accommodation with the natural world—from literary and political, as well as religious angles—has inspired a proliferating number of books and articles.3 Several scholarly symposia have Source: “Lexical Landscapes and Textual Mountains in the High T’ang,” T’oung Pao 84 (1998): 62–101. 1  Le T’ai chan: essai de monographie d’un culte chinois (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1910). 2  Such as Michel Soymié’s “Le Lo-feou shan: étude de geographie religieuse,” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 54 (1956), 1–132, and Edward H. Schafer’s Mao Shan in T’ang Times, rev. 2nd edn. (Boulder: Society for the Study of Chinese Religions, 1989). 3  Major landmarks include Aoki Masaru’s 1934 article, “Shinajin no shizenkan” 支那人の自然 観, rpt. in Aoki Masaru zenshū 靑木正兒全集, 6 vols. (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1969–75), 2: 552–91; Richard B. Mather, “The Landscape Buddhism of the Fifth-Century Poet Hsieh Ling-yün,” Journal of Asian Studies 18.1 (1958), 67–79; J. D. Frodsham, “The Origins of Chinese Nature Poetry,” Asia Major 2nd ser., 8.1 (1960), 68–104; Obi Kōichi 小尾郊一, Chūgoku bungaku ni arawareta shizen to shizenkan, chūsei bungaku o chūshin to shiru 中国文学に現われた 自然と自然觀, 中世文学を中心としる (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1963); Paul Demiéville, “La montagne dans l’art littéraire chinois,” France-Asie 183 (1965), 7–32, rpt. in Demiéville, Choix d’études sinologiques (1921–1970) (Leiden: Brill 1973), 364–89; Wang Kuo-ying 王國瓔, Chungkuo shan-shui-shih yen-chiu 中國山水詩硏究 (Taipei: Lien-ching, 1986); Tokura Hidemi 戶倉英美, Shijintachi no jikū: Kanpu kara Tōshi e 詩人たちの時空 : 漢賦から唐詩へ (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1988); and, most recently, Donald Holzman, Landscape Appreciation in Ancient and Early Medieval China: The Birth of Landscape Poetry (Taipei: College of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Tsing Hua University, 1996). Jean-Pierre Diény’s studies on the symbolism of various natural phenomena and images should also be mentioned here; e.g., “Pour un lexique de l’imagination littéraire en Chine: le symbolisme du soleil,” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 69 (1981), 119–52. Of the numerous works focused on particular flora and fauna, one of the more interesting recent offerings is Martin Kern’s Zum Topos “Zimtbaum” in der chinesischen Literatur: Rhetorische Funktion und poetische Eigenwert des Naturbildes kuei (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994).

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been convened to investigate various aspects of the topic4 and have added their measure to the expanding bibliography. The journal Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie devotes considerable space to the subject of sacred geography.5 It sometimes seems that one can scarcely pick up a sinological journal these days without finding at least one article focused on some Chinese mountain—a frequency of study beginning to rival the perennial topics of Wang Wei’s “nature poetry” or Liu Tsung-yüan’s “landscape essays.” I too have contributed items to this outcropping of mountain and landscape scholarship. But one begins to wonder where it is all leading. Of course we should be, and are, grateful for each new fact, all new data, on any subject or place that helps us see more clearly into the culture of traditional China. When you’ve seen one Chinese mountain, you haven’t seen them all. But their outlines often seem to blur and fade into one another. Perhaps it is time to re-examine some of our assumptions about the literary values of Chinese landscapes. Now, a student of the T’ang has a particularly blurry lens to unfog, because it is such a well-studied and ever-attractive era. We must first, therefore, do our best to skirt the reductive categories and smooth clichés that have come to determine our responses, to prescribe our views. Hence we shall not here admit the term “nature poetry”—an unreflecting tag of no critical value. To be sure, we may acknowledge the fact that Chinese poetry has since its beginnings—like virtually all traditional poetry anywhere—drawn deeply on the natural world as a primary fund of imagery; but that is an obvious and, in truth, unremarkable fact. Squeeze this idea and you will notice how little remains in your grasp. Nor shall we warrant, on any but the most vulgar level, a convincing distinction between “religious” and “literary” texts—as though the educated elite of the T’ang conceived of themselves and their writings in terms of the disciplinary boundaries of our university curricula. Instead we accept as given, from earliest times, the continual merging and mutual affinity between the power of the word and the presence of the numinous. There may be more to say about these matters. To shake off the more persistent fleas is not easy. But there are two areas of concern that I wish to stress, before turning to the heart of this article. We may begin with a quatrain by Li Po 李白 (701–762?), known to us all: 4  Including the one for which an earlier version of this paper was prepared, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in January 1993. 5  One of the better examples is James Robson’s ambitious article, “The Polymorphous Space of the Southern Marchmount (Nanyue): An Introduction to Nanyue’s Religious History and Preliminary Notes on Buddhist-Daoist Interaction,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 8 (1995), 221–64.

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You ask for what purpose do I roost in the cyan hills; Smiling, I don’t reply, my heart freely at ease. Drifting waters with peach blossoms go off inscrutably: It is another heaven and earth, not amidst the human realm.6 We often hear that this little poem demonstrates Li Po’s disdain for the world or the worldly, that it reflects his love of Nature, that it reveals the apparent or hopeful aloofness and playfulness of his outlandish temperament—platitudes and banalities, even if correct. Perceptive readers notice the allusion in line three to the Peach Blossom Font of T’ao Ch’ien 陶潛 (365–427) and the suggestion in line four of the Taoist grotto-heavens. We have even seen an analysis that finds the implied “dialogue” of the poem’s title (“Question and Answer in the Mountains” 山中問答, as given in late texts) to be no true dialogue at all, simply because the persona does not verbalize his response.7 Yet, if only we are alive to the historical echoes of earlier poetry—as Li Po surely was—we shall catch an even more important hint. That is the question-and-answer exchange of T’ao Hung-ching 陶弘景 (456–536) and Ch’i Kao Ti 齊高帝 (r. 479–83). When the Ch’i emperor summoned to court the influential Taoist adept and scholar from his retreat on sacred Mao Shan 茅山, the ruler is said to have sent an edict with the supercilious query, “What is there to be had amongst the mountains? (山中何所有). T’ao Hung-ching, declining to leave his sanctuary just then, replied with the following quatrain: “What is there to be had amongst the mountains?” Plenty of white clouds atop the ridge. Here alone may one be freely cheerful and content— Impossible to send this in hand to you milord.8 6  Li Po chi chiao-chu 李白集校注, ed. Ch’ü T’ui-yüan 翟銳園 and Chu Chin-ch’eng 朱金城 (Shanghai: Shang-hai ku-chi, 1980; hereafter cited as lpccc), 19.1095; Ch’üan Tang shih 全唐詩 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1960; hereafter cts), 178.1813. 7  Stephen Owen, The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High Tang (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1981), 136. This surprisingly flat-footed reading ignores the poet’s verbalization—i.e., the poem itself. And of course a “question and answer” is hardly a “dialogue” in any meaningful— much less, literal—sense, to begin with. Worse yet is that Owen bases his interpretation of the poem so heavily on this late and variant title, despite the fact that all the earliest editions of Li Po’s works, as also recensions of the mid-eighth-century Ho-yüeh ying-ling chi 河嶽英靈集 in which the poem was first anthologized, record the title as “Reply to a Worldly Fellow’s Question” 答俗人問, clearly enough denoting that there is a real response here. 8  Hsien-Ch’in Han Wei Chin Nan-pei-ch’ao shih 先秦漢魏晋南北朝詩, ed. Lu Ch’in-li 逑欽立 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1983; hereafter cited as Lu, Hsien-Ch’in), 1814; Mao Shan chih 茅山志

