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The Ounce and the Cup:
Xie Lingyun's Imitation of Cao Zhi
Xie Lingyun’s “Imitation of the Crown Prince of Wei’s Anthology at Ye” 擬魏太子鄴中集 does not neatly fit any genre or interpretation. The set does not elevate the diction of a model poem, as typical for the “imitation” 擬 genre. Nor does it present a traditional allegory. Instead, the poems form a pastiche of the many works dealing with the outings at Ye. Xie demonstrates his extensive learning, often using the language of later writers to point to earlier texts with indirect allusion.
It is tempting to read an imitative consciousness into the series, and many have done so. Three relatively new interpretations of the series have attempted to redefine Xie’s corpus using “Imitations” as a key unlocking the central metaphor. J D Frodsham argues that the retelling of the Ye feasts is a veiled attack at Xie’s political enemies, who had marginalized the rightful claimant to the throne just as Cao Pi mistreated Cao Zhi.1 Mei Jialing analyzes the question of the poems’ genre and concludes that they attempt to create synchronicity between reader, imitator, and imitated.2 Yue-June Liang uses the questions of authenticity and genre to support her thesis that Xie’s natural poetry is a metatextual exploration of the relation between reader and read.3
The relationship of each poem’s text to the works of the imitated author is key to each of these arguments, but a thorough study has not been made. In the following paper I hope to demonstrate the usefulness of this method by analyzing one of the eight poems, the one imitating Cao Zhi. The choice is deliberate. If the poems are close rewritings, Zhi has the largest surviving corpus of the Jian’an poets, making it easier to find textual antecedents. If imitations, he is the figure most admired by Xie. If historical allegory, he stands for the central figure, Liu Yizhen.
In analyzing the piece, I have looked for actual textual allusions, themes or images in Cao Zhi’s writing of which Xie’s couplet might be consider a ni-like elevated rewriting, and later references to Cao Zhi which characterize him in ways owing more to Xie’s imitation than his works themselves. Although my reading of the poem is not conclusive in answering the question of the nature of the series, it is substantially different from existing readings and suggests that this abstract question cannot be accurately answered without more attention to the details of the text.
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平原侯植 |
The prince was not in accord with worldly affairs, only enjoying rambling outings. Nevertheless, he sighed at the sorrows of his life. |
Most commentators consider the second phrase descriptive of Cao’s years in Ye, and the third of his life afterwards. Given that the poem includes melancholy, his “sighs” do not need to wait until after his years at Ye.
Only this poem is being analyzed, so it is difficult to say how these biographical prefaces function within the set. Without establishing in what sense Xie imagines Cao Pi as anthologist, it is difficult to say anything about it. Clearly, the preface is echoed in the following poem.
The morning/evening formula is a common introduction in Jian’an poetry, setting out the topic of the following poem and suggesting the completeness of the action described. Xie Lingyun often uses the same sort of introduction in his nature poetry. Here, Xie suggests the completeness of his portrayal of Cao Zhi and the two halves of the body of the poem: Zhi’s lonely rambling and thoughts in lines three to ten and the festive gathering in lines 11 through 20. Although commentators have read all of the poem as a banquet piece, the following couplet very clearly shows Cao in lone reflection.
Translators and commentators have usually taken all of the poem’s activities as communal.4 However, after the introductory couplet, Cao Pi and the guests do not appear until line 11. Biographical information fills the corresponding couplets in the other poems in the series. Lines 3 to 10 of this poem present studies in various characters and themes from Cao Zhi’s poetry. As we will see, they borrow imagery from his works and speak for him from many voices: the abandoned woman, plaintive brother, martial hero, and separated friend.
This couplet describes Cao with imagery traditionally associated with the neglected lover, as presented in yuefu ballads or the political allegory of the Chu ci poems.
If the previous couplet presented images of the lover abandoned by a worldly companion or king, this one incorporates the imagery of the lover jilted by supernatural forces: the disappearance of the goddess or the soul of the king. Some of Cao Zhi’s poetry, especially the Luo shen fu 洛神賦, uses this imagery. Critics speculate that Cao intends the spirit as allegory for his brother.5 The allegorical speaker’s love for the goddess is manifested in Cao’s desire to do some patriotic service, as in the following couplet.
In light of the contemporary texts, these two places are clearly linked with Zhi’s desire to do some martial service for his country.6 Xie has carefully read through these texts and combines a certain bookishness with a careful reading of Cao’s works, even noticing the small detail of “looking back” 顧 in connection with his ambition. The following couplet presents him as no longer yearning, but accepting his fate.
