THE POETRY OF TS'AO CHIH

A Critical Introduction

by

TERENCE CRAIG RUSSELL

A., The University of British Columbia, 1973

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

. . MASTER OF ARTS.

in

THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

(Department of Asian Studies, Chinese)

We accept this thesis as conforming

to the required standard

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

September 1979

(c)Terence Craig Russell, 1979 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study.

I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.

Department nf Asian Studies

The University of British Columbia 2075 Wesbrook Place Vancouver, Canada V6T 1W5 n.tP Sept. 12, 1979 ii

ABSTRACT (Preface)

The form which this thesis has taken is rather different from what I had originally envisioned. It contains far more discussion of literary style and far less translation than I had planned to include. This is both a virtue.- and a short• coming. Certainly it has been much more. Interesting to have attempted an analysis of some of the literary forces which molded and characterized the poetry of Ts ' ao Chih and the Chien An writers than it would have been simply to have translated a large number of their works. I have made many fascinating discoveries and the reader will surely find more substance to occupy his attention. However, it is difficult to avoid feeling that to try to analyse and criticise poetry which one has the greatest difficulty even reading, and which is the product of a literary tradition as remote as that of third century China,is very presumptuous. After all, if as accomplished and mature a scholar.as Professor Donald Holzman would decline to engage in just this type of discussion on the grounds that he felt it so difficult as to 'actually defeat its own purpose'"'" how could I hope for any kind of success? Nevertheless, as mentioned, I have learned much through the preparation of this work and generally don't regret my presumption. It is perhaps only necessary to forewarn the reader that many of the statements made herein are of a tentative and speculative nature and are iii

not in any respect the last word on the subject. Yet if these speculations lead the reader to a slightly deeper appreciation of certain facets of the fine poetry of Ts'ao Chih, or even if they only stimulate him to seek such appreciation on his own, then I will consider that my work has not been completely in vain.

I have placed my translations of Ts'ao Chih's poems at the end of the thesis. This is only because, that seemed to be the only logical place to put them. It does not indicate that

I consider them to form merely a kind of appendix which the reader may refer to for his own convenience. On the contrary,

I have spent a great deal of time In preparing these translations and would like to think that they are a significant improvement over those previously available. Thus they represent perhaps, an even greater 'contribution to knowledge' than does the main body of my text. 2

In my translations I have followed Huang Chieh's text except where otherwise indicated. Wherever possible. I have recorded variant wordings but, due to a lack of library re• sources and personal interest, I have not attempted to indulge in extensive textual commentary. I have striven to present translations that are both accurate and fulfil the axiom that a translation must be good poetry in its own right in order to be successful.

I have used the modified Wade-Giles system of romaniza- •3 tion found in the Mathews' Chinese English Dictionary through• out. To this system I have made a few minor modifications of my own but these should be quite self-evident. iv

I would like to acknowledge the immeasurable assistance that has been given me by Prof. Y.C.Y. Chao and Prof. E.G.

Pulleyblank in the preparation of this thesis. Special thanks must be given to Prof. Michael Bullock and the members of his translation workshop for their assistance in making my trans• lations more readable. I am also indebted to Mjr. _ E_^Y; Shin who was kind enough to write in the Chinese Script for me.

Notes: 1-See Donald Holzman, Poetry and Politics; The Life and

Works of Juan Chi3 Cambridge, 1976, p. 228.

2This text has been included at the end of the thesis. Also see Huang Chieh, Ts'ao Tzu-ohien shih chu •# .3-zj^ for the original version with annotation. 9

3see R.H. Mathews, Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary, revised edition, Harvard, 1969, originally published 1931- V

CONTENTS

Abstract _ —'—-— ii

List of Abbreviations vi

Introduction 1

Note on Editions 6

The Life of Ts'ao Chih 15

A- General Introduction to the Poetics of the

Chien An and Wei Eras 45

The Poetics of Ts'ao Chih • 65

A) Traditional Evaluation 67

B) Roots and Influences 69 i) Shih Ching 69 Ii) Yiieh-fu 74 fill) Ku-shih and the '19 Old Poems' 80

C) The Question .'of Allegory 81

D) Metaphor and Using 9 2

E/Pic'tionallzation • ."97

P) Response and Dedication 106

G) Social and-.Political Concern 115

F) Formal Refinements 120

1) Overall Structure 121

li) Imagery; . • ; Nature as metaphor 124

.-'.iii) Parallelism 125

iv) Word Selection 128

Conclusion 135

Translations of Ts'ao Chih's Poems with Annotations- 138

Bibliography 204

Chinese Texts 213 VI

List of Abbreviations

BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African ..Studies CHC CK'u Hsueh-ahi CHS Ch'ilan Han shih CCS Ch ''uan Chin shih CSKS Ch'uan San-kuo shih CHW Ch'uan Han wen CSKW Ch 'uan San-kuo wen HS Han Shu pu-chu HHS Hou Han Shu HYHP Hsin-ya Hsueh-pao JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JAS Journal of Asian Studies PTSC Pei-t'ang shu ch'ao SKC San-kuo-chih (Wei ChihJ_ WC San-kuo-chih, pu-chu, Wei Chih SPPY Ssu-pu pei-yao SSCCS Shih-san-chirig$' chu-shu SSHY Shih-shuo hsin-yu TPYL T'ai-p'ing yu-lan CP Ts'ao chi ch 'uan-p 'ing WCTKTL Wei Chin Nan-pei-ch 'ao wen-hsueh shih ts'an-k'ao tzu-liao

WH Wen Hsuan YWLC Yi-wen lei-chu YTHY Yu-t'ai hsin-yung YPSC Yueh-fu shih-chi CHHW Ch 'uan Hou Han wen SKCCC San-kuo-ch-ih cki-chink 1

INTRODUCTION

The third century A.D. was a crucial time period in the history of Chinese literature for a number of reasons. Prof.

Donald Holzman has described it as a watershed era during which the general conception of literature progressed from the antique to the medieval."'" This is an apt characterization. Just as the historical progression from antiquity to the middle ages in

Europe Involved many complex, yet often interrelated, phenomena, so the evolution of literary values from the end of the Han

Dynasty until the Chin -^j- and Six Dynasties periods involved a number of essentially interrelated factors.

The most important among these factors was the emergence of literature from the domination of Confucian pragmatism and rationalism. In terms of the Confucian philosophical system which held sway over virtually all aspects of the lives of literate Chinese during the Han Dynasty, literature was only valuable in so far as It could be of benefit in the government of the state. The creation of literature with no intrinsic political or moral value was not considered to be a valid occupation for educated men. As a result, though poets contin• ued to write, their work tended to be overladen with political and moral content. Theorization about the aesthetic merits of literature was openly eschewed.

During the third century, this subjugation of literature by Confucian philosophy was strongly challenged. Even though 2

no.writer would dare to openly contradict Confucian principles

by arguing for the establishment of literature as an independent

art form, in practice, literature did achieve a considerable

degree of freedom. Literatus poets began to concern themselves

less and less with moral or social matters. They wrote in a more lyrical vein, endeavouring to achieve lucidity of emotional

expression rather than heavy moral relevance. They also began

to consider the various theoretical and practical aspects of

literary composition. This trend began with general and passing

comments on the merits of certain writers or on the nature of

literary creation and developed to the extent that major treat•

ises on literary aesthetics, such as the Wen-hsin tiao-lung

,v "5t iT ^| 2 and Shih p'in "j^f *a 3 were written. Such

works inressence demonstrated that writers had freed themselves

dfcmoral and political obligations and had developed a strong

awareness of the purely expressive potential of literature.

On a more particular level, the fall of the Han Dynasty

and the coinciding decline in the prestige of Confucianism

meant that writers were less bound to the rationalism and

anthropocentrism of that philosophical system. According to

Confucian cosmology, man participated in the functioning of

nature and the universe. However, there was a clear demarcation

between the respective spheres of Man, Heaven and Earth. This

demarcation was evident in the literature composed during Han

and pre-Han times. Chinese writers were fascinated by the

beauties of nature and they paid tribute to its mysteries and

functioning in their poetry and fu. Yet in their work there

always exists a kind of separation between themselves and the 3

forces and objects of nature. When they wrote, they described nature objectively or used natural imagery only as a kind of

embellishment or ornamentation.

In the third century, writers, along with the literate class in general, became more interested in the naturalistic ou outlook of Taoism. Through this philosophy they began to find more identity and involvement with the landscape in which they lived and moved. In their literature they began to express this

subjective involvement through the use of natural imagery as metaphor for their own feelings and by finding expression for emotions stimulated by natural scenes. The willingness to become more involved with nature is one of the outstanding characteristics of medieval Chinese poets.

Confucian rationalism had led writers away from the realm of emotional expression toward more objective, expositive styles. After the fall of the Han, emotional subjectivisim came totplay an ever increasing role in-literary creation.

Friendship, love, personal anxiety and other similar emotional themes became far more prevalent than they had been previously.

Furthermore, the expression of these emotions became more direct and intense. This directness and intensity were traits that were especially valued by later poets and critics.

The third century was also the time during which poetry was re-established as the most Important literary form, replacing the fu which had been so popular during the Han Dynasty. This phenomenon was also in a sense related to the fall of the Han and the decline of Confucianism. The fu had been developed pri• marily as a vehicle for political remonstrance.^ As such it fit well Into the framework of Confucian views concerning literature.

With the decline in the formal power of Confucianism there was less pressure on writers to write politically oriented literature.

This allowed them to explore new forms and to rediscover the potential of poetry for literary expression. Fu continued to be written but it was quickly surpassed by poetry as the most popular literary form.

In all of the above mentioned phenomena, the Chien An writers played a crucial role. They were still basically part of the classical or antique tradition but in their work we find that the seeds of medieval literary values have already begun to grow forth. As mentioned, the first self-conscious discussions of purely literary aesthetics appear in writings from this time,-' indicating a growing consciousness of litera• ture as an Independent medium of expression. More importantly, we find in the actual poems and fu of this era, a very marked development in literary practice. In almost all aspects of their art, the Chien An writers show a progression away from the strictures of antiquity, toward a freer, more potent style of expression.

The most representative writer of the Chien An period is Ts'ao Chih. He was born near the end of the second century and lived through the turbulent years that accompanied the dis• integration of the Han Dynasty. To an extent the imprint of . these years can be seen in his works. Not only was he a poet of great technical accomplishment, but in his work we can see most graphically Illustrated the innovations and special attri• butes of Chien An literature. For this reason I have chosen him 5

and his work as the subject of this thesis. I hope that through an examination of certain aspects of his work we will be able to discover the nature of his contribution to the evolution of literature during the early middle ages in China as well as of the development of Chinese poetics in general.

Notes

1In a lecture given at the University of British Columbia in September, 1978.

2Liu Hsieh ^-l] •fyf^Wen-hsi-n tiao-lung iK^ )f|f|L ^[ com• posed during the Liang Dynasty (502-556).

3chung Jung brfe Shih p'in also composed during the Liang Dynasty but not as comprehensive as the Wen-hsin.

4 See Helmut Wilhelm, "The Scholar's Frustration: Notes on a Type of Fu" in Fairbank ed., Chinese Thought and Institu• tions, Chicago, 1957-

^For example in Ts'ao Chih's letter to Yang Hsiu, and Ts'ao P'i's Tien Lun jJL . 6

A NOTE ON EDITIONS

In Ts'ao Chin's biography in the Wei chih "^j^ , Ch'en

Shou jjtjj^ ;|| states that in the middle of the Ching Ch'u %f)

era of the Emperor Ming's reign (237 - 239) Ts'ao Chih's writings

were collected and placed in the imperial archives."'" There were

apparently over a hundred pieces of both prose and poetry in

that collection. Chih himself also made a collection of some 2

seventy-eight of his works before his death. Neither of these

collections have been transmitted to the present day. In the

Sui-shu ching - chi - chih j5^j| i|t- jif„ there is a record of a

collection of Ts'ao Chin's works entitled Ch'en-ssu Wang Chih

chi |^ ^ ^Jl-^ in thirty . ch'uan. ^ The T'ang histories record works of the same title in twenty chuan. The authors of the

Ssu-k'u ch'uan-shu tsung-mu t'i-yao \£) ^ Q 4^-^

speculate that the collections recorded in the T'ang histories were essentially the same as that recorded in the Sui-shu but

that the arrangement of ch'uan had been altered. An edition of

twenty chuan was recorded by Ch-'en Chen-sun'"- of the

Sung in his Chih-chai shu-lu chieh-t'i ^_*yjj^ fyfy 7^1 ^ but

this was most likely not the same edition as recorded in the

T'ang and Sui histories as it apparently contained a number of

pieces collected from various lei-shu ifH-^r • The oldest '.-extant

editions are all In ten chuan. , The Ssu-k'u ch'uan-shu edition was based on a recut block print from the sixth year of Chia-ting

^ in the Sung Dynasty (1213 A.D.). Chu Hsu-tseng 7

had access to a similar edition and he believed that it was the version upon which the numerous later Ming Dynasty block prints in ten ohiian were based. 5 There are forty-four fu seventy-four poems and ninety-two miscellaneous prose pieces in the Ssu-k'u edition, making a total of 210 pieces. Although many of these are fragmentary, this is considerably more than the

"hundred or more" pieces referred to in the Wei Chih. Either the later edition contains many forgeries, or else the original edition excluded many works that were recorded in other sources.

In any case, the Sung version used by the Ssu-k'u was > also ••-.

Incomplete as it did not contain Ch'i-fu shih found1 in the

y Yu~t '\:a'i^hsin-yung jL fj|T ^\ "|^Canc^ several other pieces to be found in various lei-shu.

In the Ming Dynasty there were at least two moveable- type editions made. The earlier of these, that of a certain

Mr. Hsu in Ch1 ang Chou ~h\ \^ seems to have preceded the block prints of Kuo Yun-p'eng ^fjj and Li Meng-yang jjj^

It was unfortunately not well prepared and contained many textual errors. The later edition, made by a Mr. Fu in Chiang An yX-^

^Jj" fa was more reliable and served as the basis of the Ssu-pu ts'ung-k'an %^ -f'J edition.

The most notable Ming block prints are those of Kuo Yiin- .fe

p'eng made during the Chia Ching-:: era j^- 5^" , and Li Meng-yang, the original of which was made at roughly the same time and was later re-cut during the Ch'ing Dynasty and printed in four vol• umes. Wang Shih-hsien yfc. made an edition which must have been published somewhat later than these two editions as It

contains Li Meng-yang.';s preface. Chang P'u also made an edition in the late Ming period entitled Ch1 en-' Ssu-wang • ch'uan-chi i • It was printed in four volumes and two chuan. All of these editions used the Sung Ch'ia Ting version as a starting point and went on to make corrections and additions of their own.

In the Ch'ing Dynasty considerable work was done toward making a definitive collection of''Ts'ao Chih's works. The most successful attempt was made by Chu Hsu-tseng, a Tao Kuang '•• ting yu ^Jt T'H ^l837) ohu-jen ^K- His Ts'ao Ghi k'ao-yi ^ ^

-^L Is based primarily on an early Sung block print made during the fifth year of Yuan Feng ^ (1082) by the Wan-yii T'ang printers f«£[ . Chu also collected both complete and fragmen• tary works from the lei-shu and added his own collations, based on numerous earlier editions at his disposal, and annotations, based on the work of earlier commentators and his own research.

The work is in twelve chuan. . Ten chuan contain the actual col• lected works. One ehuan contains extensive information regarding the history of the text as well as an annotated bibliography of editions referred to. The final ••- ahuan contains a detailed chron• ology or nien-p'u jcf-'|£jg" of Chih's life. This book was published in the Chin-ling ts'ung-shu ^f^^_^^n four volumes and unfor• tunately has not been reprinted in a more accessible and con• venient modern form.

The Ts'ao chi ch'uan-p'ing ^ ^£ ^ of Ting Yen "T" ^ was completed at roughly the same time as Chu's work but did not appear in print until somewhat later. Apparently Ting and Chu were unaware of each other's work and there is much similarity between them. Ting Yen took a Ming Wan Li |^ ^(1573-1620) era print made by a Mr. Ch'eng in Hsiu Yang -jj:]^. as his base text and added three prose pieces to it. Although he did exten• sive work collating the text, he did not include as many annota• tions as did Chu. Ting also drew up a nien-p'u and made notes on the text. His book was originally published in 1872 in two volumes by the Chin-ling Book Company/^|^j|£.y2j and has been re• published'in a re-set "Western"- version edited by Yeh Chii-sheng

-j^H/^in Peking in 1957-

Two excellent annotated collections of Ts'ao Chih's poetry were made in the 20th century by Chinese scholars. The

Ts'ao Tzu-ahien shih ch-'-ien ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ o f Ku Chih ~^ Jj[_ appeared in 1928 in the Ts'eng ping t'ang, wu ahung"J§g ^JC ^ edited by Ch'en Hsiin. The other work, Ts'ao Tzu-ahien shih chu ^ ^ 5^"$^r by Huang Chiehwas first published in

1930 by the Commercial Press in Peking and then reprinted by

Jen-min wen-hsueh A^ji^^in 1957- Of the two, Ku Chih's is the less extensive and the more difficult to use. It has no index and is unpunctuated. Ku's scholarship is somewhat better however, as he gives a more detailed discussion of the back• ground and traditional interpretations of most of the poems- and identifies the source of his information in a more specific manner. Huang Chieh has essentially followed Chu Hsu-tseng's text. He selected seventy-one of Chih's poems and added a great deal of commentary and annotation to each piece.

The most useful foreign language work on Ts'ao Chih's poetry is Ito Masafumi's Sd Shoku.^ . Ito has selected forty- four of Chih's poems, made his own translation and comments and added a critical introduction to Chih's life and work. He has 10

also prepared a well researched chronology of Chih's life.

Professor Ito's detailed and judicious scholarship is an indis- pensible contribution to the understanding of Ts'ao Chih's poetry.

There are numerous fragmentary translations of Chih's works in English. The most Important being Hans Frankel's translation of fifteen pieces in his article, "Fifteen Poems o by Ts'ao Chih: An Attempt at a New Approach". There are also

David Roy's translations of six of Chih's poems on the theme of the "neglected wife",^ and K.P.K. Whitaker's translations of

Lo-shen fu10 San tang shih E-^f^p1 and Ch'ieh po ming

hsing ^•j^-^"^1^ • Chih's works are also found In many antholo• gies made by Western translators.

The only large-scale translation of Ts'ao Chih's poetry made into English is George Kent's Worlds of Dust and JadeT3

Mr. Kent has translated forty-seven of Chih's works and written a critical introduction to them. The translations are by and large accurate, but the sometimes curious language employed, and the limited nature of the annotations has led me to use my own translations and commentary in the present work, rather than rely on his.

Ts'ao Chih's poems are included In a number of early

literary anthologies. The earliest of these is the Wen Esuan

compiled under the auspices of Prince Chao Ming of the

Liang Dynasty. This book includes twenty-five of Chih's poems, one of his fu and six other miscellaneous prose pieces. The commentary made to these pieces by Li Shan ^jp J|. and later the

so-called "Five Officials" of the Sung Dynasty, is very 11

useful in the interpretation of these poems. Also, the p'ing chu

Chao Ming Wen Hsuan'pf'%$Qo9i\%jBi edition of this book made in

the Ch' ing Dynasty by Yu Kuang-hwa -J"-^^ (in Ch^ien lung 37 J^pj^

(1772))"^ is a valuable source of traditional commentary col•

lected- from the notes of various scholars. The Yu t 'ai hsin yung

JS-'fjr%%j> an anthology of lyrical verse made during the

Ch'en Dynasty by.Hsu Ling ^^^^ contains a number of Chih's poems,

at least one of which, Ch'i-fu shih' was preserved only in this

collection by Sung times'. Ting Pu-pao' s Ch'uan Han San-Kuo Chin

Nan-pei-ch'ao shih lH>i% £ 1% 1%% $\$L%$ 15 , Peng Wei-na's §fe

\%%$\Shih chi "f^f *£i 16 and Yang Te-chou's^^^ Chien An

ch'i tzu chi jf^^ct-T ^ ^ a11 contain important collections of

Chih's works. The Yueh-fu shih chi j^/£j"^J£of Kuo Mao-ch' ien

f^j^of Sung contains most of Chih's poems which fall under the

classification of yileh-fu and provides much valuable information

.regarding the background of many of these works. Finally, the

excellent work of Yii Kuan-ying^C^jfe i-n his San Ts'ao shih hsuan

^ "J^r jj^ and of the scholars at Peking University in' their

Wei-chin Nan-pei-ch'ao wen-hsueh shih, ts'an-k'ao tzu-liao ^j^-^"

should not be overlooked. Both of .

these books contain scholarship of a very high calibre presented

In a form which is both easily understood and accessible to the modern student.

As mentioned above, the numerous lei-shu compiled largely

in the T'ang and Sung eras were valuable sources of works lost

from the collected works of Ts'ao Chih. The T' ai p'ing yu lan

fcfy Yt-wen lei chul^ij^^^, Ch'u hsileh chi '#77r^'f£»and Pe^

t'ang shu ch'ao $X*^£.3k%M to name but a few, all contain Chih's 12

works In either fragmentary or complete form. I have had re• course to these primarily for the purpose of verifying the col• lations of former scholars.

The most important source of historical information . regarding Ts'ao Chih's life is the Wei Chih in the San Kuo Chih

^ of Ch ' en Shou f^L-^ • This work is supplemented by the annotations of P'ei Sung-chih y^^-fc^of the Liu-Sung Dynasty

^.'1 $R' an<^ later by those of Lu pl^_^S^of the early republican era in his San Kuo chih, chi-ohieh • This latter work contains a great deal of information also drawn from certain lei-shu and later historical accounts such as the Tzu-chih t'ung ohien >(? i|j.£jjaOf Ssu-ma Kuang ^ ^ . The work of Ito Masa- fumi In his "Introduction" to his So Shoku and that of Yoshikawa

Kijiro ^ )l| ^/fc in his Sankokushi jitsuroku 5-§;ci^ ^jc 21 were also most helpful in clarifying certain matters of an his* torical nature.

In the biographical chapter all references will be to the

Wei Chih of the San-Kuo chih, pu-chu J*. "^j preprinted by 22 the Yi Wen Book Company of Taipei unless otherwise indicated.

I have used this text because it follows most closely the index compiled by the Harvard-Yenching Institute. In other cases where there is an index with text Included to a given source work I have used the reference system of that work. Where no such work exists or is not readily available I tried to use either the Shih-s an-ching, chu-shu -f'^ edit ion, (Yi Wen reprint)2^ or the Ssu-pu pei-yao ^g^pj^j^ edit ion.2 ^ Exceptions' to this will be noted. 13.- '>'---

Notes

1WC 19/22a,

2YWLC 55/996.

^Sui Shu]\$L, Peking, Chung Hwa edition, p. 1059

^Ch'en Chen-sun f^^lt^^, , Chih chai shu-lu chieh-t'i Jl ®* photo-reprint of a block-print based on the Yung-lo ta tien ^ *g* Jfc edit ion in twenty-two ch'uan 3 vols., published by Kuang Wen* Book Company in Taipei, 1968. l6/3a.

^Chu Hsu-tseng, Ts'ao-ohi k'ao-yi %^rJ^^x , ll/6a.

^See postface to Ts'ao-ohi k'ao-yi by Chiang Kuo-pang

7Ito Masafumi, So Shoku , Tokyo, 1958. o Hans H. Frankel, "Fifteen Poems by Ts'ao Chih; An Attempt at a New Approach", in JAOS 84/1964, pp. 1-14.

^David T. Roy, "The Theme of the Neglected Wife in the Poetry of Tg'ao Chih" in JAS 19/1959, pp. 25-31.

l^K.P.K. Whitaker, "Tsaur Jyr's Louhshern Fu" in Asia Major, IV/I, 1954, pp. 36-56.

11 . "Some Notes on the Background and Date of Tsaur Jyr's Poem of the Three Good Courtiers" in BSOAS 18/1956, pp. 303-311.

12 _—. "Tsaur Jyr's Song of the Ill-fated Lady", in

BSOAS 17/1955."

^George 0. Kent, Worlds of Dust and Jade 3 New.York, 1969.

^Republished in Shanghai, 1931.

15First published in 1916 as a block-print, republished in 1966 and 1968 in facsimile by Yi Wen of Taipei.

l6Feng Wei-na Shih-chi #L published in a block- print in 1613, a modern edition does not seem to be available.

17Yang Te-chou jfj was a Ming Dynasty scholar. A Ch'ing, Ch'ien Lung, wu'-yin %tfk^% (1758) print of this work has been photo-reprinted by Chung Hwa in Taipei.

l8Published by Jen-min Wen-hsueh A.^^C'^in 1957, Peking.

-^published by Chung Hwa in Peking in two volumes, 1962. 14

20First published by the Ku Chi Publishing Company ^ iK )j/^L^i_ and subsequently reprinted in Peking, 1957-

21See The Collected Works of Yoshikawa Kojiro volume 7, P- 73-133-

^San-kuo-chih, pu chu Z-§&| ,c: photo-reprinted by Yi Wen Book Co. if j^->£*jrin Taipei, from a Ch'Ing, Tao Kuang £jl era (18.50) block-print, produced in Shanghai by the Wu-shih Esi-shuang-t 'ang Jp- x&? $L 'jtl

^Sh ih-san-ching, chu-shu -f" 2- >JL 2»Lj photo-reprinted by Yi Wen, Taipei, from a Ch'ing Chia Ch'ing"20 jjfe M (1815) blockprint produced by the Nan Ch ''ang fu-/zsue/zi.in>,Gniangh~

^Ssu-pu pei-yaoffl %f jfa first published in Shanghai by the Chung Hwa Book Co. $ £ jt fa from 1927-1935. 15

THE LIFE OF TS'AO CHIH

Ts'ao Chih was born in the third year of Ch'u-p'ing

i^U 3f- ) era of the Later Han Dynasty (192 A.D.)1 He took the style Tzu-chien and is, according to Chinese convention, referred to also by the various titles which he was granted throughout his life. His father was the famous general Ts'ao

Ts'ao leg. who was to become the de facto ruler of northern

China in succeeding -years. His mother was a former singing girl whose family name was Pien -"jr . Chih was her third son, and at the time of his birth she was merely one of Ts'ao Ts'ao's many official concubines •2 Later she was to become Ts'ao

Ts'ao's queen and the woman whose sons would succeed him in his official position.

The latter half of the second century was a time of tremendous social and political chaos. The Later Han Dynasty was passing into a final phase of profound decline. In answer to intolerable living conditions In the rural areas, numerous peasant revolts surged forth over the countryside. The largest and most powerful of these was led by a semi-religious society called the Yellow Turbans. This movement came to public atten• tion in 184 A.D. when large numbers of its adherents launched

h attacks in northern China. This massive disturbance was per• haps the catalyst that led to the outbreak of wholesale military struggle between the various generals for control of the empire. 16

Ts'ao Chih grew up in the midst of this conflict. It was not until he was seventeen years old, in 208, that his father had managed to defeat or contain the other generals and unify most of northern China. This brought a measure of stabil• ity and peace to the area. Even then, however, the military campaigns continued as Ts'ao Ts'ao tried to complete the unifi• cation of the empire by overcoming the regimes that had been established in Szechwan by Liu Pel J^]'^ an^ in the lower Yangtze region by Sun Ch'uan . There were also campaigns against invading tribal peoples from the north and rebelling generals.

ffit Is easy to imagine that Chih's early life must have been heavily coloured by the continual movement, pressure and discomfort of military life. It is also natural that Chih would very early have been subjected to training in the martial arts.

We can find evidence of this in many of his poems and prose works. For example, in a memorial to the Emperor Ming (Ts'ao

Jul ) written late in his life, Chih writes:

I was born into times of chaos and grew up among the troops. I often received Instruction from the Martial

Emperor (Ts'ao Ts'ao) and observed the essentials of his c- technique in directing the troops and employing weaponry1;-

We also know that from an early age he had taken part in his father's military operations. In a slightly earlier memorial to the same man which contained much advice on military matters Chih says:

Formerly I followed our ancestor, the Martial Emp• eror southward to Ch' ih An. To the east I approached •• • • • the vast seas, in the west I saw the Jade Gates, while in the north I passed out through the Dark Pass. I saw the power that he used in directing the troops^and em• ploying weaponry. It could be called sublime. The memorials that Chih sent to the Emperors Wen (Ts'ao

P'i^^l) and Ming often stress the importance of military af-? -

fairs. These, along with a few of his poems and fu on martial themes, such as "The White Horse" or "Marching East"7 demon•

strate that Chih must have been very much impressed of the

strategic importance of the military during politically unstable

times. He further expresses the conviction that he was a man very competent to deal with such matters.

Although Ts'ao Ts'ao's family background was military rather than scholastic,8 he had obtained a very good education.

He had become a writer of considerable accomplishment. He also believed strongly in the importance of employing men of scholas•

tic and artistic talent in government. Next to his success in

uniting (§Jstabilizing northern China, his patronage of literature

and the arts was probably his greatest contribution to Chinese history. In many ways it was the longer lasting. Ts'ao Chih benefitted very substantially from his father's love of arts and

letters. He and his brothers most likely received the best tra•

ditional education available at that time. They must also have been greatly stimulated by their contact with the many learned

and artistic men who had been called to serve in the administra•

tion of their father.

Ts'ao Chih began to exhibit considerable talent in liter•

ary pursuits at a very early age. In Ch'en Shou's biography of him we read:

The King of Ch'en, Chih^ was styled Tzu-chien. At the the age of ten years or more he could recite the "Poems" and the "Analects" as well as tz 'u and fit $j£ totalling thousands of characters. He was also very accomplished in composition. Once Ts'ao Ts'ao saw one of Chih's compositions and asked him, "Did you copy this from someone?" Chih knelt and said, "As I speak my words have refinement. Putting brush to paper I create treatises. Test me face to face if you wish, why should I copy from someone?

Ts'ao Ts'ao took his son up on this idea and sponsored a kind of poetry competition in one of the newly finished towers in the city of Yeh jjjrjj :

At that time in Yeh, the T'ung Chiieh Tower ^ was .'. • • newly completed. Ts'ao Ts'ao took all his sons into the tower and had each of them write a fu. Chih took up his brush and immediately completed his piece. It was very readable and Ts'ao Ts'ao was much impressed.11

The result of this competition set the stage for the most active and problematic phase of Ts'ao Chih's life. His eldest brother Ts'ao P'i is not mentioned specifically in this passage but we know for certain that he must have attended because the Yi-wen lei-ahu ^-^1 *KJ£ contains the fu which 1 2 he wrote on that occassion. From roughly this time until the end of P'i's life, the two brothers would play major roles in o each other',s lives.

Sometime between 205 and 208 (Chien An^jj- 9 - 12)

Ts'ao Ts'ao decided to make the city of Yeh in Honan his base of operations.13 Because of this Chih, who was then still teenagedj.mmust have moved to live in that city. Of these early years in Yeh we know very little. We can only assume that Chih was continuing his education in the various military and civil arts in a more stable environment than he had previously.

In 211 (C.A. 16) Ts'ao Chih turned twenty sui ^ , the age of majority in traditional China. Because of this he re• ceived his first official title: Duke of P' ing Yuan .

This title carried with it an endowment '-of land and made Chih the feudal ruler of that land.11* There is no reason to believe that he actually took up residence in P'ing Yuan however, as the next few years saw him involved in many activities in and around

Yeh.

In the same year, CA. 16, Chih accompanied his father on two important campaigns against rebellious generals; one against Ma Ch' ao J^jj^ in the west and the other northward against

Yang Ch'iu \^^f')k'^ Several of his best poems and fu allude to these journeys and seem to have been written at about this time.16

The l6th year of Chien An is also very significant as it was the year in which Ts'ao Ts'ao, through the Han emperor, made

Ts'ao P'i Wu-kuan chung-lang-chvang ^3. ^ cj7 ffj5 ^-If1 ^ and aide to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister was none other than Ts'ao

Ts'ao himself and his actual powers extended far beyond those normally ascribed to that office. He was de facto ruler of northern and central China and had since 207 (CA. 12) been bestowing feudal titles on his supporters. He was by then fifty-eight years old and was undoubtedly concerned about the problem of selecting someone to succeed him in his position. P'i was the eldest of the three sons borne by the Lady Plen, Ts'ao

Ts'ao's principal wife, and as such was the nrcfst "obvious candi• date. It had been pointed out that by giving P'i a position in the central court and making that position directly responsible to the Prime Minister, Ts'ao Ts'ao was very likely indicating 19 that he had tentatively chosen him as his heir. J

Ts'ao Ts'ao did not, however, consider the matter of selecting a successor closed. He was a tough-minded man who would not allow convention to arbitrate decisions of importance. He used various means in the following years to test the abili• ties of his sons. He wanted to ensure that the most capable among, them would succeed him in the work that he had so ably begun. Unfortunately, this kind of pragmatism gave rise to a number of problems in the administrative circles at Yeh.

Perhaps as-.a result of the fu contest in the T'ung

Chiieh Tower, Ts'ao Chih came more and more to his father's atten tion. He had by then matured into a talented and personable young man and Ts'ao Ts'ao was charmed by him. In Ch'en Shou's words:

Chih's nature was simple and easy-going. He didn't cul• tivate a severe demeanour. Whether in his carriage or trappings, robes or jewellery, he did not strive for beauty or ostentation. Each time he was questioned during an audience he would respond directly and aptly. Hence he received particular favour and love.20

It isn't possible to ascertain if Chih actively sought this favour. It was not long, however, before a number of prominent court personalities realized the possibility that

Ts'ao Ts'ao might eventually select Chih as his heir. Thus, either through confidence in Chih's ability or through self-Lit interest, these men began to cultivate Chih's friendship and to promote him in Ts'ao Tslao's presence.

Foremost among these men were two brothers named Ting

Yi"J"^J^and Ting I "J" ^ and a long time aide of Ts'ao Ts'ao's,

Yang Hsiu-^^^i^-.^l All of these men held considerable power at court and there is no doubt that their persuasions on Chih's account, along with those of a number of other friends df Chih's had a strong influence on Ts'ao Ts'ao's thinking. Evidence of this influence is perhaps found in the Wei-wu ku-shih tsai-ling4 5JC^jP^^Quoted by P'ei Sung-chih. There we find this passage

"At first he (Ts'ao Ts'ao) said, 'Among my sons, Tzu-chien is most able to settle major affairs.'"22 If this is reliable in• formation, it is an indication that Ts'ao Ts'ao may indeed have been seriously considering making Chih his successor.