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The point in Li Po’s poem is not that the persona doesn’t reply but that he replies wordlessly: the scene replies for him, everything that can be said in words having already been said two and a half centuries earlier by T’ao Hung-ching when asked the same question.9 But we cannot overlook the fact that it must obviously be with carefully chosen words and images that Li Po the poet— as opposed to the smilingly unresponsive persona—portrays the scene itself. And those words point here not to a literal view of the mountain landscape but rather to a pair of literary images. The primacy of the word—not the eye—and of its accumulated resonances through time is the first item to be noted when rethinking the landscapes of T’ang poetry. This will occupy us at greater length in what follows. A second factor is the religious potency of the living world, taken so much for granted by the men of T’ang that, unless we find it specially lit up in text or rite, we are apt to make the false assumption that the landscape was for most of them—as for most of us now—a merely scenic backdrop to an urban-oriented life. But, for all the undeniable civilization of T’ang culture, these were people who were daily in a much more familiar relationship with the physical world than we can easily imitate. It requires an effort of imagination and understanding to insert ourselves conceptually into such a world, in the same way we must consciously force ourselves to realize the terrific difference between living in a print (or, increasingly, post-print) culture as opposed to a manuscript culture. The difference is so enormous that, no matter how hard we try, we can’t program ourselves to keep a grip on the alternate image for more than a moment: the reality of it is too alien for a prolonged embrace. Likewise, the simple fact that even in Ch’ang-an a nobleman or commoner of the eighth century would see from his urban residence every cloudless night the star-splashed sky, with a clarity and immediacy granted us only upon removal from the light-pollution and gaseous haze of our cities and suburbs, or that the moon in its nightly change of dress and varying light was not then just an occasionally noticed (hy 304), 28.2b; P. W. Kroll, Meng Hao-jan (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981), 101. See T’ai-p’ing kuang-chi 太平廣記 (Taipei: Ku-hsin, 1976), 202.414a, quoting the early 7th-century T’an-sou 談藪 of Yang Sung-chieh 楊松玠, for the anecdotal context of the exchange. 9  Another possible echo from the past is identified by the earliest commentator on Li Po’s works, Yang Ch’i-hsien 楊齊賢 (fl. 1190): “Someone inquired of Chu-ko Liang’s ambitions. Clasping his knees, Liang smiled but did not reply.” For the original passage, see San-kuo chih 三國志 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1973), 35.911, quoting the Wei lüeh 魏略. The Shu connection between the poet and the fabled recluse and strategist is also relevant here. See Fen-lei pu-chu Li T’ai-po shih 分類補註李太白詩 (Ssu-k’u ch’üan-shu), 19.3a. Yang Ch’i-hsien’s comments are often pertinent, but unfortunately—as in this case—they are not always included in the more modern editions of Li Po’s works, even those purporting to be comprehensive in scope.

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but rather an inescapable and influential phenomenon—such facts are not insignificant. They are fundamentally determinative of one’s connections with the surrounding world. As noted at the outset of this article, much scholarly work in recent years has gone into studies of China’s “sacred geography.” So much so that it has now become a cliché to say that these “most prominent features of the Chinese landscape are not merely natural, but numinous, objects.”10 Still, it is good to remind ourselves of how deep-seated this notion was, both in the political and the religious sphere (which amounts to the same thing in this context). Recall, for instance, Li Lung-chi’s 李隆基 (pht. Hsüan Tsung 玄宗, r. 712–56) extreme and continuing concern for honoring and acknowledging the powers of his realm’s supreme mountains and rivers, evident in the new titles and enfeoffments bestowed during his reign on each of the Five Marchmounts (wu yüeh 五嶽: Mounts T’ai 泰, Heng 衡, Hua 華, Heng 恆, and Sung 嵩), Four Conduits (ssu tu 四瀆: the rivers Ho 河, Kiang 江, Huai 淮, and Chi 濟), Four Holdweights (ssu chen 四鎮: Mounts Kuei-chi 會稽, I 诉, I-wu-lü 醫無閭, and Huo 霍), Four Seas, and other assorted alpine and fluvial divinities.11 The imperially ordered sacrifices and propitiatory rites to these spirits were performed by highranking envoys of the throne, often princes of the blood.12 Hsüan Tsung’s own successful accomplishment of the feng 封 and shan 禪 observances at Mount T’ai in December 725 is, of course, well known. But what is interesting in all this is the impression one receives, when viewing the physical area of China in this perspective: it is a land anchored and watered not by geographical forces, but by the sway of a host of more or less local, more or less potent spirit-lords. 10  P. W. Kroll, “Verses From on High: The Ascent of T’ai Shan,” T’oung Pao 69 (1983), 223; rev. version in The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late Han to the T’ang, ed. Lin and Owen (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1986), 167. Cf. Gaston Bachelard who noted the priority of the terrestrial (as opposed to the celestial) as an image of immensity and awe; hence, “La moindre colline, pour qui prend ses rêves dans la nature, est inspirée.” See his provocative La terre et les rêveries de la volonté (Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1948), 378–402, esp. 379–80 and (for the quote) 384. 11  See Ts’e-fu yüan-kuei 册府元龜 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1980), 33.7a–23b, for some of the imperial edicts relating to Hsüan Tsung’s activities in this area; also T’ang hui-yao 唐會要 (Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1960), 47.834, and T’ang ta chao-ling chi 唐大詔令集 (Taipei: Tingwen, 1978), 74.418–19. Kroll, “Verses From on High,” 236–37 n53 (184–85 n53) summarizes some of this information. 12  See, e.g., Ts’e -fu yüan-kuei, 33.13a (edict dated K’ai-yüan 25/x/8, i.e., 4 Nov. 737), 33.15b–16a (edict dated T’ien-pao 3/iv/3, i.e., 19 May 744), 33.21b–22a (edict dated T’ien-pao 10/iii/16, i.e., 16 April 751); “Ling ssu Cheng-wang Hsi-yen fen chi wu-yüeh ch’ih,” T’ang ta chao-ling chi, 74.418.

