Imperial Commissioner Liu Letter
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chapter 2 Letters as Calligraphy Exemplars: The Long and Eventful Life of Yan Zhenqing’s (709–785) Imperial Commissioner Liu Letter Amy McNair Letters have been collected as examples of calligraphy since the Later Han dynasty (25–220), when cursive script became an art of the elite. For collec- tors, a letter’s significance lay mainly in the style of the brushwork and its perceived power to evoke the personality of the writer. Typically, to contem- poraries, the style is admired as sophisticated and cutting-edge, the product of an insider group with access to the right models and plenty of time to practice the art, while to later collectors, the style represents the epitome of the age in which it was produced. Further, thanks to the traditional belief in graphology, the lines of the characters are seen as traces of the author’s being that allow the viewer to “see the man in his writing.” In addition, since the verbal content of letters can be of the moment and because cursive script is traditionally held to be unpremeditated and highly expressive, a further appeal of letters is the sense of emotion and immediacy felt by the viewer as he or she re-traces the progress of the brush on the page. When collectors have a letter mounted in the hand scroll or album format, it becomes the core of a living document as later viewers inscribe their responses to the letter in colophons. When the letter is mounted, it is given a name, typically two or three characters from the first or second lines of the letter. The mounting and the naming turn the letter into a work of art. The name is written on a label on the scroll and used to record the letter’s presence in a collection. Famous early letters were also reproduced within “model-letters compendia” ( fatie 法帖), in which copies were engraved into stone plates, from which ink rubbings were taken and dis- tributed as elegant gifts. Finally, famous letters became the source texts for “innovative transcriptions” (lin 臨), rather like musical compositions that can be played many ways. Artists creatively re-interpreted certain letters as a way of demonstrating their competence in canonical calligraphy styles and their own ingenuity, transcribing what had been private documents in public art formats such as hanging scrolls and fans. My case study for these developments is the Imperial Commissioner Liu Letter (Liu Zhongshi tie 劉中使帖) by Yan Zhenqing 顏真卿 (709–785), now in the National Palace Museum, Taipei. This © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�9���3_004 54 McNair brief letter, which comments on military actions in 775, is exemplary not only for its extraordinary appearance—highly gestural cursive-script characters on blue paper—and the reputation of its author, a renowned loyalist statesman, scholar and aristocrat, but also for the rich documentation of its nearly thir- teen-hundred-year life in the hands of numerous important collectors and the manifold responses by critics and artists. 1 Yan Zhenqing’s Imperial Commissioner Liu Letter Though unsigned, the Imperial Commissioner Liu Letter is nearly universally accepted as one of two extant ink-written autographs by the celebrated Tang- dynasty calligrapher Yan Zhenqing.1 The letter comprises forty-one large characters in eight lines, written in a blend of running (xing 行) and cursive (cao 草) scripts, on a piece of dyed blue paper 28.5 cm high and 43.1 cm wide (fig. 2.1). It is undated, but an approximate date of the end of the year 775 may be deduced from the letter’s contents. In my translation, it reads: Recently, I heard that when Imperial Commissioner Liu arrived at Yingzhou, Wu Xiguang had already surrendered. This should comfort the hearts of those on the seaboard! I had also heard that though Cizhou was besieged by Lu Ziqi, the Sheli General had seized him alive. What a consolation! 近聞劉中使至瀛州，吳希光已降。足慰海隅之心耳。又聞 礠州 為盧子期所圍，舍利將軍捦獲之。吁足慰也。 Hou Yili, on the staff of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, has done an admi- rable job of researching the personages mentioned in the letter, which I will summarize in English here.2 The events described refer to the insurrection of Tian Chengsi 田承嗣 (704–778), which was a continuation of the catastrophic An Lushan Rebellion (755–62). After the deaths of the rebel leaders An Lushan 安禄山 (703–757) and Shi Siming 史思明 (703–761), several of their subordi- nates refused to submit to the throne and continued to drag out the uprising. In 763, in an attempt to pacify them, Emperor Daizong 代宗 (r. 762–79) appointed 1 Wang Zhuanghong 王壯弘 says it is a Tang copy, without explanation. See his Bei tie jianbie changshi, 113. Perhaps because the letter lacks a signature and an addressee, he considered it fragmentary, which could indicate a copy of a portion of a letter. 2 Hou Yili 侯怡利, entry on Yan Zhenqing’s Imperial Commissioner Liu Letter in Jin Tang fashu mingji, 177–81. .