Ts'ao P'i was well aware of this situation. In response to this threat to his position he used his power to gather a group of supporters to counter the efforts of the clique sur• rounding Chih. This resulted in a political struggle which clouded the air around Ts'ao Tsao's court with many bitter feel• ings that didn't dissipate until many years afterwards.

It is difficult to trace the exact course of events in that struggle. There is very little in the way of source mater-

•ial, and that material which remains tends to be rather subject• ive or romanticized. We know for certain that Chih must have been in his father's good graces in 214 (CA. 19) because It was in that year that he was given the responsibility of guarding

Yeh while Ts'ao Ts'ao and his two sons, P'i and Chang jjr^ went 23 off to campaign against Sun Ch'uan. When leaving the capital Ts'ao Ts'ao demonstrated his confidence in Chih by saying:

When formerly"I was made commander of Tun Ch'lu I was 23 years old. I remember my actions during that time and have no regrets to this day. Now you are also 23 years old. You must strive to do your best.2^

In that year also, Chih was given a new fief. He was made Duke of Lin Tzu^^^- This fief seems to have been of the same size as his former one in P'ing Yuan. J

After this time Chih's fortunes declined. For some reason or other he seems to have abandoned his simple, easy• going ways and become something of a reprobate. He began to 22 drink excessively and carried on without much concern for his reputation. According to Ch'en Shou's account, P'i took advan• tage of this and used various means to undermine Chih's position further. P'i himself, on the other hand, was careful not to sully his virtuous image. Those lobbying on his behalf often stressed this seeming uprightness. Ts'ao Ts'ao was apparently persuaded that P'i was in fact the most responsible of his sons as he made him the official crown prince in 217 (CA. 22) after he was made King of Wei ^j^J_by the Han emperor. Chih was only given the consolation of having five thousand households added to his fief.

The drama at court did not end at this juncture. In the next two or three years Chih was to be involved in a number of rather unseemly incidents. Sometime in 219, Chih drove his chariot down the main thoroughfare in Yeh and then forced his way out through a gate which was restricted to use by the em• peror himself. This made Ts'ao Ts'ao very angry and led him to have the officer in charge of the gate executed and to have the regulations governing the behaviour of the various feudal

2J9 "30 lords made more strict. There is some evidence to suggest that Yang Hsiu was involved in the incident with Chih and even that he induced him to break the official regulations. Por example, in the Hsu Han shu $||?]^-||,we find this account:

Someone informed (the court) that Yang Hsiu and the Duke of Lin Tzu, Ts'ao Chih, had become drunk and were riding in the same carriage when they had driven out through the Ssu-ma Gate and defamed the Duke of Yen Ling (Ts'ao) Chang. When Ts'ao Ts'ao heard this he was greatly angered. So he arrested (Hsiu) . and executed him. At the time he was f6rty-fIve.31 Another account in the Shih Yu reads this way:

Ts'ao Ts'ao sent the Crown Prince and Chih each to go out through one of the gates of Yeh. Secretly he ordered that the gates not be opened so that he could observe their behaviour. The Crown Prince arrived at the gate but when he could not gain exit he returned. Hsiu first warned Chih that if the gate did not open for him he could, since he had been given orders by the King, have the keeper killed. Chih followed this advice. Thus, Hsiu, as a result of his involvement was executed.33

A second incident, also occurring in 219, had more serious implications. In the fall of that year Chih's half- brother, Ts'ao Jen had become surrounded while doing battle with the Shu-Hangeneral Kuan Yii ^|J^^ • He was in danger of suffering a major defeat. Ts'ao Ts'ao decided to dispatch Chih, whom he had endowed with two weighty military titles,-1 to rescue Jen. Unfortunately Chih was drunk at the time when the orders arrived and he could not but decline the responsibility with great embarrassment. After this fiasco

Ts'ao Ts'ao undoubtedly became very disillusioned about Chih's character. Ch'en Shou states that after the first incident,

"Chih's favour declined day by day".^ In another quotation from the Wei-wu ku-shih tsai-ling we read that after Chih had transgressed official security regulations, Ts'ao Ts'ao began to regard"him in a different light.^ The inability of Chih to accept responsibility in a military emergency was of far more serious consequence than his transgressing of the gate control regulations in Yeh and must have had an even greater effect on his father's evaluation of him.

Further, in that, or perhaps the following year, Chih once again apparently fell afoul of regulations governing the behaviour of officials and lords. In an incident recorded in the Shih Yu, Ts'ao Ts'ao allegedly had climbed a tower and caught sight of Chih's wife dressed in brocade. Since a law had been passed prohibiting palace women from wearing such elaborate *. -> dress/' Ts'ao Ts'ao had the woman sent home and put to death.

This must also have been very humiliating for Chih and very aggravating for his father.

When dealing with these stories, one cannot but wonder just what relevance they have to the eventual outcome of the struggle to succeed Ts'ao Ts'ao. Some historians, including

Ch'en Shou, seem to have felt that the significance of these incidents was that because of them Chih ruined any slight chance that his father might change his mind about the selection of a crown prince. Although that is probably true, I am inclined to see their significance in a somewhat different light.

When dealing with the political intrigue connected with the selection of a crown prince, traditional accounts tend to ascribe a somewhat passive role to Chih. Ch'en Shou's records never state that Chih sought to be crown prince, but they do im• ply that his supporters had his succession in mind and also that

P'i worked directly against such a possibility. There are stor• ies of how P'i oppressed and controlled his brother, including one that attributes to him the act of forcing Chih to get drunk before the messengers carrying Ts'ao Ts'ao's orders to go to the aid of Ts'ao Jen arrived. Such stories tend to lead us to imagine a scenario in which P'i, the villain, unscrupulously manipulated his younger brother, who was really a nice man, but rather inept.

More recentievaluations of the relationship between these two brothers and their respective motivations have been made by a number of Chinese scholars. Foremost among these is the late

Kuo Mo-jojp-^ who has dealt with the problem in his Li-Ahih jen

41 series. He tries to prove that Chih, along with his clique, tried to take advantage of his father's favour by underhandedly seeking to be named crown prince, even after the matter had been officially settled. In such an interpreta•

tion, Chih becomes the shameless intriguer and P'i the right•

eous hero.

There is some merit in both the traditional and the modern view. From the manner in which P'i rather heavy-handed• ly dealt with all of his brothers, and especially Chih and his

supporters, after Ts'ao Ts'ao's death, we know that he was not one to allow his position to be threatened simply in order to be humane. It is not difficult to imagine that he would have used all the same means open to him to defeat any movement that might have endangered that position. Chih, on the other hand, seems from traditional accounts, and from his own writing to have been quite -innocent of strong feelings of aggression against his brother or the power that he was going to inherit.

In his writings Chih always expresses great deference and af•

fection for P'i. For example, in 211, the year in which P'i was made Wu-kuan bhung-lang-ohiang, Chih wrote a fu dedicated to him in which he expressed what seems to be genuine frater-

42 nal love. Later, when P'i was made crown prince, Chih wrote both poems and laudatory prose pieces to commemorate the occa-

sion. Chih's eulogy for P'i also seems to be quite sincere,

even if, as Liu Hsieh notes, he devoted a large portion of the 44 piece to his own concerns rather than to P'i. Some later 26 scholars even went so far as to claim that Chih actually yielded il c the throne to P'i rather than selfishly take it himself. J '

It seems unrealistic to believe that Chih had no desire to inherit his father's position. He certainly was aware of his fa• ther's favour for him and it would have been only human if he had hoped that that favour would eventually lead to his being made crown prince. The fact that he allowed men like Yang Hsiu and the Ting brothers to lobby on his behalf is certainly evidence that he entertained some aspirations In that regard.

Unfortunately for Chih, he did not possess the ability to handle affairs that his father believed he did. He allowed him• self to become involved in a struggle for succession to the throne, yet he clearly lacked the political finesse to be successful in that struggle. In the first place, by occasionally drinking to excess and not respecting the laws and regulations laid down by his father's administration, he created a very poor public image of himself. Even if P'i had played some part In staging those incidents mentioned above, the simple fact that Chih allowed him• self to come to public attention in that manner demonstrates that he was either highly irresponsible, or at least politically inept.

Secondly, there is a good indication that Chih may have been victimized by the over-anxiousness of his supporters.

All of the above-mentioned events occurred after the sel• ection of a crown prince had been made. It would seem that a man with, as much resolution as Ts'ao Ts'ao would be unlikely to ren• ege such an Important decision without extremely good reason.

In fact, according to Ch'en Shou, Yang Hsiu was executed because

Ts'ao Ts'ao feared that he would jeopardize P'i's orderly sue- '2 7

39 cession to the throne. That would certainly suggest that, at

least by that time (219) Ts'ao Ts'ao must have been firmly set

in his decision to have P'i follow him on the throne.

It is improbable that Chih, who at least in his writings,

seems to have been a highly principled man, would have continued

to seek that position after his father had made a definite dee--.'

cision to award it to P'i. Nor is he likely to have encouraged

his supporters to continue to lobby or plot on his behalf. In working to subvert Ts'ao Ts'ao's will, Yang Hsiu was very likely

acting on his own behalf. Similarly, the fact that P'i had the

Ting brothers and all their male off-spring slaughtered as prac•

tically his first official act as King of Wei, indicates that he must have suspected that they also had Intentions of finding a means to replace him with his brother Chih. Here again, it is

difficult to imagine that Chih himself would have played a very

active part in such plotting. If he had, it is quite possible

that P'i would have had him executed along with the Tings.

It would seem then, that Chih had become a victim of his

inability to control those who he had hoped would help him gain

political advantage. Whereas Ts'ao P'i had made good use of the

support that various officials around the court were willing to

give him, Chih was used by his so-called supporters as they tried

to further their own ends. The number of embarrassing affairs

that he became caught in in the last few years before Ts'ao Ts'ao

passed away were perhaps to some extent by-products of his in-f-

volvement with these men. As a result of those affairs he lost

all the favour that his father had at first given him.

In the spring of 220 (CA. 25), the year following Chih's heavy fall from his father's grace, Ts'ao Ts'ao died at the

relatively advanced age of 66.' '-• " He had established a legacy

of formidable dimensions. He had also done his best to ensure

that this legacy would be preserved and expanded after his pas•

sing. In this respect his preparations proved to have some iron•

ic results, for, as we have seen above, the pragmatic attitude

that he maintained about the selection of his successor brought

about a great deal of 111 feeling among those of his sons who may have felt themselves worthy of the honour.

Ts'ao P'i took on the title of King of Wei immediately

upon his father's death. Within a year, however, he decided to

take the step that his father had, for various reasons, refused

to take. He forced the abdication of the Han emperor and pro•

claimed recognition of the actual state of political affairs

north of the Yangtze as they had existed for a number of years.

It was, nonetheless, a fairly bold gesture. Under the previous

arrangement,- the House of Wei was officially the protector of

Han imperial interests. As such, their role was a righteous one.

By founding a new dynasty, P'i technically speaking made himself

usurper of the Han throne. But he had apparently grown impatient

with the pretense of the former situation and felt secure enough

in his position to proclaim the transfer of Heaven's mandate

from the Han to the Wei.

Upon ascending the throne, one of P'i's first acts, as mentioned, was to execute the brothers Ting along with their male

children. He also ordered all the feudal lords to take up resi- 48

dence in their respective fiefs. These gestures clearly showed

the bitterness that P'i felt about the political intriguing that 2'9 had come close to costing him the throne. They also revealed the distrust which he had of his brothers and their future ambi• tions .

Por Chih, his brother's assumption of the imperial throne and his own subsequent exile to his fief marked the beginning of a very trying and disheartening phase in his life. Although he is now remembered primarily as a poet, Chih's ambition was to become an administrator in the Imperial government. The favour and encouragement that his father had initially given him had undoubtedly strengthened those ambitions. He was sincerely con• vinced of the traditional Confucian view that the duty of all able and educated men was to devote their lives and energies to 49 the betterment of the state. His exile from the capital meant that his ambitions quite likely were not going to be fulfilled and the future must have looked very bleak.

Some of the worst was yet to come. His exile to Lin Tzu was rather short lived. Shortly after he arrived there he was recalled to the capital to answer the allegations of the official investigators, or censors, who had been dispatched to monitor his behaviour. It isn't possible to determine for certain what crimes had been committed, if any, but it seems that Chih once again had become a victim of his penchant for wine drinking.

Ch'en Shou records the incident this way: In the second year of Huang Ch'u (221), the state Investiga• tor, Kou Chun, sycophantically reported that Chih had become drunk and unruly and had threatened the Imperial envoys. Some officials wanted to have Chih punished for this crime, but the Emperor, in consideration of the Empress Dowager's feelings, only decreased him in rank, by exiling him to be Duke of An Hsiang tfc tfe .51 Ch'en Shou obviously felt that the Investigator, knowing .30.

that P'i was particularly distrustful of Chih, was'trying to

ingratiate himself to P'i by finding, or perhaps fabricating,

cause.to have Chih punished. There is some reason to believe

that P'i would indeed have been, grateful for an excuse to deal

harshly with Chih. Aside from being bitter about the problems

that Chih had caused, him, even if passively, before the death

of their father, and still fearing that Chih might consider-

taking part in a plot to overthrow him, P'i had apparently been

deeply offended by his brother's overt expression of remorse at

the termination of the Han Dynasty's mandate. There are a number

of stories relating this, but once again we will follow Ch'en

Shou' s: . •'

t Previously, when TSe (Su Tse' j&fc. H'] and the Duke of Lin Tzu, Chih heard that the. House of Wei had replaced the Han, they both put on mourning clothes and cried grievously. The Emperor Wen heard that Chih had done this but. he didn't hear about TSe. When the Emperor was in Loyang he casually said: "I.have responded to the Heavens and taken the throne, but I heard that there were those who cried. • Why was that? 53

Tse, who was present at the time was about to blurt out the ans• wer, but someone pinched him and he prudently remained silent.

If Chih had actually done those things, one can hardly

blame P'i for taking offence.. At the same time Chih was not

necessarily trying to be offensive. As. mentioned already, he was

a highly idealistic man and he likely took great pride in the

fact that his father had been, at least in name, protector of'

the Han Dynasty. He may have been genuinely grieved to hear that

•the 'Han, which had lasted for roughly '100 ycarr; and had come to

represent all that was grand and civilized, had finally come to

an end. Nevertheless, to have made such•an overt show of remorse

was certainly not very tactful to say the least. .31

Just how strongly P'i wastmotivated to punish Chih is a matter open to speculation. The punishment which he meted out,

on the surfacejmight seem to be no punishment at all. Chih was

simply assigned to a new fief. The essence of the punishment

lay in the fact that the new fief was considerably smaller and

perhaps more culturally backward than the one which he held in

Lin Tzu.5^ Also, it is significant that, had it not been for the

influence of the Empress Dowager, the Lady Pien, the punishment

might have been considerably more severe.

This was not the only time that Chih's mother saved him

from a rather unhappy fate. She was a strong person and Chih was 55

her favourite son. ^ It may be that she was also to some extent

responsible for inciting the affection that Ts'ao Ts'ao felt

toward Chih. After Ts'ao Ts'ao's death she seems to have con•

tinued to exercise considerable influence in the court through

her position as empress dowager. Often she defended Chih against

the enmity of his eldest brother. Her death, in 230 (T'al Ho

jk-%a 4)-^ was a great blow to Chih.

Chih was understandably upset about his demotion to Duke

of An Hsiang. He later complained that his fief, at Yung Ch'iu

which he was given subsequently, was nothing but marshy low•

lands and did not give him an income large enough to support him- 57

self and his retinue properly. An Hsiang was undoubtedly no more appealing a location. More importantly, to have incurred a

greater share of ill will from his brother meant that his chances

of eventually regaining a position of prominence at the court

were considerably reduced. In the same year, 221 (Huang Ch'u ^jpf)), Chih was

ordered to another fief, .this one centered at Chiian Ch' eng ^j5£/7^

The motive for this change is not recorded,, but from the letter

Chih wrote to the emperor the following year, we know that he

was still very much under the cloud of guilt created as a result 59 of Kou Chun's accusations. In that year (222) Chih was given a titular promotion. He was made Prince of Chuan Ch

6 0

^_ . This promotion was simply an adjustment to the new

official political situation and similar promotions were granted

to all the feudal lords. The size of the fief was not increased

It was only 2500 households, or one fourth of the size of his

fief at Lin Tzu.

In 223 (HC 4) Chih was summoned to Loyang to take part

in the seasonal rites.61 It was normal for feudal lords to be

in attendance at such ceremonies at the court, but this was the

first time that Chih or his fellow lords had been invited to do

so since P'i had taken the throne. There were a number of fac•

tors at work which prevented P'i from calling the feudal lords 6 2

to the capital earlier. Probably the most important however,

was the fact that P'i had moved the capital from the city of Yeh where Ts'ao Ts'ao had established it, back to the old Han center

of Loyang. He did this undoubtedly as a means of strengthening

the credibility of his fledgeling dynasty. Unfortunately, Loy•

ang had not survived the turmoil that took place in the wake of

the Yellow Turban uprising and the numerous military rebellions

toward the end of the second century. It had been badly sacked 6 3

and burned by Tung Cho in 190. Naturally, if P'i wanted to

re-establish the capital there he was faced with a major rebuild 64 mg job. This rebuilding was probably not sufficiently com•

plete until 223 to allow for the proper observance of the various 65 courtly rituals. Once reconstruction had taken place, however, P'i certainly wanted to waste nottime^in bringing his'broth^ - "

ers and relatives back from their fiefs to witness how he had

consolidated his power and was well in control of the new dynasty

'• . . The atmosphere in the capital was not by any means clear.

Ts'ao Chih received an audience with his brother but there is

some indication that it was not granted happily and that P'i did not greet him warmly.66 Later, feelings became even more

strained when Ts'ao Chang, the Prince of Jen Ch' eng 4£^$(, died

suddenly in one of the residences at the capital. He had been

the Empress Dowager Pien's second born and had been very success•

ful as a general. Tradition has It that he was particularly - 1

strong and healthy.67 Thus his death raised speculation about

the possibility of foul play being involved. There are early

accounts that attribute Chang's death directly to Ts'ao P'i.68

There are also Indications that P'i wanted to dispense with

Chih as well, while he had him within arm's reach so to speak.

The Empress Dowager is said to have put an end to any such plans.

Finally, we know for certain that censors acting on Pli's behalf would not allow Chih to return to his fief in the company

of his half-brother Ts'ao Piao. This Incited much resentment on

the part of these men. In the Wei shih oh'un-oh'iu ^^^T^h^^v

Wecfind this resume of the situation:

At that time the fiefdoms were treated very strictly in accordance with the laws. After the Prince of Jen Ch'eng died suddenly (or violently) allcthelprihces ?) no:.-> felt brotherly sorrow. When Chih and the Prince of Pai-ma 34

Piao, were going to return to their fiefdoms, they wished to travel east together on the same road, in order to ex• press their feelings of bereavement,70 tmt the official overseers would not allow it. Chih angrily took his leave and wrote a poem (to express his feelings).71

In all, the events in Loyang demonstrated that there

still was much distrust and ill feeling between Ts'ao P'i and his brothers. P'i apparently felt that there was still a real danger of a rebellion or coup being staged against him and he did all he could to avoid such a threat. Chih, for his part, repeatedly stressed his loyalty and willingness to cooperate 72 with the imperial government in his petitions to the throne.

These petitions were, however, largely ignored.

In the autumn of that year, after returning from the

capital, Chih was again transferred to another fief; this time in Yung Ch' iu . There he passed the following year rather uneventfully we must assume. In 225 (H.C. 6) however, we find evidence that relations between Chih and. P'i had begun to thaw

somewhat. While on his way back to Loyang from a campaign against Sun Ch'uan in the east, P'i stopped at Yung Ch'iu to visit his brother. It must have been a cordial meeting as P'i 73

increased Chih's endowment of households by 500.IJ Chih un•

doubtedly took heart in this gesture. He could genuinely hope

for a further strengthening of his relationship with P'i and,

perhaps eventually, a real opportunity to take part in the gov•

ernment and thereby to fulfill his long-standing ambition to make a name for himself.

But, almost as if his life's scenario had been written

by Samuel Beckett, Chih's hopes were quickly dashed. P'i died 74 in the summer of 226 (H.C. 7). He was succeeded by his son, 35

75a Ts'ao Jul. Chih's efforts to regain his brother's trust were thus wasted and he had to begin afresh with a man many years his junior. Jul naturally felt very uncomfortable about the pres• ence of the men who had struggled with, or had been maltreated by his father. They were all his elders and were more mature and experienced than he. Chih particularly must have frightened him. There seemed to be a number of ministers and officials who felt that Chih would have made a better emperor than Jui, a fact 75 which must have worried the latter very deeply. Because of this, far from inviting Chih back to the capital to aid in ad• ministrative matters, Jui continued his father's early practice of constantly moving him from one fief to another. In the first year of his reign, 227 (T'ai Ho jfcjpp 1) , Jui made Chih Prince of

Chun Yi ^ In the next year he made him Prince of Yung 7 7 Ch'iu once again. Then again, in 229 (T.H. 3) he was moved 7 ft

a to Tung 0 tjj? jjsj > place he seemed to prefer to his previous

fiefs. All this moving was obviously very frustrating to Chih. We find testimony to this frustration in many of the poems that 79 he wrote during "this-time. And yet, he did not give up hope

completely. He sent a number of memorials to the court pro•

claiming directly and indirectly his sincere desire to aid in 8 0 matters of state. These memorials and the numerous other

letters and petitions that Chih presented to Jui did not seem to have much effect., Chih sensed this and his frustration began

slowly to turn to hopeless disillusionment. In the Wei Liieh j£ we find this passage: 8l Although Chih offered this petition he still suspected ;36

that he would not receive employment. Therefore he said: "The reason that men value life is not that they value the nourishing of their bodies, the wearing of good cloth• ing and living to a ripe old age. They value the ability to aid the Heavens and put things in order... Hence the ultimate goal is to establish one's virtue. Establishing achievements is the next best. For through virtue and achievements one can transmit a reputation, and what a gentleman values is for his reputation to be preserved... I have ambitions which have not been acted upon and because of this I sighed and sought to be tested, as I thought I would surely be able to establish some merit. But alas, I hope that my words that have not been heeded. will let later men of virtue know my intentions." '82

Chih was finally summoned to the capital, along with all other feudal lords to take part in the New Year rites of

232 (T.H. 6). At that time he was given the new title of Prince of Ch'en (Jjjj..^. This carried with it the responsibility for administering four prefectures as well as a slightly larger endowment of households.

This gesture in Chih's reckoning was undoubtedly only a token or even an Insult. He was already forty years old, which at that time would have been considered rather elderly. Being granted a new fief was like being given an extention of his term of exile. He died a very sad and unfulfilled man the following winter at the age of forty-one. He was buried on Yu

Mounta in tl? ^4 in Tung 0 as he had once expressed a desire to 84 be. He was given the posthumous title of "Thoughtful" or perhaps "Melancholy", ssu .^ His son, Ts'ao Chih ^ ^ , 86 inherited his title and fief. A few years after his death there was an official proclamation at court, sponsored by a number of powerful ministers, that exonerated Chih of all guilt. His writing87s were also collected and placed in the imperial archives. Taken as a whole, Ts'ao Chih's life could be seen as a kind of low-keyed tragedy. Although the crises that he encount• ered were never grand in scale or implication, he was very much a victim of the forces in his environment. His struggles against these forces were noble, but never heroic. In the end, he suc• cumbed to a melancholy and perhaps welcome death. 38

Notes

Ito Masafumi A^f^ S-iC in his boook So Shoku spec = ulates that Chih was born in either Tung Wu Yang ej?^^ or Chlian Ch' eng i$£ . P • 5. p The Lady Pien was born in Lang-yeh K'ai-yan^ entertainer m present day Shantung. She had been working as an 1g? ^ when. Ts'ao .Ts'ao took her as- a concubine She..became the official "first wife" when the former "first wife", the Lady Ting T^.^ fell from favour, largely because of the death of her adopted son, Ts'ao Ang 5/2a-b. See note from the Wei Lueh,

3 The Yellow Turbans seem to have had certain connec• tions with the folk Taoist tradition. See Maspero, "Le Taoisme" pp. 149 - 156 for a discussion of their religious practices. In Melange Posthwnes Sur Les Religion et L'histoire de la Chine, Paris, 1950.

l/3a.

^Prom Ch' en-shen ahu-piao f^^Jt^ ^ > found on 19/l8b.

19/13a.

Tung-oheng fu ^^Ef^,, see Ts'ao ohi oh'uan p ' ing ^ p.l. This was written on the occasion of Chih's departure on a military expedition. "The White Horse"^ |^ see my transla• tion.

He came from a line of provincial military commanders. His father, Ts'ao Sung ^ % was eventually promoted to the posi• tion of TJai-wei jk. fjfif or "Grand Commander". Ts'ao Ts'ao inher• ited this office from him.

^Actually it begins, & £. , but the ssu was a posthumous name, perhaps meaning "thoughtful" or "melancholy". This is difficult to translate into English smoothly. Prince of Ch'en was Chih's last official title. 10 19/3a. 11 19/3b.

12See YWLC 62, also Ch'u Esueh chi 24.

JThe conquest of Yeh, which had been held by Yuan Shao e took place in 205, l/21b-22a. We next, find that in 208 Ts'ao Ts'ao returned to Yeh and began to assess his accomplish• ments and distribute feudal titles to his followers, indicating that Yeh must have been his base of operations by that time. We are not told exactly when Yeh was chosen for the function. l/25a 39

14 P'ing Yuan itself was situated in present day Shantung, east and slightly north of Yeh. The size of the fief was five thousand households. See Lu Pi .San Kuo ohih.ohi ohieh - ifi

15l/31a-32b.

~^The most famous poem written with reference to this journey is the first of ...the two poem set entitled "Sending off Master .Ying'"-' • fc^2^ . The Li ssu fu & was written on leaving the capital and addressed to Ts'ao P'i who had been left to guard the capital, see CP p. 6. 17 l/30a. This office presumably delegated to P'i the command of the palace guard.

l8l/25a. 19 All the other male offspring had been given feudal titles rather than positions as officials at court as P'i had been. Also, in the passage in the "Annals of the Martial Emper• or: jj^fify pertaining to P'i's appointment, he is referred to as the Kung shih tzu which would indicate that he was considered the heir to Ts'ao Ts'ao's office.

2019/3b.

21 See P'ei Sung-chih's note drawn from the Tien Liteh '-concerning Yang Hsiu's background, 19/4b. Information nuout about the Ting brothers can be found in P'ei's note from the Wei;- L'ueh 19/7a.

2219/4a.

2319/3b-4a.

2419/4a.

25 Lin Tzu was situated south of the Yellow River almost due east of Yeh.

26r

Shou's: Because of his talent, Chih received special regard. Ting Yi, Ting I, Yang Hsiu and others acted as his supporters. Ts'ao Ts'ao had many reservations, but he almost made Chih crown prince several times. Yet Chih indulged himself and did not seek to cover up his behaviour. He drank wine unrestrainedly.. The • Emperor Wen manipulatedhim with various devices. He (P'i) was pretentious and tried to put up a facade of virtue. The palace personnel all around spoke on his behalf. Thus he was eventually made the heir to the throne.: 19/4a. Also see Ts'uei Yen's Biography in W.C., 12/4a.

2 8 Ts'ao was made King of Wei in the summer of 216, P'i was made crown prince in the winter of 217. l/4lb. 2Q At that time many of Ts'ao Ts'ao's officers and rela• tives were given feudal titles but, rather than live on their respective fiefs, they generally remained at the capital.

3°19/4a.

31See Lu Pi SKCCC, 19/8b. The Hsu Han shu was compiled by Ssu-ma Piao sifj^jfy , a member of the Ssu-ma clan who usurped the Wei throne to found the ChinDynasty. Although he did not inherit his father's title (Prince of Kao Yang %)~$Q J_ ) due to his rather dissolute behaviour, he received a number of appointments at the Chin court because of his outstanding schol• arship. As a servant of the Chin Dynasty he might have been inclined to try to discredit members of the Wei royal family and thus his account must be regarded with some circumspection. There are two inconsistencies in this passage. The first is that Ts'ao Chih is not likely to have been abusive to his elder brother, Ts'ao Chang as the two seem to have been on good terms. Secondly, the text states that Yang Hsiu was forty-five at the time of his death. This, Lu Pi and Ito' Masafumi find to be_in-. correct. Lu Pi bases his argument on -a text in the Shih Yu- " : which states that at age twenty-five, Yang Hsiu, along with the Ting brothers wanted to make Chih the crown prince. Lu's rea-1 soning is apparently that if this passage is more or less' par• allel to Ch'en Shou's, which mentions these men's involvement in that situation when he describes events around 214, then Yang, who died in 219, would have been thirty in that year. Ito does not clarify his reasoning, but he may simply be fol• lowing Lu, p. 209.

The Shih Yu was compiled by Kuo Pan J"j5'^ in the late t" third century.

3319/6b, quoted from the Shih Yu. 34 The two titles mentioned by Ch'en Shou are Nan ahung- lang ahiang $jf) £jj ^ and Cheng-lu ohiang-ohun fa _j|jL 3519/4a.

36 19/4a, quoted by P'ei Sung-chih.

37 See note from the Wei Shu quoted by P'ei Sung- chih in 1/46b1/ . v*" &

38 See note quoted from the Shih Yu in 12/3a. 39 19/4a-b, the text reads; "Since Ts'ao Ts'ao was con• cerned about the succession and because he realized that Yang Hsiu had much talent at plotting and was also Yuan Shao's nephew, he had Hsiu executed for a crime. Chih became very .much ill at ease. See P'ei Sung-chih's quotations from the Wei-shih ah'un

ch'iu3 19/7a. •--41

4lSee Kuo Mo-jo, "Lun Ts'ao Chih" f^" % yfjL , Li-shih jen-wu, (Hai Jen Book Company, Shanghai, 1947, pp. 1-29- 42 This was Li-ssu fu , written on the occasion of Chih's departure from the capital with his father on a mili• tary expedition. P'i had been assigned to remain and guard the capital. 4 3 For example, Serving the Crown Prinoe ^ If- j£. Euang-tzu sheng sung '£% • These may or may not have been written just at the time that P'i first became crown prince, but they were written to P'i in the position of crown prince.

^See Wen hsin tiao-lung•'••12/36/6 , Shih p. 65.

45 See, for example, the prefaces of Li Meng-yang and Chang P'u to their respective collections of Chih's writings.

46l/46a.

^72/lb-5a.

4819/7a-b. 49 This theme is repeated many times in Chih's poetry and prose. See for example, Hsuan-oh 'ang fu ^| |^ and "For Ting Yi and Wang Ts'an" -

5119/7b. 52 Su Tze was a general allied formerly to Ts'ao Ts'ao.

53l6/4b.

54 An Hsiang was a considerable distance due north of Yeh, in present day Hopei. The endowment of households in the fief is not known exactly, but since his next fief, at Chiian Ch'eng ^jj had 2500 households, we may safely assume that An Hsiang had that number or fewer. See 19/7b. 55

See P'ei's note from the Wei Shu, 5/3a.

^65/4a. ^7See Chiian feng Tung 0 wang hsieh piao JJU^ £=f ^ "lH CP P- 119. Also see Ch'ien tu fu , there he also complains, that his fiefs had generally been poor and backward. In Ch'iian San-kuo-wen ^ =. 13/4a. 58 Huang Ch'u was the reign period name adopted by Ts'ao P'i when he first took the imperial throne. It is significant in that, according to "Five Phases" £. ff theory, the colour yel• low should succeed the colour red. Red had been the colour that represented the han Dynasty. For reference to Chih's transfer to Chiian Ch'eng see 19/8a. 42

59 - See Feng Chiian Ch'eng Wang hsieh piao ?

•SfrT- #1 CP pp. 118-119. ./

6019/8a. 6l19/8a, also the "Preface" to "For Prince Pai'ma, Piao". The seasonal rites in question are not specifically iclen^ tiffed. Many scholars have felt that it must have been for the "Arrival of Summer" ^ ^_ or for a ceremony traditionally held eighteen days before the "Establishment of Autumn" iLJfk rites that the lords had been summoned. Lei Chia-chi in Ts'ao Chih3 Tseng Pai-ma wang Piao ping hsu .chien oheng ^ f$H & j£j £. 'Hf ~Pk %1 ~i*fc ln Hsin-ya Hsileh-pao %tf$_1^4ffL 12/August, 1977, argues that the rites were to commemorate the ^ "Great Heat", p. 358. 6 2 For a discussion of this see Lei Chia-chi, ibid., pp. 3580360. 63l/5b. 64 The rebuilding was actually begun by Ts'ao Ts'ao in 220. See P'ei-'s note drawn from the Shih Yu - l/46a. 65 See Lei, ibid., p. 360. 66See the story quoted by P'ei from the:Wei Lueh 19/10a.

67See Shih-shuo • Esin-yu %fc $(f$fc33/l, the note from the Wei Lueh. Mather's translation p. 470.

68See SSHY 33/1, Mather p. 470.

69Ibid. 70 In order to be travelling east together to their fiefs, Ts'ao Chih would probably have still been Prince of Chiian Ch'eng and Ts'ao Piao would have been Prince of Wu j^. . See Lei, pp. 342 - 346 and Piao's biography, Wei Chih 2*0. •fiP'ei's note, 19/10a. Much of the same information is also found in the preface to 'Chih's poem" series, '-For Prince Pai'ma, Piao". 72 For example, the two memorials In the form of poems, Ying chao shih -£g Tse kung shih -% % i$f •» cp PP-41-2, and pp. 48-50 respectively.

7319/10b.

742/26a.

75a3/lb-2a. ^Evidence to this effect can be found in a passage quoted from the Wei Lueh_ by P'ei Sung-chih. In relation to Jui' s return to Loyang from a campaign in Shu, it says: "At this time there was a false report which claimed that the Emperor was already dead. The retinue of officers and the flock of ministers wished to place the Prince of Yung Ch'iu, Chih on the throne. At the capital, every- on one from the Empress Dowager Pien to the host of lords all were fearful. When the Emperor returned, they all were mindful of their countenances. Empress Dowager Pien was both sad and happy. She wished to find the originator of the story. The Emperor said, 'Everyone in the empire told it, how are you going to find the originator?'" 3/4b .