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One might argue that by the T’ang this view was becoming somewhat obsolete, if it was not anachronistic; that the imperial rites referred to above were, for instance, turning largely into formal exercises. One might argue this, but the facts seem otherwise. It is a rather more complicated matter than wishing or declaring some vague—but, to modern minds, comforting—advance of “rationalist” tendencies. Jean Levi’s work in particular has made clear that the chief conceptual role of state officials in medieval times was as representatives of the state cult, the Confucian tao, centered on the “Son of Heaven”—not as political placemen.13 We have become so used to speaking of T’ang government functionaries as bureaucrats (with the unavoidable connotations, for us, of the corridors of power, the steps of the Capitol) that we look right past their defining activities as religious emissaries. Like the Taoist priests, they aimed to exert control over the sundry local gods—the gods of the profane—of any region, who were worshipped through “irregular cults” (yin-tz’u 淫祠); the wellattested duty to “transform by instruction” (chiao-hua 敎化) was no less than a replacing of provincial beliefs with education in and adherence to Confucian teachings, effected through the establishment of schools—and temples. Indeed, the functional activities of the warranted Confucian official and those of the ordained Taoist priest share so many similarities in medieval times that “peut-être fonctionnaires impériaux et maîtres du Tao ne sont-ils que les deux faces de la prêtrise en Chine.”14 In this regard, we may better appreciate the map of T’ang sacred geography we obtain when we overlay the imperially recognized Marchmounts, Conduits, etc., with the contemporary Taoist scheme of the ten major and thirty-six lesser grotto-heavens, and seventy-two “favored lands” ( fu-ti 福地), codified in Hsüan Tsung’s time by the great prelate Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen 司馬 承禎 (647–735)15—to say nothing of the Buddhist network. We can even see 13  See especially his “Les fonctionnaires et le divin: luttes de pouvoir entre divinités et administrateurs dans les contes des Six Dynasties et des Tang,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 2 (1986), 81–106, and Les fonctionnaires divins (Paris: Seuil, 1989). 14  Levi, “Les fonctionnaires et le divin,” 106. See especially K. M. Schipper, “Taoist Ritual and Local Cults of the T’ang Dynasty,” in Tantric and Taoist Studies, in Honour of R. A. Stein, vol. 3 (Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques 22; Brussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1985), 812–34, for examples of encounters between local cults and the “pure” theology of the Tao. The best discussions of the centrality of Taoism in Chinese culture are Schipper’s Le corps taoïste: corps physique—corps social (Paris: Fayard, 1982) and, on a smaller scale, Anna Seidel’s Taoismus, die inoffizielle Hochreligion Chinas (Tokyo: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, 1990). 15  For the full layout, see Ssu-ma’s “T’ien-ti kung-fu t’u” 天地宮府圖, preserved in the 11thcentury encyclopedia Yün-chi ch’i-ch’ien 雲笈七籤 (hy 1026), ch. 27. This formed the

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in this period a subsumption of the imperial plan by the Taoist one. When Hsüan Tsung, convinced by Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen that the true lords of the Five Marchmounts were in fact Realized Ones (chen-jen 眞人) of the Shang-ch’ing 上淸 pantheon (in contrast to the mere “gods of mountain and grove” 山林之神 that the emperor had been fostering), come down to discharge their responsibilities in the mortal world from seats in the “grotto archives” (tung-fu 洞府) of the great mountains, the monarch decreed the establishment of shrines on these peaks, to be erected according to Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen’s specifications, called “Bethels of the Realized Lords” (chen-chün tz’u 眞君祠) in honor of these prepotent divinities.16 But the landscape was not, of course, simply a matter of terrestrial geography. This is another point we usually slip over too unthinkingly, unfeelingly. So it merits reminding, for instance, that the traditional notion of the fen-yeh 分野 or “apportioned countrysides,” by which the various geographic and political divisions of early China were each paired with a corresponding sky sector and subject to the latter’s accompanying astral influences, was still very much alive in T’ang times. The Taoist view, let us recall, could see earthly landscapes as representations and, in some respects, containers of celestial phenomena—just as the human body could itself be regarded as a microcosm, embodying somatic and psychic identity with mountains, rivers, valleys, sun, moon, and stars. And to the Buddhists, notably the monk I-hsing 一行 (683–727), who had an important role in the spread of the Esoteric School, goes the honor of perfecting a fully worked-out system that added to the old fen-yeh template a finer correlation with the twenty-eight “lunar lodgings” (hsiu 宿) that had earlier been imported from Indian astronomy. But I only mention these matters—ignoring many others (such as the growing interest in private gardens, the development basis for the now better-known arrangement in the Tung-t’ien fu-ti yüeh tu ming-shan chi 洞天福地嶽瀆名山記 (hy 599) of Tu Kuang-t’ing 杜光庭 (850–933). In his preface Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen gives a most interesting description of the formation of the sacred abodes and the taking up of residence in them by the various divinities. There are numerous pre-T’ang formulations of Taoist sacred geography; a convenient summation of the earthly locales is that in the sixth-century compendium Wu-shang pi-yao 無上祕要 (hy 1130), 4.5b–10b. Note also the early list of twenty-eight mountains that Ko Hung 葛洪 (283–344) gives as being places “conducive to concentrated thought and the compounding of medicaments for transcendence”; see Pao-p’u Tzu nei-p’ien chiao-shih 抱釙子內篇 校釋, ed. Wang Ming, rev. edn. (Peking: Chung-hua, 1988), 4.85. 16  See Chen hsi 眞系 (by Li Po 李渤), preface dated 805), as preserved in Yün-chi ch’i-ch’ien, 5.15b. The Chen hsi biography of Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen is the basic source for his biography in the Chiu T’ang shu 舊唐書 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1975), 192.5127–29, where this incident is also recorded.

