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Xiao Tong's Literary Inclination 51 GENTLEMANLY STYLE

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Xiao Tong's Literary Inclination 51 GENTLEMANLY STYLE Xiao Tong’s Literary Inclination 51 Chapter Two Gentlemanly Style: Xiao Tong’S Literary Inclination The Great Anthology The official history of the Liang might have intended to bequeath to Xiao Tong a good name as an ideal Confucian heir apparent, but in practice the crown prince is best remembered for the anthology he compiled in the 520s, the Wen xuan. The prince’s posthumous name—Zhaoming—is tra- ditionally attached to the title of this anthology, which is therefore known to us as the Zhaoming Wen xuan. The Wen xuan is the oldest extant liter- ary anthology and since the Tang has exerted profound influence on the learning and understanding of early medieval Chinese literature. It pre- serves 761 pieces, arranged according to genre, by 130 authors and span- ning eight hundred years from the late Zhou to the Liang.1 Many poetic works that we now take for granted as touchstones of Chinese literary his- tory would not have been available to us without the Wen xuan. The “Nineteen Old Poems” (Gushi shijiu shou 古詩十九首) is a case in point. By presenting these poems as a group, Xiao Tong asserted their exalted status and thus made them some of the most admired and memorized pieces of Chinese poetry. The only other anthology comparable to the Wen xuan in this regard is the eighteenth-century Anthology of Three Hundred Tang Poems (Tang shi sanbai shou 唐詩三百首), and this was not the Wen xuan’s peer in scope and volume. It is no exaggeration to say that Xiao Tong’s Wen xuan, to a large extent, shaped how writers wrote in later times. This Liang anthology received prominent recognition in the centuries after it was compiled. The two most accomplished poets in Chinese his- tory both gave their endorsements to the Wen xuan, albeit in different ways. Li Bo 李白 (701-762) wrote three different imitations of poems from the Wen xuan over the course of his lifetime. He finally burned all three, considering them unworthy to stand beside the works in the original Wen xuan. Only one piece from Li Bo’s efforts is left to us titled, interestingly, “An Imitation of ‘Rhapsody on Regrets’” (Ni hen fu 擬恨賦), which is an 1 Knechtges, Wen xuan, “Introduction,” p. 1. 52 chapter two imitation of Jiang Yan’s 江淹 (444-505) work of the same title.2 Du Fu 杜甫 (712-770), through his poems, reveals to us that recitation of the Wen xuan was part of his education plan for his son.3 Memorization of the Wen xuan was in fact an indispensable part of the education received by those preparing to take the civil service examinations from the Tang dynasty on.4 In the Song dynasty, the Wen xuan was comparable to a student’s bible. The renowned Song prose writer Lu You 陸游 (1125-1210) quoted a popular saying among scholars and students: “With the Wen xuan thor- oughly done, half a scholar you become” (Wen xuan lan, xiucai ban 文選 爛, 秀才半).5 The exalted status of the Wen xuan continued into late imperial Chinese history. A specialist on the Wen xuan, David Knechtges, has suggested a reason for Wen xuan’s high status: “one important reason for the privileged status of the Wen xuan is that its literary values had a strong appeal at a time when the definition of literature was changing and when literary men openly debated the question of what was the proper form and function of literature. The Wen xuan reflects a view of literature that may properly be called moderate.”6 This moderate view certainly belongs to its compiler Xiao Tong, and is consistent with the purpose of this work. Xiao Tong as the Compiler and his Preface to Wen Xuan Before I set out to analyze the Liang crown prince’s ideas about literature, it is necessary to address an issue raised by the Japanese scholar Shimizu Yoshio 清水凱夫 regarding Xiao Tong’s role in the compilation of the Wen xuan. Shimizu argues that Xiao Tong was only the nominal compiler, and that the actual work of compilation was done by Liu Xiaochuo, who also composed the Wen xuan preface.7 Although it is not uncommon for rulers 2 Qu Shouyuan, Wen xuan daodu, p. 81. Duan Chengshi, Youyang zazu, chapter 12, “Yuzi” 語資, 12.116. See also Xu Donghai’s 許東海 “Cong ‘Ni hen fu’ dao ‘Bai you zhang’— Wen xuan Jiang Yan fu qiandong Li Bai shifu chuangzuo zhi yi kaocha” 從〈擬恨賦〉到 〈百憂章〉-《文選》江淹賦牽動李白詩賦創作之一考查, in Nianyi shi ji Han Wei Liuchao, pp. 271-93; Michelle Sans, “A Better View of Li Bai’s ‘Immitating the Fu on Resent- ment,’” T’ang Studies 18-19 (2000-1): 41-59. 3 See Li Hui 李暉, “‘Wen xuan li’ yu Tang shi” “文選理”與唐詩, in Wen xuan xue lunji, pp. 333–49. 4 See Li Jinkun 李金坤, “Tangdai keju kaoshi yu Wen xuan” 唐代科舉考試與《文 選》, in Wen xuan yu Wen xuan xue, pp. 155–68. 5 See Lu You, Laoxue’an biji, 8.1a. 6 Knechtges, “Culling the Weeds,” in Culture and Power, p. 209. 7 See Shimizu Yoshio’s “Monzen hensan no shūhen,” in Ritusmeikan bungaku 377-88 (1976): 207-27. Another of Shimizu’s articles on this topic is: “Shōmei taishi Monzen jo kō” .
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