^Chun Yi is not very far from Yung Ch'iu to the norths west, in present day Honan. It is quite possible that Chih never actually "lived" in Chun Yi. After he had been made Prince of Ch'en in 232, Ch'en Shou writes that in eleven years he had moved his capital three times, 19/21b. Prom the time that he was made Prince of Chuan Ch'eng he was, in name, given five different fiefs. Since Chiin Yi was very close to Yung Ch'iu and since Chih states ih^his Chuan feng Tung 0 wang hsieh-piaa that he spent five years at Yung Ch'iu, it seems likely that he remained there while being in name the Prince of Chiin Yi. Also see Ch'ien tu fu CSKW 13/4a.

7719/10b. 7 8 Tung 0 was in present day Shantung on the north bank of the Yellow River. 19/14b. 7^TRe best example is from his yueh-fu "Alas!" tf-J ^ which P'ei Sung-chih feels is from this period, 19/21b'. In it he alludes to himself as a tumble-weed broken from its stalk and tossed at the mercy of the wind. Chih often uses metaphors of plants or animals which have no fixed place to refer to him• self. Many of these metaphors seem to be the product of this period.

See for example, his lengthy pieces requesting to be given a chance to prove himself by the emperor, Tzu-shih piao Q 4t ,and. Ch'iu tzu-shih piao ^ ^ .

8lRef erring toCChiiu '~ tzu? s.n'ih^ piao.

8219/l4b. 8 3 Ch' iu 19/21a-b, Ch'en was in Honan directly south of Yung 19/22a, The passage referring to Chih's death is really ver84.y poignant. It reads: • • •.. • "He left orders that he be given a simple burial. His small son Chih was to become protector of the household and he wished to make him his successor. Once when Chih had climbed Yu Mountain, and approached Tung 0 (the eastern slope) he sighed and expressed a desire to be buried there. So they made his tomb at that place." Several Buddhist apocryphal texts have been attracted by this passage and have elaborated on it to give Chih credit for being a Buddhist and writing Buddhist hymns. See Lu Pi 19/38a.

85 There is a traditional explanation of the choice of this title quoted by Lu Pi from Hu San-hsing £fl 'Jg\ which says: "According to the rule for conferring posthumous titles, 'to come to regret past faults is called 'thoughtful' (SSM)1." If this is the case it would be difficult to find a streamlined English translation. Perhaps "Repentant"? 86 In about 238, JJrjjto 19/22a.

7'ibi- d 45

A GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE POETICS

OF THE CHIEN AN AND WEI ERAS

The period of political and social turmoil that marked

the decline and eventual collapse of the Han Dynasty had wide

ranging effects on most facets of Chinese culture. Politically, new administrative techniques had to be developed to replace

those of the Han and to meet the challenge of the chaotic times.

Philosophically, the collapse of formal dynastic power meant a

coincidental decline of the Confucian ethical and philosophical

system which had been constructed to support it. New philoso-'

phies and religions gained popularity and the Confucian system was re-evaluated. In the area of literature major changes also

took place. These changes are perhaps less easily defined in

objective terms than are modifications in governmental procedure

or the formulation of new philosophical and religious concepts, but they did take place. Moreover, the changes in literary .

practice and theory that occurred during the late Han (usually

referred to by the last reign period name of Han Chien An 5^_'-^- )

and Wei eras were probably the most crucial since the poems of

the Shih Ching were committed to writing, or at least since Ch'u

Yuan had written the Li Sao.

In many ways it was social and political upheaval that

stimulated and speeded the evolution of literary style. This may seem contrary to the generally held view that literature, 46

along with all the arts thrives only in times of peace and sta• bility. To some extent it is. In terms of sheer numbers, there were undoubtedly more poets, musicians and artisans living under the patronage of the Han court in its heyday than there were under the patronage of Ts'ao Ts'ao's military administration, or at the court of the Wei Dynasty which were the centres of the literary movement in question. However, during the Han Dynasty the prevailing attitudes toward literature and art were extreme• ly pragmatic and almost anti-artistic. The system of Confucian ethics and governmental philosophy which had been made state orthodoxy in the early Han1 had a strong governmental bias.

It was a system developed by and for the literate, scholar- official' class which had risen to pre-eminence In Chinese govern• ment and society. This class owed all of its power and prestige to the role it played in the administration of the state. Thus it naturally tended to value literature only in so far as it was useful In the realm of administration of the state. Such an attitude was not conducive to the vigorous development of artistic expression. As a result, literature in its belle-let- tristic mode stagnated. Poetry was written by and large in hol• low Imitation of the works in the Shih Ching. The major liter• ary form of the Han the fu or rhyme-prose, which owed much inspiration for its development to the Ch'u Tz'u j^j|j!J:did not follow up the trend, started by the Ch'u Tz'u toward creation of a free-flowing, expressive style. Rather it became a vehi• cle for, at worst, dry panegyric addressed to the Emperor or some important figure, or at best somewhat stilted and artificial 47

descriptive pieces written under the guise of admonition or satire for the emperor's perusal and entertainment.

Fortunately, while the literature of the scholar-offi• cial class was becoming ever more stylized and involuted, oral traditions of song and prosody among the people had continued to evolve and find new forms of expression. The Chinese social fabric had changed during Han. New social classes had risen out of the framework of an ever more sophisticated culture.

These classes had new concerns and lifestyles and demanded enter• tainment tailored to their special tastes. Further, the military conquests of the early Han had brought the Chinese into more intense contact with cultures from Central Asia. Music from these cultures became popular in China and new verse forms eventually were created from the lyrics written to the accom• paniment of this music.

So long as Confucian traditionalism held sway over the literate class these new currents in prosodic art were eschewed.

The literati considered such literature too base for their ser• ious consideration. It was for the entertainment of the common classes and perhaps their own leisure-time diversion. Because of this outlook, potential stimuli for new poetic forms were deliberately overlooked.

With the social turbulence of the late Han era the schol• ar-official class and the Confucian orthodoxy which they so re• vered were both given a major shaking up. Political power fell from the scholar-officials Into the hands of men commanding military power and their retainers. These men were generally 48

of more common origin and their taste in the arts tended to be

at once less sophisticated and less affected by Confucian Phil•

istinism than the literati they replaced. Consequently, they

were willing to cast aside the oppressive traditionalism of the

Han and sponsor the writing of literature in a more popular

style.

In this respect it is difficult to overestimate the

importance of the great military commander Ts'ao Ts'ao. This

man not only made a tremendous contribution to the continuity

of Chinese culture by unifying most of northern and central

China (the traditional centre of civilization) in the wake of

unprecedented popular and military rebellion*, he also patronized,

and participated in, a major new literary movement.

Ts'ao Ts'ao was of relatively low birth and was not a

part of the Confucian elite such as it then existed. He did

however, receive a fairly respectable education. Through this

education he cultivated a strong affection for the arts, es^e

pecially literature and music. As he consolidated military and

political power through his successes in putting down popular

rebellion and military revolt, he gathered a core of advisors

and administrators around his court in Yeh. Although essen•

tially a very pragmatic man who employed men and methods on the

basis of their efficacy in solving existing problems, Ts'ao

also held a strong conviction that literature and creative lit•

erary men had a definite place in a state's government. This

conviction, coupled with his personal interest in literature led him to seek out and give employment to the best literary minds

in the country. Yeh became a centre of vigorous literary acti• vity. 49

One of the most famous literary coteries in Chinese history, the "Seven Masters of the Chien An Era" was formed out of a group of men in Ts'ao's employ. These men obviously ben• efitted from their mutual contact and interaction. Along with

Ts'ao's talented sons Ts'ao P'i and Ts'ao Chih as well as a num• ber of other noteworthy figures, they actively engaged in crea• ting new styles and forms in both poetry and prose.

The raw material from which they worked was primarily• the large corpus of popular ballads and lyrics which had been accumulating all through the years of Han but which had been passed over by earlier writers. Under the patronage of Ts'ao

Ts'ao, who had little or no affection for Confucian literary taste, the Chien An writers used this fresh material to give new impetus to literary development. This is especially so of poetry, which they helped to re-establish as the major literary form. By pioneering new aesthetics and techniques, they made an important first step in the progression toward the great flourishing of poetry and poetics during the T'ang Dynasty.

Let us now examine briefly the major characteristics of

Chien An and Wei poetics.

To begin with,lit may be useful to look at traditional

Chinese criticism to see how the Chien An writers were evaluated by men much closer totthem in time and space than we are. Liu

Hsieh in his Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons^ says of the Chien An poets that they were, "Heroic in giving free play to their vitality, open and artless In the application of their talents."' This rather Impressionistic statement is quoted time 50

and again by later critics. It describes the "spirit" of Chien

An literature and tells us very little about its formal . prop•

erties. It is very tempting to discard this statement and nu• merous others like it made by scholars and critics over the cen•

turies as being irrelevant in terms of modern criticism. I be•

lieve however, that there is a good deal of very relevant, con•

crete information contained in this kind of statement, but in

order to find it one must dig beneath the surface somewhat.

The first phrase, which Shih translates as "Heroic in

giving free play to their vitality", i}^ >'A ^ is perhaps

the most famous statement ever made about Chien An literature.

I found very few, if any, later critical works that did not

quote or paraphrase it. Unfortunately there is no simple trans•

lation of the phrase and Shih has simply given an estimation of

its connotations. Keys to the phrase are contained in the words

"'r^JL'HSEl' and '' Tne word oh'i ^ , here translated "vitality"

is of course notoriously ambiguous. "Vitality" is not a bad

approximation in this context but we must keep in mind that oh'i

was not an absolute quality; the oh'i of Chien An was not the

same as the oh'i of other times. As Hu Ying-lin.in his "Poetry

Preserve" says, "The vitality (spirit?) ^ of Wei was more Q

masculine than that of Han". In any case, the literature of

Chien An and Wei was very vital and strong in comparison to both

the literature of Han which preceded it and that of the Six Dy•

nasties which followed. As mentioned above, the literature of

Han had stagnated and become rather detached from popular cul•

ture. Chien An writers were much closer to folk tradition and

they enthusiastically embraced the freshness and vitality of its 51

literature. Their work was thus bolder and more expressive than

that of Han. The writers of the later Six Dynasties period did not continue this trend. They became more concerned with writing'

florid, highly ornamental verse and so lost most of the Intensity

of expression characteristic of Chien An and Wei.

The term Shih has rendered as "heroic" is K'ang-k'ai '

When dealing with Chien An literature it Is one of the most

important epithets-. It is also one of the most difficult to

define. The connotations that it carries are very positive. It

seems to refer to an emotion that only noble-minded scholar-

knights or literati were capable of feeling. In some cases it

refers to a feeling of agitation related especially to the noble

desiresto meet with and.endeavour to solve problems of government

and society. In that sense it could be called ."heroism". At

the same time k'ang-k'ai can describe the intense disillusionment

and frustration which noble and sincere men felt when they rea•

lized that, for whatever reason, they would not be given a chance

to act upon their ambitions. An example of this is found in the

last line of the last poem in the "Six Occasional Poems" set.

After describing how he longs to join in the military struggle

against the kingdoms to the south of Wei and intimating that he

is unable to do so Ts'ao Chih ends the poem with the-lines:

The strings sound swiftly, a sad air rings out. Won't you listen to my song of despair.

In this instance k'ang-k'ai seems to be best translated

as "despair".

On a more personal level, the term k'ang-k'ai wascalsor1

applied to sadness over the shortness of life, the fear that one 52

would not be able to make a lasting name for himself, and the seeming futility of all sincere endeavour when times are chaotic and uncertain. Ts'ao Ts'ao's Tuan-ko hi^ng Ij^L^f uses k'ang fe.' CL-1 in this sense. The opening lines of the piece read:

I will sing a song to wine, Can my life last much linger?

It is like the morning dew And the past has brought much bitterness.

I feel a great sorrow , For cherished thoughts aren't easily forgotten.

Here k'ang fe' ai. has been translated as "sorrow".

The term fe' ang fe.' a-i often occurs in the poetry of Chien An, especially in the work of the Ts'ao family. Many other poems describe emotions which could be called fe'ang k'a-i, but which aren't referred to by that term. Late scholars and cri- 53 tics have found the expression of these feelings highly appealing and have revered Chien An literature because of it. The reason being primarily, I think, that, as mentioned, k'ang k'ai in all of its shadings is such a noble and Confucian emotion. As has been mentioned, the profound decline of Han during the latter part of the second century A.D. had led to a breakdown in the formal Confucian governmental system. This was accompanied by a loss of credibility fc5r Confucian morality and philosophy in general. Among Chien An poets however, there was still faith

in the essential validity of Confucian values. These men were connected with Ts'ao Ts'ao's and later Ts'ao Pli's administra• tion. For them, the relative success that the Ts'ao family had attained in restoring order to most of the civilized regions of China must have produced a large store of hope that dynastic order could be restored within a reasonably short period of time.

The close contact which these writers seem to have had with the Ts'ao family was probably also a factor in leading them to feel a kind of identity with the family and the government they headed. • Thus the tone of Chien An writings was sincere and concerned-. The poets were well aware of the tremendous difficul• ties their society was experiencing and in the best Confucian manner they continued to seek to give their services to the state and to work for the ultimate remedy of its problems.

This attitude may seem rather naive to us now, but to later Confucian scholars these writers epitomized the sincere devotion to the service of the state that was so much venerated in the Confucian tradition. It is the force of Confucian moral- ism, which viewed ethical content as being far more important 54

than technical achievement, that has, to a large extent, been responsible for the position of respect that Chien An litera• ture has enjoyed in China for so long. Even Huang Chieh, a relatively modern literary historian and critic"^ concludes that the thing that sets Ts'ao Chih, the most accomplished Chien

An poet, apart from most later writers is his righteousness or principle above all else.11 We may not consider ethical content to be particularly relevant to the appreciation of an ? artist's work, but it is certainly worth bearing in mind that

It was a large factor In traditional Chinese literary theory and that it was partly because of its moral vigour that Chien'

An literature exerted the strong influence that it did on later waiters.

On a more practical level, Liu Hsieh also acknowledged the fact that the Chien An poets had made a major contribution 12 to the development of the pentametric verse form. Pentameter had been written during the Han Dynasty by a number of establlsh- 1 TO ed writers, . but for the most part tetrameter was the accepted form. There is evidence that pentameter may have already been on the way to becoming the predominant form toward the latter stages of Han. This evidence is primarily in the form of a set of pentametric"verses'swhichnwereecomposed anonymously during 14 the. Eastern Han. ThesThise arseet exceptionallis'referred yt o beautifusimply als piecethe s"1 9 andOl d their existence tends to indicate that the form had fairly broad popularity by that time. However, the nature of their content, which is related more to the popular tradition than the scholar- 55

official class, and the fact that they cannot be attributed to

any particular poet, may suggest that they were not written by

a literatus poet or poets, or that the author did not particular•

ly want to be identified with the work. This being the case we might conclude that such verse, written in pentameter, had not

yet been fully accepted as a legitimate form by the literati.

Chien An poets on the other hand, had no inhibitions about using

it. Taking their lead from the "19 Old Poems" and popular yueh- fu poems, which also often employed five-character lines, they put their best efforts into developing and exploiting the poten•

tials of the form. By the time Ssu-ma Yen ^] ^ ^ usurped the Wei

15

throne to found the Chin Dynasty pentameter was firmly estab•

lished as the preferred poetic form.

The importance of yueh-fu poems has been alluded to above.

If one were to single out one source as being the most important

ini"forming the new literary aesthetics and forms of the Chien An period it would undoubtedly be the yueh-fu. Yueh-fu, strictly translated, means "Music Bureau". In the Former Han Dynasty the

Emperor Wu established a bureau for the collection and examina- 16 tion of popular songs and poems. Although this bureau was abolished near the turn of the millenlum, certain kinds of popu•

lar ballads and poems continued to be referred to as yueh-fu for years afterwards.

It is impossible to define just what yueh-fu are or what

characteristics they generally possess. As stated above, yueh-fu were originally folksongs collected under the auspices of the

Imperial government. After the Music Bureau was abolished, popular ballads collected and recorded by private individuals 56

continued to be called yueh-fu. In the late Han and Wei periods

scholar-poets began to write imitations of folk yueh-fu. They

either wrote new words to old tunes or borrowed the theme or

story of a folk yueh-fu as the basis for one of their poems.

Sometimes they would borrow a theme and add their own title or they 'would borrow a title and write a poem on a new theme. Some• times they would write such poems to musical accompaniment and

sometimes not. In all cases however, the pieces that they wrote were called yueh-fu. In later times, especially in the T'ang, poets wrote poems with new titles and new themes and still called 17 them yueh-fu. We can only assume that the reason for this was that the poets were writing in what they thought or considered to be a folk style. In actual fact these poems were largely undistinguishable from standard shih poems.

Formally, because y'ueh-fu were originally written to mu•

sic, they often had lines of varying length in order to suit the melodies to which they were played. As time went by however, their musical basis became less important and many yueh-fu written by scholar-poets had lines of regular length. Stylistically, early yueh-fu tended to be ballads, narrating stories of some description. Their language was simple and colloquial. This also changed with time so that later yueh-fu could be rather polished lyrics.

There are scattered examples of yueh-fu that seem to have 18 been written by pre-Chien An poets, but it was under the lead• ership of Ts'ao Ts'ao (whose extant yueh-fu number around twenty and constitute the largest part of his poetic works) that schol• ar-poets began to write yueh-fu on a large scale. Many of their 57 works tend to be quite direct imitations of folk yueh-fu style and form, but some of the more innovative writers began to modi•

fy both style and form.

The importance of yueh-fu did not lie simply in the fact that literatus-class poets began to write poems in imitation of them. Yueh-fu were tremendously rich in the variety of their themes. During Han, poets were, extremely restricted in their themes. Literature was intended to serve the state and reflect

Confucian virtue. Many themes were thus passed over as being irrelevant to" these concerns. Yueh-fu* being the product df folk culture, were not so bound, and they freely dealt with such matters as love, estrangement, the hardships of rural life and the tragedy of war. Chien An writers became very familiar with yueh-fu and took advantage of the decline of formal Confucian authority in the arts to begin to write both yueh-fu and standard poems on a much broader range of themes. Love and friendship became common topics. Poets even went so far as to deal with

some of the bitter hardships of peasant life,1^ something which

Han writers would never have deigned to touch upon. In this re•

spect the work of Chien An poets became much more realistic and attuned to the real world.

Yueh-fu style also had a strong influence on Chien An 20 writers. Han poetry had been notoriously dry and wooden. Its language was sometimes contrived and generally lacking in vital• ity. Folk yueh-fu, on the other hand, were extremely fertile in emotional content. The language was direct and powerful, if ra• ther unrefined. The musical nature rings through in the heavily 21 rhythmic feeling of their sentence and rhyme structures. The 58

Chien An poets discarded the stiff, stylized language of Han literati and began to use the fresh direct language of the common people. This gave their works a lively, uncontrived diction. Liu Hsieh described the Chien An poets as, "Open and artless in the application of their talents, never resorting to petty cleverness in the expression of their feelings, or in the description of what they saw, and in harnessing language for their descriptions, aiming simply 2 2 at lucidity." There is little doubt that a fondness of yueh-fu poetry had played a major part in producing these characteristic s.

Although-.yueh-'fu were of great importance in the formation of CHien An poetics, there were other potent influences at work. The most easily identifiable of these/M"^ were the "OJd-style poems"o written in the Eastern Han era. Of these, the "19 Old Poems" and the works attributed to Li Ling, Su Wu and Chang Heng^were particularly impor• tant. The importance of the "19 Old Poems" in"the devel• opment of pentameter has already been discussed. Their influence was also felt in other areas. Firstly, their diction was similar to yueh-fu,having most likely been strongly influenced by them, but it was slightly more sophisticated. The authors.of 'Old Poems' were quite possibly literati who had added a gentle touch of refine• ment to the rough vernacular diction common in yueh-fu, much as Ch'u Yuan or some other Ch'u poet had done with the

'Nine Songs ' )L ^JC^ . Not only did Chien An poets quote liberally from "Old Poems", they also continued the trend of using basically colloquial diction and adding some 59

degree of refined elegance to It.

Secondly, the content of the '19 Old Poems' was much more humanistically oriented than earlier court poetry.

This was also undoubtedly the result of contact with the yiieh-f ut^tr&dltlon. However, whereas ' fo-lk yueh-fu were largely narratives, describing emotion or life situations

in the third person, the "19 Old Poems" were more often direct expressionsrd'f thought and feeling written in the

first person. This trend toward a more personal express•

ionism, dealing with very human concerns was also continued and greatly developed in the Chien An and Wei era.

In summary, we have noted a number of significant:'-,- ' ... trends and phenomena in the development of Chinese poetics

from the Han to the Wei periods. We first noted that it was due to the fall of Han Dynasty authority and the accompanying social and political turmoil that was indirectly responsible for bringing about major changes in the literary field. Literary men, who had previously lab• oured under the oppressive conservatism of state Confucian•

ism, were freed to explore fresh modes of expression under the patronage of such men as Ts'ao Ts'ao who were much less Influenced by conventional tastes in literature

than the Han aristocracy. We also explained that the primary source of inspiration for the creation of new

literary styles was the popular tradition of folk songs

and ballads, represented largely by so called yueh-fu.

That tradition was a source of a broad variety of influences.

Prom these, Chien An and Wei poets drew new content, 60

new diction and new form.

Yu Kuan -ying has summarized the principal trends of the Chien An and Wei era and grouped them under three 2k headings: . -

I) Realism: By this he refers to the tendency of Chien

An writers to deal in a more realistic and expressive way with matters and emotions closely affecting them. This extended to the feeling which these writers had for the social and political difficulties being experienced in their time and to the attempts which they made to depict these difficulties in their writings.

II) Expressiveness: This refers to the greater candor and intensity with which Chien An writers expressed their feelings. They abandoned the heavily narrative or depic• tive modes of the Han in favour of a more personal and emotional style.

III) Colloqulalness: Taking their inspiration from folk yueh-fu poems,-Chien An poets discarded the artif• icial, styllz.ed diction of Han court literature in favour or a more simple and direct language, mostly based on the common' vernacular. Though they added a fair degree of polish to the language.*- they still were able to preserve a large part of its raw power.

To these observations we should add that Chien An was the period in which pentametric verse became establ• ished as the most important poetic form, setting the stage for the tremendous flowering of poetry written in that form during the Six Dynasty and T'ang eras. We also spent 61

a considerable amount of space exploring the 'spirit' of

Chien An land the reason why later scholars have often considered this spirit to the the most important aspect of Chien An literature. The term k 'ang-k 'ai7,\ was iden• tified as the modifier most descriptive of this spirit and ittwas suggested that k 'ang-k ' ai described a number of interrelated emotions which were a kind of practical embodiment of.noble, Confucian ideals. The reason Ithat

Chien An writers manifested this kind of emotion "so strongly and clearly was perhaps that they were often personally associated with central dynastic power and held the conviction that they could actually aid in the exercise of this power to the end of remedying the problems of their culture. They had not become completely dis• illusioned with the ability of the imperial government to rule the country effectively and were thus not as pessimistic or alienated as later poets.

This being a rough outline of the general properties of Chien An literature we should now move on to examine the part Ts'ao Chih played in the development of these properties, what unique qualities he possessed, and what made him the most respected poet of his age. 62

Notes

"'"During the reign of Wu Ti.

^Ts'ao Ts'ao's father Ts'ao Sung ^ ^ was a military commander.

Ts'ao Ts'ao established his capital at Yeh sometime between 205 and 208 A.D. See WC l/25a. 5 " The oldest member of the group K'ung Yung 3L$£ actually was a minister in the Han court but he had considerable contact with Ts'ao Ts'ao, often as a satirist or antagonist. Of the other members, Ch'en Lin J#|L Juan Yu frt $$q and Hsli Kan1'' fej^ - served Ts'ao before he became Prime Minister and Wang Ts'an Liu Chen !§?|/f£and Ying Chfang jfe Jjjjj served him while he held that office. See Complete Works of Yoshikawa Kojiro, vol. 7, Ts'ao Chih hsuing-ti ^Jl. JL. ^ (Soshokukyodai) pp. 91-93- 4Por a discussion of this see, m jfcfe g. *g ^ chpt. 1.

6 IJ^. ^ft, j|l Paris University, Peking Insti• tute for Chinese Studies. Translated by Vincent Shih as "The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons".

See Wen-hsin tiao-lung 6, 2/18/2. Shih trans, p. 35-

8Hu Ying-lin Shih Sou %^ j& Taipei, Cheng Sheng ed.

9#|£?/21. 9a" This will be discussed in more detail below. -10Huang Chieh (1874-1935) was active as a lecturer and scholar at Peking University and Ch'ing-hua University in the early 20th century. See Hsiao Ti-fei Ifi Jf^ 4fc Tu-shu san tsa- ehi $L * £L %ZJ which is based on notes taken from Huang's lectures in 1930 and 1931-

11See Hsiao p. 9-

12See "Literary Mind" 2/17/10, Shih p. 35-

13Especially Ts'ai Yung Ch ' in Chia and Chang Heng^|^.

"^See Yeh Chia-yingi^s 'an 'Ku-shih shih-ohiu-shou' ohih shih-tai wen-t'i in Chia-ling T'an-shih jp7 -i-,^ vol. 1, pp. 9-20 for a discussion of the problem of dating these poems.

15in 265 A.D. 63

The inspiration for the establishment of this bureau was undoubtedly the tradition begun in pre-Ch'in times that held that the poems in the Shih Ching had been collected under imperial auspices for the purpose of gauging popular opinion. 17 Li Pai and Pai Chu-yi were particularly important in this phenomenon. l8 Such as Yu-lin-lang j>]^) ^"tp attributed to Hsin Yen- nien j^-- "^e.g. Ts'ao P'i's Shang-liu-t ' ien hsing J^. ^ \J) ^•3* T'ai-shan-liang-fu hsing >jfj- >jf^ •

2 0

The Shih P'in~%^^0 in its general introduction says of Pan Ku's Yu'ng-shih -zfy< & > that its content was wooden and had no literary adornment; ^^^^C- See Shih-p 'in-ahu $v by Chung Jung, annotated by Ch'en Yen-chiehfl* /Art; , Tsung-lun *g |^i/2. ^ ^ For example Ts'ao Ts'ao's Tuan-ko hsing £&_^k.'fior Ts'ao Chih's P'ing-ling-tung hsing ^-^$.4^"- The former is laden with internal and end rhyme, the latter has a line structure of 3-3-4-3-3-3-4-3-7-7- and thus has a strong rhythm reminiscent of children's verse.

22See "Literary Mind", 2/18/2-3, Shih pp. 35 - 36. 23 There is some question about the authenticity of the poems attributed to Li and Su. See 5tr^ȣ f|j|5=|-PP- 6oi~

24Se e Yu Kuan-ying, San Ts'ao shih-hsuan ^.^^i^P 28 64

no page 64 no page 65 66

THE POETICS OF TS'AO CHIH

Ts'ao Chih is generally considered to be the most accom• plished poet of the Chien An period. Until Su Tung-po rediscov• ered T'ao Yuan-ming and brought his work the attention and re• nown it deserved, Ts'ao Chih was also thought to be the most

Important poet to have lived between the time of Ch'u Yuan and

1 that of Li Po and Tu Fu. The Shih P'in^%Q , places Chih's work in the highest category (Ji_ ^2 ) and says that Chih's con• tribution to poetry was equivalent to the contribution that 2

Duke Chou and Confucius made to human ethics. Liu Hsieh in his "Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons" also acknowledges the prestige of Chih's work in a somewhat back-handed manner by saying that Chih's elder brother Ts'ao P'i ought to be given relatively more recognition and that Chih's reputation was to an extent based on his work's moralistic appeal. Even today, only T'ao Yuan-ming is thought to have made a greater contri• bution to Chinese poetry during the long period from the be• ginning of the Ch'in Dynasty until the "Golden Age" of the T'angi

When we consider that such well respected writers as Ssu-ma

Hsiang-ju, Pao Chao, Hsieh Ling-yiin and Lu Chi all lived during that time span, we must conclude that Ts'ao Chih was not only a skillful and prolific writer but also a progressive and innova• tive one. It will be our objective in the following pages to try to establish, wherever possible, just what contributions 67

Ts'ao Chih made to the development of Chinese poetry and what made him a great poet."

A. Traditional Evaluation

As in the case of many Chinese poets, the factors that

contributed to Ts'ao Chih's renown as a poet did not always have

to do with poetry. It has already been pointed out that the

Chien An writers, as a group, were much respected because of the noble, upright and moral tone of much of their work. This tone

is given particularly strong expression in Chih's work. As a

consequence his reputation has been particularly good. Pang

Tung-shu says of him for example that:

His natural character was lofty, he was loyal and prin• cipled as well as being well read. Thus when he wrote, he could let free his emotions without fear of trans• gressing against the correct way.^

In terms of Confucian ethics, that is fairly thick praise.

Furthermore, because of the unfortunate circumstances of his

life, he has been viewed by many scholars as an especially

tragic figure; a noble and talented man who became the object of

unrelenting and unwarranted persecution. For this reason his work has an even greater appeal. In his preface to his Ts'ao

Tzu-chien chi ^-f"^^^- the great Ming Dynasty traditional•

ist Li Meng-yang ^ says :

When in reading Chih's poetry I come to "Lute Tune", "Song of Complaint", "For Pai-ma", "Floating Duckweed" and such pieces, or read "Seeking to be Tried", "The Spirit Rises" and other memorials. I always shed many tears. Alas! Chih,"his tone was courteous, his emotions lofty and his words were earnest and had an excess of sorrow.5

Chang P'u in his preface to Ch'en Ssu-wang ch' uan^-chi ^^S^X^

Jf\ w^ites in a similar vein: 68

When I read Ch'en Ssu-wang's "Rebuking Myself" 41"-i}^ |£

In both these prefaces Li and Chang deal primarily with the un• fortunate aspects of Chih's life. They both assume that Chih willingly yielded the throne to P'i and was therefore a truly magnanimous person who was repaid with only cruelty and oppres•

sion. It is very common1; to find traditional scholars approach• ing the poetry of Ts'ao Chih in this fashion, giving principal

importance to the emotional content of his work as it was ima• gined to relate to the circumstances of his life. Quite clearly, the grievance and anguish that Chih gave voice to, when placed

in the context of those life circumstances, found many reson• ances in the hearts of later scholar-officials. This contribu• ted quite significantly to estimations of his poetry.

The validity of some of the traditional assumptions about

Chih's life and also the basic nature of Chih's grievances has been subject of re-evaluation on the part of certain modern Chi- 7 nese and Western scholars. Curiously enough, some of these re-

evaluations have also been accompanied by re-evaluations of his poetry. Apparently tradition lives on.

We are only interested in the quality of Ts'ao Chih's

verse. The question of whether he was essentially an oppressed

and virtuous martyr or a spineless ninny is quite irrelevant to

such interests. As the late Wallace Stevens (who was apparently

unfamiliar with Chinese literary criticism) once wrote: "I do not think that a poet owes any more as a social obligation than he owes as a moral obligation, and if there is anything con- 69

cerning poetry about which people agree it is that the role of g the poet is not to be found in morals." With this in mind we will leave Ts'ao Chih's character and proceed to examine his poetics.

B . Roots and Influences

No writer works without employing influences gained from a great variety of sources. This was especially so of

Chinese writers who worked under the influence of Confucian , scholasticism and conservatism. Ts'ao Chitewas very , well read. His study brought him into intimate contact with such traditional literary classics as the Shih Ching and the Ch'u

Tz 'u as well as later developing works such as the "old-style poems" and yueh-fu of the Han era. Heavy traces of all these sources can be found in Chih's poetry, i. Shih Ching

The Shih P'in says that Chih's poetry was produced out Q of the Kuo feng in the Shih Ching. The exact intention of this statement is difficult to ascertain. Some have suggested that

Chung Jung is simply indicating that he believed Chih's work to be part of the orthodox, mainstream of poetic development.1^

This is a plausible explanation but one suspects that Chung had something slightly more specific in mind.

The title Kuo feng is sometimes translated as "Lessons from the States". There is a tradition which held that the poems recorded therein were largely veiled satires criticizing the Emperor or local rulers. Many of the pieces in fact had

little if any political content. It was believed in such cases that the poet had written in a strictly allegorical style, partly so that the author might avoid reprisals and partly to give a measure of discreet indirection to his work. Despite the fairly obvious fallacy of this tradition, it was accepted as being the simple truth by most Chinese scholars until fairly recent times.

In fact, many of the poems in the Shih. Ching and Ch'u Tz'u un• doubtedly owe their preservation to the existence of this tra• dition. Were it believed that certain poems had no practical function or elevated moral content, pragmatic Confucian scholars would have been less concerned that they be transmitted to later generations. In any case, beginning with the authors of the

Ch'u Tz'u, more and more Chinese poets began to express certain types of political satire and complaint through the medium of allegory. Ts'ao Chih, as welshall see later, was particularly

skilled at this style of composition. Later scholars were quick to make note of this and often became so involved in uncovering such allegory that they managed to find it in many places where

it quite clearly did not exist. In view of this it seems not unlikely that by saying that Chih's poetry was derived from the

Kuo feng, Chung Jung was referring to his ability to express political satire and personal complaint through allegory.

It would be difficult to maintain that the primary source

of inspiration for the style and content of Chih's poetry was

the Kuo feng or the Shih Ching in general. Chih did write in

tetrameter, the predominant form of the Shih Ching f but none

of his important works are in this form. There are instances

of lines or phrases borrowed from the Shih Ching scattered

throughout his poems, as well as allusions to particular poems. In "Poems of Feelings" the titles of two Shih Ching poems are mentioned as a means of alluding to certain feelings or situa•

tions described by those poems. Outside of this kind of allusion

and incidental borrowing, perhaps the clearest example of Chih's

debt to the Shih Ching is in his famous "For Prince Pai-ma,

Piao". In this series, which we will have occasion to discuss

in more detail later, there are first of all a number of phrases

or terms borrowed from the Shih Ching. For example, the last

three lines of the second poem, or strophe:

So I alter course and mount the steep ridge. The long slopes reach to the clouds and sun, My black horse is paling from fatigue.

is derived from a couplet found in the third ode of the Shih

Ching which reads:

I was ascending that ridge, ^ But my horse's blackness paled.