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of historical maps, the spread of Buddhist maṇḍalas, the continuing fascination with “container gardens”)—on the fly, as examples of broad-scale ideas common, indeed commonplace, to eighth-century writers but which we must struggle to keep in front of our eyes, or at least not too far back in our minds, lest they slide imperceptibly out of the picture and thereby allow us to displace the T’ang landscape inadvertently with our own. What all this leads to is that, despite the well-documented dulcifying of the landscape effected during the Nan-pei-ch’ao period, despite the gentler appreciation of a more benign natural environment that came with the continuing cultural assimilation of the Chiang-nan region, we are yet involved with a landscape of “natural supernaturalism,”17 even if the deeper fastnesses are no longer to be fully dreaded as “zones of sacred horror.”18 Inadequate as these remarks may be, they shall have to serve for preliminaries. Almost every area of T’ang life is somehow relevant to this topic, and it is easy to find forking paths. But it is time now to consider some texts. For the moment, we shall let Li Po be our touchstone and shall remain earthbound. Look first at two poems on the waterfall at Mount Lu 廬山. The better known of the two is the quatrain, in heptasyllabic lines: Sunlight illumines the Incense Burner, quickening a purple haze; Far off I see the Sheet of Spray—a vertical waterway before me. Its flying flow descends straight down three thousand feet; I fancy that is the Silver Ho, dropped down from the Nine Heavens!19

17  The phrase is M. H. Abrams’, used as a defining concept in his famous study, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: Norton, 1971), a book that offers many interesting points of comparison for the present subject. 18  Demiéville, “La montagne dans l’art littéraire chinois,” 15 (372), describing the “classical” feeling for mountains as it persisted into the early medieval period. See Marjorie Hope Nicholson’s Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite (1959; rpt. New York: Norton, 1963), for the story of the comparable transformation of mountain landscapes in European literature from the late-seventeenth through the eighteenth century. 19  “Wang Lu Shan p’u-pu, erh shou,” no. 2, lpccc, 21.1241; cts, 180.1837. The tenth-century Wen-yüan ying-hua 文苑英華 (Taipei: Hsin-wen-feng, 1979; hereafter wyyh), 164.4a prints a variant first couplet, in which the present opening line is displaced to line two and preceded by a new first verse that reads: “Mount Lu on high with the Starry Dipper is joined.” This seems to me too bald and flat an opening gambit; nor does the second line then follow in a satisfactory fashion.

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The final couplet has been a focus of critical acclaim, including special praise from Su Shih 蘇軾 (1036–1101),20 with its surprising conception of the waterfall as the upended Milky Way pouring down from the sky. It is not so often noticed how neatly the poet has prepared for this conceit from the very beginning of the poem. It is not the waterfall we see first, but Lu Shan’s northwest bluff,21 Incense Burner Peak 香爐峯, seen lit by the sun. As often, Li Po here plays on the semantics of a place-name, seeing Incense Burner as exactly what its name proclaims it to be. The first image the poet reveals to us, it is a true mountaincenser (a po-shan lu 博山爐) with a cap-cloud of heaven-hued mist. The cloudtrailings are the visible mark of the mountain’s energy (ch’i 氣). But then it is the color of the haze—this one detail—that fuses the visual imagery of the line into a notional unity, purple being the color of the celestial pole, of cosmic  “Sheet of Spray” may at first seem an overtranslation of p’u-pu 瀑布, the common “waterfall.” But it has the virtues of retaining both the original image behind this phrase (it is not a binom) and a hint of its phonetic resonance (M. C. *bau- pu-). This rendering also allows us to deal more readily with related phrases, such as 瀑布泉 , 瀑泉 , 瀑布水 etc., which must be distinguished from p’u-pu and which otherwise might be reduced to homologous “waterfalls” as well. Although it may be a commonplace in modern Mandarin, the term p’u-pu was not yet so in the eighth century. There is little evidence for its use prior to the fourth century, when Sun Ch’o 孫綽 (ca. 310–97) employs it in his “Yu T’ienT’ai Shan fu” (Rhapsody on Roaming in the T’ien-t’ai Mountains), a composition whose influence over later “ascent” literature was enormous. P’u-pu was also used sometimes, as in Li Po’s poems, as the proper name of the famous Lu Shan waterfall: in this case, merely adding a capital W to “waterfall” does not suffice, nor can the article “the” (even should it too boast a capital) bear this much semantic weight without seeming foolish. We must, therefore, keep the phrase intact and not truncate it to a single word—at least, not till after the T’ang. In any event, once one sees the phrase several times, “sheet of spray” soon loses any unusual coloring. 20   Tung-p’o chih-lin 東坡志林, ed. Wang Sung-ling (Peking: Chung-hua, 1981), 1.4. 21  There are four Incense Burner Peaks at different spots on the Lu Shan massif. The one referred to in all pre-T’ang references is that on the northwest side, associated with the Buddhist monk Hui-yüan. The pronouncement of Wang Ch’i 王琦 (1690–1774), the great Ch’ing editor and commentator of Li Po’s works, seemed to resolve any dispute about which Hsiang-lu feng was meant by Li Po. However, in her recently published edition of Li Po’s works, with chrono-biographical notes, An Ch’i 安旗 argues—as had some preCh’ing scholars—that the peak in question is the Incense Burner further south (though still “west” from the poet’s starting-point in line one). See Li Po Ch’üan-chi pien-nien chushih 李白全集編年注釋, 3 vols. (Chengtu: Pa-Shu shu-she, 1990), 49. While An Ch’i’s geographical proofs seem persuasive, they fly in the face of literary tradition that was already established in Li Po’s time. Note also that Hui-yüan’s biography in the sixth-century Kao seng chuan 高僧傳 locates a beautiful waterfall near the northwestern Incense Burner; see Kao seng chuan 6 (T 2059), 50: 358b.

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unity; here it establishes an initial prejudice for the otherworldly that is realized in the poem’s conclusion.22 Under the pressure of that first, controlling image, the coursing waterfall of the more straightforwardly presented lines two and three is turned into something more than its normal seeming—the revelation that strikes the poet in line four. What we have observed here, without (I hope) treading too heavily, is a small example of imagination and language molding a scene that might have been thought purely descriptive. Before I say anything more, we should put alongside this quatrain its longer companion, written in pentasyllabic lines:

4



8

To the west I scaled Incense Burner Peak, To the south viewed the waters of the Sheet of Spray— Vertical in flow for three hundred staves, Spurting through the strath several tens of leagues; Flashing like the onset of lightning in flight, Or dulled as though at the raising of a white rainbow. At first I feared that the Ho and Han had dropped down, Half spewed out from within the clouded heavens!



Look upward and observe the rolling might of its power— Oh, valiant—the exploit of the Shaper of Mutations! A wind from the sea blows on, unrelentingly; And the river’s moon shines, back into the void.