Although the translation of line 9 is quite straightforward, its interpretation will only be tentative. I suggest that Xie is cleverly turning around a common image in order to fit the structure of this poem. Normally, the long road beset by difficulty or cut by rivers represents separation or the impossibility of fulfilling ambitions. The speaker has just reflected on these problems and now turns to the alternate option: the level, clear road of revelry. The roads to Taihang and Handan are difficult, both allegorically and in reality, but this is the “eastern road” which Cao Zhi’s poetry refers to, leading back to Ye and the festive gatherings.7
This interpretation also gives added meaning to the soughing aspens, which remind the speaker of the transience of life. To all his previous desires and yearnings, he says in essence: life is too short and this way is easier. Here, the poem makes its transition from his private thoughts to the festive gathering.
Thanking the host and describing his actions in commencing the occasion are formal necessities of the gathering poems. Cao Zhi’s “Lord’s Feast” 公宴 and “Seated in Attendance on the Heir Apparent” 侍太子作 both follow this formula. The idea of the feast releasing and relieving sadness is also conventional.
Having provided such compliments, it is also necessary that the guests not desire to end the feast.
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14 |
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良游匪晝夜， |
Happy ramblings know not day or night, |
The romantic image of the revelers continuing late into night, or early into the morning, does not appear in Zhi’s poems on the Ye feasts, but does appear in the letters remembering the events. One of Cao Pi’s letters to Wu Zhi records: “When the white sun disappeared, we carried on by the bright moon.”8
Their ramblings consist in extemporaneous poems and high-minded discussion:
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16 |
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眾賓悉精妙， |
Assembled guests—each uniquely skilled, |
Praising the assembled guests, in part to honor the host who has been able to summon them, is a traditional part of the banquet poem. This couplet is less related to Zhi’s works, though, and appears to have some place in the set as a whole: all eight poems mention the splendid guests and refined conversation, though they disagree on many other details. Any further discussion of the image will have to wait for a full study of the set.
Matching their conversation is excellent music, so sorrowful that it moves nature itself.
This paper has already identified many allusions in the poem, some with seemingly tenuous connections, resting on only one or two characters or a chance grammatical similarity. Tracing the history and use of each of these could be a paper in itself. As a brief example of how carefully intentional Xie Lingyun’s diction is in this poem, I will briefly trace the antecedents to this couplet. It makes use of the image of sad music, as enhanced by a common Jian’an pattern opposing the music of Qin and Qi in parallel couplets, and further elevated by the replacement of these geographical locations with relevant allusions.
The image of sorrowful music first appears in five-character poetry in “This Day’s excellent feast” 今日良宴會, fourth of the “Nineteen Old Poems” 古詩十九首:
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4 6 |
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彈箏奮逸響， 新聲妙入神。 令德唱高言， 識曲聽其真。 Wen xuan 29.410a |
The harp is struck, the notes rise free, new tunes so fine they touch the gods. Those with virtue sing high words, those skilled in song will hear what’s true. Trans.: Stephen Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature (New York: Norton, 1996), 255. |
Cao Zhi’s “For Ding Yi” 贈丁翼 presents the same sorrowful music in its characteristic Jian’an form, with the pairing of the music of Qin and Qi to represent the completeness of the entertainment:
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6 |
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秦箏發西氣， Wen xuan, 24.341b |
Zhengs from Qin play western airs; Ses from Qi raise an eastern song. Trans.: Cutter, 86, 152n84. |
A slightly later variation on this image is seen in Lu Ji’s imitation of the “Old Poem” quoted above. Lu elevates the diction of those four lines by adding the Qi/Qin pairing, naming two particular yuefu ballads, and alluding to two stories from the Liezi:
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4 6 |
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齊僮梁甫吟， 秦娥張女彈。 哀音繞棟宇， 遺響入雲漢。 Wen xuan, 30.435a |
The boy from Qi will play “Song of Liangfu,” And the beautiful maiden from Qin will play “Zhangnü Tune.” Mourning sounds wind round the beams, While lingering echoes enter the Cloud River. Trans.: Chiu-Mi Lai, “River and Ocean: The Third-Century Verse of Pan Yue and Lu Ji,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Washington, 1990, 254. |
Xie’s couplet borrows the sorrowful music of Qin Qing (a native of Qin) and the plaints of Zhang E (who was traveling in Qi) to indirectly fulfill the Qi/Qin convention. He also adds the allusion from the Hanfeizi. His two lines seem to wrap up all the conventional images and allusions on the subject of doleful music.
In much the same way, The entire banquet description is a catalogue. Although all of the themes and images are quite traditional, actual banquet poems were written to praise a particular host, to thank particular guests, to commemorate a specific occasion, and might touch on some, though not all, of the traditional themes. Xie’s poem seems to dutifully touch on all of these themes in an attempt to catalogue the variety of Cao Zhi’s banquet poems. The continued elaboration also serves a dramatic effect, like the piled-up couplets on Zhi’s lonely wanderings. Just as his previous resolve to patiently wait for a chance to serve his country eventually succumbed to the easy revelry of the feast, so the revelry fades away in the following couplet, and yields to a very different resolve in the final one.