The reference to "blue flies" in the third strophe is 12 related to a poem in the "Lesser Odes", as is the line: "But 13

as depression becomes a sickness" in the sixth strophe. In

these two instances Chih most likely wishes to allude to the

content of the poems as a means of supplementing the meaning

of his poem.

The most striking aspect of the relationship between

this poem and the Shih Ching is the fact that the strophes in

the series are connected to each other" by the repetition of a

key phrase from the last line of one strophe in the first line

of the following strophe. This occurs between all but the first

and second poems. Chih must have derived this device from the

first poem in the "Greater Odes". In that piece the various

strophes are often joined by the repetition of phrases or parts 72

of phrases from one to the next. Chih modified the format of

this poem considerably but the basic device of repetition ena• bled him to create a strong sense of cohesion and continuity within the series such as had never previously been achieved.

Ts'ao Chih was much more drawn to the imagery and feel•

ings of the Ch'u Tz'u than he was to those of the Shih Ching.

In the figure of Ch'u Yuan, Chih found much to identify with.

He must have seen in Ch'u Yuan a man who, like himself, had

suffered many humiliations and hardships due to the unjust

accusations and suspicions of petty men. Although the exact

circumstances of their lives were rather dissimilar, the feel•

ings of intense frustration and indignation expressed in Ch'u.

Yiian's work struck many resonant chords among Ts'ao Chih's

emotions.

Chih also found the expressive nature of the Ch'u Tz'u

very appealing. Han Dynasty writers had generally avoided such

expressionism in favour of a more objective depictive style.

The Chien An writers, and especially Chih felt a need to develop

a more direct and subjective style. The Ch'u Tz'u offered a

good model for such a style.

Furthermore, the highly emotive imagery of the Ch'u Tz'u

was a great source of inspiration for Chih's work. To a poet

living in the relatively dry and severe northern region of China,

the lush images of semi-tropical flora and fauna which filled

the Ch'u Tz'u must have seemed very exotic and attractive. As

a result Chih often drew upon the various pieces in the Ch*u Tz'u

in his own writing. This tendency is especially evident in his

"wandering immortals" poems. Chih wrote quite a number of these 73

and all of them are essentially related to the Yuan yu ^j^f£ in the Ch'u Tz'u 7^ Poems such as "Duckweed" and "Alas!" in which he uses plant imagery in a metaphoric or allegoric manner also

owe a certain amount of inspiration to the persistent use of nature imagery in the Ch'u Tz'u.. It might be useful here to

examine one of Chih's "wandering immortals" poems as a means of

demonstrating how and to what extent he employed such imagery.

"Travelling the Fifth Realm" is a classic example of a

"wandering immortals" poem. It combines mythology from the

tradition of religious Taoism with elements of pure phantasy.

We will be looking at this genre later in more detail. For our

purposes here it is only necessary to note that Chih's approach

to such pieces was probably not fully religious. The opening

line of the Yuan yu - in":the Ch'u Tz'u reads: "I am saddened by

the oppressions of the common run and would like to lightly

rise and travel afar."1^ Chih used this line as a starting point

and took the idea of wandering as an immortal primarily as a

symbol for his desire to find an escape from the the mundane

existence which he found so abhorrent.

The first couplets of "Travelling the Fifth Realm" state

the poet's desire to escape the confines of terrestrial exis•

tence and travel far into the mysterious realms beyond the clouds.

This is a fairly standard manner of introduction. It relates

to the first line of the Yuan yu quoted above. The fifth and

sixth lines contain images drawn from the Chiu ko JtMfc There

we find reference to a "blue cloud gown" and a "white rainbow

tunic". In this instance, as in most others, Chih hasn't used

the exact wording of the original passage, he has modified it slightly to better suit the context and feeling of his own poem. 17

In the following line, the term "flower canopy" Is drawn from

the Chiu huai > while the modifier an-ai ^"lij is found in

the Li sao. The idea of riding behind six dragons is derived l8 tfroo mhav the e haldi widChinge usag& e in rathe"wanderinr thag n immortalsthe Ch'u " Tz'upoetr buy t durinit seemg s

that time. Reference to the sun as "the dazzling spirit"

is found in the T'ien wen J^fJ^ , and the modifier shu-hu -('Jf-^?*

is used in the Chiu chang • To continue with this account•

ing process would be tedious as in almost half of the twenty-

four lines in the poem some term or image has been borrowed from

one of several pieces in the Ch'u Tz'u. Although this kind of

borrowing is most prevalent In Chih's "wandering immortals"

poems, it does occur to a greater or lesser degree In a very

large number of his works.

ii. Yueh-fu

The importance of yueh-fu in the poetic development of

the Chien An and Wei periods has already been discussed in the

previous chapter. Here we will look at the special role that

Ts'ao Chih played in bringing yueh-fu influence to bear on lit-

eratus poetry and in modifying yueh-fu style.

Yueh-fu were, by original definition, popular songs col•

lected by an imperial bureau. As songs they naturally were as

much music as they were poetry. The length of their lines was

directly related to the melody used to accompany them. The

tonality of the words was taken into consideration so that the

sound and rhythm of the words might better flow and accentuate

the melody. Both of these factors are apparent in the yueh-fu . written by Ts'ao Chih. 75

Many yueh-fu were written in irregular meter. Chih also wrote a reasonable number of such verses. The majority of these were composed to tunes already in use as the accompaniment to older yueh-fu."East of P'ing Ling", "To: Great Trouble in Coming Days" and "The Cassia Tree" are all examples of this type of composition. Many yueh-fu^ eve written In regular p.entamet.erc

Chih obviously preferred this form as approximately three-quar• ters of his extant yueh-fu employ it. This is in fairly marked contrast to his brother Ts'ao P'i and his father Ts'ao Ts'ao who both seemed, to have preferred tetrameter and irregular 19 forms. It is difficult to establish just how ...closely -some of Chih's longer poems such as "The Sage Emperor"^ j^? , "Ling

Chih'lg. and "Great Wei";^$^Jj^ were related to music. Some scholars believe that in many cases the relationship was not at all strong.

When poetry is sung, the sound of the words, or their tonality, becomes very important. The authors of folk yueh-fu must have been aware of this and so, apparently, was Chih. Un• fortunately, without reconstructing the sounds of his poems, something quite beyond the scope of this work, we cannot legiti• mately make^any statements about this situation. For now, we will have to rely on the evaluations of Chinese scholars such as Chang Chieh«j|jij£- and Chang Wen-chu^j^^^^ . Chang Chieh, in his Sui-han-t'ang shih-hua writes, "In Juan Shih-tsung's poetry the feeling is the outstanding quality. In T'ao Yuan-ming's poetry the feeling is the outstanding quality. In Ts'ao Tzu- 20 chien's poetry the outstanding quality is its tonality." Chang Wen-chu, in his article "Literary attainments of Ts'ao Ts'ao and his sons"^J^^^y3^__^^ , lists among 76

the four major contributions of Ts'ao Chih, his ability to create

2 '1 a musical feeling in his poems. This attention to tonality was very likely stimulated through his contact with yueh-fu.

As we also noted above, the language of folk yueh-fu was very colloquial and unrefined. It was.also, by nature, much more direct than the ornamental diction found in Han court lit• erature. Ts'ao Chih was conscious of the properties of this lang• uage. In some of his yueh-fu he uses a diction that is very si• milar to that of earlier Han yueh-fu. For some reason or other, it is in poems of irregular meter that one most often finds this style of language. Chih seems to have associated colloquial dic• tion with irregular verse much more than with regular pentameter.

Chih was not satisfied simply to imitate the unrefined diction of folk ballads however. He wished to find a language that would have the forcefulness of colloquial speech but which would also possess a much higher degree of elegance and refine• ment. In this quest he was-quite successful. Many of his yueh-

fu ? though preserving the vitality and directness of earlier ballads, have a feeling of elegance that could only have been produced by a skillful and highly literate poet such as Chih.

The classic example of this is found in the comparison of his

"Beautiful Maiden" with the early yueh-fu "Mulberry by the Path" f&J^-^' Both of these poems concern a beautiful young woman who picks mulberry leaves. From the similarity of theme and the number of common images and phrases, we can be quite certain that

Ts'ao Chih intended his piece to be an imitation of the earlier piece. "Mulberry by the Path" opens with the lines: 77

The sun rises from the south-east corner And shines on Master Ch ' in ' s mansion.

Master Ch'in has a fine woman Who goes by the name of Lo Fu.

Lo Fu likes silkworms and the mulberry ?y So she picks mulberry leaves by the town's southern corner. _i

I have deliberately avoided simplifying the translation so as to convey some of the roughness in the texture of the or• iginal. It isn't difficult to see that there is very little poetic refinement in these lines. The vocabulary is simple and there is no attempt made to avoid repeating words from one line to the next. By contrast Chih's opening lines are much more artful:

A beautiful maiden, attractive and charming Picks mulberry leaves by the fork in the road.

The soft branches sway in profusion, . Falling leaves flutter to the ground.

In "Mulberry..." the identity of the maiden is relevant because there is a legend behind the piece 25- Chih is only Interested in this woman as a symbolic figure and therefore is able to dis• pense with the long winded introduction found in the earlier poem. The woman in "Mulberry..." is described simply as "fine" or "good" TJJ^- . Chih however, manages to include three mod• ifiers in his opening line; "beautiful" i£ , "fascinating" or "TV

"attractive"-^ and "at ease" or "charming" . In the second couplet Chih ostensibly describes the mulberry tree, but the description also serves as a metaphor for the beauty of the maiden.

The "Mulberry..." continues:

Her basket sash is made of blue silk, The basket hook is made of a cassia branch. 78

From her head fall pliant tresses> In her ears are bright moon-pearls.

Her petticoat is made of light-yellow brocade, Her bodice is made of purple brocade.

These lines are meant to describe the beauty of the maiden. Rather than do this directly, the poet has described her jewelry and clothing from which we are meant to infer the nature of her beauty. This is a neat device, but the clumsiness of the phrasing makes it seem weak and contrived. Ther?e is a rudimentary parallelism in the lines, but this is created through an obvious redundancy in the syntax (XX 3^ XX) which gives a feeling of simple repetition more than anything else. The middle couplet is constructed with somewhat more finesse but the opposition of "From her head..." f^J^- and "In her ears..." j£ cj? is quite without grace. In this passage once again there has been no attempt to avoid repetition of words from one line to the next.

Ts'ao Chih employs a similar technique of description by association to better effect;

Her rolled-up sleeve reveals a silk-white hand; On her fair wrist is a bracelet of gold.

Gdlden swallow clasps hold up her hair, And from her waist hang pendants of blue jade.

Bright pearls are strung all around her precious figure While strings of coral are mixed with green pearls.

Her silken robes seem to be floating As her light skirt swirls with the wind.

From her glances a light seems to shine forth And when she sings her breath is like orchids.

Even through the heavy screen of my translation, it is possible

to see that this passage is far more elegant and skllfullthan the

one in "Mulberry...". The vocabulary Chih employs Is much more varied and exotic. There is considerable evidence of Ch'u Tz'u influence in his choice of imagery. There is a simple parallel• ism in some of the couplets but he has avoided the redundancy of

"Mulberry...". Perhaps the most artful turn in his description

is his introduction of motion and sound into the picture he cre• ates. The image of the maiden's robes swirling and floating and the imagined sound of her voice adds considerable strength to the passage.

The "Mulberry..." continues with a description of the effect that Lo Fu has on those who see her;

When travellers see Lo Fu

They drop their shoulder poles and stroke their beards.

When youths see Lo Fu They doff their hats and wear a turban. Ploughmen forget their ploughs, Hoe-men forget their hoes. 26 In their comings and goings, they resent each other, But they only sit and watch Lo Fu.

Here again, the feeling of redundancy arises. Line patterns and words are repeated with unsophisticated abandon.

Ts'ao Chih avoids this problem by reducing his passage to only

one couplet:

Passers-by stop in their carriages; Those resting forget to eat their meals.

From this point on the close similarity between the two

pieces is lost. In "Mulberry..." Lo Fu is discovered by a gov•

ernment official who propositions her. She rejects him on the

grounds that they both are married, and not to each'-other. •, The

last stanza involves a description of Lo Fu's husband and his

household. This man is apparently very rich and important. 80

In "Beautiful Maiden" Chih turns the ending into a bit of political allegory. The maiden, though beautiful beyond compare, has not yet found a suitable mate. There is no one who has ~. enough virtue or principle to satisfy her. As a result she wastes away in her painted tower and bemoans her fate. This is quite obviously an allegory representing the plight of virtuous officials such as Chih himself who are unable to gain an oppor• tunity to exercise their talents in government because the ruler

Is not enlightened enough to appreciate them. This poem is therefore, an excellent example not only of how Ts'ao Chih was able to refine the rough, colloquial diction of folk yueh-fu and create an elegant poetic style, but also of how he remoulded the content of such pieces. Polk yueh-fu were most often ballads which simply narrated a story. They seldom carried much expres• sion of personal thought or emotion. In contrast, Ts'ao Chih worked from the framework of this narrative style to create poetry that was of a very personal nature. This tendency toward an In• dividualistic expressionism is a major facet of his art. From the yueh-fu tradition he was able to draw a wide variety of ima• ges and human situations which could serve as a vehicle for this expressionism. iii. Ku-shih and the "19 Old Poems"

The term Ku-shih ov "old-style poem" generally refers to any poem written in pentameter or heptameter without the use of tonal inversion or syntactic parallelism. In dealing with the Chien An period the term often refers more specifically to the anonymous pentametric verse written during the Eastern

Han Dynasty. This poetry was very closely related to the yueh-fu •27' tradition. The use of pentameter was certainly inspired by 81 the use of this form in various yueh-fu poems, such as "Mulberry by the Path" examined above. Furthermore, ku-shih often dealt with themes relating to the lives of the common people, either the peasants or the urban bourgeoisie. This was a tendency de• rived from the yueh-fu tradition also. What set these poems apart was largely the fact that they were not written to the accompaniment of a particular piece of music and were not written in imitation of an established yueh-fu theme. There was also a tendency for these poems to be less narrative in character and to employ a somewhat more classical language than folk yueh-fu.

Among ku-shih the pieces that had by far the greatest impact on later generations were the "19 Old Poems". These were probably collected by an unidentified scholar in the East• ern Han era. The reason that these poems became so important is most likely that they were not only very progressive in their use of themes and diction drawn from the popular tradition but also very well written. Their language is direct and expressive, the themes they deal with are very human. These properties were very attractive to later poets.

In the poetry of Ts'ao Chih we constantly find the use of themes and phrasing from these works. When reading such works as "Six Occasional Poems" and"Seven Sorrows" it is extremely easy to discern the great debt that Chih owes to these early composi• tions .

C. The Question of Allegory

One of the most persistent, concerns of Chinese scholars

dealing with the :poe try cdf'".'Ts'ao. 'Gnlh'-hasofeeenttD^.d±scoverj-.arid

interpret the allegorical meanings beneath the surface of his texts. Often this concern has overshadowed all others and some

scholars have, as a result, drawn a very distorted picture of the nature and intent of Chih's work. There is little doubt that

some of Chih's poems have a definite allegorical content. As mentioned above, the technique of writing allegory into poems

developed very early in China. Due to the exegetical traditions

that had grown up around the Shih Ching and Ch'u Tz'u, poets were led to believe that poets of high antiquity employed the

device. Thus, because of the pressure of Confucian tradition they felt somewhat obliged to use it also. More importantly though, the great emphasis on the use of indirectness in liter•

ature made allegory seem a rather discreet and elegant mannerism.

The problem now, as always, is to discern when allegory

is being used and what it means. The "Concise Oxford Diction• ary" defines allegory as: "Narrative description of a subject 28

under guise of another suggestively similar." This would

seem to be a good starting point for our discussion. Leaving

aside classical Chinese literature for the moment, if we take

George Orwell's "Animal Farm" as a good example of modern day

allegory we can easily see that it is a narrative description

of the Russian Revolution under the guise of a suggestively

similar revolution undertaken by the animals on a particular

farm. This all seems quite straightforward except when we consi•

der that when I first read the story (in highschool), I had no

idea that Orwell was concerned primarily with events in Russia

and not on an imaginary farm. Obviously what is suggestively

similar to one is quite opaque to another. Herein lies the

major problem with the identification and interpretation of allegory in classical Chinese poetry.

We are living almost two thousand years after Chih wrote his poetry. This naturally places us at a considerable disadvan• tage when dealing with the question of allegory in his work.

What may have been suggestively similar imagery or phrasing to one of Chih's contemporaries is often simply imagery or phrasing to us. Even scholars living in closer spacial and temporal prox• imity to Chih than we do apparently had a great deal of difficul• ty in identifying some of his allegorical expression. Sometimes as many as three or four contradictory interpretations may exist

for the same line or poem., There were also many scholars who chose to ignore advances in poetic theory and practice and stead• fastly continued to interpret Chih's poetry according to the very traditional view that, like all literature, it almost by definition contained some form of political content or relevance.

As a result, allegorical meanings have been attributed to the majority of Chih's poems, when in fact, only a few of his works can with certainty be said to possess this property.

A definitive study of the use of allegory in Ts'ao Chih's poetry would be a very complex and treacherous undertaking and I do not propose anything of the sort here. However, by examining two or three of his poems, I think we may be able to gain some

insight into the general extent and style of his employment of

the technique. Let us begin with "A Feast".

This poem is of a standard form which is Intended to

celebrate the pleasures of a feast. In this case the feast seems

to have been given by the future founder of the Wei Dynasty,

Ts'ao P'i. The guests are the various nobles, officials and lit- erati of the Wei capital at Yeh and the feast takes place in a garden in that city, possibly the T'ung Chiieh Garden. We can easily assume that this poem is a product of a time in Ts'ao

Chih's life when he enjoyed an active and stimulating social life.

He seems to have been associated closely with many members of the so-called "Seven Masters of Chien An" coterie. This associa• tion was both social and artistic as we find much evidence of mutual borrowing and influence among Chih, his brother P'i and the members of the "Seven Masters" group. For example, we can see that the first line from this poem is very similar to a line from one of Ying Ch' ang' s poems,29, and points of similarity can also be found in poems entitled "A Feast" by Wang Ts'an and Liu 30 Chen.

Fang Po-hai has suggested that one of the unique characteristics of Chih's "A Feast" is that it is not restricted to a facile description of the festive activities.

Rather, Chih quickly moves from the feast outwards, to describe the natural beauties of the park at night. To the extent that this is true, it is possible to see certain parallels between this poem- and Ts'ao P'i's "Lotus Pond" ^^L--^^ which transcend op the dissimilarities of their respective themes.

Despite the attention given to the landscape, Chih only

leaves the feast itself behind for a short while. After six

lines of natural description we once more are returned to the

feast. Furthermore, by drawing back from the scene of the feast

and focussing on the landscape Chih has not necessarily done

anything very unique. By and large poems on feasting themes

written both before and after this time, and even some of Chih's own poems ° do not take such liberties. However, In the other

"Feast" poems from the Chien An period which are included in the

Wen Hsiian we find that there is much use of natural description to complement the description of the feast. These poems even contain a number of mutually borrowed phrases and images rela• ting to the landscape.

It is also quite possible that Chih has used the lands• cape imagery as an allegorical representation of certain aspects of the feast itself. Ho Cho maintains this and he has sketched *r\ out the details of the allegory for us. He believes, for example that the "bright moon" represents the master or host, and the stars represent the guests. The "autumn orchids" and "scarlet flowers" (presumably lotus blossoms) on the banks symbolize the guests and the host's appreciation of them. The fish who surface from the depths of the pond and the birds perching on the high branches represent the guests who have gained enough confidence, in their host to present themselves and their ideas openly. The gusty winds that blow around the chariot are symbolic ic of the feasters who rally around their royal master.

Whether or not this poem was in fact' written as-- an ' allegory, and to what extent any allegorical meaning might be important, is, of course, impossible to determine for certain.

The comparison of the moon to the host and the stars to the guests seems to be quite obvious. Chih uses a very similar image in

"For Hsu Kan" which also seems to contain allegorical meaning.

Similarly,* the fish which ascend from the depths and the birds on high branches are images which have been used by other poets as symbols for men of high virtue who can only be drawn out by a particularly enlightened ruler. D The wind that blows around the chariots is also reasonably easy to see as representative of the guests who gather around the Prince. Even in the couplet concerning the orchids and scarlet flowers (lines 7 and 8) it does not take too very much imagination to see these flowers" as being metaphors for the guests who have arrived in great num• bers for the feast and who present themselves to the host in col• ourful array.

With a little consideration Ho Cho's thesis appears to be quite plausible. It Is not stretching things too far to say that there exists a suggestive similarity between the landscape imagery and the .festive proceedings. At the same time, if we accept this thesis we must not think that the poem has no content save the allegorical meaning. A reading of the previously men• tioned poems by Wang Ts'an, Liu Chen and Ying Ch'ang reveals con• siderable use of natural imagery. For the most part however, these images do not betray any second level of meaning. Assuming that these men were all writing in a comparable style, it is likely that the direct evocation of natural scenery was the starting point of Chih's composition too. Certainly, there is much genuine power in the depiction of the landscape itself, and even without assuming a second level of meaning, this would stand as good poetry.

By injecting allegorical meaning Into the landscape

imagery, Chih has given his poem considerably more depth and

interest. It is a deft touch which allows' him to comment on the nature and ambience of the feast and yet frees him from the need to employ hackneyed formulas which would depict the drinking and carrying on directly".. It is an excellent example of Ts'ao Chih's

technical accomplishment.

The second example I would like to make use of is "Rejoic

ing with the Rain"., On first reading, this poem seems a straight

forward ode to the rain •: . ' Vwhich falls after a long, drought.

Commentators have maintained, however, that the piece is not so

simple as it might at first appear. 36 Beginning with the pre•

mise that the poem was written in 228, during the reign of Ts'ao

Jul, when Chih's writings were heavily laden with frustration

arid appeal for better treatment, they have tried to show that

•this is an allegory of complaint against the court. They believe

that the Heavens represent the Emperor, and the "abundant life"

or "myriad living things" ^ ^_ include the poet himself. . Thus,

when Chih writes that living things flourish with proper nurture^

from the Heavens', he really implies that he would be much more

happy and productive with proper attention from the Emperor and

the court.

Though there is a tendency to. resist this kind of Inter•

pretation, there is fairly solid evidence to support it. This

evidence is based on the similarity between this poem and certain

passages in the memorial by Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju mentioned in the

annotation to the translation (see note #2) and also a fu written

by Chia Yi,"Dry Clouds" j^^T . In his essay, Hsiang-ju works on

the concept of the Emperor as ritual intermediary between man

and the Heavens. In this role he (the Emperor) has a definite

responsibility to maintain the balance and order between these

spheres. This theme is further blended with the idea that the

Emperor is'himself like the Heavens in that his attention arid nurture have the same kind of effect on his subjects as the Hea• vens' nurture has on all living things. He writes: "Prom the rolling of the clouds In the canopy of Heaven comes sweet dew 37 and seasonal rain In whose fecundity we may revel..." Also,

In an earlier passage, we find: "Your majesty's humanity nur• tures the myriad living things, and your righteousness attacks those who are disobedient." Chih has made use of both these passages in his opening couplet. In this way he informs the

erudite reader that he should keep the meaning of Hslang-ju's

essay in mind while reading the poem. The effect is that, al•

though Chih never specifically identifies the emperor and his

power to sustain his subjects with the power of the Heavens to

nourish living things, the identification is implicitly there.

There is no textual correspondence between "Rejoicing

with the Rain" and "Dry Clouds". There is a strong thematic

similarity however. "Dry Clouds" Is a description of a drought

and the effects that drought has on agriculture and the people

who rely on agriculture for their livelihood. In the course of

this description Chia Yi directly accuses the emperor of being

responsible for the lack of rain. He writes: I attribute blame (for this drought) to the emperor. Has he not heard of the way In which great merit was accumulated in T'ang £g and Yu & , or of the spirit of the three epochs?...When the government loses its cen• tralism and goes contrary to the rhythms of nature, the yin forces withdraw and stagnate." 3'9

Here again the connection between the office of the emperor and

the functioning of. the elements is outlined. This connection

was founded on the very ancient idea that the emperor was the

intermediary between Heaven, nature and man and that to ensure harmony between these spheres he had to perform his ritual duties correctly. When Chih speaks of the functioning of the Heavens and particularly Heaven's relation to living things, he almost automatically implicates the emperor in the situation.

Commentators such as Yu Kuan-ying (pp. 106 - 107) have tried to relate the content of this poem as closely as possible to the feelings expressed in other works written in the T'ai-ho era. Yu believes that Chih is speaking very specifically of his own relationship with the emperor and that his tone is definitely one of complaint. If we assume, as Yu does, that the poem posi• tively was written in 228, this kind of inference is difficult to avoid. On the other hand, if we allow the possibility that the poem might have been written at some other, unknown, time,

It would seem more reasonable to view it as a general statement about the powers of the emperor contained allegorically within a piece written about the advent of rain after.a period of . :r--\^.: drought. Here again the question of "suggestive similarity" is a relative one. We may not associate the function of the emper• or with the functioning of the elements but once we understand the close association that the ancient Chinese made between these two spheres, the allegorical nature of "Rejoicing with the

Rain" becomes clear.

Probably the most easily established allegories that Chih wrote were all based on a similar theme; that of a woman aban•

doned by her husband or lover. There is very little doubt that

in almost any Chinese poem where the poet adopts the persona of

a woman who suffers feelings of loneliness and betrayal because

her beloved has left for parts unknown, the relationship between 90

the poet and his ruler is being i-mdlicitlyoreferred to. In the symbolism of the Ji Ching, the ruler represents yang qualities and the subject represents yin qualities. Similarly, in a sexual relationship the man represents yang qualities and the woman rep• resents yin qualities. Consequently it is rather natural that ruler-subject relationships should come to be symbolized by man- 40 woman relationships. ' Let us look at one of the best examples of this manner of allegory to be found among Chih's poems. This is "Seven Sorrows".

In this poem, as in many of his poems and fu the woman's feelings of estrangement must be symbolically equated with Chih's own feelings in relation to the treatment that he had received from his brother, Ts'ao P'i. After P'i took the throne of Wei and made himself emperor, he dispatched Chih to his fief in Lin

Tzu. This was a kind of exile. It meant that Chih could not take an active part in state affairs; something which he had a great ambition to do. P'i obviously distrusted Chih very much and had no inclination to let him remain at the capital. We can well imagine that Chih's feelings of helplessness in face of this situation must have had some similarity to the feelings of a woman whose husband has left her and may never return.

The moon in the first line may symbolize; the woman's husband, but the image of the moon is slightly enigmatic. Chih may simply be using the first couplet to set a mood for the piece. However some commentators have attempted to assign sym• bolic meaning to it. Ho Cho believes that the moon symbolizes the lord or master whom the poet, In the persona of the abandoned

wifeihopes will cast down an observant look to discover her (his) true feelings. The hesitancy of the rays shows that though the lord or husband is about to withdraw his favour, the woman still hopes that the favour will be returned to her.

The two couplets beginning "He is like the: dust on a bv:i:~: bright road..." clearly draws our? attention toward the contradic• tions in Chih's situation vis a vis his brother. The dust on the road and the mud in the stream are essentially the same material, but for reasons beyond their control, they have been drawn apart and forced in very different directions. Chih and P'i were bro• thers borne of the same mother, they were the same flesh and blood. But, because of circumstances prevailing at court, P'i felt that it was In his best interest to alienate Chih, along with many other blood relatives, from himself and the court by keeping them in a state of semi-exile on their fiefs.

As mentioned in note #6 of the annotations to the trans• lation, the significance of the southwesterly wind has been de• bated by various scholars. Without even being certain about the actual time during which the poem was written it seems meaning• less to maintain that Chih was, at the time of writing, residing in a place southwest of where P'i was living. This may have been the case and may be the true foundation of the line's mean• ing, but it seems more reasonable and imaginative to follow Ito's interpretation. In that manner a quite satisfying paralleling of poetic image and allegorical reality is achieved.

As with "Rejoicing with the Rain" and "A Feast", the full beauty of the poem cannot be appreciated if one takes either the surface meaning or the allegorical meaning as being the more important. Both meanings are equally important. It is 92 one of the great virtues of Ts'ao Chih's work that he was able to use ambiguity and allegory in such a way as to create poems that could function in a very balanced manner at two or more lev• els at once.

D. Metaphor and "Hsing" Jjs&

Metaphor is of course the very foundation of poetic ex• pression. It is the technique of modifying an object or a state 41 by comparing it with some other object or state. - Por example, in the lines:

I dwelt alone In a world of moan, ^ And my soul was a stagnant tide, there is a very simple metaphor. The idea of "soul" Is modified by comparing it to the ideas represented by the words "stagnant tide". Obviously the poet's soul is not strictly speaking a tide of any kind, but by describing it as one, the poet has conveyed to us some very real feelings.

In classical Chinese poetry, metaphors are often construc•

ted in ways that are unfamiliar to the modern Western reader.

Por example, as Waley notes: "Early Chinese songs do not as a

rule introduce a comparison with an "as if" or "like", but state 43

it on the same footing as the facts that they narrate." This

technique is well illustrated in one of Ts'ao Chih's poems. The

opening two couplets of "Duckweed" read: Duckweed lying on the clear water Follows the wind flowing east and west. On becoming a woman I left my parents To become a gentleman's mate.

The poem goes on to describe how the woman is faulted unjustly

and as a consequence is abandoned by her husband. Although the first couplet might, on superficial reading, seem out of place, in fact it provides a metaphor for the instability of the woman' life. Like the duckweed she has no roots to hold her fast, so she is driven to and fro by forces beyond her control. As such the couplet is a highly descriptive image.

In "Occasional Poem" we find another very suggestive met aphor relating the feelings of a woman abandoned by her lover.

The lines:

The abandoned halls, how silent now! Green weeds cover the courtyard stairs.

Empty caverns blow forth their own winds

While a hundred birds rise for the the southward flight. suggest loneliness, desolation and abandonment. With the follow ing couplet: Spring thoughts can never be forgotten, Sorrow and loneliness unite with me.

Chih indicates that the description of the"empty courtyard and departing birds is actually a metaphor for the woman's sorrow over the departure of her beloved. This metaphor is executed with a great deal of elegance and depth of feeling.

One of the most commonly cited• • examples of the use of met• aphor in Ts'ao Chih's poetry is from the first of the "Six Occa• sional Poems". The first two couplets of this poem read:

Around the tall tower blow many sad winds; Morning sun shines on the northern wood.

He is a thousand miles away now;

The lakes and rivers are far and deep.

In this poem also Chih uses the persona of a woman left behind by her wandering lover. That the poem concerns a woman and her lover is subtly hinted at in the first couplet. Firstly, as

Huang Chieh points out, the association given to the phrase 94

"northern wood" by its locus classicus in the Shih Ching is of 45 the sorrows of an abandoned wife. This association is employed 4 6 by other poets such as Juan Chi. The tower in the first line could easily refer to the place where the lonely woman lives.

There is a tendency to identify towers as being the dwelling places of lonely women In Chih's work. Note for example, "Sev• en Sorrows", and "Beautiful Maiden". This is also the case in the fifth of the "19 Old Poems". The image of "sad winds" blow• ing around the tower is very evocative. It sets a mood of mel- andholy In the poem, yet is not overly sentimental. The impor• tance of the second line is that it conveys both an allusion re• garding the content of the poem and also an image that compli• ments that of the first line. This ability to combine allusion with metaphoric imagery is one of Chih's most notable accomplish• ments.

In "Poem of Feelings" Chih uses a metaphor which operates slightly differently from the examples above. This metaphor is found in the second and third couplets of the poem; Gliding fish hide beneath green rivers And rising birds press toward the sky. So distant, the travelling knight, Cast afar, he cannot return.':

The "gliding fish" and the "rising birds" all have a place where they feel secure and comfortable. By contrast, the travelling knight has no such place. He Is far from his home and has no means of return. In this case, rather than modifying the pre• dicament of the knight by comparing it directly to certain nat• ural imagery, Chih modifies by contrasting the relatively safe, stable existence of the fish and birds with the highly unstable existence of the knight.

There exists in Chinese poetic theory a term which seems quite closely related to the idea of metaphor. This is hsing

Hsing literally means "to give rise to" or "to raise". It was used as a literary term from very early times, but by the Han 4 7'

Dynasty its original meaning had been lost. Characteristical• ly, Chinese scholars were not willing to admit that they no longer knew what hsing meant as a literary term so they attribu• ted new meaning to it according to what they thought that it probably meant. Liu Hsieh describes one of the more commonly held theories about this termes meaning in his "Literary Mind and the Carving of the Dragons"; "Hsing (is) response to stim- ulus...When we respond to stimuli we formulate our ideas accor- 4^8 ding to subtle influences we receive. In other words, instead of finding images that will stimulate in the reader certain feel

Ings regarding particular objects or states, the poet is stimu• lated to certain feelings by external objects and then simply describes those objects along with the feelings that they stim• ulated. The idea of kan wu jj^ffi "being moved by things" which 49 is found in the Lz Chi- and is repeated continually by poets throughout China's history is very closely related to the idea of hsing as Liu Hsieh describes it. Chih himself uses the term in the fourth strophe of "For Prince Pai-ma, Piao". In that passage he describes the coming of autumn's chill, the desola• tion of the plains and the urgency with which birds and animals are seeking the security of the woods and their own kind. The concluding couplet reads: Moved by these things, I feel great distress? Beating my breast, I heave a long sigh. In this case Chih has already intimated that his feelings of dis•

tress are related to his forced estrangement from his brother

Ts'ao P'i. Thus the perception of those very somber images

drawn from the landscape serve principally to intensify his

feelings.

Another excellent example of this type of "response-to-

stimulus" metaphor is found in the first of Chih's two poems

dedicated to Ying Ch'ang. In this poem Ts'ao Chih is moved to

strong feelings -of melancholy and remorse on viewing the ruins

of the old Han capital at Loyang. There is a traditional asso•

ciation in Chinese literature between viewing scenery from a high place and the remembrance of the glories of former ages."