16

Out of that void a confused confluence shoots forth, Washing to left and right the walls of bice-blue. Flying pearls scatter in buoyant rose-pink clouds, As a flowing froth churns over vaulted rocks.



And it is mine to take delight in a mountain of renown! Confronting it, the mind is ever more free. Let there be no more talk of quaffing rose-gem liquor,

12

22  The symbolic significance of the color purple has been summarized by Manfred Porkert as “kosmische Ganzheit und Fülle, ungeschmälerte Macht, deshalb auch die wiedergewonne Einheit, die Rückkehr zum kosmischen Tao”; see Porkert, “Untersuchungen einiger philosophisch-wissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe und Beziehungen im Chinesischen,” Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft 110.2 (1961), 439–40. On the atmospheric phenomenon imaged here, see Kroll, “Li Po’s Purple Haze,” Taoist Resources 7.2 (1997).

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For I am now to gain a face washed clean of dust! Now reconciled to sojourn where I please, Let me take leave forever of the human realm!23

Although not as well known as the previous work, this poem is an extraordinary composition that reveals its merits the closer one looks. We notice right off that most of the imagery contained in the quatrain reappears here—in somewhat expanded form—in the first octave. But this time the image of the fallen Milky Way (ll. 7–8) leads on to a further and fuller examination of the waterfall. A change of rhyme at this juncture allows for a brief pulling back, for an imperative command and exclamation to appreciate the work of the “Shaper of Mutations,” the great selecting and synthesizing principle of Nature24 (and let’s catch the peculiarly apposite use here of the adjective “rolling” 轉 in describing the virile surge of the waterfall), after which Li Po picks out two details for special attention. Anyone who has had experience of a waterfall knows exactly what line eleven refers to—there seems in the vicinity always to be a wind blowing, harder and blusterier than expected. Line twelve’s moonlight, reflected in and off the water (the waterfall here being seen as a vertical “river” 江 [cf. the quatrain’s suspended “waterway” 川]), seems to radiate an aura that is diffused back into the sky—a beautiful image that also recalls the lighting effects of lines five and six.25 The next rhyme-change is rhetorically bridged through the use of anadiplosis (Ch. ting-chen 頂針), the “void” 空 into which the moonlight melts at the close of line twelve being the identical emptiness at the beginning of line thirteen out of which seems to shoot the “confused confluence” 亂潀 that we follow in this stanza more closely in its rush down the dark cliffside. Its outflung droplets, the “flying pearls” of line fifteen, are dissipated into the surrounding iridian mists (as the reflected moonlight earlier was thrown back to the sky), while the current bounds on, foaming down its steep path. With the next rhyme-change, the ostensibly descriptive section of the poem has come to an end; so let us pause a moment to consider how Li Po has presented this rather extended description. Throughout these first three stanzas the directional imagery has alternated up and down the vertical plane, with 23  “Wang Lu Shan p’u-pu, erh shou,” no. 1, lpccc, 21.1238–39. cts, 180.1837. 24  See Edward H. Schafer, “The Idea of Created Nature in T’ang Literature,” Philosophy East and West 15.2 (1965), 153–60, for a cursory view of the concept. Gerard Manley Hopkins’ notions of “instress” and “inscape” include similarities worth pursuing. 25  These two lines are lauded highly by those scholars—including the commentators Hu Chen-heng 胡震亨 (fl. 1590) and Wang Ch’i—who prefer this poem to the quatrain.

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some carefully inserted horizontal spreads (1 up, 2–4 down, 5–6 up, 7–8 down, 11 horizontal, 12 down/up, 13 down, 14 horizontal, 15–16 outward/up/down), imitating perfectly the “rolling might” of the waterfall: one’s eye is always in movement, drawn in different views down and up constantly, as variously repetitive as the streaming cascade itself. It would retard our discussion too much to examine all the spots where Li Po has reinforced sense and sight with sound, but two really must be mentioned. Lines nine and ten—the lines of exclamatory interjection—are identical in their tonal prosody, this being the only instance in the poem where the prosody is not varied between the lines of a couplet, as is usually expected; the rhythmic reiteration gives an emphatic punch to these lines.26 Also we note the unusual internal assonances in line thirteen (M. C. *kung tyung lwan- chung dzyek), a conscious confluence of sound that seems to suggest phonetically the “confused confluence” of the waters themselves. In the final stanza the poet delivers his judgment on the scene, declaring its effect on him and its influence over his future actions. Lu Shan’s Buddhist connections, from the time of Hui-yüan’s 慧遠 (334–416) famous monastic community, are historically more prominent than its Taoist links.27 In this context Li Po puts aside the Taoist elixirs (“rose-gem liquors”) favored by him at other sites for a Buddhist clearing away of dust: the waterfall has washed off his earthly grime, cleansing his mundane self (note the appropriateness of the literal imagery), releasing him now and, he vows, forever from the “human realm” 人間.28 Lastly, let us look back at one more technical excellence that contributes to the poem. That is the rhyme scheme. The first stanza, in eight lines, rhymes in deflected-tone, xAxAxAxA. The second stanza, a quatrain, rhymes in level-tone, BBxB. The third stanza, another quatrain, rhymes in deflected-tone, CCxC. The 26  Note that this occurs not only at a rhyme-change, but also underlines an alteration in the rhyme pattern—from the even-line rhyming of the opening octave to the AABA scheme of the quatrains following. Of course the strict prosodic guidelines that apply to “recentstyle” verse are not the issue here. The tendency of T’ang poets to play with conscious prosodic patterns for effect in “old-style” verse is well established. For Li Po in particular, see e.g., Elling O. Eide, “On Li Po,” in Perspectives on the T’ang, ed. Wright and Twitchett (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1973), esp. 377–83; and Kroll, “Li Po’s Transcendent Diction,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 106.1 (1986), esp. 115–17. 27  On Hui-yüan and Lu Shan, see especially Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China, 2 vols., rev. edn. (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 1: 208–11, 241. 28  The final image of the soon-to-be-abandoned “human [or mortal] realm” may remind us of the same closing to the “cyan hills” quatrain. The phrase jen-chien 人間 always has a pejorative connotation for Li Po.

