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A Concise History of Chinese Literature

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A Concise History of Chinese Literature 656 chapter sixteen this way the scholar-ofcials were completely deprived of their option to keep themselves detached from the regime. Te cultural control in the Song dynasty may be considered as rather tight, but at least on the surface, the personal dignity of the scholar-ofcials was still respected, so they were able to pursue, more or less, their ideal that the search for the “Way” was their ultimate purpose in life, whereas the Ming regime, from the very beginning of its establishment, tried to cast the personality of men of letters in a slavish mould. During the Ming dynasty, the Cheng-Zhu Lixue was honored, forc- ibly, as a government-sponsored theory, and their annotated editions of Confucian classics were held as the required texts for daily learning and as the basis of the civil service examinations. From the beginning of the Ming to the Chenghua reign, the standard format in the civil service examinations gradually took shape. Te eight-legged prose, with fxed number of characters in length and the requirement that one could only “compose in the voice of the ancients” rather than freely assume one’s own, further reinforced the shackles on the thinking of the literati with a lasting infuence. (See “Survey of Ofcial Appoint- ment” in History of the Ming) Tereupon the free and lively literary practice, introduced in the last years of the Yuan, came to a sudden stop at the beginning of the Ming. Te more than a hundred years aferward (1368–1487), through the last years of the Chenghua reign, made a rather lengthy period of decline in the history of literature. Gao Qi and Others Te Poetic School of Suzhou, which started at the end of the Yuan, kept its momentum for a short while at the beginning of the Ming. At the time, with Yang Weizhen in his declining years, Gao Qi (1336–1374) became the main fgure. He was born and brought up in Suzhou. Dur- ing the upheaval at the end of the Yuan he lived at his hometown in seclusion. At the beginning of the Ming he answered the government’s summons and went to Nanjing to participate in the composition of the History of the Yuan. Later he served at the Hanlin Academy, and subse- quently he was ofered the senior appointment as Vice Minister of Rev- enue, but he frmly declined and went back home. In the seventh year of the Hongwu reign, on the pretext of Gao’s involvement in another case, Zhu Yuanzhang had him executed at the age of thirty-nine. As regards Gao Qi’s death, it was attributed in the History of the Ming to poetry and prose of the ming dynasty 657 his composition of some poems satirizing Zhu Yuanzhang, which was not necessarily reliable and nor was it so important; the primary reason was his noncooperation. Because of his fame and prestige, the warn- ing that Zhu Yuanzhang issued to those among the literati who were unwilling to submit to his will became even more grim and stern. Gao Qi, sensitive and poetic by nature, was a contemplative man who found it difcult to live without freedom. In fact, he was not without any intention to take part in politics, but his personal char- acter was obviously at variance with politics, so he made up his mind to be content with being a poet only. In his “Song of the Master of Green Hills” which demonstrates his personality, he describes himself as “Not willing to bend my waist for fve gallons of rice; / Not willing to wag my tongue to take over seventy towns,” “I care not the hard fght between a dragon and a tiger; / I care not how the sun and the moon keep running around. / I just sit alone by waterside, / Or walk by myself in the woods.” It indicates his weariness of the fght among the various political camps that was going on at the time. We may have a better comprehension of his weariness of politics by reading another poem of his, “Passing by the Battlefeld of Fengkou.” Afer depicting the horrible sight created by warfare, the poem makes such a lament: “For the passing year, the war has seen no end; / Both the strong and the weak engage in making conquests. / Rank and honor: who will eventually acquire them? / People are killed around between earth and heaven. / I’m ashamed that I have no way to end the chaos; / I just stand still with a broken heart.” Poetry became the source of happiness for Gao Qi. His friend Yang Ji recalled: “When Jidi was in Suzhou, whenever he composed a poem he would run over to show it to me, and he would be amazed at