This is precisely the theme that Chih develops here. With the

first line a somber mood is set because the hill upon which he

is walking is one which held the tombs of many former members

of the- Han royal family. He then depicts a scene of Loyang's

deep desolation. Loyang, which once was the most flourishing

and rich metropolis in the world had been ravaged. Years later

it still remained in a state of utter decay. . Walls were crumb•

ling and weeds climbed from the cracks in the roads and court•

yards . There no longer remained any of the officials and schol•

ars who once watched over the administration of the empire.

There were only a few common people who had returned to try to

re-establish some kind of livelihood. Outside the city too,

the farming lands which had supported the opulence of the imper•

ial court lay largely untended. The peasants-had all moved away

or died and the paths and fields had become overgrown. Prom

this picture of Loyang and its environs lying in a state of neg- 97

lect and devastation, Chih is moved to feelings of intense dis•

tress. Loyang's dismal state was symbolic of the state of civil•

ization in general, or at least as the Chinese knew it. The fall

of Han authority had been a severe blow to all Chinese and espe•

cially to the educated elite. For them the political establish•

ment of the Han with its Confucian orthodoxy had come to be iden•

tified with all that was civilized and it gave a sense of ulti-

.•ma'te- validity to the way in which they lived their lives. Chih,

as part of the elite, must have felt a tremendous melancholy and

disorientation at the sight of Loyang in ruins. The wilds amid

which he viewed those ruins extended not only for hundreds of

miles into the distance, but also deep into his own being.

E. F'ict'ional-ization

We have seen how Ts'ao Chih often used the situation of

an abandoned woman as an allegory or metaphor for his own feel•

ings of estrangement from his brother Ts'ao P'i and later his

nephew Ts'ao Jui when these men held the position of Emperor.

It is the intensity and depth with which Chih is able to depict

both his own feelings and those of the imaginary woman whose

persona he adopts that makes such poems so successful. Ts'ao

Chih had a tremendous ability to identify with the emotions of

others and also to employ external objects as symbols or meta•

phors for his own emotions. This latter facet of his art is

most powerfully demonstrated in a number of what might be called

phantasy or imaginary pieces. Two of the best examples of this

style of poem are written along very similar lines. The first

is the second poem in the set of "Six Occasional Poems". Chih

often uses animals or plants which wander or are moved about 98 aimlessly and have no fixed resting place as symbols for men or women who have been forced to leave their homes and travel in distant places. Here, the tumble-weed, blown at the mercy of the wind's constant pressure is like the traveller or soldier who must follow the army unquestioningly to distant places, often risking his life to do so.

It has been suggested that this poem was written during the latter stages of Chih's life when he was constantly being shifted from one fief to another. • In two prose pieces, ".Mem• orial in gratitude for being transferred to be Prince of Tung-O"

we find Chih complaining of the number of times he had been transferred, and in two other notable yueh-fu poems "Alas!" and the "Great Rock"

fa'-j^ > which we will discuss later, he alludes to the sadness" and frustration that he experienced in his later years because of that instability.

I believe that this particular poem was written at a rather early stage in Chih's development. Though he would nat• urally include himself among those who were subject to periods of rootlessness and alienation, the subject in the poem seems to be man in general rather than the poet in particular. The theme of the travelling soldier is a very prevalent one in the ku^shih

&f^of the Han and Wei periods.52 Chih appears pri• marily to be imitating poems of this convention. He has bor• rowed heavily from the style and vocabulary of such poems. How• ever, he has also added certain refining touches of his own so that we can easily determine that the poem was composed by a well-trained poet rather than a balladeer. What makes the poem most attractive is that the description of the weed blown hither

and yon by the wind is made into a kind of transcendental phan•

tasy. The weed swirls up through the clouds to reach toward

Heaven's infinity and feel the endlessness of the universe. In

like manner, we, as travellers through a world often hostile and

forbidding, are often led to feel, in our loneliness and aliena•

tion, this same emptiness and indifference of the universe's

infinity.

In "Al'as! "> Chih has again employed the image of a tumble-

weed blown in the wind, but in this case, rather than simply use

the image as a metaphor for the feelings of travelling soldiers,

he has extended it through the length of the poem. In that man•

ner the piece becomes more of a phantastic allegory. As such

it is quite unique. It was certainly not unusual for natural

imagery, such as plants or animals, to be used as metaphors or

symbols for a poet's feelings. Nor was it unusual for a poet

to write from the persona or perspective of someone other than

himself, such as in the case where Chih wrote in the persona of

a woman. However, by writing a completely phantastic piece in

which he imagined himself to be an essentially inanimate object,

Chih had taken a very innovative step.

The poem was most likely written sometime after Ts'ao

P'I had taken the throne and forced his brothers to leave the

capital and take up residence in their respective fiefs. Chih

is writing with reference to his feelings during that trying

period. Through his exciting -and rich description of the often

violent and dramatic movements of the tumble-weed, he created

an exceedingly evocative metaphor for his feelings of hopeless,- 100

instability and frustration.

This ability to fictionalize Is also exercised extensive•

ly in Ts'ao Chih's "wandering Immortals" poems. Such poems, which constituted a kind of sub-genre in the literature of med•

ieval China, owed their inspiration to a piece in the Ch'u Tz'u

entitled "Travelling Afar", Yuan Yu • This piece was tra•

ditionally attributed to Ch'u Yuan but is now generally believed

to have been an early Han composition. J It is the account of

a man who is disillusioned and anxious about mortal existence

and its limitations and so contrives to become an immortal. We

are transported with him on a journey through the ultramundane

realms frequented by immortals. In view of the great populari•

ty of the cult of immortality and religious Taoism during the

Han era, it could very well have been that this piece was writ•

ten as a religious testament; a Swedenborgian trip through the

Chinese equivalent of Heaven. Such an interpretation was, of

course, unacceptable in Confucian terms. As a consequence it

was interpreted as being a purely imaginative exercise; the

product of Ch'u Yuan's feelings of frustration and oppression,

'"phantastic escapism if you will. The same type of interpreta•

tion was applied to most works subsequently written in this

style. Whether or not it was applied correctly is another

question.

Ts'ao Chih wrote a large number of poems on the theme

of "wandering immortals", but it is somewhat difficult to de•

termine why he so favoured this style. After reading his "Dis•

course on Distinguishing the Tad" > ^ there remains lit•

tle doubt that Chih was not a naive follower of popular Taoism. 101

In that essay he Is very hostile to the sorcery practiced by the fang-shih -^-irof the time and highly sceptical about the idea of immortality. Another example of this scepticism Is found in the last strophe of "For Prince Pai-ma, Piao". There he writes:

It is vain and empty to seek the immortals,

Master Sung (an immortal) has deceived us too long.

In consideration of such statements we must assume that either

Chih had accepted the Confucian view that "wandering immortals" poems were simply phantasies written in reaction to the oppreseioi sions of political intriguers,or that he held strongly contra• dictory feelings on the subject of immortality. Unfortunately it is not within the scope of this work to give more thorough consideration to this problem. It will have to be sufficient for us to understand that whatever the actual extent of Ts'ao

Chih's belief in the immortals might have been, there was cer• tainly a large measure of escapist fictionallzation at the heart of his "wandering immortals" poems.

All of Chih's "wandering immortals" poems have been classified as yueh-fu. Some are very rough colloquial pieces that seem to be fairly directly imitative of popular ditties.

Others are more highly developed and owe more to the Ch'u Tz'u than to popular yueh-fu. A good example of the former kind is

"East of P'ing Ling". The form of this poem Is quite similar, but not identical, to a folk yUeh-fu of the same title. Both pieces begin with a line structure of 3-3-7 and are composed-al• most entirely of three and seven character lines. The folk yueh-fu uses the technique of repeating the last line or phrase of one strophe at the beginning of the next. This is also used in Chih's poem. Both poems also have Irregular rhyme patterns, and use vernacular diction. There the similarities end. The folk yueh-fu is concerned with a certain Duke Yi who was execu• ted for leading an unsuccessful rebellion against Wang Mang.

Ts'ao Chih's poem was concerned with the mythology of the immor• tality cult. He imagines donning a feathered cloak and riding a flying dragon through the gates of Heaven to meet with the immortals. He then climbs Mount P'eng Lai to pick ling chih fungus which he eats and consequently achieves immortality. It is basically a very straightforward and unadorned verse except for the inclusion of the mythological imagery.

In contrast to this, Chih wrote a number of "wandering immortals" pieces that are much more highly developed, both for• mally and stylistically1.. One such piece "Travelling the Fifth

Realm" has already been discussed in terms of its textual in• debtedness to the Ch'u Tz 'u..Another^good example is "Travelling

Afar". Although there is a piece in the Ch'u Tz'u with the same title, Ts''iao Chih seems not to have been attempting to directly imitate that piece. Naturally the theme of immortality and immortals is the same, and as in "Travelling the Fifth Realm",

Chih has borrowed a number of phrases and images from various works in the Ch'u Tz'u. For the most part, however, this poem is highly characteristic of Chih's own style.

As in "Alas!", it is Chih's wonderful ability to fic• tionalize that gives life and force to the poem. Chih not only creates imagery that is extremely suggestive, he builds his des• criptions very logically, so that we feel the imagery being gra• dually completed before us, much as if we had been watching an artist bring a sketch to completion. Chih has an ability to inject motion into his work. His images are seldom static. This property is particularly evident in such pieces as "Alas!" and

"The Great Rock". It can also be seen in this poem. "Travelling

Afar" is divided into two movements of five couplets each. In the first movement Chih uses his depictive abilities to create a scene of rolling waves, rugged mountains and super-natural beings. Each line leads into the next as our mind's eye is

slowly guided from one image to the next. The second movement

is more expositive than descriptive, but here too, the Image of him leaping the sands and dancing on the winds in the seventh and eighth couplets is well developed and very potent.

Ts'ao Chih was very well acquainted with the symbolism and mythology of the immortality cult. His poems contain a wide variety of images and allusions drawn from that cult. He was also familiar with the works of the pre-Ch'in philosophical Tao- ists. An interesting example of this is found In the "Ballad of Bitter Thoughts". In that poem he describes following two ohen-j en jjji./^ to a place where he meets an old recluse who Is well versed in the concepts of Taoism. The recluse advises him

"to forget mere words". This phrase is, of course, drawn from the Chuang-tzu and refers to one of the central ideas of phil• osophical Taoism, that of the essentially mystical nature of the Tao and of the impossibility of describing it with words or logical concepts.

Despite the hostility to the immortality cult that Chih demonstrates in his "Discourse on Distinguishing the Tao" it is difficult to believe that he did not hold more than a casual curiosity about Its tenets. In any case, he freely exploited 104

the suggestive,magical properties of the cult's mythology to

create a good deal of highly imaginative verse. In many respects

the success that Chih had in using this mythology in his poetry

paved the way for the extensive development that took place in

this sub-genre later in the Six Dynasties era. Such poets as

Kuo P'u and Ho Shao /{S^/^jj were noted as writers of "wandering

immortals" poetry. In many ways Chih's work is superior to

that of later poets. Although the "Immortals" poems of Kuo P'u

for instance are more highly developed in the sense that he

used more sophisticated imagery and spent more time refining his diction, his poems tend to be mostly concerned with describ--

ing the curiosities of Taoistic mythology and possess relatively

little emotional force. For example, let us look at one of Kuo's

"wandering immortals" poems and compare it to Chih's "Travelling

Afar". The second in the series of Kuo P'u's poems contained 5S in the Wen 'Esuan J reads: Ch'ing Gorge is more than a thousand yards deep. In it there lives a Taoist.

Clouds form amid his rafters And winds issue forth from the windows and doors.

May I ask, who is this man? ^ It is said that this is Master Kuei Ku?•

573 ' I rise and look toward Ying Yang, ' j-o Nearing the river I think to wash out my ears. " " Ch'ang-ho's wind comes from the southwest,^ Hidden waves rise like scattered fish scales.

Fu Fei looks back at me and laughs'^ Gaily showing her jade-like teeth.

Chien Hsiu is no longer living, If I want her, who can I dispatch?

The feeling of this poem is of subdued elegance. The poet speaks 105 of his encounter first with the Taoist adept Master Kuei Ku and then with the famous Goddess of the Lo River, Fu Fei. There are a number of well drawn images that would ."not have been found in one of Ts'ao Chih's poems. In the second couplet the picture of the clouds forming amid the rafters of the Taoist's cottage and the winds blowing from his windows and doors is somewhat more involved than is generally found in Chih's work. Likewise, the image of the waves scattering like fish scales before the wind is more advanced than most imagery employed by writers in Chih's time. Apart from the finesse with which the poet has created his imagery, there is very little to distinguish this poem. In the fourth couplet there is an allusion that intimates that the poet is uninterested in gaining'worldly success and therefore chooses to wander in search of immortal beings, but this idea is not elaborated upon. In the last few lines the poet expresses his attraction to the beautiful Fu Fei but he does so in a very diffuse manner, without any revelation of strong emotion. The poemr.seems to drift along rather than flow with any force.

Ts'ao Chih's "Travelling Afar", by contrast, moves at a great pace. Grand images rise dramatically before us and the poet flies and leaps rather than walk. There is also a great deal more emotion in this poem. Chih gives voice to his dis• illusionment with the mundane, and expresses a great desire to escape the mortal world and take his place among the immortals.

This poem, along with others such as "Travelling the

Fifth Realm", and "Wandering as an Immortal" are deeply imbued with real human emotion. Chih may not have believed very strong• ly in the validity of the immortality cult, but he felt a need to 106 find some means of rising- above the oppressiveness of mundane existence. In his phantastic wanderings through the realms of the immortals he was able, in his imagination at least, to do just that.

F. Response and Dedication

had managed to gather so many talented literary men together at his administrative capital in Yeh, there was a considerable amount of contact between these men, both officially and so• cially. Inevitably, friendships arose out of this contact.

We find tribute to these friendships in the relatively large number of poems dedicated by these men to their comrades and associates. Ts'ao Chih's collected works contain eight poems

(if "Por Prince Pai-ma, Piao" is taken as one poem) specifi• cally dedicated to men who he was associated.with in some way.

Many of these poems are considered to be among his best works.

If we accept the generally held view that the seven poems once supposed to have been exchanged between Li Ling and 62 '

Su Wu are actually later forgeries, •• the "dedication" poems written by Ts'ao Chih in pentameter are among the earliest ex• amples in that form. There are a number of remaining examples of "dedication or response" poems from the Han Dynasty, but these were generally written in tetrameter. The only excep• tion to this seems 64t o be the three poems that Ch' in Chia-' wrote to his wife. Chih's poems were all written In pentameter however, and they exhibit a high degree of sophistication.

A very large portion of early "dedication" poems were 107 written on the occasion of a friend's departure. Because of this they are often expressions of sadness and affection. The general tendency was to describe one's feelings about the one departing directly, although in some cases poets employed alleg• ory or metaphor.. In cases where a poem was dedicated to a friend simply as a show of affection or in response to a poem written by the friend, the poet usually tried to describe the virtues

65 1 - and talents of the friend and to express his esteem for him.

The following simple poem written by Hsu Kan (179-217) in res• ponse to a much more elaborate piece from Liu Chen (?-217) will 66 perhaps serve as an example of this type of poem. Poem in Response to Liu Kung-kan

It has not been long since we parted Not even ten days have passed.

How grave my thoughts have become, This sorrow makes it seem like three years.

Although the length of the road is trifling It is-as-hard: to cross as the Nine Gates. 6;'7'

Amid the splendour of the scarlet summer we parted, The grasses and trees were glorious and abundant.

The prime concern here,as In Liu's poem,is the sadness that the poet felt on having to depart his friend. Liu also wrote a ser• ies of three poems to his cousin. These poems were written as allegories. The first poem reads:

The east flowing river churns along, • Over the rocks it leaps and splashes.

Weeds and rushes grow by its bank, Their leaves and flowers sway In profusion.

Pick them to place in the ancestral hall Or to offer to your honoured guests.

Why not use hollyhock from the garden? gg You know the beauty of these from the deep marsh. This piece,which obviously owes a great deal to the "19 Old ?r

Poems", is basically an allegory. Liu is telling his cousin that although he may come from a poor family, he has virtues of his own which people will appreciate, just as people can appreciate the beauty of flowers grown in the marshes as well as those grown in more genteel locations.

I-. In all except two cases, Chih's dedication poems were a significant departure from these patterns. These two excep• tions are the second of the poems written sending off Master

Ying, and "For Ting I" jl^'T• Tne second poem of the "Sending

Off Master Ying" set for example,Is of rather conventional style. It was written on the occasion of Ying Ch'ang's depar• ture from Ts'ao Chih. It describes the departure feast and expresses many conventional emotions associated with parting an old and trusted friend. Although it Is written in a some• what conventional style, it does contain genuine and deep emo• tion. "For Ting I" is a stylized piece beginning with a des• cription of a feast and ending with a series of platitudes re• garding the nature of virtue and achievement. It is not a high• ly polished or deep work.

If we exclude these two pieces and also the first poem of "Sending off Master' Ying" and "For Prince Pai-ma, Piao" which are unique for reasons to be discussed later, Ts'ao Chih's "ded• ication" poems follow a roughly identifiable pattern. Let us examine "For Wang Ts'an" as a means of finding the nature of this pattern. Wang Ts'an was of course one of the major liter• ary figures of the late Han period. He had served both the last Han 'emperor and Liu Piao until the latter died. He 109

'then travelled north to serve Ts'ao Ts'ao. Although Ts'ao Chih was fifteen years younger than Wang Ts'an, the two had much in common as far as their taste and ability in literature was con• cerned. In this poem it seems as though Chih is seeking to "break the ice" as it were, and to establish a closer friendship with Ts'an. In the opening two couplets, Chih introduces asdes- cription of his own thoughts and of a scene that he comes upon as he strolls though a garden. In contrast to his feelings, which are rather .depressed, the garden scene is bright and gen• tle. In the third couplet he introduces a lone mandarin duch . • which sits on the pool and calls in search of a companion. This quite clearly must be a symbol for Ts'an who had perhaps only arrived in Ts'ao Ts'ao's court a short while previously and had not yet established many friendships. In the fourth couplet

Chih implies that he would like to befriend Ts'an but has not yet found a suitable method of doing that. The fifth couplet begins a new movement in the poem. Here, rather that develop one cohesive image, Chih has chosen to use a series of images and allusions as a means of conveying certain ideas. Unfort• unately, with the scant information we have pertaining to the background of this poem, it is difficult to be certain what

ideas Chih is trying to express. The fifth couplet seems

to imply that it is no longer possible to retrace one's steps and return to a former existence. It may have been that Wang

Ts'an was not happy with his situation in Ts'ao Ts'ao's service and wished to return to his home or to the government of Liu

Pei^i]/|^ in Szechwan. Chih may have been trying to persuade him that this would be unwise. In the sixth couplet, the

"doleful wint" is most likely symbolic of the unsettled state

of political and. social affairs that existed at that time.

The reference to 110

the "sun-chariot" is undoubtedly an allusion to the shortness of life. In the seventh couplet we find a symbolic reference to the de facto ruler of northern China, Ts'ao Ts'ao. As was the case In "Rejoicing with the Rain", the ruler's ability to give support and encouragement to his subjects is equated to the ability of the heavens to give nourishment, in the form of rain, to all living things. Chih is assuring Ts'an that this support would not be denied him. In the last couplet Chih asks Ts'an why he seems to be unhappy about his lot and then, by way of allusion to one of Ts'an's own works, tries to comfort him.

We can see in the most general terms, this poem is com-' posed of two movements. In the first movement Chih creates a scene which is descriptive of his own feelings, particularly as they relate to Wang Ts'an. In the second movement Chih addresses certain advice and consolation to Ts'an with specific reference to his personal concerns. Although not all of his "dedication" poems divide so neatly, they all, with the exception of those mentioned above, contain these same two elements to a greater or lesser extent. All open with a description of natural scen•

ery. The images in this scenery generally suggest;through alleg• ory or direct evocation, the mood in which Chih is writing the poem. Often this mood is related to some aspect of his feelings toward the recipient of the poem. This approach was quite novel.

His contemporaries virtually all still held to less sophistica• ted styles, such as directly describing the recipient's virtues or attesting their love and respect for that person. Even in a complex piece such as Liu Chen's "Por Hsu /Kan" it is the poet's sorrow at having to be parted from his dear friend that is the Ill predominant feeling in the piece. By spontaneously relating his own feelings rather than trying to evoke conventional feelings of admiration or affection, or give a flattering account of the recipient's merits and abilities, Chih added a very personal touch to these poems. We are given the impression that he was writing with greatest sincerity and with a great deal of under• standing of the feelings of the other person. This impression is deepened when we note that the other unique characteristic of Chih's "dedication" poems was that he almost always addressed himself to certain concerns held particularly by the recipient.

For example, we have just seen how he urges a somewhat reluc• tant Wang Ts'an to leave aside his anxieties and have faith in the leadership of Ts'ao Ts'ao. In his poem to Ting Yi he tries to emphasize that he is a broad-minded and principled man and that Yi should trust in his friendship. Hsu Kan is urged to come out of retirement and take a more active part-'''iii. politics.

In this way, Chih not only made his dedication poems more person• al and specific, he also expanded the range of themes that could be dealt with in such poems. No longer were "dedication" poems concerned only with the sorrows of parting or mutual admiration, they could be very flexible and spontaneous means of communica• tion .

A poem that Chih wrote for Ying Ch'ang; the first of the "Sending off Master Ying" poems, is a rather sublime example of that kind of communication. This poem does not follow the pattern of most of Chih's "dedication" poems as in it he does not offer any particular advice or consolation to Ying Ch'ang.

On the surface it would seem that Chih had not made an attempt to relate the poem to Ying Ch'ang at all. We must consider, howei> ever, that the sight that Chih was viewing, Loy.ang, was not his home but Ch'ang's. Chih had conceivably never seen Loyang in its prime. Ch'ang on the other hand had served at the imperial court there and would have been very familiar with its former glories. In that sense we can see that through his description of the ruins of Loyang Chih was not only giving Ch'ang a report on the state into which his former home had fallen, he was put• ting himself in Ch'ang's place and feeling the deep sadness that Ch'ang himself would certainly have felt had he been there with him. The manner in which Chih was able to identify in his own emotions, the emotions of others and further, to describe these emotions with great felicity, is the mark of a truly per• ceptive and accomplished poet.

"For Prince Pai-ma, Piao" is perhaps Chih's best known work. It is well known partly because It is of such great sig• nificance in relation to the historical legends surrounding

Chih's life. In this poem,or poem series, Chih gives very strong expression to his feelings of frustration given rise to by the treatment he had received at the hands of his brother

Ts'ao P'i and certain officials at the Wei court. Many have held this poem up as proof that Chih was in fact a virtuous and highly principled man who had been bullied mercilessly by his elder brother P'i and his evil cohorts. More important to our purposes here, this poem series represents a major development in poetic expression. We have had occasion to examine some of the more technical aspects of this poem. For now it is neces• sary only to look at it from the perspective of its being a "dedication" poem.

I have used the word poem in the singular because, alfe/.o

though it is most often treated as a series of poems, it could

just "as easily be treated as a single poem which has seven

strophes. Taken as a single poem, it demonstrates a pattern

similar to that of the other dedication poems. The preface, which may or may not be authentic, outlines the background to

the. poem. Chih states that it was his indignation at being

forced to abandon plans to travel back to his fief with his half

brother Ts'ao Piao that led him to write the poem. Piao also must have felt a very similar indignation, but not being a poet, was unable to give vent to It in writing. Thus the poem likely

served as a record of the affair and of its emotional signifi•

cance to both men.

The first two strophes make no reference to Piao* at all.

Chih gives reign to his emotions through a description of some

of the scenery through which he passed on the first part of his

journey away from the capital. As in so much of his best work,

Chih employs a combination of direct description, metaphor, in

the form of natural imagery, and subtle allusion, to give sharp

expression to his thoughts and feelings. In the third and

fourth strophes, Chih turns his attention to the feelings which

exist between himself and Piao. In the third strophe he is esp•

ecially hostile toward those who have deliberately forced him

and his brother to become estranged. He calls them wolves,

screeching owls and blue-flies. In the fourth strophe he relies more-heavily * on metaphor drawn from natural imagery to express

the desolation and deep loneliness which both he and his brother 114 must have felt. The fifth strophe deals with the death of Ts'ao

Chang. Both Chih and Piao surely felt deeply bereft by his sud• den passing. Chih philosophically notes that though they are still among the living, there is no certainty that their lives also might not be snuffed out just as suddenly as Chang's. In the last two strophes Chih addresses Piao directly and speaks of his depression and bitterness in regard to the Indignities they have been forced to bear. He consoles Piao firstly with the thought that It isn't always essential for two men to be physi• cally close to each .other • in order for them to feel the comfort of their mutual love and caring. Then he implies that, although there is no hope of gaining immortal life, they should still have hope that some day they may still have an opportunity to be re• united and to spend their old age together.

Reading this poem it is very difficult not to be moved by the tremendously deep poignancy of Chih's expression. Not only had he been forced into exile by his jealous and insecure elder brother, he was not even allowed the comfort and consola• tion which the companionship of his brother Piao would have meant to him. But Chih didn't write the poem simply as a vehi• cle for expounding his own misery and complaint. He hoped that through his poetry Piao also could find a kind of emotional out• let. By giving so direct and powerful expression to his feel• ings and then dedicating the piece to Piao, Chih was saying that the poem did not belong to him personally, but was a product of their mutual experience. In a sense it was Piao's poem as much as it was Chih's.

It was through the achievement of this kind of intensely' personal communication that Chih was able to elevate his "ded- ication"'..;poems to heights never before reached. It is often said that in Chinese poetry, the expression of friendship be• tween men was of the same importance as the expression of sexual love in Western poetry. To whatever extent this is true, it is not difficult to see that Ts'ao Chih made a very significant contribution In raising it to that level of importance.

G. Social and Political Concern

Although attempts to incorporate social and political content into artistic expression often result in the debasement of the aesthetic quality of the art, such content can also be a vitalizing force if properly handled. Ts'ao Chih was very much concerned with the politics and social evolution of his country.

As a member of the ruling family he had every reason to be.

His concern constantly finds expression in his poetry and prose.

In some of his poems, particularly those written as memorials to the throne during Ts'ao P'i's reign, the political content is rather too heavy and the quality of the poetry suffers as a result. In a number of other cases however, Chih was able to blend his political concerns more subtly into^the fabric of the poem, such that the essentially aesthetic character of the work is preserved. The last two poems In the "Six Occasional Poems" set are good examples of this style of poem.

In the fifth poem several traces of actual historical events can be found. Chih was obviously writing with reference

to the state of Wu which during his lifetime wastconstantly In• volved In conflict with the state of Wei. The rulers of Wei from Ts'ao Ts'ao onwards were anxious to conquer Wu-, as well as 116

Shu-Han in the south-west, and to reunify the empire under their rule. Unfortunately, they were-'never successful. Chih naturally identified with the causes taken up by the court. Thus he wished to take part in the military campaigns against Wu. However, after his father's death and the succession of his brother P'i to the throne,IChih was essentially banished from all important affairs of state. This poem is clearly an expression of his desire to regain his brother's trust and to be allowed to aid in the wars against Wu. Like the fourth poem in this set, this piece owes a certain amount of inspiration and imagery to various works contained in the Ch'u Tz'u. In Li Shan's commentary he quotes five passages from the Ch'u Tz'u and one passage from an histor• ical source dealing with the King of Ch'u. On close inspection, these passages seem to have a rather close relationship to the content of Chih's poem.

The political message which is conveyed through this poem is fairly strong. In a sense one could interpret the work as simply a vehicle for this message. However, the finesse with which Chih has incorporated the political comment into the frame• work of the poem's imagery has saved it from being merely an ex• ercise in rhetoric and allows the piece to stand on its own as pure poetry. The inclusion of phrasing and allusions- related to the Ch'u Tz'u lends a slightly exotic and perhaps scholastic feeling to the work. Through them Chih indicates that his feel• ings of frustration are similar to those associated with the legendary Ch'u Yuan. He has managed to avoid using these phrases and allusions blatantly and thus maintains a fresh, uncontrived tone throughout the poem. 117

.'.•^ 1 The last poem in the set is even more laden with politi• cal comment than the previous one. Chih climbs a look-out tower.

The view of the open plains inspires him to feel a certain ex- pansiveness and then to sense a lonely frustration which has re• sulted from his not being able to take a more active role in government and especially in military matters.

Several theories have been put forward concerning the dating of this poem. None are very conclusive. Whatever the chronological situation may have been, the feelings of patriot• ism and self-sacrifice are expressed in very direct terms.

There seermtoobe some stylistic peculiarities in this piece.

The transition between the first two couplets and the middle three is quite abrupt. This abruptness is somewhat understand• able however, when we consider that the first couplets are evi• dence of hsing as described above. From the dramatic view af• forded from the tower , Chih has been stimulated to feel certain emotions related to the military struggles of his country. The last couplet appears to have been added as a kind of tag or re• frain, such as might be found in a yueh-fu poem. It doesn't flow smoothly from what precedes. Despite this, the poem has a very lyrical quality about it which balances the political message.

"The Famous Capital" is classified as a yueh-fu. This is perhaps more because of its narrative quality more than any other factor. Formally speaking its regular pentametric lines are just as much like shih poetry as yueh-fu. Here Chih has indulged in some subtle social commentary. The young aristocrats described in the piece lead a life of ease and luxury. They spend their days engaging in sports and lavish feasts. Chih describes In elaborate detail how skillful the young men are at the martial arts and how agile they are in playing various leisure sports.

He never actually makes any directly critical statement in re• gard to the activities of these people and one might be led to believe that the piece was strictly an exercise in fine phras•

ing. Two factors indicate that this is not the case. The first factor is the ironic quality of the last couplet of the poem. As we read Chih's description of the events of one day

in the lives of these youths we are impressed by the display of martial and equestrian skills and at the array of exotic

foods at the feast. It all seems so wonderfully exciting. We are quite relieved when the end of the day comes and the parti• cipants disperse to their own homes. In the last line we read that with the dawn, the whole process will be repeated all over again. This has the:;:same effect on us as too much rich food.

What seemed exciting and desirable the first time through, seems vulgar and pointless when repeated in such fast succession. The idea that the youth of Loyang .carry on in such a protracted

fashion day after day, makes us aware of how utterly idle and unproductive such a life must be. We feel a deep revulsion to• ward the situation.

The second factor that makes us aware of the essentially

critical nature of this poem can be appreciated when one reads another of Chih's yueh-fuj"The White Horse". This piece is con- r

tained in the same category of the YFSC as is "The Famous Capi•

tal". It has a similar number of lines (28), and is written in

a very similar style to that of "The Famous Capital". I would

even venture to claim that the two pieces were written as a kind 119 of set. Regardless of whether this is all true or not, there is at least one point of very important correspondence. Both con• tain a description of a display of equestrian and martial skills.

In "The Famous Capital" we find:

As they galloped along, not half-way there A pair of rabbits crossed their path.

Grasping his bow, one drew a singing arrow And gave chase up South Mountain.

Drawing back left to shoot to the right His first arrow hit both animals.

And as there were skills he had not yet displayed He shot toward the sky and brought down a hawk.

In "The White Horse" he writes:

It has been a long time that he has carried a bow, His hemlock arrows all lie in neat array.

Drawing the bowstring he hits the left bull's-eye; To the right he strikes the jou-chih post.

Raising his hand he snatches down a flying monkey Then leans down, driving his horse in a gallop.

Both men demonstrate similar skills at riding and archery. The crucial point is that the one employs these skills solely for his own amusement, while the other has devoted his life to the noble enterprise of defending his country against the incursions of the nomadic tribes from the northern frontiers. When we con• sider this contrast, we are given an even sharper perception of the idleness and irresponsibility of the young men described in

"The Famous Capital". They are strong, able-bodied and have the required skills for warfare at their command. However, rather than offer their services to the state, they choose to while away their time in extravagant, yet fruitless pastimes.

Chih is very subtle In his commentary on this situation.

Yet after reading both poems, there can be no doubt that he was disgusted with the idle, uncommitted young people at the capital,

(one of whose number he might have once been counted), and ad• mires those who wage the wars along the frontier. It is perhaps the subtlety of his manner that makes the message come through with such genuine force. We are required to put some of the pieces together and thus the realization we come to is much more

immediate and meaningful.

H. Formal Refinements

One of the most tangible achievements of the Chien An and Wei poets was the establishment of pentameter as the most important verse form. Ts'ao Chih made a considerable contribu• tion in this regard. Although he wrote both tetrameter and irregular verse, he used the former primarily for rather formal pieces addressed to the throne, such as "Rebuking Myself",

"Responding to the Summons" and "The Great Feast" ^^"f^p > the latter style was used exclusively in pieces written in imitation of folk yueh-fu style, such as "East of P'ing Ling, "TorGreat

Trouble in the Coming Days" and "The Cassia Tree". In all, more than three quarters of Chih's total extant poems are written in pentameter. This predominance is especially noteworthy when dealing with yiieh-fu poems. As noted above, five-character

lines were often found in folk yiieh-fu, but often in combination with lines of other lengths. All of Chih's most important yiieh- fu arelwritten in regular pentameter. In that sense they are

indistinguishable from shih poems. One wonders what relation

such yiieh-fu would have had to music, such an important factor

in original yueh-fu poems. Chih must surely have downplayed

the function of music and written his poems primarily to be spo--; 121 ken or chanted. This tendency continued down into the T'ang

Dynasty.

In his shih poems Chih constantly borrows from the phras• ing and imagery of the "19 Old Poems". There Is little doubt- that these works served as the models from which Chih worked while writing pentametric verse.

In our discussion of the developments in Chien An lit• erature in general, we made reference to the fact that Chien An writers spent a good deal of time and effort on the refining of their poetic diction. As in so many cases Ts'ao Chih was the leading proponent of this concern. In fact, some have suggested that it was Ts'ao Chih's success in creating verse of a relative• ly polished nature that sparked the tendency in Six Dynasties poetics toward a highly florid and contrived stylism. However just or unjust these claims may be, it is certainly true that

Chih spent considerably more time than earlier poets on the re• fining and polishing of his poems. Oftenrithis property of re• finement is extremely difficult to perceive and define. It is possible though, to give some examples of the more obvious kinds of refinement that Chih worked on. i. Overall Structure

It has already been noted that Chih was highly skilled at developing his imagery in a logical and progressive manner. The effect of this being to promote a more direct and forceful in• volvement of the reader in the poem. This ability to develop

imagery was also extended to the poem as a whole. Earlier poets did not spend a great deal of time In the planning of their works.