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final stanza, a sestet (or, as it is probably better to see it, a quatrain with an attached couplet as coda, the suppletory nature of the couplet evident in the way its first word, 且, repeats in anaphoristic manner the first word of line twenty), rhymes in level-tone, DDxDxD. This untypical alternation of rhyming tonics is perhaps another means of suggesting here the same “rolling” movement we found in the poem’s flow of imagery.29 Now, we must resist the temptation to draw facile inferences from these two poems. It might seem obvious that the longer poem is a more “realistic” or “accurate” description. Certainly it is more circumstantial. In commenting on it six hundred years later, Wei Chü-an 韋居安 (fl. 1368), after calling it a composition truly incomparable for all time, adds, “But unless one has had the experience of actually looking upon the scene itself, one cannot appreciate sufficiently this poem’s perfection.”30 If we take this comment as more than an individual reader’s self-congratulatory attempt to assert special rights of ownership, we must accept that the full reach of the poem requires an act of perception beyond it. It is completed outside the words that form it. We need not invoke sages from Bologna or Paris to validate—and obfuscate—this idea: it is well—and clearly—expressed in traditional Chinese musings on the relationship between language and reality, from Confucius, Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu, Hsün Tzu, and on. We know its influence in other areas, particularly in theories of landscape painting. But the question here is the old one of verisimilitude. How “real,” how faithful, is a verbal description as a representation of scene? Stated that simplistically, the question is probably pointless. However, let’s try to hold it in mind as we seek to complicate the issue. Li Po was not, of course, the first to write in verse about Mount Lu. But before his poems, composed most likely in 725 or 726,31 the waterfall enjoyed only 29  And here is a final curiosity, which I do not think is accidental: in every stanza the words that end non-rhyming verses are, as normal, in the tonic group opposite to that of the rhyming verses, with the sole exception of line seven’s 落 (*lak), “dropped”—a phonetic means to add an exclamation point to this word, which we have seen is the crucial verbal surprise in the Milky Way image. Now, I don’t believe that Li Po or any good poet tediously plots out such phonetic strategies as though they are a hidden code; it is rather that the particular sound of a word or the rhythmic and resonant shape of a phrase—that is, a native awareness of aural patterning—often determines a writer’s choice between lexical and grammatical options. See the appendix to this article for a full phonetic reconstruction of this poem into Middle Chinese, with a diagram of its tonal patterns. 30   Mei-chien shih-hua 梅澗詩話 (tscc), 1.3. 31  An, lpcc, 49, says 725, while Chan Ying 詹瑛, the other leading contemporary authority on Li Po, says 726 (see his Li Po shih-wen hsi-nien 李白詩文繫年 [Peking: Tso-chia, 1958], 5; also lpccc 21.1240–41). Huang Hsi-kuei 黃錫珪, however, thinks these poems

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passing mention in poetry. Yet, if we care to look, we may come upon diction and imagery from a few earlier poems that seem to prefigure some of Li Po’s phrasing—even some of his more memorable and, we would have thought, more “individualistic” lines. Thus in a “Rhapsody on Mount Lu” 廬山賦, written by Chih T’an-ti 支曇諦 (d. 411), a Central Asian monk and associate of Hui-yüan, the last couplet of the thirty lines that remain to us, preserved in the seventhcentury I-wen leichü 藝文類聚 where Li Po is sure to have seen it, reads: The Incense Burner ejects a cloud, in semblance of haze; The sweet wellspring showers foam, soaking us first off.32 Can one doubt that the opening image in Li Po’s Lu Shan quatrain (the purple haze quickened by Incense Burner) has its basic origin—though not its color—here, as also the juxtaposition of Incense Burner Peak and the waterfall? The point is not that there is an allusion here—there is not, at least not in the normal sense—but that a lexical loop has been activated, such that these lines from Chih T’an-ti’s fu have affected, in small part, how Li Po is disposed to view and represent the scene. One can locate similar sources of verbal resonance for Li Po in passages from two other Lu Shan poems, both also included in I-wen lei-chü. First, from Pao Chao 鮑昭 (?414–66): The tall crag cleaves half the sky; Long bluffs are sheer for a thousand leagues.33 which finds plausible echoes in line three of the quatrain (“straight down three thousand feet”) and in line eight of the longer poem (“half spewed out from within the clouded heavens”). Second, and more interestingly, from Chiang Yen 江淹 (444–505): Scarlet vapors fall upon embrangled thickets; White clouds rise into inscrutable faintness. were written in 756 during Li Po’s period of reclusion at Lu Shan; see his Li T’ai-po nien-p’u, fu Li T’ai-po pien-nien shih mu-lu 李太白年譜附李太白編年詩目錄 (1906; rpt., Peking: Tso-chia, 1958), 75. 32   I-wen lei-chü (Taipei: Wen-kuang, 1974; hereafter iwlc), 7.134; Ch’üan Chin wen 全晋文, 165.16b, in Ch’üan Shang-ku San-tai Ch’in Han San-kuo Liu-ch’ao wen 全上古三代秦漢三 國六朝文, ed. Yen K’o-chün (1893 edn.; hereafter cited as Yen). 33   i wlc 7.134; “Teng Lu Shan shih, erh shou,” no. 2, Lu, Hsien-Ch’in, 1282.

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Sitting here, I catch sight of a swelling rainbow; Huddled with lowered head, I behold a coursing star.34 Have these “scarlet vapors” 絳氣 become Li Po’s “purple haze” 紫煙? Is this “swelling rainbow” 蜿虹 the prototype of the rising white rainbow (1. 7, longer poem)? Most intriguing is the possibility (probability?) that Chiang Yen’s image of looking down from the mountain, on a meteor (a “coursing [or flowing] star” 流星) below him, may have helped trigger Li Po’s now-famous image of the waterfall as the Sky River sluicing earthward. Perhaps such understandings afford a glimpse into a corner of the poet’s creative craft. While we do not solve the mystery or grasp the magic of poetry by reconstructing the lode of texts and words possessed by a poet through his readings, I think we have that much more insight into Li Po—or any T’ang poet—for contemplating his mental storeroom, even if we cannot approach as thorough and meticulous an unpacking as J. L. Lowes did of Coleridge’s resources.35 (Among other pre-T’ang texts on Lu Shan, special note should be taken of the lengthy passage in Pao Chao’s well-known letter to his sister from the Ta-lei 大雷 riverside, which acts as something of an undertone in many later poems.36)