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20 |
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中山不知醉， |
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19 |
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Zhongshan refers to alcohol made there. It was twice fermented and reputably extremely strong. See: “Wei du fu” in Knechtges, vol. 1, 468 l.669. |
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20 |
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Shi jing 247: “We are drunk with wine, we are sated with power.” 既醉以酒，既飽以德。 Trans.: Arthur Waley, Joseph R. Allen, ed., The Book of Songs (New York: Grove Press, 1996), 248. |
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Although wine and the offering of toasts are common images in banquet poetry, I am unaware of a poetic precedent for denying alcohol’s efficacy. Although Frodsham takes these lines as a continuation of the festive gathering,9 they clearly present a dropping-off from the ideal revelry, which is often described as getting participants drunk even without alcohol. This line, like Cao Zhi’s consideration of the “eastern road” in line 9, is a transition in which the speaker’s previous ideal seems to fail and he adopts another. In this case, his thoughts turn to prolonging his life.
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22 |
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願以黃髮期， |
I desire, in my yellow-haired old age, To nourish life and hope to live long. |
Frodsham points out that this concluding couplet’s mention of Daoist practices is antithetical to the drinking and revelry which immediately precede it.10 The reader is tempted to take the statement metaphorically, as Cao’s intention to prolong his life by staying out of politics.11 In reality, Cao’s corpus includes many poems on Daoist themes, including practices of “nourishing life” through diet, breathing techniques, and other methods.12
If there is a contradiction between the poem’s presentation of patriotic desires, drunken revelry, and Daoist practices, the contradiction lies not in the poem, but in the man. Cao Zhi’s life and works contain such contradictions, as indeed do Xie’s. This poem does not attempt to untangle them, as it does not aim to imitate any one of Cao’s poems. Instead, it provides a literary overture to his works: presenting the important themes closely together, so that their tension is felt, but not resolved.
In examining the text of the poem, no apparent evidence can be found for any of the prior theories about the nature of Xie’s imitation. Although there is certainly an abstract similarity between the political situations in Xie’s time and Cao’s, the lines quoted from Cao’s work focus on his desire to do a great deed, not the selection of his brother as heir. The poem fits more as allegory for Xie’s mixed political desires than for the infighting of the Liu Song princes. Similarly, although the nature of Xie’s imitation is certainly complex, he is not revolutionarily metatextual; he is, indeed, precisely traditional in his use of allusions and scholarship as the basis for the imitation.
This paper has only examined a small portion of the set “Imitation of the Crown Prince of Wei’s Anthology at Ye” and is not conclusive. Although Xie clearly tries to present a pastiche of Cao Zhi’s works and identifies with Cao himself, many questions remain about the set. Do all of the poems present each poet in relation to Xie, or do the other poets stand allegorically for other figures in one of Xie’s literary salons, perhaps his younger nephews? To what extent do the poems agree in theme and diction on the circumstances of the feast? How does the character of Cao Pi as anthologist relate to the grand preface and the biographical prefaces for each poet? These questions among others cannot be answered without a detailed study of the complete set.
Footnotes
1 J D Frodsham, The Murmuring Stream (Kuala Lampur: University of Malaya, 1967), vol. 1, 160.
2 Mei Jialing 梅家玲, Han-Wei-liuchao wenxue xinlun 漢魏六朝文學新論—擬代與贈答篇 (Beijing: Beijing daxue xhubanshe, 2004), 24-26.
3 Yue-June Liang, “The Redefinition of Landscape Poetry, Xie Lingyun,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1999, 15-22.
4 Frodsham, vol. 1, 168 includes “we” even here in line 3, where the action of plucking at branches is clearly an image of loneliness.
6 For a full discussion of this theme in Zhi’s poetry, see Cutter 355-76.
7 The “eastern road” appears in “For Biao, King of Boma” and the fifth of “Miscellaneous Poems.” In both places, Zhi rejects the option, which would take him away from the real political or military happenings. See Cutter, 360.
8 Cutter, 70, Wen xuan 41.591a
9 “Chung-shan wine can never make us drunk, Yet quaffing of his power we feel quite sated.” Frodsham, vol. 1, 168.
11 Gu Shaobo 顧紹柏, Xie Lingyun ji jiao zhu 謝靈運集校注 (Taibei: Li ren shuju, 2004), 233.
12 Cutter, 277-352 fully examines the question of supernatural phenomena in Cao’s poetry.