They tended to join images and ideas together with little regard 122 for matters of progression and continuity. The result was often a feeling of disjointedness which impeded the involvement in, and identity with, the emotions expressed through the poem. In Ts'ao

Chih's poetry, much progress was made toward the planning and in• tegration of individual works. Chih paid a great deal of atten• tion to the net effect of his poems. He attempted to structure them in such a manner as to lead the reader to the greatest appre• ciation of the ideas and emotions contained in his lines. This is perhaps best Illustrated through concrete example.

The first poem of "Six Occasional Poems" has already been briefly mentioned in relation to the use of the image of a woman estranged from her lover as a symbol for an official who is not trusted or appreciated by the ruler. It is a skillfully written piece that develops a great deal of evocative power through. Its structure. The poem is divided into two movements of six lines each. The first movement narrates the woman's situation. We have discussed the first couplet at some length previously.

It very subtly introduces thestheme of the poem through the allusion in the second line. The natural imagery sets the mood of the poem as. being essentially somber. The second and third couplets fill out the theme of the piece by describing the wo• man's situation in more explicit terms. The second movement draws us directly to the centre of the woman's feelings through a very intense metaphor. The lone goose is a very common symbol of^loneliness or separation from loved ones. It probably origin• ates in the Minor Odes of the Shih Ching where we find a piece entitled Hung Yen J^ln which the plight of those who lose their spouses to war is referred to. Chih is almost certainly alluding to that piece here.- In Chih's hands the image of the goose takes on a sublime quality. The goose is flying southward, a sign of autumn which is in turn suggestive of the coldness and sorrow of loneliness. Wheniit cries out above the woman's courtyard, she looks skyward and immediately the image of the goose and the remembered image of the man estranged from her are gently intertwined. The poem might have ended on the tenth line with the woman wishing to communicate with her lover through the calls of the goose. A mild climax is reached at that point.

Chih, however, employs great finesse in bringing the piece to a far more moving close. In the penultimate line the images of the goose and the lover are momentarily confused. We are not sure if the "form" is that of the goose or that of the lover.

This ambiguity creates a feeling of deep poignancy. In the last line, we are returned abruptly and anti-climacticly to the real• ity of the woman's situation. She remains alone In her court• yard while the goose has flown swiftly from sight. With this, her loneliness and feelings of helplessness are brought home with great force. Because of the deftness with which we are led to this anti-climax, this is possibly one of Chih's most moving poems.

Another poem that we have discussed in relation to the use of a woman's persona as an allegorical device is "Seven

Sorrows". This poem is also divided into two movements. It begins with the image of the moon shining on a tower. As noted above, this image introduces the theme and ."provides a metaphor for the feelings of the woman. The next three couplets narrate the situation of the woman. In the fifth couplet, which begins 124 the second movement of the poem, Chih introduces a metaphor for the relationship between the man and the woman. With the sixth couplet, the poem seems to have come to an end. if it were not for the minor consideration of balancing the length of the sec• ond movement with the first , the somewhat rhetorical question in the sixth couplet would be a very logical and usual place for the piece to finish. But Chih has not exhausted the emotional potential of the situation. He adds another metaphor; that of the wind blowing across the distance. Through it he expresses the woman's strong desire to find her husband once again. In the last couplet however, the positive feelings of wanting to seek out her husband are brought down by the persistent uncer• tainty that exists when people become separated. Even if she were to find him, how could she be sure that'-he would still.'ho Id any love for her? The introduction of this element of uncer• tainty brings a great deal of depth and reality to the situa• tion. The poem is no longer a conventional poetic exercise, it is an expression of powerful and realistic emotion. It is largely the manner In which Chih has structured the piece, and especially the last movement, that allows us to feel that emo• tion . ii. Imagery: Nature as Metaphor

One of the most easily perceivable characteristics of

Ts'ao Chih's poetic art is his use of natural imagery. The extensive use of natural imagery was not uncommon in early Chi• nese literature. The Ch'u Tz'u was full of such imagery as were many fu written during the Han Dynasty. There are two things that set the work of Ts'ao Chih apart from earlier poets 125

In regard to the use of natural imagery. Firstly, he was one of the first to make extensive use of landscape imagery in poetry.

The Ch'u Tz'u and the Han fu did contain landscape description to a' certain extent,.but they.were naturally not written in the same form as shih poetry. Earlier poets had apparently not gen• erally associated landscape description and the heavy use of natural images with strictly poetic forms. They had followed more in the tradition of the Shih Ching which used such imagery in a very limited manner. As we can see from pieces like the first poem of "Sending off Master Ying", "Alas'." and "For Prince

Pai-ma, Piao", Chih made a good deal of progress?in grafting the descriptive manner of fu and the Ch'u Tz'u into the framework of shih poetry.

Secondly, Chih was particularly adept at using natural imagery as metaphor. He seldom uses imagery strictly for orna• mentation. As we have seen in the case of such poems as "A

Feast", "For Hsli .K'an" and numerous other pieces, Chih was very skilful both in expressing emotion or idea by using natural images as allegory or metaphor, and in using such imagery to create a mood or atmosphere within a poem. In this respect he was a poet of considerably more skill and depth than virtually all of his contemporaries, iii. PavalleI ism

One of the characteristics of ku-shih, the form in which

Chih wrote, was the absence of extensive parallelism or tonal apposition. Ts'ao Chih was one of the first writers to employ these devices in his poems. Parallelism was not by any means a new concept in Chinese literature. It had been used quite 126 extensively in fu and prose compositions in the Han Dynasty and earlier. It also occurred, although infrequently, in the Ch'u

Tz'u. Its use in poetry was rather slow in developing. This is most likely due to the fact that the traditionalism of Chinese writers led them to look primarily to the Shih Ching for .ideas concerning poetic form. In the Shih Ching, despite the tremen• dous potential for parallelism in its tetramefric form, strictly parallel couplets are very seldom found. As a result, poets tend• ed to avoid the idea of parallelism in their poetry, even though they might have employed it quite liberally in their prose and fu.

Yueh-fu poems were not generally heavily influenced by scholastic traditionalism and as we observed in "Mulberry by the

Path", they could be laden with rudimentary parallelism. Per• haps due to inspiration from such yueh-fu , Chien An writers, led by Chih, began to incorporate parallelism into their verse. It is relatively easy to find examples of this in Chih's poetry.

Parallelism of varying degree is evident in "A Feast". In the third couplet there is a rough parallel between "Bright moon" flj^J

JtJ and "the constellations" ^ij ^ . The structure of both lines

is subject-modifier, which gives a feeling of parallel. The

sixth couplet also contains a similar type of correspondence.

In the fourth and fifth couplets however, the parallelism is very well developed. The opposition is not only on the level of grammatical function, i.e. subject-verb-object, it extends to a similarity between the subjects and between the objects: autumn orchids - crimson flowers, or, modifier-flower; hidden fish - beautiful birds, or, modifier-animals; long slopes - 127 green ponds, or, modifier - landscape object; clear waves - high• est boughs, or modifier - landscape object. In the fourth coup•

let there is an ambiguous relationship between the verbs. Both,

in one way or another,relate to the idea of wearing clothing.

In the case of pei the relationship is direct, in the case of mao ^ the relationship is through its phonetic and graphic resem- 7 0 blance to the word mao , "a hat". This is a very advanced

form of parallelism.

Parallel construction is most easily employed in des•

criptive passages. Because of the descriptive character of many

"wandering immortals" poems, we find some of the heaviest usage

of parallelism in these works. In "Travelling as an Immortal"

for example, the last four lines all have a very similar pattern, which could roughly be described as "direction-verb-place", or

D-V-P-P-P. Only the last line deviates slightly. It has two

verbs in succession: D-V-V-P-P. In "Travelling the Fifth

Realm", there are examples of parallelism used in various types

of sentence pattern. In the third couplet we find: "I will

open my cinnabar-mist cloak and unravel my silk rainbow skirt."

In the Chinese these lines have a very close correspondence.

The first character is a verb pertaining to the use of clothing, p'i^^, "to open" and hsi^"to turn the sleeves down". The sec•

ond character is wo^, "T." or "my" in both cases. The third

character is a colour word which also refers to a material,- tan

"red" or "cinnabar", su^ , "white" or "plain silk". The

fourth character is a noun referring to an atmospheric condition, ni ^"rainbow", hsia ^"mist". The last character is a noun re•

ferring to a type of clothing. Yi ^ "gown" and shang1^" a lower 128 garment". The nature of the paralleling in this couplet is very complex, yet Chih carries it off very artfully and without osten• tation. Couplets six to eleven all possess parallelism to some degree. In certain cases the opposition is very obvious and close, as in couplets 7, 8 and 11. In other cases the parallel is quite loose, as in couplets 6, 9 and 10.

Parallelism can be found in a great many of Chih's poems.

In some poems he appears to avoid this device as a means of cre• ating a feeling of rustic asymmetry in his work. This is par• ticularly true of pieces that were written in imitation of earli• er ku-shih,:^sxich as the "Six Occasional Poems". At the same time, Chih was aware that parallelism could be a very effective technique, particularly in descriptive.pas sages. The effect of the use of parallelism is to give the apiece a slower and more ornate movement. Rather than being rushed along by prosaic, narrative diction, we are drawn back and allowed to become more involved in the imagery. The poem.becomes an atmosphere in which we may move and breathe, not simply a story that is re• counted for us. The success which Ts'ao Chih had in his use of this device was undoubtedly a major factor contributing to its great importance in the work of later poets, iv. Word Selection

A good writer is one who has developed considerable skill in the use of the language of his time. A great writer is one who not only can use language skilfully, but also contributes to the evolution of new and more expressive means of using that language. This is as true of James Joyce or e.e. cummings as it is of Ts'ao Chih. None of these men were content to limit their 129 expression to the conventionally accepted manner of their time.

They strove to find imaginative and striking ways in which to convey their feelings and thoughts.

We touched upon certain ways in which Ts'ao Chih was able to accomplish this end when we examined his use of such devices as allegory and metaphor. His developmental work was also evident in the modifications that he made to colloquial diction found in yueh-fu poems. Here I would like to look at the manner in which he was able to create very interesting effects by finding new uses for certain individual words.

The first example of this we find in the couplet from

"A Feast" just previously examined in reference to the use of parallelism. The word mao^ has. a derived meaning of "to issue forth". This fits quite straightforwardly into the context of line 8. Yet, because it Is used In parallel with the verb pei

^t. which means "to wear" as well as "to cover", we cannot ?; ? avoid associating it with the word mao^^fj "a hat" which is a homophone and also is graphically and semantically related.

The ambiguity latent in this association would give the line a meaning of something like: "The crimson blossoms "hat" the green pool". This Is a unique and suggestive image.

In "Serving the Crown Prince" we find two of the numer• ous examples of Chih's verbal use of words generally used as nouns or modifiers. In the first line the word yccoS^ is most commonly used as a modifier meaning "bright" or "dazzling".

As a verb it must mean something like "to brighten" or "to dazzle".

In the second line the word ahing which usually refers to the state of stillness is particularly effective when Chih uses 130

It as a verb, meaning "to still". The first line of "Por Hsu

Kan" has a very modern sound when translated into English as

"A startled wind buffets the white sun...". The reason being that the word "startled" is so suggestive. In the Chinese or• iginal however, it is the word p'ido translated as "buf• fets" that,, strikes one as being most curious and effective.

P'iao usually is an intransitive verb meaning "to float", or a modifier meaning "floating". In this usage it must be a trans• itive verb. The idea of the wind "floating" the sun is very interesting, though difficult to convey in translation. The same word is used again in a similar manner in "For Ting Yi" in the line "And a clear wind buffets the winged pavilion.".

In the preceding line of that poem, Chih has used the word yi.

/\%L "to rely on" or "to lean on" to describe the way In which the frost has formed on the staircases.

One could go on outlining this kind of unique word usage, but these examples should serve as adequate evidence of

Ts'ao Chih's accomplishment in this regard. Very few poets have the skill or imagination to extend and modify the meaning of words in this manner. There is little question that this ability was a very important manifestation of Ts'ao Chih's poetic genius. 131

Notes

^See Yoshikawa Kojiro's postface to Ito Masafumi's :\ So Shoku ••• p. 217 2 Shih P'in, p. 72.

3Wen-hsing Tiao-lung, 10/123/1-3- Shih pp. 254-255

^See Fang Tung-shu Chao mei chart yen \\# p. 70

5See Li Meng-yang, Ts'ao Tzu-chien pp.11-2

6 Se^ e_ Chan_ ™g P'uT-,, Ch'ent ^.i. Ssu-wangf . .. ^ _ . . .ch'uan-chi, - 1. r *• T:'i_ tz'u7- -• Y%.fcm * - • J- _ t . . Hth & X'ir^ ^ifsl p.l. Po Ch'i >fa-§j" was the son. of a Chou king. His own mother died and his stepmother, slandered him in order to have her own son, Po Feng ^{3 i?[ , established as crown prince. The king believed her and exiled Po Ch'i. "Treading Frost" was written out of his sorrow. Master Ts'uei's mother also died early. His stepmother mocked him by calling him by his own mother's name. He refused to respond to it. Eventually he tied a rock to his waist and jumped into the river. "Master Ts'uei Crosses the River" is a song recounting his misfortune.

7For example Kuo Mo-jo in "Lun Ts'ao Chih", Liao Chung- an in "Kuan-yu Ts'ao Chih te chi-ke wen-t'i and Hans Frankel in "15 Poems by Ts'ao Chih: An Attempt at a New Approach". o Wallace Stevens,-"The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words", in The Necessary Angel p. 27.

^Shih Vin p. 72.

10 See Suzuki Shuji, Kan Qishi no Kenkyu fftfijV • 664

11Shih Ching 1/3/3- Legge. p. 8.

12ibid. 54/219- Legge p. 394.

13lbid. 46/197/2. Legge p. 337-

^Ch'u Tz'u pu-chu $j$ti%i£chuan 5, SPPY ed.

15ibid., 5/86 f .

16. ibid., 2/41 -p . The line reads : %^ .

17 $fiL ibid-, 15/147 1 8 The idea of riding behind dragons is often found in the Chiu ko. For example in the line; ^^g^^f^^j 2/h<2 • 132

The Idea of riding behind six dragons is found in Ts'ao Ts'ao's Ch'i ch'u ch'ang |^#o|jCSKS 5/7a, and Kuo P' u's Yu-hsien shih

19 For example, only seven of Ts'ao P'i's twenty-two extant yueh-fu are written in pentameter. 2C]Sui-han'4-t''ang shih-hua %-^^° • 21 "• Chang Wen-chu, ^jg^j fyj^.^'sft in Eua Kuo • #3. p. 85. 2 2 J&\4L See Huang Chieh, Han Wei yueh-fu feng chien . }%^J^.t^j^xJ^. pp. 10 - 13- From certain terminology used in the piece it is possible to determine that it was written in the Eastern Han period. See Liang Han wen-hsvseh-shih ts'an-k'ao tzu-liao &)>%it?f JL^% f P{ P- 518> NOTE #13- 23 My translation. 24 also my trans.. For annotation see full translation appendixed. 2 5 See Ts'uei Pao,. '.Ku-chin chu /s^ , quoted by Huang Chieh in Yueh-fu feng ch ien . "7 / 2 6 'There is some difficulty in determining just what this line means. 2 7 Some have even suggested that certain ku-shih were in fact yueh-fu. See Chu Chu-t'ang Otibfe quoted by Huang in Yueh- fu feng chien, P>35. ? 8 See "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English!! 5th edition, p. 32. 29

See note #2 in annotation;

3°See WH 20/8b . - 10a.

3^See Ving chu chao ming wen hs'uan &f\~$L^zr 5/7« 32 33] Fo"Lotur exampls Ponde " seies a"Th landscape Great e Feastpoem." jr\®~"*£? an<3 the second poem of "Sending Off Master Ying". 0 *'J

34 According to Li Shan. 35 , See for example Tu Fu's Ch'iao'Ling shih san-shih yan

See Huang Chieh, Ts'ao Tzu-chien chi chu p. 16, and Yu Kuan-ying San Ts'ao shih hs'uan pp. 106 - 10.7.

37See WH 48/3b. My trans. 133

38WH 48/2b.

39CHW 15/Ib/2Q8.

^°See Helmut Wilhelm, "The Scholar's Frustration" in Chin• ese Thought and Institutions, i Fairbank ed., p. 401. n. 46. 41 For our purposes, the distinction between simile and metaphor is quite irrelevant. All such comparisons will be re• ferred to as "metaphor" regardless of whether or not they involve the use of such words as "like" or "as" or the Chinese equiva• lent . 42 See Edgar Allan Poe, "Eulalie", in Edgar Allan Poe: Poems and Essays, J.M. Dent & Sons N.Y. 1927, 1977- p. 20. 43 Arthur Waley, The Book of Songs, p. 13. 44 As indicated in the note #8 of the annotations to the translation, "spring thoughts" is an allusion to thoughts of love between a man and wife. 45 See note #3 in annotation.

^6See Juan Chi ^fu^jj , Yung huai shih '$7^>\%t~$%#1 • 47 'See Ch'en Shih-hsiang, "The Shih Ching; Its Generic Significance" in Birch ed. Studies in Chinese Literary Genre, Berkley, 1974, p. 21. 4 8 Wen-hsin tiao-lung 98/8/2-3, Shih p. 195- 49 Li Chi 37/lb, There the phrase is used with reference to music: "All music is borne out of men's hearts. The movement; of men's hearts is caused by (external)obbjects. We" are affected by things and are moved. This is given form to in sound." 50 For a discussion of this phenomenon see Hans Frankel, "Contemplation of the Past in T'ang Poetry", in Perspectives on the T'ang, Wright and Twitchett ed., Yale, 1973, PP • 345-365- 51,"Se e Ku Chih ^ Jfi Ts 'ao Tzu-chien shih chien 2/2a. .. .

52, "For example the first of the "19 Old Poems", and Shih Wlx i ts'un.g chun-cheng -j-

53See Chiang Liang-fu

55 WH 21/15b 134

"^Master Kuei-ku ^^"^was a famous Taoist adept. There is also a book which carries his name.

"^Ying Yang ^ was a mountain in Honan. 58 This is an allusion to Hsu Yu who washed out his ears as a gesture indicating to the Emperor Yao that he was not in• terested in ruling the empire. "^Ch'ang Ho is the name of a mythological gate from whence the south wind blows forth. It is also the name of one of the gates of Heaven.

^°Fu Pel is the legendary Goddess of the Lo River about whom Chih himself, as well as numerous other poets, also wrote. l o r The actual term in the poem is Ling fei fj!P-££J "spirit concu• bine V.

61 Chien Hsiu was tne Director of Marriages in Fu Hsi's time 6 2 See Liang Ran...ts'an k'ao tzu-liao pp. 601-6(36. ^3For example Wang Ts'an's three pieces in the WH (23/ l6b-19a), Ying Heng'sj^ % "For the Four Wang's on their coming of age", |f tsP $ %L%ks (CHS 2/15a-b) and Chu Mu's^iJ- "Breaking • Off Relations with Liu Poetsung, j^^i]^ ' ^CHS 2/lla)

See CHS 2/llb-12a. 65 An interesting exception is Chu Mu's "Breaking Off Re• lations with Liu Po-tsung". This is a rather violent allegori• cal attack on Liu's honour and probably was a'model for Chi K'ang's "Breaking Off Relations with Shan Chu-yiian".

66See CSKS 3/6a.

^7The Nine Gates were the gates of the imperial palace of mythological times.

68See CSKS 3/8a.

69See Shih Ching 40/181/1,2,3. 70 ' This relationship will be discussed further in the section on word selection. 135

CONCLUSION

In a time when poets had just begun to throw off the chains of Confucian pragmatism and move toward a greater con• sciousness of literature as a purely expressive medium, Ts'ao

Chih stands out as the poet who was most able to give form to

that new consciousness through his work.= He was a man of very deep and genuine sentiments and he did not shrink from the ex• pression of his thoughts and emotions in all their variegated, and sometimes contradictory, shadings. More important from an artistic standpoint was the fact that he was an extraordinarily gifted technician. He was well aware of the importance of for• mal refinement as a means of augmenting the overall impact of his poems.

This aspect of his work is perhaps not immediately evident to the reader unfamiliar with pre-T'ang poetry. Chih's poems read rather prosaically and are not particularly ornate in com• parison with later works. In this sense he is perhaps best con• sidered part of the classical or antique tradition, rather than the medieval. Yet when we compare his work to that or earlier poets it becomes clear that he was a far more complex and self- conscious writer than any that had preceded him.

He wrote in most of the forms and styles popular in his time and demonstrated a great deal of skill in all of them.

Prom lengthy . rational discourses such as Pien tao lun ^^^"1^ to lyrical poems like "Seven Sorrows", or from relatively ornate 136 fu such as Lo-shen fu J&'vf^'S&to simple ditties like "East of

P'ing Ling", in all he manifested a high degree of artistic maturity. Similarly,lin his poems we find expressions of many different moods. In "A Feast" he is expansive and noble, in

"For Prince Pai-ma, Piao" frustrated and disillusioned. In

"Alas!" his feelings shift violently from ecstasy to dejection, while in "The Beautiful Maiden" his tone is elegant and sub• dued .

Wang Shih-mao , in his summary of the most im• portant developments in the history of Chinese poetics says:

("In the development of) antique poetry from the time of t the two Han Dynasties, Ts'ao Tzu-chien appeared and for the first time there was strong expressiveness. He man• ifested many emotional attitudes.1

Aside from his technical innovation, it is perhaps.the complexi• ty and variety of Ts'ao Chih's work which most distinguishes him as a great poet. It was the tumultuous and involved circum•

stances of his personal life and the world around him which were undoubtedly responsible for this complexity. Chih had a great reservior of life experience from which to draw the raw material

of his art. Through his natural talent and broad classical

learning he forged that raw material Into finely crafted and

exquisitely moving forms. Perhaps in the work of no other pre-

T'ang writer, including T'ao Yuan-ming, do we find the level of

emotional complexity and technical accomplishment that we find

in the work of Ts'ao Chih. His poetry is an intimate revelation

of reality as it existed in China 1700 years ago and as It in

some respects still exists today.

This work has dealt with a large number of problems In a 137 rather superficial manner. There are many more problems concern• ing the life, thought and work of Ts'ao Chih that deserve more detailed and extensive consideration than they have thus far re• ceived in any language. I hope that those who read this thesis may be encouraged to begin a study of some of these problems.

If my own experience in the preparation of this work is any indication, such study will not go unrewarded.

Note

See Wang Shih-mao £ & ,u£ Yi-p'u hsieh yu Ssu-k'u ch'uan-shu, chen-pen, san chi fflflfy.&j^-'Sfi'fcz.jL edition, volume 1523, Commercial Press, Taipei, p. 2a. 138

TRANSLATIONS OP TS'AO CHIH'S POEMS

WITH ANNOTATIONS 139

I. A Feast1

2 3 The young noble loves and honours his guests, ' 4 •Til the end of the feast he knows no fatigue. In the clear night they,all roam the Western Park While flying carriage-tops chase to and fro."

The bright moon casts down its clear glow, The constellations are all strewn about the sky.

Autumn orchids have covered the long slopes, Crimson blossoms rise from green pools.

Hidden fish come out to leap the-clear' waves, Beautiful birds sing on the highest boughs. 7 Spirit gusts meet the scarlet cart wheels,' The light carriage rocks in the wind. Buffeted and tossed we may give reign to-=h=i=s ambitions J~ Por a thousand more autumns may it always be this way I

Notes:

1 i - 'A , This type of feast was one which was given by a noble for the entertainment.of his retainers and aids. See Lu Yen-chi ^ in the Liu oh'en chu Wen .Hsuan.

2 ' - The "young noble" /£ V. in this case can fairly positively be identified as rs'ao P'i. In Ying Ch'ang's Shih Wu-kuan ohung-lang-chiang chien Chang-t'ai chi shih ^ -2»-'IT *f $k T%LOr- Pfr ; we find a couplet clearly related to the first fouplet of this poem; " ^ tMt * *D & " "The young noble honours and loves.his guests, Amid the music and drink he knows no fatigue". Ts'ao P'i became Wu-kuan chung- lang-chiang in 211 A.D. (C.A. 1 6) ,.. see .the San-kuo-chih s. g|J*. . "A Feast" must have been written around that time. tfiL » The- Wen. Hsuan version reads > as d°es the parallel line in Ying Ch'ang's poem. Perhaps that is the more correct phrasing. 140

The T'ai-p'ing yu-lan quotes this passage as 4|_ ^ in 824/9b. It seems that this is simply a mistake in the c'o'pying as another quotation of the same line in 474/12a follows the other versions of the text.

The Western Garden may have been the T'ung Chueh Gar• den. In the notes to Tso Ssu's Wei tu fu fy^Y L1 Shan we read: "To the west of the Wen Ch'ang Hall there is T'ung Chueh Garden. In the garden there is a fish pond." WH 6/6b. This fish pond may be identifiable with the pond in Ts'ao P'i's "Lotus Pond" poem , there too the "Western Garden" is mentioned. Wherever it was,It seems to have been a favourite gathering place for the scholars of Yeh. It is frequently mentioned in the poems of other Chien An writers.

^•$LJHL> Tne image of the carriage canopies suggests the noble andelite character of the guests attending the feast.

7 ~% 'f^L s Here again carriages are used to symbolize - the vaunted status of the guests. The "light carriage" jfcfL ^r refers especially to the King's carriage.

8 JC^II^AL , This phrase owes much to the "Nineteen Old Poems". K line in the poem beginning "The eastern wall is high and long" reads: " ±jL :4\&--i:lr " 29/4a WH.

9Chang P'u's edition reads "^"fa"- 141

II. Serving the Crown Prince

The white sun brightens the green of spring, Seasonal rains still the flying dust.

Cold ice flees the blazing sun, Cool winds swirl around me.

Clear wine fills the golden cup, Rich food is spread all about.

Musicians of Ch'i perform rare tunes, And singers have come from western Ch'in.

How elegant indeed Is my lord! His wit as swift as a spirit.3

Notes:

The Crown Prince was Ts'ao P'i who had come to that position in 217. See SKC 2/la.

2 -^f Chang P'u, Huang Chieh and Chu Hsu-tseng use this variation. Ting Yen, Ku Chih and the TPYL (539/2444) make it -^j" ^ . The latter would seem more natural, but the former version is perhaps more descriptive. The sun may rep• resent the Crown Prince. Also,chun makes a better rhyme.

3Chu Chia-cherg TK-JT^C.believes this poem to be utterly sarcastic. He refers to two poems in the Shih Ching which were considered to be sarcastic because they praised men who did not warrant praise. See 16/77 and 21/106. It is not likely that Chu is correct as the poem does not betray even the slightest trace of irony or satire. 142

III. Seven Sorrows

The bright moon shines on the tall tower, Its flowing rays move to and fro.

In the tower a lady lives in sorrow, Her lament overflows with grief.3

Pray tell, who is it who laments? ^ She says, "I am a traveller's wife,"

"My lord has been gone ten years and more, Leaving me to sleep alone.

He is like the dust on a bright road, I,like the mud in a turbid stream;

One floating, one sinking, each has a different course, Will there come a time for us to meet again?

I wish I were a south-westerly wind,6 Blowing across the distance I'd enter his embrace.

But if his heart would not open to me Where would I then find repose?"

Notes:

This poem appears in different sources under two dis• tinct titles. The more common title is "Seven Sorrows"-t* . In the Yu t'ai hsin yung and Yueh-fu shih-ehi the poem is called "Poem of Complaint" %~ 'ft • Wang Ts'an, Chang Tsai and T'ao Yung (of the T'ang Dynasty) have all written poems of a similar nature under the same title. The fact that the poem is included in the Yiieh-fu shih- ohi raises the question of the poem's origin-and:-its intended' character. It is difficult to determine whether or not TsHao Chih wrote the piece as a yueh-fu or not. The style and some of the language employed could pass for either a refined yueh-fu or a somewhat colloquial poem . This poem is the earliest extant under its title which may indicate that Ts'ao Chih was not writing on an established yueh-fu theme. By the Chin Dynasty 143 there was a modified and lengthened version which must have been accompanied by music and would have been considered a yueh-fu. Kuo Mao-ch'Ien has included this version along with the original in the Hsiang-ho Ch 'u-tiao-oh'ii yfS-Jp? & section of his YPSC. The lengthened version is called Yuan shih. hsing, oh'i chieh $<^f. ft is also referred to in the Yileh Chih - of the Sung Shu where the title is reduced simply to Ming •YVleh flfl k| , the first two characters of the work. The title "Seven Sorrows" is not easy to give definite significance to. It definitely is not a .eh 'i-fc, following the model of Ch'i chien found in the Ch'u Tz'u ; these were essential• ly prose discourses. Commentators have tried to. show that "Sev• en Sorrows" implies either that the poet was sad in seven dif• ferent ways (i.e. sad because of his pain, sad because of un• righteousness, etc., see Huang Chieh's quotation of Lu Hsiang), or that all seven emotions,(i.e. joy, anger, sorrow, pleasure, love, hate, desire, see Chu Hsu-tseng 5/5b), are all dominated by sorrow. Such arguments are not particularly convincing. As there are two quotations from a poem or poems en• titled "Seven Sorrows" by Ts'ao Chih included in the Wen Hsuan commentary, some scholars have theorized that perhaps there was originally a series of seven poems (see WCTKTL p. 82). It is possible that the title relates to music. The piece was used as a yueh-fu and the Chin version of it was divided into seven stanzas. Whatever the true meaning and origin of the title, it was used by later writers as a yueh-fu whose title was loosely applied to poems dealing with the sorrows of a lonely or aban• doned woman.

This line is partially""derived -from one of the "Nine• teen Old Poems" #5, which reads "Just", in', the midst of the tune she hesitates" ^ oE./M^ flQ •

This line is also derived from the same poem. The original reads, "Her disillusionment overflows with grief."

Depending on the edition this reads variously ^- , ^ ^- , or • There is little significant difference made to the meaning of the line regardless which variant is employed. I have followed Huang Chieh's version as usual.

Huang Chieh says that the character -fa in the above two lines reads ^ in the'TPYL. I could not find the passage to confirm or refute this.

^The reference to the "south-west wind" has raised speculation regarding the location in which Chih actually wrote this poem. Liu Lia ^Jyff^ believes that Chih was showing his desire to be united with his brother P'i who^Liu believes, would have been residing at the Imperial court in Yeh. At > that time Chih would have been living on his fief at Yung Ch'iu, southwest of Yeh. In that way, a southwest wind would have travelled from Chih towards P'i. According to my calculations however, by the time that Chih had moved to Yung. Ch'iu the 144 the Imperial court had moved to Loyang, almost directly west of Yung Ch'iu. Ito Masafumi notes that the Southwest was a feminine area according to Chinese geomancy and thus would naturally have been associated with the female persona In the poem. (p.119) 145

IV. Sending Off Master Ying,• Two Poems

1.

Walking up the slope of Pel Mang In the distance I see Loyang's hills.

How silent now is Loyang! _ The palaces and mansions all burned.

The walls lie broken and shattered Amid brambles that now rise to meet the sky.

Nowhere are the elders of yesteryear, There are only young people newly come. 4 My.y steps are awkward for there is no travelled path; Overgrown fields have not been returned to theoplough. 5 A traveller, absent so long Would not know the roads and byways. How desolate it is amid these wilds There is no hearth smoke for a thousand miles.

When I recall my former home '' g My chest grows so tight I cannot speak.

Notes:

The Master Ying named in the title was Ying Ch'ang. He was one of the so-called "Seven Masters of Chien An" and once served as Ts'ao Chih's tutor while the latter was Duke of P'ing Yuan. It has been suggested that the poems were_ addressed to both Ying Ch'ang and his younger brother Ying Chu. However, Ying Chii is not known to have had any close association with Chih. The confusion arises from the fact that Chih did not spec• ify the full name of the recipient of the poem as he did with all of the other poems dedicated to friends. It seems to me that to take the poems as being written to two different people simply adds unnecessary complication to their understanding. 146

The relationship between the two poems is not clear. They may or may not have been written as a complementary pair. The first piece is a description of the ruins of Loyang which had been burned and sacked in 190 by Tung Chuo. (see SKC, WC l/5b) Shih probably saw these ruins in 211 when on an exped• ition against Ma Ch'ao. The significance of seeing Loyang was that Ying Ch'ang, as the son of a Han official (his father Ying Shao fill was Grand Guardian of T'ai Shan ^& ), most likely grew up there at a time when it was a flourishing metropolis. The second poem was written as part of an actual fare• well gathering. It isn't possible to tell just where Ying Ch'ang was going or why. It may be, as some have suggested, that he was leaving Chih's service ~-to join the ranks of Ts'ao P'i's officialdom. Assuming that the poem is not overly hyper• bolic or hypothetical,lit is likely that Ch'ang was leaving on a lengthy journey northward in any case.

•IL or "tp was a mountain northeast of Loyangg' In 37 A.D. a certain King Kung j>&. jL£_ was buried there. After• wards many other nobles were also interred there. 3 The burning of Loyang, as mentioned, was done by the army of Tung Chuo in 190. There is a variant of J"5^" found in the T 'ai-p 'ing Huan-yu-chi r$?- r*? -f^ reading . I was-::unable to trace this down. v ^There is a variant of this in Kuo Ylin-p'eng ^ followed by Ting Yen reading ^ for^ .

5 I^t This probably refers to Ying Ch'ang.

6 This is, strictly speaking, a first person pro• noun. In the literature of this time however, it often was used to imply a second person. That is the case here. Chih must be speaking of Ying Ch'ang.

7 -^"* lrj» fe> There is a common variant (found in the Wu- Ch'en. \£_ version of the Wen Hsuan' '•- among other places) which reads jt £ ; "friend of my youth...". It is a plausible alternative out it would seem that the other version is more consistent with the general emphasis in the poem on describing the ruined city of Loyang.