34   i wlc, 7.134; “Tsung kuan chün Chien-p’ing wang teng Lu Shan Hsiang-lu feng,” Lu, HsienCh’in 1557; also Wen hsüan 文選 (rpt., Taipei: Wen-chin, 1987; hereafter wh), 22.1058, an anthology that Li Po, like all T’ang poets, knew thoroughly. 35  See Lowes’ famous volume, The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination (1927; rpt., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964). Perhaps the best contribution to Li Po studies in this area is Juan Yen-yü’s 阮延瑜 chapter on the sources of Li Po’s poetic diction, in his Li Po shih-lun 李白詩論 (Taipei: Kuo-li pien-i kuan, 1986), 183–225; this, however, ignores Buddhist and Taoist influences. Many perceptive comments pertinent to this subject are made throughout Ko Ching-ch’un’s 葛景春 collection of essays, Li Po ssu-hsiang i-shu t’an-li 李白思想藝術探驪 (Cheng-chou: Chung-chou ku-chi, 1991), the most remarkable book on Li Po’s poetry to appear in the last decade. 36   Pao Ts’an-chün chi-chu 鮑參軍集注, ed. Ch’ien Chung-lien (Shanghai: Shanghai ku-chi, 1980), 2.84–85. The very fragmented translation of this passage offered—oddly enough, in verse form—by Kang-i Sun Chang in her Six Dynasties Poetry (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1986), 89, is too flawed to be recommended as anything but a partial paraphrase. Her remarks on this passage as being an accurate description of the sunset scene viewed by Pao Chao bypass the fact that it would have been impossible for Pao Chao to see from his stated vantage point all that he mentions—the description is rather a lyrical and imaginative tour de force. Chang’s other comments in this chapter on the “verisimilitude” of Pao Chao’s “microscopic,” “realistic” imagery, which she pushes very hard, are, in my opinion, overtaxed.

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Intrinsically satisfying as Quellenforschung can be, we cannot be trapped by it here. It shows, though, another danger of assuming too much about the “realism” of a landscape description. At least in shih poetry there is rarely scope for attempting anything approaching a detailed examination of a scene. Thus the so-called “nature poetry” of Wang Wei 王維 (701–61), for example, consists largely of generic imagery, founded on a relatively restricted vocabulary, that presents little in the way of visual particularity.37 Other T’ang poets are more exact in this regard than Wang Wei, but for all of them the imperatives of shih composition are a push toward the suggestive arrangement of a selected few images rather than a punctilious depiction of scene. I like Kenneth Burke’s formulation, which can readily be applied to Chinese poetry: One cannot long discuss imagery… without sliding into symbolism. The poet’s images are organized with relation to one another by reason of their symbolic kinships. We shift from the image of an object to its symbolism as soon as we consider it, not in itself alone, but as a function in a texture of relationships.38 These “symbolic relationships” are what hold a poem together—if it works— and allow the words to speak with more than dictionary meanings. The skill with which the “texture of relationships” is woven, a texture that also implicates both the warp of tradition and the woof of individuality (I had almost said the hum of the past and the howl of the present), is what we continually judge as readers. Here we may quote Liu Hsieh 劉勰 (ca. 465–522), who has something relevant to say on every literary topic; at the moment the pertinent passage is from his chapter on “The Guises of Physical Things” (物色): Though the guises of physical things are diverse, in hewing one’s phrases there is need of succinctness, so that the flavor rises lightly, wafted aloft, and the feelings are ever renewed, blithely burgeoning. Since long ago, poets of one age have trod heel-to-toe with those of other times, never failing to join ranks and intermingle in effecting their own variations, to accept or recast [the words of their predecessors] in working out their own achievements. Those by whom the guises of physical things are used to the utmost while there remains no end to the feelings [suggested by those things] are those who understand with total comprehension. And so it is that mountain forests and riverbank loam really are the tacit treasury of literary thought! But if one’s wording is too abbreviated, there 37  For more on this, see Kroll, Meng Hao-jan, 99–100. 38   Attitudes toward History (1937; 2nd edn., Los Altos, Calif.: Hermes, 1959), 281–82. Paul W. Kroll - 978-90-04-38019-6 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:21:35PM via free access

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is something wanting; if one’s saying is too detailed, there is more than need be. Yet the reason why Ch’ü P’ing (i.e., Ch’ü Yüan) could see so penetratingly into the feelings behind the feng 風 and sao 騷 is very likely due to the assistance of the rivers and the mountains!39 This goes to the heart of our subject, embracing the triple concerns of literary economy, the use of precursors, and the inspiration of landscape. To return to Li Po and round out his views in poetry of the Lu Shan waterfall, we need only refer first to a couplet in his “Lu Mountain Ballad, Sent to ‘Emptyboat’ Lu, Aurigal Attendant,” so ably discussed by Elling Eide.40 The couplet reads: The Silver Ho is upended, vertical, across three joists of stone; Incense Burner and Sheet of Spray gaze on each other afar.41 Here is the Milky Way waterfall again, again paired with Hsiang-lu feng. The two go together once more in a couplet from the poem “To Leave Behind at Parting from Several Gentlemen in Chin-ling” in which Li Po speaks of Mount Lu as his destination, adding: There, Incense Burner’s purple haze is snuffed out, As Sheet of Spray drops down from the realm of Grand Clarity.42 The heavenly purple haze reappears, here to be extinguished in the cascade’s downward rush from the pure limits of the sky.43 It is evident that, once the 39   Wen-hsin tiao-lung chiao-ch’üan 文心雕龍斠詮, ed. Li Yüeh-kang 李曰剛 (Taipei: Kuo-li pien-i kuan, 1982), 43.1903. The “Wu-se” chapter is no. 46 in the standard sequence but Li Yüeh-kang, following Fan Wen-lan’s 范文瀾 suggestion that it was originally placed elsewhere, shifts the chapter to no. 43 of the fifty that make up the work; for Fan’s views, see his Wen-hsin tiao-lung chu 文心雕龍注 (rpt., Taipei: K’ai-ming, 1958), 10.2a. Li’s extremely thorough edition, along with that of the mainland scholar Chou Chen-fu 周振甫, Wenhsin tiao-lung chu-shih 文心雕龍注釋 (rpt., Taipei: Li-jen, 1984) (see 46.846 for the cited passage), should now rival Fan’s as the edition of choice for scholars. 40  “On Li Po,” 379–87. 41  “Lu Shan yao, chi Lu shih-yü Hsü-chou,” lpccc, 14.863; cts, 173.1773. This poem is dated to 760 by An Ch’i (p. 1580) and Chan Ying (p. 143), but to 756 by Huang Hsi-kuei (p. 77). 42  “Liu-pieh Chin-ling chu-kung,” lpccc, 15.926; cts, 174.1784. Dated to 750 by both An Ch’i (p. 914) and Chan Ying (p. 76), but to 756 by Huang Hsi-kuei (p. 75). 43  “Grand Clarity” (T’ai-ch’ing 太淸) is the celestial zone that commences at a height of forty li above the earth, according to Ko Hung (see Pao-p’u Tzu nei-p’ien chiao-shih, 15.275). In the developed Taoist cosmology of medieval times it was surmounted in ascending order Paul W. Kroll - 978-90-04-38019-6 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:21:35PM via free access