himself over any lines that he took pride in.” (“Short Foreword to the Poem ‘I Dreamed about My Friend Gao Jidi’ ”) One could imagine what he looked like at such moments, and it was because writing excited him, making him feel the expansion of his life-force. “Song of the Master of Green Hills” goes, “Mobilize the primary force / Search for the primary essence, / It makes it hard for the myriad things from the creator to hide their truth. / I send out my mental troops in all directions of the vast; / While I sit, I hear all the sounds in the great silence.” Te subjective mind, as a dominant force, controls and reconstructs everything in the world, and makes the world present itself in a way which used to remain hidden. “My ingenious mind ofen meets that of spirits and divinity; / Te beautiful scenes I see therein ofen compete with the rivers and 658 chapter sixteen mountains in nature.” In the world of poetry, the poet has become the creator who is on a par with spirits and divinity and with Nature itself. Te admiration for one’s own creative power helps the poet to free himself from the oppression in reality and to enjoy, all by himself, the joy of creation: “Nothing in the world is going to entertain me; / Only that comes from metal and rock will make its roaring sound.” For Gao Qi, poetry does not serve any external purpose; it only satisfes the need of the poet’s own mind. His understanding of poetry’s exclusive artistic nature and its individuality was rarely found before him. However, Gao Qi was still summoned by Zhu Yuanzhang, and went to Nanjing. Freedom was impossible. All the poems composed during his short stay at the capital smack of a kind of anxiety and sorrow under high pressure. For instance, “A Wild Goose on the Pond” uses as a self-image a wild goose: “Due to its wild nature it was not to be domesticated,” but “All by chance it was captured by a hunter.” It is being fed and kept at a “beautiful pond,” but “It always felt shame and fear; / It was not at ease any more;” all it does is to gaze at its faraway homeland, “Crying sadly it ofen stood still.” Take, for another example, his “Hearing Grand Scribe Xie Reciting the Poems of Li Bo and Du Fu”: At frst, he sang “Hard Is the Way to Shu,” Ten he sang “Song of Straits.” Te sound of music, loud and sharp, came out from the shabby house. Birds in the woods few up at night; neighbors were startled. Sad with solitude, I was about to go to sleep; Hearing it, I got up and sat, feeling at a loss. I sang loudly to join him from the next door; I burst into tears in front of the green lamplight. Attendant Li, Reminder Du, Led a wretched life then—both were pathetic cases. Lord Yan wanted to kill one; the eunuch was angry with the other. White-headed they roamed by rivers and sea, worried and hungry for long. Extremely talented as the two masters were, it was like that. Now you, my friend, and I: what are we going to do? One can hardly tell the background of this poem, but still feel in there an unspeakable sorrow and indignation, as well as the poet’s premonition that once one gets involved in the ofcial circles one may get drowned therein. During the Yuan dynasty Gao Qi, for a long time, led the life of a recluse, which was ofen described as easy and peaceful, but Gao Qi’s mind appeared to be in a turmoil and complicated state, and he could poetry and prose of the ming dynasty 659 hardly fnd any rest for his soul. Under the high pressure of the poli- tics of the Ming, with a sharp sensitivity, he was even more enveloped in anxiety and fear. Even afer he resigned from ofce and went back home, he was still unable to get over his depression. As it goes in his “Taking a Walk to the Eastern Plateau”: Te slanting sunshine keeps half the river bright. Te reclusive man ofen takes a solitary walk. In gloomy mood, he confronts the somber dusk. His poetic mind gets refreshed when autumn arrives. A bird keeps pecking, tearing apart the withered willow; With an insect hanging on it, a leaf falls so lightly. How is it that even afer getting to return He feels the same as when he’s away from home? Te poem does not show any sense of the leisure of living quietly in mountains and woods; instead it is full of grim melancholy. Lines 5 and 6 contain the central imagery of the entire poem: a withered wil- low tree is torn apart by a bird’s pecking, an insect hangs mid-air by a thin thread onto a falling leaf, which seem to symbolize human life being devastated, without a place to settle down, and with no sense of security whatsoever.
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