#k This is taken from an anonymous poem in the "Old Style" ^ ^ . The couplet reads: j^MM^.M^Xi "Sadly I part from my beloved friend; my chest grows so tight that I can hardly speak.". .This may give strength to arguments for employing the variant rp. ^ in the preceding line. 147

2 .

Times of peace don't often come, Such pleasant meetings can't be repeated.

Por though heaven and earth will have no end A man's life is like the morning frost.

I wish we could continue this harmony and joy But my friend is travelling northward.2

Friends and relatives all gather to send him offJ With a feast on the river's northern shore.4

The kitchen's offerings are so meagre, The guests drink but don't drain their cups.

With affections so strong, the hopes were so deep.., I feel shame down to my very core.5

The mountains and rivers are dangerous and long,^ Parting is swift, the day of reunion far. 7 If only we could be as birds who share wings Spreading our plumes we'd rise and soar on high.

Notes:

The first line seems to have a slight allusion to Li Ling's letter to Su Wu /f-^iX 4|* • There we find the line: See %j :s%Q&f • 4l/lb^ p. 584. The second line once again follows Li Ling, this time from a poem written to Su Wu. The See WH line reads : jfc ^ ( ^($kft S » 29/6a)

2 -This refers to the north. In this case it has connotations of the severe climate and uncivilized nature of lands north of the Great Wall.

3 The iML^ Wu^'en - edition of the WH gives |?J^(jj{| •

^Ho Yang >»f may be a place name as Huang Chieh indi• cates, being the interior of the Yellow river bend. It is more likely that this simply refers to the southern bank of a river as I have translated It. 148

The use of the word i\y^ , "shame" is curious as one would not ordinarily feel shame at a friend's parting. Ito". Masa- fumi speculates that Chih had requested that Ch'ang remainiin his service rather than go to serve P'i. Ch'ang apparently c could not do that and Chih was ashamed for making such a re• quest, (p. 33) There Is no other evidence to this effect.

6 lU )'| PJL The YWLC 29/515 quotes this as ^ ji| • 7 The birds who join wings in order to fly are mytholog• ical creatures of the south called ahien-chien %%) • See Erh-ya 21/5/6. These animals were of course, symbolic of friend• ship and affection. 149

V. Six Occasional Poems1

2 Around the tall spires blow many sad winds; Morning sun shines on the northern wood. He is thousands of miles away now; The lakes and rivers are far and deep. 5 With only a skiff I could surely never cross them So the sorrow of being parted is yet harder to bear. A"* lone goose flying southward^ Passes my yard and cries long and sad.

Looking up, I yearn for him so distant; If only I could speak through those fading calls...

But his form has suddenly disappeared; The beating of wings strikes to my heart.

Notes:

"'"The six poems included in this set were most likely not all composed at the same time or place. There are similar• ities of theme between some of the .pieces, but no single theme runs through the entire set. Unlike "For Prince Pai-ma Piao" which is a definite series of poems written on a single occasion, "Six Occasional Poems" is most probably a group of untitled poems which were made into a set when Chih's works were first collected. 2 The tall spires represent the capital city and the court, the sad winds may symbolize the evil state of political affairs in and around the court. The .''.northern wood" is probably an allusion to one of the "Odes of Ch'in" in the Shih Ching entitled Ch'en feng JUL. , 27/132 which deals with the theme of an estranged husband. See Legge p. 200.

^ ^L^f is also a term taken from the Shih Ching. It translates literally as "that one". 150

5 •> / This was a kind of vessel made by lashing two mono-hulled boats together. Presumably this made for a more stable ride.

6The image of the goose flying south seems to owe some• thing to the Ch'u Tz'u which contains a passage reading: ffc o^jr iT * See chiu Pien JLsMfy WH 33/8b. A variant text 151

2 .

A tumble-weed, broken from its stalk ^ Swirls and rushes with the ceaseless wind.

Recklessly a whirlwind lifts it up And blows it skyward amid the clouds.

Higher, higher, there are no boundaries above; The road of Heaven will never reach an end. 2 Like the weed is a journeying knight, He lays down his life to wage distant war. His torn hempen cloak leaves his body exposed And he can never get his fill of pulses and beans.

Gone, gone, don't speak of it again. It's this deep sorrow that makes men grow old.

Notes :

This image is similar to that in "Alas!" v^Q%.f£ft> Li Shan quotes a passage from the Shuo-yuan concerning plants leaving their roots but the implication of that passage has nothing to do with the meaning of this poem.

2 This is a slightly ambiguous term which could mean either a retainer or a traveller. Here the person Is apparently travelling with the army. The YWLC 82/1413 reads

The object of the penultimate line is not specified. I have taken the "it" to refer to the traveller's sorrows. 152

3-

In the northwest lives a weaver woman. All her silk cloth lies in disarray.

2 3 At morning's light she takes up the shuttle, ' But by evening the patterns are still not done. Sighing deeply all through the long night Her sobs reach the dark clouds above.

" I remain alone In the empty chamber^ While...my loved one marches with the troops.

He hoped to return within three years. Yet already nine springs have passed.' g A lone bird flies circling the trees, He calls sadly in search of the flock. Q :If only I were the south-moving sun I would cast down my rays to see my lord."

Notes:

In the northern sky there Is a famous triangular con• stellation called the "Weaving Woman". Chinese mythology associ• ates a number of legends with this stellar being. See Shih Chi T'ien-kuan shu 27/23 (1834). Note especially the ^ jj^ and Jjv, commentaries.

2The TPYL 8l6/3b reads^- for p£) ..

3Huang Chieh states that tfie'Z'ao yi-% %• reads . (See Chu 5/8b). Ku Chih states that the Y'THY also reads jj}* . The editions that I have seen of these works do not have this variant It is not difficult to see where confusion would arise however, as a line in the tenth of the "19 Old Poems" reads ^L>WJ^ ^IL^ •

11 The YWLC 32/563 reads fl The TPYL 8l6/3b reads £ 5 This line relates to a poem in the Shih Ching which reads in part j£g>Uf ^A^ct' See ^9/203/5,6 Legge pp. 355-356. 153

The YWLC reads . 7 Li Shan for some reason wanted to make the nine springs equivalent to only three years. It seems more likely that the number nine, as is so often the case, indicates a large, Indefin• ite number. o The YTHY edition reads . I have followed this variant'.

9Huang Chieh argues that this must be the moon rather than the sun. He quotes a passage from the Han Shu, T ' ien-Wen chih which says: "The moon has nine phases. Prom the first of summer until summer fully arrives it follows the red road south". See Han Shu, T'ien-wen-chih £ jc_ fe 26/21a. This seems a somewhat contrived explanation. 154

4.

There is a beauty in a southern land; ' ^ Her face like the blossoming peach and plum.

4 At dawn she walks on the Yangtze's northern bank;

At sunset she rests by the Hsiang or Hsiao.^s6

The vulgar crowd don't value her beauty Is there anyone worthy of her smiles??

It won't be long before her years reach their end; Such radiance can't be preserved very long.9

Notes:

The "southern land" refers to that area south of the Yangtze. See Wang Yi' s note to the Ch'u Tz'u, C'hiu Chang, Hsi Wang Jih ^^^f Q . 2 " In the Ch'u Tz'u, especially the Li Sao,Mei-jen, (lit. beauteous one) refers to the King of Ch'u. In this case, how• ever, though Chih is obviously alluding to the Ch'u Tz'u the "beauteous one" must represent either Chih himself or perhaps someone toward whom Chih felt sympathy. This second line seems to have been lifted from the Shih Ching. SSee Kuo Feng, Shao-nan, Ho pi nung yi, 2/24/2,

* Legge p-35' 4 There are several different versions of this line. The YWLC Chang P'u and the WH give: £fl ig* £(.& jf • 18/32 6 reads: ^| 51. yfo jjl . Ting Yen and Kuo Yun-p' eng give: ^Mi£f4t» i£ . Of these, the first mentioned seems to be the most apt. ^ 5 Here also, there are at least three different varia• tions of the text. Huang Chieh follows the WH In giving Q J ^ 3t85£-• Tne YTHY gives p ft :M >'l ;it . Huang Chieh also claims that a Liu Ch'en -fc edition of the WH gives '/ ^ Jjjjj . The editions I have seen all read: £J ^ :J| jjL • This last variation may simply be a misprint as it doesn't work well in context. All other editions, including Chang P'u, Ting Yen, Ku Chih and the Ming moveable type edition give ^ ip§ ' 155

I~-prefer this as It preserves a certain degree of parallelism with the preceding line. More closely translated this would read: "At dusk she rests on islands in the Hsiao and Hsiang.* 6The references to the banks of the Yangtze, the Hsiao and Hsiang Rivers are intended to lend an exotic and romantic feel.-'.t-o the poem. The Hsiao and Hsiang are in present-day Hunan Province and have traditionally been considered very beautiful, probably because of the lush vegetation and beautiful land forms in the area. 7 Literally: "Show her white teeth". This could either mean to smile, as I have translated, or to sing. 8

The Ming edition of Kuo Yun-p'eng apparently gives-; for m The YWLC 18/326 quotation of this passage reads: ^ 156

5.

The grooms prepare my carriage early, I am leaving to travel afar.l

2 Where is it that I wish to journey? The state of Wu is"5still our foe. I will gallop along that endless road, Never wanting to return to the east.3

Along the Yangtze many sad winds blow; The Huai and Ssu plunge, swiftly on, 5

I wish that I could cross them quickly But alas! I have no skiff.6

My ambition is not to lead a leisurely life, I want to assuage my country's woes.7

Notes:

The Wen Hsilan reads : ^ft^- The second passage quoted by Li Shan from the •Ch'u Tz'u seems to have been lost in the original. (I couldn't find it anyway.)

2 Chang' P'u's version gives: J^^^'fff^.* -2 Literally: "How could the East Road be worth travell• ing?". The significance of this line is not clear. The Easts ern Road may have been the same one referred to in "For Prince Pai-ma Piao" in the lines: "On a pitching raft we traverse the great waves, I despise the endlessness of this Eastern Road.", (poem #1). This was the road eastward from the capital to his fief in Yung Ch'iu. ii This line is closely related to a passage in the Ch%u Chang, She Chiang -/L 4£ >^;t-which reads ^Ji^p^.(I am sad• dened by the lingering winds on the Yangtze'sbanks). Li Shan, in his commentary misquotes this passage as : >fr ^ JiY j|J , which makes it seem even more closely related.' ^ The Huai and Ssu flow into each other • and empty into 157 the sea in present-day Anhwei province.

6This is again the "square boat" mentioned in poem #1. See poem #1, noteo#5. 7 The phrase is somewhat:.problematic. Chih has perhaps borrowed it from the Shih Ching, Wei Feng, Po Hsi P'ien

%tT )iL i ifa'*) '%o > 1/5/8 swhere it seems to mean the opposite of what it would ordinarily. Legge follows the ancient commentators and translates it as: "'Till my heart is weary,". (See Legge p. 105). If this meaning were applied to Chih's line it would translate more like: "With weary heart I will assuage my coun• try's woes.", or "I burden my heart (with desire to) aid my country's woes.". I find it more reasonable to translate the •jj" A^* in its normal sense which is, "I take pleasure in..." or "I would be happy to...". This interpretation is supported to some extent by the existence of a line in Chih's Tse Kung Shih % % ffwhich reads: jfcV =*g (1 wlsn to travel to the Yangtze and Hsiang to attack Wu and Yueh.). 158

6.

In a winged look-out over a hundred feet high, ' I go to the window and lean against the sill.3»4

Gazing around I can see for a thousand miles; Prom dawn to dusk I watch the flat plains.

Brave knights hold much sorrow in their hearts. While petty men just revel in their sloth."

The kingdom's foes have not yet been vanquished; Por that cause I would lay down my life.8 q I grasp my sword and look southwest,y And wish I could go to Mount T'ai.1^ The strings sound swiftly, a sad air rings out. Won't you listen to my song of despair.

Notes:

^tt ^Literally, "flying look-out". There are two ways in which to interpret this. It could mean that the tower Is very tall and perhaps unsupported so that it seems to be suspended from the sky. The other interpretation, the one I have tried to convey, is that the roof of the look-out has traditional up-turned eaves and, as it is very tall, the roof- line of the tower very much resembles a bird in flight. 2 This line must be derived from the third of the "19 Old Poems" which reads: ^ /v. > (Twin towers of over a hundred feet high). '

The window in this case seems to be a lattice type. What I have translated as "sill" is more precisely a railing. H Huang Chieh cites a Wu Ch'en edition of the WH as having ^(p in place of^-y. I could not confirm this. In any case, the character jjjy which ordinarily means "to drive", has a kind of affinity with.the word which originally referred to the railing on the front of a chariot. 159

fll More literally "vigorous knights". Li Shan quotes the'Feng-su-t'ung jfL fg-as defining f,'\ -t- as "those whose ambition or aim in life does not waiver."

6Huang Chieh has found a variant in a Wu Ch'en edition of the WH which reads /[^j" for ^ .

7 The "kingdom's foes" would be primarily Wu and Shu- Han,

The term JV^ is repeated here and I have translated it in the same manner as In Poem #5• See note #7 to the pre• vious poem.

9There is a similar line in Chih's Ch 'iu-tzu-shih- piao J^'fli^fe, (see Ting p. 10 6) which reads: 'Vl li !r&#t ^ ^ j£ > "Grasping my sword I turn my gaze eastward; my heart has va?rea.dy hastened forth to meet with Wu.".

il^ I believe simply to be the mountain in southern Shantung which would be on the road to the state of Wu. The authors of the WCTKTL try to identify T'ai Shan as being the mythological residence of the spirits of the dead. If that were the case, Chih would be implying that he wished to die for his kingdom. I see no particular value in this explanation. 160

VI. Rejoicing with the Rain

How vast is the canopy of Heaven! 2 Its nurture brings forth abundant life.

Without it there would be bitter hardship, Yet with its grace things may grow and flourish.

Propitious clouds come from the north; ' g Billowing and churning, they move southwest. 7 The seasonal rain begins to fall m the night' Bringing long bolts of lightning that circle my house. o

Excellent seedi; n0w fills the fertile land;° When autumn comes the harvest will be good.

Notes:

In the annotation to the Pei-t''ang Shu-ch 1 ao ilt, ^ (156/10a) the commentator, K'ung Kuang-t'ao |$] of the Ch'ing Dynasty, quotes what he believes to be the" preface to this poem. It reads: "In the second year of T'ai-ho (228) there was a real drought. The three cereals could not be har vested. The people's lot was starvation." However, he notes that in an earlier edition, the commentary of Ch'en Yu ^j" attributed the passage to Ts'ao Chih but did not give it a title. That there was a drought during the summer of 228 is confirmed by the Wei Chih (3/4b). At that time Chih had been renamed Prince of Yung Ch'iu (WC 19/10b). 2 In the first couplet, and especially the second line, a certain affinity with a memorial by Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju is. hinted at. In that memorial, entitled Feng-shan-wen3 ^•JL%jT_> Hsiang-ju urges the Emperor Wu to reintroduce a particular sacrificial ritual into the imperial repertoire. In it we find the lines: ft #C ^_ * |T ^ i& & , f & <3^ £) jfr £$L ST ^ 3 This couplet, rendered more literally, would read: "Cast it off and it must suffer hardship, show it grace and it will grow and flourish." The "it" prefers to "abundant' life" or "myriad living things". 161

In the Records of the Grand Historian ( 7^.1? ^ 27/76) we find this description of "propitious clouds" ^ >g ; "Like smoke, but not smoke; like clouds, but not cloud. Brilliant and beautiful, spiralling silently, these are what are called "Propitious clouds". One would be hard-pressed to find a good English equivalent. 5 In northern China when the wind blows from the north in summer it brings rain. (See Huang p. 17) \

^ '^^'l^.This expression can refer either to* the upward motion of clouds or to the sound of distant thunder. (See HUang's note on page 16)

7Some editions replace ^ with #4- . Either character makes good sense but I prefer^ . g The various editions give alternatives for the first three characters of this line. Li Meng-yang replaces JL with X . Chahg-'Yen $|r replaces^ with jfcjf . The YWLC (2/28F exchang es with • The only one of these that to be reasonable is the last. Q The Ming moveable-type edition, Li Meng-yang and Ting all use in place of 162

VII. For Hsu Kan1

2 A startled wind buffets the white sun Swiftly returning to the western hills. The radiance of the moon is not yet full But the host of stars is dense and bright.

A scholar of integrity attends to his life work ' And even the petty man is not completely idle.

Aimless, I stroll around in the night, g Wandering between the twin palace spires.

The Wen Ch'ang Hall rises out of heavy clouds, And the Ying Peng Tower reaches to the sky.7

Spring doves coo in the upturned eaves While window casements rattle in the gusty wind. g I think of the scholar of the Bramble Cottage; His lowliness and poverty are truly piteous.

The coarse greens don't fill his empty stomach And his crude robes are now all in tatters."

Disillusioned, his heart is filled with sorrow, Yet, delighting in letters, he completes his book.

If one casts away a jewel who is there to blame? Master Ho was not without his faults.11 12 Dusting his cap he awaits an understanding patron But aren't we all as neglected as he?13 A good field will have no late harvests, A fertile marsh has many productive years.

A sincere heart has the beauty of an ornate jade; As the years pass its virtue shines forth more and more 14 The meaning of friendship lies in sincerity, I offer you this verse, what more is there to say? 163

Notes:

"'"In the Wei Chih (21/3a-b) we find this information about Hsu Kan: "Hsu Kan of Pel Hai was styled Wei-chang." The com• mentary quotes the Hsien-hsien Esing-ohuang 'A^ 7^ (no long• er extant) which tells us that Hsu '..Kan was of high moral fibre, broad erudition, talented at composition and not interested in seeking an official career. In the mid-Chlen An period he was twice offered positions in government by Ts'ao Ts'ao but both times he declined, claiming illness. He died in 217 (C.A. 22) (see WC 21/5a-b). He was twenty-three years older than Chih and considered to be one of the "Seven- Masters of the Chien An Era". Ito speculates that this poem was written In 216, one year before Kan's death (p. 40).

^jP)|J.The "startled wind" or "startling wind" is a f fairly common image in the literature of this time. It seems to have first been used by Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju in his Shang-lin Fu J^^^(WH 8/7a).

^ i^l "ffc Literally "circular radiance". This refers to the moon.

>\3. According to the Lun Yu, a Vscholar of Integrity" is one who does not try to make a living by harming others or by inhumanity. See ^ , 31/15/9.

^ "-jft It is difficult to determine the exact connota• tion of this term. Both Li Shan, who quotes from the K'ung Ts 'ung-tzu ^{^^t and Ito, believe that it refers to those enterprises whose benefits are passed on to succeeding gener• ations .

^ ^^This alludes to the Imperial palaces, see #3 of the "Nineteen Old P6ems". 7 According to Li Shan, the Wen Ch'ang Hall and Ying Feng Tower were buildings in the city of Yeh. He also Im• plies that the tj? ^_ in line 10 refers to a tower constructed by King Mu of Cn'in. To follow such an explanation would destroy the parallelism of the couplet. 8 The "scholar of the Bramble Cottage" is Hsu Kan. Q The above four lines refer to the fact that Kan was living as a retired scholar and had not accepted official em• ployment . "^The book alluded to was probably Kan's Chung Lun, tj? •fljg" no longer extant.

"'""''This line alludes to a story in the Han-fei-tzu about a certain Master Pien-ho who found a piece of raw jade. He offered it to King Li of Ch'u and later King Wu of Ch'u, both 164

of whom eould not recognize it as jade and consequently pun• ished Pien-ho by cutting off one foot and then the other. Fi• nally King Wen of Ch'u recognized that it was real jade. See Han-Fei-tzu, #13: 4/10b - 11a.

The expression "dusting his cap" §3? %L > originates in the biography of Wang Chi in the •"Ng$..~Shu.; 5%^- There werfind the passage: "(Wang) Ch'i and Kung Yu were friends, people of the time said, ..'."When Wang Yang (Wang Chi) was in office, Sir Kung dusted his cap". Yen Shih-ku's commentary says that 'dusting one's capVmeanstto enter official service. (See HS 72/32a) 13 JLine 22 literally reads: "But as for understanding patrons who Is not also thus.". I take that to mean that Chih is complaining that he too is waiting to be given a chance to prove himself in office. "^The character <|£_ in the penultimate line has several meanings. It could mean "esteem" or "sincerity" or possibly "to urge". The last meaning seems to fit better in the con• text of the poem as a whole and gives more significance to the last line. Unfortunately It does no translate well, therefore I have used the more neutral "sincerity". 165

VIII. For Ting li

The cool air of early autumn comes forth, Leaves on the courtyard trees have,just begun to fall.

An Icy frost lies on the jade staircases '. - And a clear wind buffets the winged pavxllion.

The morning clouds don't return to the mountains ^ And constant rain has created streams and marshes.

The wheat and millet lie on the fields and embankments. How can the peasants harvest them now?5

The rich so often forget the lowly; Who can spread grace far and wide?

With white fox down to face the winter, Why should one think of those in rags?

I truly admire Master Yen Ling: g „ His jeweled sword was not what he treasured. '

Put your mind at ease my lord, The-spirit of close friendship is not thin.

Notes:

Ting Yi, whose style was Cheng-li, j£-^§_3 was employed as an official by Ts'ao Ts'ao. He is most notorious for his support of Ts'ao Chih in the succession struggle. Because of those dealings he was executed, along with his brother, when Ts'ao P'i eventually ascended the throne. The date of this poem is difficult to determine. It may have been written just previous to Ting's execution, as Yu Kuan-ying (p. 109) suggests, or it may have been written before 216 (C.A. 22) the year in which P'i was named crown prince. LI Shan for some reason believed that this poem was written to Ting Yi's brother, Ting I -J | , and had been mis-titled. Huang Chieh demonstrates the fallacy of this. 166

2 The "jade staircases" and "winged pavillions" repre• sent the imperial palaces. See "Occasional Poems"#6, note #1 for an explanation of "winged pavillion".

This is an indirect indication of the season. In the Kuang.Ya Jgj ffi. (3/9 -k-/5b) it states: "In the Eighth month the floating clouds don't return."

"Constant r.ain" translates the term which means any rain that lasts more than three days. (see ^JL T ^% ^ Legge p. 27). ~ '

5 ^ Chang P'u's edition reads .

^The story of Master Yen Ling is found in the Hsin Hsu iffi ftfr 7/3b-4a. Yen Ling Chi-tzu had to travel to Chin on bus• iness. He was wearing his jewelled 'sword as he went by Lord Hsu. Lord Hsu looked as if he admired and wanted the sword but didn't say anything. Master Yen Ling didn't offer it at the time as he was on an important mission for his state. In his heart, however, he decided to give it to the lord. When he returned, the lord had diedl Yen Ling then took the sword and planted it on the lord's grave. 167

IX. For Wang Ts 'an

As I sit erect my thoughts turn bitter and sad; Gathering my robe, I rise and stroll toward the west.

The trees have brought forth spring blossoms And the clear pool ripples with the constant flow.

•3 On the pool a lone mandarin duckJ Cries mournfully in search of a companion.

I would like to . hold this bird But,alas, I have no boat.4

I wish to return but have forgotten the former path, And looking back, there is only melancholy and grief.

A doleful wind moans at. my side While the sun chariot flies past without stopping. c The heavy clouds bring moisture to all things, Why fear that the benefits will not go around?

Who has given you so many fears? „ You have caused yourself these hundred worries.

Notes:

"'"Wang Ts'an (177-217) along with Liu Chen %\ f& and Ts'ao Chih, was one of those most heavily responsible for the direction and development of literature during the Chien An period. He had followed the Emperor Hsien to Ch'ang An and then, during a period of great turmoil, had fled to seek asylum with Liu Piao. When Piao died, he travelled north to serve Ts'ao Ts'ao. . He was eventually made Shih^-ohung tjf . See WC 21/la-2b. This poem seems to have been written in imitation of one of Wang's own "Occasional Poems". Many of the images and ideas between the two works correspond, (see CSKS 3/4b). Liu Lu believes that the work was written while Wang was still in Ching Chou Jij ff| as a retainer of Liu Piao. Wu Ch' i ^ however, makes a good case for believing that Wang hadsalready moved to Wei at the time this poem was written. The tone of 168

consolation in the piece suggests however, that he had not yet been given very much recognition. 2 This particular line is apparently derived from one of the "19 Old Poems" where we find theelines $fci^ #3 • See "19 Old Poems" #19- Chih also used a similar line in his "Occasional Poem". There the line reads, "Gathering my robes, I walk the chamber,". % |^ The "lone mandarin duck" must be a symbol representing Wang Ts'an. 4 This line perhaps implies that Ts'ao Chih has not yet had an opportunity to make the acquaintance of Ts'an.

5Hsi Ho^^i7 is the mythological charioteer who car• ries the^s.un across the sky.

6The clouds must symbolize Ts'ao Ts'ao. Since Ts'ao was, during Ts'an's lifetime * officially a servant of the Han Emperor, he could not be symbolized by the' sun (see Wang Yi's note to the She-chiang yfy >1_ in the Ch'u Tz'u)'. The implica• tion is that Ts'ao Ts'ao gives support to all of his subjects in much the same way as rain clouds bring nourishment to living things. Ts'an could thus feel assured that he would not be neglected for long.

7The phrase "hundred worries" seems to allude to a passage in the Shih Ching which reads.: "In the latter part of my life, I will meet with a hundred worries." jfc dfc-^.'flt These worries are in part, related to the fear of death ami growing old. See ShihcChing'-15/70/2 Legge p. 118. 169

X. For Ting Ii and Wang Ts 'an

With the legions I cross Han Ku Pass/ 2 Driving my horse, I pass the western capital. '^ 4

The mountain peaks seem unendingly high, c- The Ching and Wei mix their waters muddy and clear. How formidable the imperial residences; r Their beauty stands apart from all others.

Circle Tower pierces the floating clouds,

The Dew Catcher touches the sky.i58 q The Emperor's retainer disseminates heavenly grace. Within the four seas no armies contend.10 For though militarists love victory, ^ Preserving the state brings greatest renown. 12 If a gentleman is In the lowest position, He cannot sing those songs of virtue. 13 Master Ting resents those at court, And Master Wang enjoys his own occupations. Enjoyment and resentment are not the purest mode, But the Central Harmony can truly be obeyed.^5

Notes:

Han Ku Pass was a very narrow mountain pass in Honan. 2 According to Huang Chieh this line is quoted m the TPYL with replacing ^^ . I could not verify this. 3 JThe western capital was Ch'ang An. It seems most likely that Ts'ao Chih was speaking from experiences gained while travelling with his father on an expedition against Ma Ch'ao jjij j£| and Han Sui ^ j^L in the autumn of 211 and then against Yang Ch'iu jp)^ in the winter of that year. 170

% Wu Ch'en edition of the WH apparently givesfor I could not verify this. '

The Ching River flowed into the Wei River which in turn emptied into the Yellow River.

^Literally, "Their beauty is different from the hundred walls. 7 'The Circle Tower and the Dew Catchers were structures built during the Han Dynasty in Ch'ang An. The Circle Tower was_ situated north of the gates of the Chien Chang Palace "IT • On the top of the Chien Chang Palace there was a _re'at bronze bowl called the Dew Catcher which was intended to catch the Heavenly essences that might give immortality.

8 Literally "great clarity". This refers to one of the three levels of the sky. It was supposed to be situa• k ted 40 li above the ground. See Pao P'u-tzu

"^This possibly alludes to Ts'ao Ts'ao's victories over Ma Ch'ao,•• Han Sui and Yang Ch'iu.

^"Preserving''t.he'istate ", this alludes to the Sun-tzu •ping-fa which states that the highest aim of any military strategy is to take the enemy state without destroy• ing it. See Sun-tzu ^- 3/la. 12 This must have been written while Ting and Wang were still minor officials in Ts'ao Ts'ao's court. 13 This may refer to a passage in Ting's Li-ahth-fu see CHHW 9V2a-b

Huang believes this refers specifically to a passage from Wang's Ch'i-shih ^ , found in YWLC 57-

"'"''The Central Harmony tjf^owas a state in which all the emotions are in balance. When this state prevailed all liv• ing things were nourished. Chih is perhaps implying that the government of his father existed in such a state. See Li Shan's note. 171

XI. For Prince Pai-ma, Piao

In the fifth month of the fourth year of Huang Ch'u, (223) the Prince of Pai-ma, the Prince of Jen-ch'eng3 and I ^ travelled to the capital to take part in the seasonal rites. When we arrived in Loyang, Prince Jen-ch'eng died.5 in the seventh month I was going to return to my fief with Prince Pai- ma," but a court official, having heard of our intentions, ruled that if two princes were returning to their fiefs they must not travel together. I deeply resented that, and, know• ing that our long separation7 was going to begin in a few days, I used that time which remained to express my feelings to the Prince and to take proper leave of him. I wrote this piece out of my indignation.

1.

After an audience with the, Emperor in the Ch'eng Ming Hall I am returning to my former territory.2

In the clear dawn we leave the Imperial Precinct, By dusk we have passed Mount Shou-yang.3 4 The Yi and Lo rivers are broad and deep: We wish to cross but there is no bridge.

On a pitching raft we traverse the great waves; I hate the endlessness of this eastern road!5

Looking around I long for those walls and towers,6 Gazing upward, I feel an inner grief. ..•

2 .

How broad and deep is T'ai gorge!1 The mountain trees are so luxuriant and green. 2 Unceasing rains have obstructed my route; Great torrents flow in every direction.

The central road is cut off and without rutsjj So I alter course and mount the steep ridge.

The long slopes reach to the clouds and sun, My black horse is paling from fatigue. >7 172

3-

His blackness has paled but he can still advance. My thoughts are sad and dejected.

In this sad dejection who is it that I think of? A beloved friend living far away.1

Our first plan was to be together, But things changed and it was not to be. 2 3 An owl shrieks from my carriage yoke, 5J ^ Wolves have taken to the roads and paths. Blue flies have changed white into black With artful slander that estranges closest friends.

I wish to return but am cut off without tracks; Holding the reigns, I stop in indecision.

How can I linger in indecision? There will be no end to my thoughts of you.

The autumn wind brings a slight chill As cold cicadas chirp at my side.1

So desolate now, the wild plains, The white sun suddenly hides in the west. 2 Returning birds fly toward the lofty wood, Their wings whirring as they pass. A lonely beast runs in search of the herd, Its mouth filled with grass, It cannot eat at leisure 4 Moved by these things, I feel great distress, Beating my breast, I heave a long sigh.-3

1 2 What good will come of sighing? 5 Heaven's will is set against me. What use to worry about my brother? Once gone, his form will not return. 4 His lonely soul flies to its former home, But his casket still remains in the capital 5 Those left will soon also pass away: The body declines and then is gone." A man's life lasts but a generation „ And then perishes like the morning dew. o My years have reached their horizon, Their glow cannot be pursued.9

I know that I am not stone or metal, Ah I How it saddens my heart.10

My heart's sadness moves my very soul. _ Casting it aside, I won't speak of it again.

A strong man's will encompasses the four seas, Within a myriad miles all are like his neighbours.

If his grace and love are not diminished, Those far away become ever more close.

Men don't need to live close together ^ o Before they can speak their deepest thoughts, '

But if depression becomes a sickness ^ It is only the sentiment of women and children.

When feelings for flesh and blood are ravaged, Could one but harbour great bitterness?

7-

How this bitterness disturbs my thoughts! The will of Heaven must truly be doubted.

It is vain and empty to seek the immortals; Master Sung has deceived us too long.

Mortal transformations take place In an instant; Who can hold on for a hundred years?

Once we separate, we will never meet again; When can we once more join hands? 3 4 My lord you must cherish your precious body ' So that we may enjoy great old age together.-3 Holding back my tears I begin the long road, "' Taking up my brush I must now bid you farewell. 174

Notes:

A. Pre face

"'"According to Li Shan's note, this piece was originally entitled: %h~ ll *%> If , "Written in Ch'uan Ch'eng". Ch'uan Ch'eng (sometimes written^ J^O ) was situated in present-day Honan. Prince Pai-ma was Chih's half-brother Ts'ao Piao. His style was Chu-hu feu . There is some inconsistency in this title and preface as, according to the SKC (WC 20/10a) Piao was not made Prince of Pai-ma until 226 (H.C. 7). Some schol• ars believe that there must be an omission in the SKC and that Piao was temporarily enfiefed as Prince of Pai-ma in 223. It seems more likely however, that, as Lei Chia-Chi has argued, the preface and title were added later either by Chih or by a forger. Thus, at the time that the poems were written, Piao was in fact Prince of Wu. See Lei Chia-Chi, >| j£ #f &4 3- M> % ft $ p. 59. HYHP #12. 2 Chang P'u and Chu Hsu'-tseng make this the "first month" They must be mistaken as P'i did not return to Loyang until the third month of 223. (WC 2/23a)

Prince Jen-ch'eng was Ts'ao Chang,% ^ Ts'ao Chih's elder full brother.

li The exact seasonal rite that.these lords were to attend has been a matter of some dispute. Most scholars believe it was for the ceremonies which took place 18 days before the "establishment of Autumn"£ that they had come. Lei, however, has argued convincingly that they had come for the "Great Heat" K% rites. (p. 22) 5 The death of Prince Jen-ch'eng seems to have occurred suddenly and somewhat mysteriously. There'ls an unverifiable account In the Shih-shuo hsin-yu which indicates that he was poisoned by Ts'ao P'i who was envious of his younger brother's strength and virility. (See SSHY 33/1, Mather pp. 470 - 471) ^Even if Piao was enfiefed as Prince of Wu he would have had to travel east before heading south to his fief. Chih was most likely returning to Chuan Ch'eng or Yung Ch'iu.

-k.%'\ Because of the strict rules governing feudal lords which had been imposed by P'i and his administration, Chih and Piao would not be allowed to see each other.- after returning to their respective fiefs. Thus, after their departure from the capital they might not see one another for a very long time, if ever.