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poet hit on these images, they became symbols for him—the inescapable figures of what Lu Shan signified. If we accept the dating of An Ch’i or Chan Ying, we find that these images remained potent for Li Po for more than a quarter of a century. This picture appeals. Huang Hsi-kuei’s dating, however, would cluster all these poems together, written in one and the same year—in which case we have the poet ringing a close succession of changes on the original idea. But so far we have been talking only of Li Po’s shih poetry. If we look elsewhere in his works, we can discover another very interesting text to put beside those quoted above. This is a prose piece entitled “Autumn at Ching-t’ing, a Preface to See Off my Paternal Nephew, Tuan, Journeying to Mount Lu” 秋于 敬亭送從姪耑遊廬山序, written sometime in the mid-750s.44 Like most of Li Po’s prose writings, it is all but unknown. I quote it in its entirety, because it is charming in its sentiments and deserves to be read. But our attention should zero in on the lines about Mount Lu, roughly halfway into the piece; these will sound familiar. When I was young, an adult set me to reciting the Rhapsody of Master Vacuous 子虛賦, and I took it to my heart in admiration. When I was grown, I traveled south to Yün-meng 雲夢 and looked out upon the valiant sight of the Seven Marshes 七澤 [just as in the poem].45 Ten years then slipped tumbling by, as I lived reclusive with wine in An-lu 安陸.46 Some time later, when my paternal uncle in Chia-hsing 嘉興 was going back west, upon demotion to Ch’ang-sha 長沙, and I paid my respects to him at a farewell party held within a grove, you, Tuan, were then just a stripling, cavorting in high spirits by his side. And here you are now quite mature, richly bearing about you an impressive air. As for me, I have been in decline for a good while, but seeing you brings comfort to my heart, and the sadness that comes over me in speaking of long-ago things is changed from tears to smiles. by the regions of “Grand Culmination” (T’ai-chi 太極), “Highest Clarity” (Shang-ch’ing 上淸), and “Jade Clarity” (Yü-ch’ing 玉淸). However, “Grand Clarity” is often used in medieval poetry as a general term for high heaven. 44  An Ch’i (p. 1968) says 757, Chan Ying (p. 94) says 753, Huang Hsi-kuei (p. 93) says 754. 45  See “Tzu-hsü fu,” wh, 7.349; tr. David R. Knechtges, Wen xuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987), 55. 46  From about 727 to 735 An-lu, in northern Hupeh, was Li Po’s “home” with his first wife, née Hsü 許 (but “wine” in the translation is no typo for “wife”; the phrase is 酒隱). These were relatively quiet years, of a sort scarcely to be known by him again. See especially Maeno Naoaki 前野直彬, “Anriku no Ri Haku” 安陸の李白, Chūgoku koten kenkyū 中国古典研究 16 (1969), 9–22.

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You have just now acquainted me with your [plans for a] distant excursion, on which you’ll scale Incense Burner to the west. There where long mountains are creased athwart and the Nine Rivers draw rolling back,47 the Sheet of Spray drops down from the heavens, half contending in its flow with the Silver Ho: a leaping rainbow, darting lightning, a confluence that shoots forth into a myriad straths—it is a singular anomaly of all space and eternity! And on the summit there is a square lake and stone well, impossible to get a look at.48 I envy you this trip, as I [can merely] pet a crane and whistle long, regretting that the cinnabar ichor is not yet completed and the white dragon’s arrival is late.49 Should the man of Ch’in show the lash, I would soon take to the waters of peach blossoms.50 Alone I carry still a longheld vow, but I am embarassed to return to the mountains of renown.51 Once the appointed time is fulfilled, we’ll go hand-in-hand through the Five Marchmounts. 47  The reference is to Kiukiang 九江 (also known in T’ang times as Hsün-yang 潯陽), north of Mount Lu, where the Yangtze was traditionally said to break into nine branches. 48  These sites and the red-scaled fish that frolic in them were part of local legends about Mount Lu, according to Hui-yüan who noted in his “Yu Lu Shan chi” 遊廬山記 that the rustics of the area could only sigh wordlessly about the waters on the Hsiang-lu peak. See the fragment quoted in Liu Chün’s 劉峻 (462–521) commentary to Shih-shuo hsin-yü, sec. 10, certainly known to Li Po: Shih-shuo hsin-yü chiao-chien 世說新語校箋, ed. Hsü Chen-o (Peking: Chung-hua, 1984), 2.314; tr. Richard B. Mather, Shih-shuo Hsin-yü: A New Account of Tales of the World (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1976), 288; also in Yen, Ch’üan Chin wen, 162.7b. 49  Li Po pictures himself as an adept in hiding: he only strokes but cannot ride off on the crane that is the transcendent’s vehicle, he amuses himself with the cosmic “whistling” 嘯 associated with Sun Teng 孫登, as he waits for his elixir to be finished in his alchemical crucible and looks for the arrival of a white dragon to bear him away into transcendence as one did for the retired official, Tou Tzu-ming 竇子明, on Mount Ling-yang 陵陽山. 50  I.e., if political troubles arise in the empire (fears—or remembrances [?]—of An Lu-shan?), he will slip away as did the inhabitants of Peach Blossom Font at the time of the disturbances in the Ch’in era. The “man of Ch’in’s” lash recalls Chia I’s 賈誼 (201–169 bc) description of Ch’in Shih Huang driving the world ahead of him with a long whip; “Kuo Ch’in lun,” Yen, Ch’üan Han wen 全漢文, 16.5b. 51  He still wishes to roam, free of the world, on the famous mountains such as Lu Shan but feels unworthy now to do so. The variant reading in wyyh, 721.5b (“… but am embarrassed not to have returned to the mountain of renown”), provides a nice example of how two apparently contradictory readings may, through the application of a little thought, be seen to be ultimately no different in meaning at all—in this case proving also that the wyyh variant is an editor’s attempt to clarify a line that he simply misunderstood.

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My feelings hereby send you off afar; [adding] a poem could only detract from this!52 It is plain enough that Lu Shan, at this time, is a memory for Li Po, and that the words he had earlier used in celebrating it remained with him, to be summoned forth again—some phrases verbatim—in this prose evocation. The very consistency with which he reverts to the same images is testimony to their symbolic status. If it is true that entropy ineluctably advances with time and that memory therefore increases disorder, perhaps we can regard the cultivation of symbols—whether purposeful or not—as a means to stabi