Poem #1

Chih has been deliberately inaccurate in the first line. The Ch'eng Ming Hall was no longer in existence at the 175

time the poem relates to. # It was used by the former Han emper• ors in Ch'ang An. (See Yu p. 113.) ;-; 2 The former territory was either Chuan ChAeng or Yung Ch'iu as mentioned in note #6 above. The record in the SKC tends to indicate that Chih had been moved to Yung Ch'iu before being called to the capital. However, it is also quite possi• ble that he was not moved there until sometime after returning to Chiian Ch'eng. Mount Shou-yang was the highest peak in the Pei-mang range and was situated some 20 li northeast of Loyang; -It - was probably not the same place that the legendary brothers Po-yi and Shu-ch'i were said to have starved to death, but it seems that people at the time believed that It was, (see Chu 5/l8b). By mentioning it, Chih undoubtedly was making an allusion to that legend. The significance was probably that, whereas Po-yi and Shu-ch'i had preferred to starve to death rather than take the throne from one another, Ts'ao P'i had rather unashamedly and ruthlessly assumed the throne and done a great deal to insure that his brothers did not take it from him.

The Yi and Lo are rivers near Loyang, the Yi flows Into the Lo 5

The eastern road was the road back to his fief.

The walls and towers are naturally those of Loyang.

Poem 2 ^T'ai Gorge seems to have been some 50 7issouth-east of Loyang. Although there are conflicting accounts of its loca• tion, it was probably the same place that Chih mentioned in his Lo-shen fu. There he called it T'ung Gorge,. 2

"unceasing rains", see "For Ting Yi" note #4.

3 4 The SKC annotation reads ^ © .

^ The WH gives $ . 5 )X_ The WH gives Yu Kuan-ying speculates that this ridge was one just west of Ch'eng Kaoi£ % where he, believes Chih and Piao would have had to take leave of each other . 6The last couplet owes much to the third ode in the Shih • Ching which reads : f$ ' , ty* % ' % , "I was ascending that lofty ridge, but my horses' blackness yellowed" (my trans.) (See Legge p. 8) Chu Hsi's commentary to this passage is that the horses were so fatigued that they changed colour. Shih Ching 1/3/3. 176

There are those who would make this second poem part of the first. They have two major reasons for doing this. Firstly, the two poems have the same rhyme whereas none of the others continue the rhyme of the preceding verse. Secondly, all the other poems begin by repeating a key phrase from the last line of the preceding poem. This is not the case between poems one and two. As Wang Shih-chen has noted however, this set of poems imitates the style of the first poem in the Great• er Odes in the Shih Ching 58/235 (see Legge 427 - 431). In that piece, the stanzas frequently, but not invariably, repeat the last line of the preceding stanza. Therefore it is quite reasonable that the second poem of "Pai-ma" might not be^in by repeating the last line of the first. (See i iLl^. J\Lf£j% quoted by Chu 5/19a).

Poem 3

"'"The beloved friend was of course Ts'ao Piao. 2 Owls were considered to be very inauspicious birds by the ancient Chinese-. 3The WH givesvfe fov$ft

4 The owls and wolves most likely represent evil, petty men who had become influencial at the imperial court. The "blue flies" also must represent those at court who had made Ts'ao P'i suspicious of his own brothers. The reference to blue flies is probably derived from a passage^ in the Shih China "Lesser Odes" 54/219- There we read \ If 4 f !fc f : "They buzz about, the blue flies, lighting on fences, Ohhappy and courteous sovereign, do not believe slanderous speeches." (See Legge p. 394)

Poem A

1 % Cicadas are said to have a different sound in the fall and in the summer.

2The S C reads % ^ rather than ^ U~ .

Couplets 4 and 5 are reversed in the SKC.

In an ancient yueh-fu poem entitled there is a line readingty %_pf&- : "Moved by these things, I embrace my thoughts.". Chih seems to have borrowed a number of his Images for Poem IV from this poem. (See WH 27).

5 jk*L- The SKC gives ,t . 177

Poem 5.

"'"Once again the SKC gives j^L for k~ .

2The SKC reads fi[ % •

Literally:, "one of the same birth". It could only mean "One borne of the same mother". This must refer to Ts'ao Chang who was, like Chih, the son of Lady Pien. 4 The former home would presumably by Jen-ch'eng or perhaps Chang's birth-place. The WH reads fori^C .

5Liu Lu suggests that the phrases^-^ and could or should be interchanged. This would make easier reading but •it is difficult to find textual justification for it.

6The SKC gives ft for .

7 £ The SKC reads & . o Literally: "My years are in the Mulberry and Elm". The Mulberry and Elm were two stars In the western sky. In this line they symbolize the place where the sun sets. By saying that his years were in the place where the sun sets, Chih obviously means that he feels he is getting old.

Most editions give in place of;?, . % meaning "light" or "the sun" makes more sense in terms of the metaphor Chih has developed.

10 *i The SKC gives .

Poem 6

"'"This line is related to one found In the first of the "19 Old Poems" which reads % k\ % '\\^L > "Cast it aside and don;'jt speak of it again." Ts'ao P'i also employed a similar line in the second of his "Occasional Poems"; see CSKS 1/llb.

2 This ^couplet probably alludes to the "Biography of Chiang Kung" %• fjfa -ff in the HHS (43). Chiang Kung was so fond of his younger brothers that he often slept In the same bed with them.

3Most editions give but Chu Hsii-tseng follows the SKC in giving , which he apparently feels is more cor• rect . 4 The sentiments of women and children were, of course, considered to be much less profound than those between men. 178

Poem '.?'

Master Sung, or Ch'ih-sung-tzu was a legendary Immortal.

2Chang P'&ilgives M for .• The term*^#Ccan mean simply "a disaster" (see Huang's note), but here it probably refers to death. q The "Lord" JL must be Ts'ao Piao. 4 „ The term "jade body" possibly comes from Mel Sheng'a "Seven Stimuli", where there is a passage; ^ ff j 7^ 4" f£ "I have heard that the Crown Prince's jade body is.not at -•- peace." It is simply a respectful way of speaking of Plao's body. 5

Literally: "time of yellow hair".

6 iH The SKC reads $ .

7J&, The SKC reads ^ . 179

XII. Oceasionat Poem

2 Gathering my robe, I walk from the chamber And leisurely stroll between the twin pillars. 4 The abandoned halls, how silent now! _ Green weeds cover the courtyard stairs. Empty caverns blow forth their own winds^ „ While a hundred birds rise for the southward flight. g Spring thoughts can never be forgotten, Sorrow and loneliness unite with me.9

The beauteous one is on a distant road And I am so completely alone.10

Those joyous meetings won't easily come again;11 The orchid and iris seldom blossom twice.12

All people abandon old affections, How could you still feel as you once did? 13 I am the climbing moss that clings to a pine ,^ And the floating weed that lies on the stream. With great attention I will serve your every need,1^'1^ Prom morning 'till night I won't fall by the way.17 18 If I may always enjoy your grace and regard My heart will remain forever content. °

Notes:

"''Certain editions entitle this poem "Sentiment from the Inner Chamber" f£\ \% . The Ming moveable type edition does this and pairs it with a four character poem attributed to Ts'ao Chih found in the YWLC 32/563. The YTHY records this work under the heading "Occasional Poems". The origin of the title "Sen• timent from the Inner Chamber" is probably the YWLC which pla• ces the poem in the section entitled fi\i\. It does not, how• ever, give any specific title to the poem Itself. 180

2 This line is similar to one in the last in the series of "19 Old Poems" which reads: % ftsj , "Gathering my robe, I rise to pace to and fro."

The "twin pillars" were perhaps those directly in front of the doorway.

She YWLC (32/563) givesf for 'f^ . 5 In this line the last two characters seem to have been inverted in order to achieve the proper rhyme.

6The YTHY (2/36) gives % for . ^ seems more likely to be correct as in Sung Yu's "Wind Fu" (WH 13) there is a line '^E '^-^.^11 ; "Empty caverns make winds come forth".

7The YWLC givesj$) instead #t| 8 i. • The phrase "spring thoughts" 4rmost likely Implies thoughts of the woman for her husband. (See Ito p. 109) Certain editions give rather than I- think the former translates slightly more easily than the latter.

10The YWLC gives H rather thanJif)ty ^ .

"'""'•Certain editions give i^- for i$\ .

12The Ming editions readl rather than j^',,>L •

13The:"term used is actually-^- ^ which is a type of para• sitic climbing moss or dodder found "especially on pine trees.

l4 A, st 1%.'^ This could be read as the term for duckweed.

15'Thr e YWLC gives # , "to offer". Several other editions- followr thitl s variant and it seems quite reasonable.

l6 r This is literally, "Binding my body and offering my lapel and sash." The exact significance of this is not easily determined. Ku Chih and Ito believe that it Is a reference to certain rituals in the traditional marriage ceremony. The implied meaning must have to do with the woman's loyalty and respect for her husband.

17 3t Apparently some editions read'^ . I couldn't find any.

l8The YTHY makes this line^ M. 9ft

19Huang seems to believe that the characterS'l in this last line means "to examine". He quotes a line from the Li Sao and a gloss from the Erh Ya i$) in support of his theory. The main problem with his thinking is that the meaning of "to examine" does not work well in this particular context. I have employed the more normal meaning of "to fit with" or, by exten- tion, "to satisfy or content" in my translation. 181

XIII. Poem of Feelings\

Thin clouds obscure the sun's glow, A clear breeze swirls in my gown. 2 Gliding fish hide beneath green rivers. And rising birds press toward the sky. So distant, the travelling knight, Cast afar, he cannot return.

As I first set out the hard frost was forming, By now the white dew has dried.5

The wanderer sighs, "The Drooping Millet",^ The one remaining sings, "Life Declines".

Disheartened, I face my honoured guests, So sorrowful, I am stricken from within.

Notes :

1The YTHY (2/36) places this under the heading of "Occa• sional Poems", the WH (29) includes it in the category of "Occa• sional Poems" but entitles it "Poem of Feelings". 2 ^i Many editions, including Huang Chieh and the WH (29) read ^ , meaning "clear". The YTHY reads $~, "green". I prefer the latter. 3The word , meaning "to extend toward" or "to cleave — a to" is in apposition to the word >B , "to hide" in the previous line. The meaning is that the birds, like the fish, have a place in which to take refuge. ^S^Several editions, including Ting Yen and the Ming editions give

^Huang Chieh and Ting Yen claim that the YWLC reads^ for 9Jf> . Neither of the editions which I saw has this variant. (See YWLC 29/515)

The YWLC gives 4" 182

'The "Drooping Millet" Shu Li J= W- and "Life Declines" Shih Wei ^ '1%JL are titles from the Shih Ching. Their' meaning here has been a matter of dispute among scholars. Ku Chih believes that Chih is referring to the interpretations given these two poems in the "Lesser Preface" of the Mao Shih. There, the "Drooping Millet" is said to be a description of a scholar- knight's sorrow at seeing the ancient Chou capital in ruins. "Life Declines" is supposed to be a poem written to urge Hou Yu to return to his homeland. Based on those interpretations Ku maintains that Chih was writing in the mid-Chien An era about the destruction the Han and the many military campaigns which had forced men to travel far from their homes. Huang Chieh takes another tack and argues that Chih was referring to the Interpretations given these poems in the Han^ commentary and the Lieh-nu Chuan H i% (V3ab,^L#4: K. ) The Han commentary indicates that "Drooping Millet" was written by the younger brother of a filial son who was killed because of the slander of one of his father's wives. (See ife !l> .1) l^i CP 9/159). If this was the case then Chih might be alluding to the death of Prince Jen Ch'eng. In the Lieh-nu Chuan is a story about a wife who is neglected by her husband but does not return home. The poem "Life Declines" is said to have been written to urge her to return. The use of this title oo could indicate that Chih was professing his undivided loyalty to the emperor. Yli Kuan-ying seems to offer the best explanation of the allusions. He feels that the "Drooping Millet" is alluded to only because it speaks of travelling off to war. The "Life Declines" is alluded to because it speaks of urging someone to return home. This explanation fairly well excludes any specific allegorical meaning in the lines of the type Ku and Huang have tried to define, but it makes the couplet seem much more consistent with the idea of a woman longing for her estranged husband. 183

XIV. The White Horse1

On a white horse with gilded bridle He gallops swiftly towards the northwest. 2 May I ask, who is this man? He's the son of a knight from Yu or Ping. When still small he left his homeland ^ - To make his name on the desert frontiers. •'

It's been a long time that he's carried a bow, His hemlock arrows all lie in neat array.5

Drawing the bowstring he hits the left bull's-eye; To the right heestrikes the moon. , ••• post. 6,7

Raising his hand he snatches down a flying monkey Then leans down, driving his horse in a gallop.;a! 8

His quickness of hand surpasses the apes. 9 In courage he is a panther and a dragon.

To the frontier walls come many alarms; ^ The nomad horsemen are always on the move.

When down from the north a call to arms comes11 He will urge his horse up the high ridge. 12 Driving forth, he tramples the Huns, Then looks left to attack the Hsien-pi. 14 He throws himself amid the swords and lances; Surely he can't value his life! Nor does he think of his father and mother, Much less of his children and wife. 15 His name will be found on the lists of brave knights But from this he seeks no selfish gain.

Devoting his life to the good of the state He sees death as a return to his home.1" 184

Notes:

.": •' This is entered in the "Miscellaneous Song Words" ^ft ^ ILff- section of the YPSC 63/4b. It was believed to be a Ch'i Se-hsing'^ltp'tf as were "The Famous Capital" and "The Beauti• ful Maiden". This piece is found in the TPYL 359/2b under the title "Wandering Knight".

2"May I ask..." 4$//) , this was a standard phrase found in yueh-fu poems.

Yu and Ping were two provinces in northern China. The people there were reputed to be very vigorous and warlike.

J*a , the YWLC reads % .

"~<3 7*- i found it somewhat difficult to establish just what kind of arrows these might behu was the preferred material for making arrow shafts and was perhaps hemlock. 6 i it > the TPYLread s isu^- 7 9\ ^.pronounced " yut-chih" . This .was the name of a type of target. _ .v . Some commentators, such as Chu Hsii-tseng and Yu Kuan- ying have argued that J, $tf was also a type of target used in martial exercises. These arguments are quite convincing but I feel that, as two types of targets have already been mentioned in lines 9 and 10, another mention would have seemed redundant. Thus I have taken the phrase, ifJLfo $f in a more literal way.

9 ML Tne YFSC givesJXk ML

10 JflM tne WH and YWLC Sive ^ /| . 42/753-

, literally "feathered dispatch". In ancient times a "summons-to-action" was written on a wooden slip. In times of urgency feathers were attached to the slip.

12 -4. Tne YFSC reads /£ . This balances the following line better, but the apposition of left and right has already been used in the piece and it is unlikely that Chih would have used this device twice.

13The Hsiung-nu (Huns) and Hsien-pi were two tribes of frontier nomads.

111 • '•- J/;. , the YWLC reads SJJ . :

15 , the YWLC reads ;f; J§ . For ± the WH reads ^

16 ^.o the YWLC reads % . 185

XV. The Famous Capital

In the famous capital live many charming girls, In Loyang live many young men.

Their jewelled swords are worth thousands In gold; Their clothes are pretty and new.3 4 There were cock fights by the east .side, path And horse races on the catalpa-llned road. 5 6 As they galloped along, not half-way there^' A pair of rabbits crossed their path.' g Grasping his bow, one drew a singing arrow And gave chase up South Mountain.9 Drawing back left to shoot to the right His first arrow hit both animals.

And as there were skills he had not yet displayed1 He shot toward the sky and brought down a hawk.

Those watching all praised his ability,11 The other riders admitted his skill.

Then they returned to feast in the P'Ing Lo Tower With fine wine worth ten thousand a quart. 13

There was minced carp and stewed shrimp with roe, Cold turtle and roasted bear paws.1^ 15 When he called to his comrades to gather around Not a place remained on the mats. They flew back and forth playing football and skittle Their skills and agility had myriad variations.

But the white sun sped to the southwest. Its radiance could not be waylaid.

Like the clouds they dispersed beyond the city walls, They would return again with the coming of clear dawn 186

Notes:

The poem ostensibly describes life in the great Han capital of Loyang but Chih may have been writing in reference to the Wei capital of Yeh. This piece is contained in the YFSC under the heading of "Miscellaneous Song Tunes", 63/2b- 3a. From the style and phrasing it seems to have been written at around the same time as "The White Horse".

2The YWLC reads JLlfc for ^ 42/753-

, the WH 27 reads £ j£_ ^ .

the YWLC reads -4 ?£- .

^ jfjCi > there are several variations of this. YFSC gives,, YWLC gives h% %h , and WH gives j&fc Jfc .

6^/5Lf , the YFSC gives^^f .

7 This does not necessarily have to be taken as first personal"5 singular. In poetry of this era it could refer to the third person or persons as well.

8it, the TPYL 746/3a reads . Q South Mountain was a mountain near Loyang.

10^^/|_the TPYL reads jL^/C . 11 if Jk. , the YFSC gives $

1 9 & iH -f >"i> , this was the name of a tower outside the west• ern gate of Loyang. 13This is, as Chu Hsu-tseng laboriously points out, a bit of hyperbole. YFSC gives jfa .

15 fc€ 48 , the WH 27 gives g .

was a type of ball. There was a kind of game in which it was kicked around.gang was a kind of wooden skittle, thick at one end and sharp at the other. It was placed at a distance and another piece of wood was thrown at it In an attempt to knock it down. 187

XVI. The Beautiful Maiden

A beautiful maiden, attractive and charming Picks mulberry leaves by the fork in the road. 2 The soft branches sway in profusion, Falling leaves flutter to the ground. Her rolled-up sleeve reveals a silk-white hand; On her fair wrist is a bracelet of gold.3

Golden swallow clasps hold up her hair, ,- And from her waist hang pendants of blue jade.

Bright pearls are strung all around her precious figure! While strings of coral are mixed with green pearls.7 o Her silken robes seem to be floating As her light skirt swirls with the wind. Q From her glances a light seems to shine forth ..Q And when she sings her breath is like orchids. Passers-by stop in their carriages; Those resting forget to eat their meals.

Pray tell, where does this maiden live?11 She lives to the south of the town. 12 Her painted tower is by the great road, Its high gate blocked up with wooden beams. 13 So fair as to rival the brilliant morning sun, Who would not praise her wondrous beauty? What is that match-maker busy with? She didn't fix a match while there was time.

But this one of beauty admires lofty principles And finding such virtue is very hard. 15 The crowd of suitors only raises a hubbub; How could they know what she respects?1" Thus her best years are wasted in that chamber, She often wakes in the night and sighs. 188

Notes:

"'"This is contained in the YFSC under "Miscellaneous Song Words''^ as a Ch'i-se-hsing ^ fa It seems to have been written in imitation of an ancient yueh-fu "Mulberry by. the Road"

2 %. The -YTHY 2/37 gives . The Pei-t'ang Shu-oh'ao 136/8a gives . The PTSC gives 8 . The Ch te-hsueh'-shi • 8£ %U !9/457 gives . The TPYL 7l8/lb gives £ j£ .

3i1L.The CHC gives .

4 U J: The PTSC reads 3k *f The TPYL gives II

5The YWLC 18/326 reads Z- for |j. . The TPYL gives ^ it. ^"Precious figure", literally; "jade body", see "For Prince .Pai-ma, Piao" #7 ,. note '#4. mu-nan, ;this was a. type of green pearl reputed to be formed from the saliva of a certain bird.

9 fl$F The YTHY gives #2) .

10 The YWLC reads •

11-Jc^r J& the Ming moveable-type edition reads -JrJ^ J$ •

12 ?L l^the Tai-Kung liu-i'ieh ' -.fa %l 10/13a gives

13 The YWLC gives ^ . This line might also be translated as "Her beauty shines in the morning sun".

^ £• ^ , literally, "Jade and silk". A jade baton and a roll of silk were traditional tokens in the betrothal cere• mony .

15 the WH reads fa .

16 , the YTHY gives 189

XVII. Wandering as an Immortal1

2 A man's years seldom reach a hundred. _ Sad and alone, there is little to rejoice for. 4 In my heart I want to spread great wings To join the mists that traverse the purple void. 5 6 Just like Sung and Chiao I'll shed my earthly skin, ' And follow the tracks that ascend from Lake Ting.7 Q Soaring above amid the Nine Heavens I will give reign and journey afar. Q To the east I will see the bright Sun Tree; Westward I will near the Jo River's flow.10 11

To the north I will visit Heaven's black isles,11 ,^ And then southward fly to climb the Cinnabar Hills.

Notes:

This seems to have been Inspired by the Yuan Yu in the Ch'u Tz'u. It is not found in YFSC and one wonders how • it came to be classified as a yueh-fu rather than a shih. , 2 This line is obviously related to a line in the thir• teenth of the "19 Old Poems" which reads % & j& S ; "The years we live don't reach a hundred."

3 Jl^The YWLC 78/1332 reads^C A . This seems to be a more evocative version and I have followed it.

^ |]$ Literally, "six quills", this refers to the six principal feathers on a bird''s wing.

Sung and .Chiao were Ch ' ih-sung-tzu and Wang-tzu-chiao , theso were famous immortals.

literally, "to exuviate as a cicada"; the process of becoming an immortal was imagined to be similar to the pro• cess of exuviation. 190

7 Lake Ting was the place where the Yellow Emperor was said to have ascended to heaven. o "Nine Heavens", these were the regions of the heavens corresponding to the eight points of the compass and the centre

9 \k & , literally, "supporting mulberry", this was a mythological tree which was said to grow in the east and sup• port the sun.

10The Jo River flowed west out of Kansu, thus it was believed to move toward the land of the immortals.

11 % "dark orrblack" was the colour associated with the north. 12 The Cinnabar Hills or Red Hills were a legendary dwelling place of immortals. They were said to glow day and night. 191

XVIII. Travelling the Fifth Realm1

2 The nine regions are too small for my travels I want to traverse the clouds and soar. Roaming about beyond the eight frontiers I will cast my gaze to the distant wilds. 5 I will open my cinnabar-mist cloakg And unravel my silk rainbow-skirt :.. 7 8 The Flower Canopy is fragrant and shady; ' My six dragons prance toward the sky. 9 Before the bright sun can shift its rays I suddenly reach the vast heavens' blue. The gate of Heaven opens its cinnabar door;10 Twin spires throw forth their scarlet glow.

I pace up and down in the Wen Ch'ang Palace Then ascend to the T'ai Wei Hall.12 13 The Lord of Heaven rests on the western balcony All the empresses are gathered in the east chamber. Jasper pendants dangle at my waist As I rinse my mouth with elixir of midnight mist.

Strolling to and fro I admire the ling chih,15's1^ 'Round about, I frolic amid fragrant blossoms. 17 Wang Tzu offers the drug of immortalitv. Hslen Men brings forth magic potions. IfCTI take them I will enjoy great longevity, My life will be preserved without end. 192

Notes:

There are four directions or regions on the earth; north, south, east and west. The fifth direction or region is upwards, toward the sky. 2 The known world was divided into nine provinces or regions in Chinese mythological times. 3 fjji This may be simply a misprint in my edition of Huang, but most editions give. 4

/v || pS hung. Beyond the nine provinces were the"eight distant realms , and beyond those were the,veight fron• tiers" or "extremities", s^- . 5 Cinnabar or mercurous oxide was a substance tradi• tionally associated with the immortality cult.

^"Rainbow-skirt" is a term found in the "Nine Songs" JLifc. There is a great deal of exotic terminology and imagery in this poem borrowed from the various pieces in'*the Ch'u Tz'u. See- Chia Ko. . 2/4l f . 7 The Flowered Canopy was supposedly made by the Yellow Emperor during his wars against Ch' ih Yu ^ from a five- coloured cloud. See .h/2a. 8 *-l The YWLC gives,^ for % . The Sung edition: gives The Sung edition further reads ^ for 8^ . ^The sun is referred to as "the dazzling spirit'^ HL .

l°Tne "gate of Heaven" is referred to by its legendary name, Ch ' ang Ho j^j .

11The YWLC givesfjfj for$|] . 12 The Wen Ch'ang palace and the T'ai Wei Hall were two of the three palaces that were believed to exist in Heaven. Wen Ch'ang and T'ai Wei were also the names of stars.

13V/|^L The Sung edition gives .

hang hsieh, this was a kind of vapour produced in the north in the middle of the night.

15J$-P $M The Sung edition reads ^

^Ling chih is a type of fungus reputed to endow immor• tality if eaten correctly.

17Wang Tzu was Wang Tzu Ch' iao ^ , Master of the Rain, in Shen Nung's time and a famous immortal. 193

l8Hslen Men was Hsien Men Tzu Kao,^f^ % a famous fang shih % or sorceror. 194

XIX. East of V1 ing Ling

The gates of Heaven are open, The Milky Way passes through them. Donning a feathered cloak, I will ride a flying dragon. I will ride a flying dragon To meet with the Immortals.

In the east I climb Mount P'eng Lai to pick the ling chih Pick the ling chih, for if you should eat them 673 Your years, like Wang Fu's, will be without end. ' ' *

Notes:

The original lyrics to this yueh-fu were believed to have been written by the followers of a certain Ts'uei Yi of the Han Dynasty. Ts'uei YI led an unsuccessful rebellion against Wang Mang and was executed for it. Ts'ao Chih's poem is written in roughly the same form but has a completely dif• ferent theme.

2 f%\f£\ Ch'ang Ho, is the proper name of one of the gates of Heaven.

3Milky Way, ^.flff , literally "the (western leading) road of Heaven".

^P'eng Lai,££-jjL , a mythical mountain in the sea re• puted to be a home of the Immortals.

^Ling chih || is a tyPe of fungus believed to endow immortality if eaten.

^ /£Ch u Hsu-tseng gives ^ £|§ .

7 Wang Fu i , a famous immortal who -it was believed, lived in a palace in the Fu-sang,Tree where the sun came to rest.

8 &t , Chang P'u reads $L ^ . 195

XX. Ballad of Bitter Thoughts

Green vines climb the tree of jade, A bright radiance glows all around them. 2 Beneath are two immortals Who raise their wings to fly aloft. 3 My heart leaps with excitement, I'll hold fast a cloud in pursuit. 4 Luxuriant and green is the Western Peak; Looming darkly, the stone palace reaches the sky. 7 Within, there lives an old recluse. His beard and hair are the purest white. g Staff in hand, he follows in my wanderings And teaches me- to forget mere words .

Notes:

XThis is found in the YFSC $f $ H^ 53/7b. There are no older yueh-fu of this title now extant.

2 & ^ , literally, "real man",., this term was very early a part of the 'Taoist vocabulary. There Is a lengthy descrip• tion In the Chuang Tzu, Ta-tsung-shih P'HenK.%^^ 3/lb-2b, on the nature and abilities of ohen-jen. Later, as the Immor• tality cult developed, ahen-jen became fairly much synonymous with the term hsien-jenjtM /LThe term usually translated as "immortal" .

3 £#l most editions read %h . Kuo Yun-p'eng apparently readsg ^ . 4 it The Western Peak, also known as Hua Mountainjp itt , was one of the five sacred peaks. It was situated in Shensi.

5The YFSC reads ^ j?), , the YWLC reads ^ ^ .

^"Stone palace"; .anciently inhabited by an immortal called Kuang-ch'eng-tzu Jfy-^r • 196

7 The YWLC does not have the character —~ .

8 ^ , the YWLC gives % .

9This must come from the Chuang Tz'u. In ^Wai-wu P'len WW%9/6a., there is a passage ^ /TpA £ , ^| jr, ^ "Words are that which possess meaning. Once you have obtained the meaning you can forget the words." 197

XXI. Travelling Afar1

Travelling afar I reach the four seas; All around I see the great waves.

Huge fish, their backs like mountains, Ride the waves and pass before me.

Divine turtles bear Mount Pang Chang on their heads;J The Spirit Peak is rugged and severe.^

Immortals soar about the summit, Jade maidens frolic on the slopes. 5 The ah'iung tree's buds quell my hunger g As I raise my head to Inhale the morning mist. 7 I first lived in the K'un Lun Range, The central states are not my home. g I am returning now to see the Father of the East: With one leap I will traverse the flowing sands.°

Beating my wings I dance on the winds, My long cries ring through the clear refrain.

Metal and stone are easily broken But my life will glow with the sun and moon.

If I could live as long as heaven and earth Why would I wish to rule a great state?10

Notes:

1This piece is contained in the YFSC under the heading "Miscellaneous Song Words" 64/la-b. It of course carries the same title (jjji ) as a piece in the Ch'u Tz'u attributed to Ch'u Yuan and owes much to that piece.

2The YFSC reads T|<^ rather than .

Mount Fang Chang was one of the three mountains where immortals were believed to live. According to legend those 198

mountains originally floated freely on the sea. The Emperor?, of Heaven feared that they would float away so he ordered fif• teen divine turtles to raise their heads and hold them in place.

^Ito believes that "spirit peak"

6W£ the YFSC gives i$fs%L . 7 The K'un Lun Mountains were believed to be a dwelling place of the immortals. Q Father of the East; according to the "Record of the Ten Continents", -f yMj |£j on top of the Fu Sang tree (see note #10 to "Wandering as an Immortal) there was a. palace called T'ai-ti-kung 3p ^ . Therein lived and reigned T'ai-chen Tung-wang-fu ^ fejj^JL • ^ •JL ^ "Flowing sands", the immortals were believed to live in the mountain ranges to the west of the great deserts.

10Literally, "How could ten thousand chariots be high• ly regarded?" Anciently, states were ranked according to the number of war chariots they could muster. A ten thousand chariot country was considered a large country. XXII. Alas'.

Alas! The tumbling weed, Why do you alone suffer this fate?

So far removed from your roots and stem From morning 'til night you find no repose.

East and west you cross the seven highways, From north to south you overpass the nine byways.

Then meeting a whirlwind you rise And are blown aloft amid the clouds.

Just when you think you are on the road to heaven You are suddenly cast down a deep abyss.

Startled gales meet you as you ascend, As you return to live in the fields.

Starting south then turning north;. Going east and returning to the west, 5 Amid such vastness what can you rely on? Abruptly you perish and then return to life.

Tossed and blown, you circle the eight marshes, Flying and swirling, you cross the five mountains

Flowing, turning, there is nowhere you linger; Who knows of your bitter hardship?

You would rather be like the grassnof the forest That are ravaged by the wild-fires of autumn.

Though to be reduced to ashes would be painful You would prefer to be united with your roots." 200

Notes:

i , "'"This is recorded In the category of "Clear Melodies" |J»] w • It was supposed to have^been written in imitation of the standard tune "Bitter Cold" "ft $ H . YFSC 33/lla-b. The note by P'ei Sung-chih in the WC 19/21b calls this piece a "Lute Song", f ^ %t % .

2 5

3The YWLC 42/755 reads ^ for ^ .

^ JL. 3 the WC reads <>0 . Huang believes that the WC is correct and that is an alteration made during T'ang due to the taboo on the character ;jfj( .

5 £ £ > the WC reads * £ ' ^The eight marshes were famous bogs situated in various states around China proper.. 7 The "five mountains" were probably the "five sacred peaks" 3i-%X mentioned in note #4 to "Ballad of Bitter Thoughts

8 the WC gives jj^ .

,, - . ^The YFSC reads for Jtf^ . The WC reads for 201

XXIII. Duckweed1

2 Duckweed.lying on the clear water ^ ^ Follows the wind flowing east and west. ' On becoming a woman I left my parents To come to be a gentleman's mate.

Though respectful and attentive from morning 'till night .I was faulted for a mistake never made.5

Formerly I received his kindness and grace, g Our happiness was like the playing of lutes.

Now, for no reason, that has all been destroyed; We are estranged like two distant stars.7

The dogwood has a fragrance of its own Yet it can't compare with the cassia or orchid.

Although his new woman is pretty g She doesn't please him like the one of old. 9 The shifting clouds will come back sometime. Perhaps my lord's grace may also return. So discontented, I look to the heavens and sigh. How can I express my heartAs distress?.1- 0

The sun and moon don't tarry for long:11 Man's life is as brief as a sojourn. 2 13 A sad wind enters through my curtains; Tears drop like falling dew. 14 15 I will bring out my basket and make new clothes, ' Cutting and stitching the fine glossy silk.1"

Notes:

"'"Duckweed,,which floats on ponds and streams without fixing its roots to anything,had become a stock symbol of Insecurity and rootlessness by Ts'ao Chih's time. In Wang Po's 202

"Nine Longings (Han Dynasty), we find this passage: H ^ '*% 1%> >^ it J5 & $J> "How sad the duckweed, floating aoout with no roots."

2The YWLC 41/742 gives jtfL in place of 4 ^ literally; '."tying up hair". The tying ;up of one's hair was part of the coming-of-age ceremony in ancient China. For women this took place at age 15 and for men it took place at the age of 20. 4 o2 literally: "severe relative". In contempor• ary usage this refers specifically to the father. I have fol• lowed Yu Kuan-ylng's suggestion in taking this to refer to both parents, however.

5The YWLC reads .

^This seems to owe something to a passage in the Shih Ching which reads : ^ 4 J& "The loving union of wives and children is like the music of drums and lutes." Legge 252 . * # , $ 34/64/7 .

^ literally, "the Shang and Shen". These were two stars at opposite ends of the sky. There is a _story in the Tso Chuart- • about two brothers (sons of Kao Hsin^^ ) who were sent, to live in a forest together. They could not abide with each other and constantly fought. This displeased the Emperor Yao and he sent one of them to be the spirit of the Shang star and the other to be the spirit of the Shen star. See Jl/\% Legge p. 580.

TJje YWLC and a Sung edition make this passage read: $L.fl\%^ . The YTHY and YFSC give in,place of ^ . The fact' that the YWLC version of this line is sup• ported by a Sung edition makes it tempting to adopt it as be• ing correct. However, the version given by Huang_is related to a couplet In an "Old Poem" which reads : fjf 0 % 4$ A- m~ , "Although his new woman is said to be pretty, she's still not as beautiful as the one of old". See CHS

9 The YWLC gives .

10 JJ^^The YTHY gives # 2/39 •

11 'ff The YTHY reads ^ .

12The Sung edition and YFSC read/t>^ ^ . I prefer this as it has a parallel in the "19 Old Poems", #14', which reads : A_ y% ^ , "Life is as swift as a sojourn.

13The YFSC reads "H_ for 'Hi .

l2|'f^.The YFSC gives ^ . I prefer this. 203

^IJfic The YFSC gives !£. jk. .

"^The association of new clothes with an abandoned wife is unusual. Yu has suggested that perhaps the last two lines refer to the new wife rather than the old one. See p. 83- 204

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary sources and traditional sinology

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