Organizer and Chair: Paul F. Rozer, Columbia University
Discussant: Marion Eggert, University of Munich
Though the field of Chinese poetry study has accomplished considerable success in philology, textual criticism, and traditional literary history, scholars have only begun to look at the place of poetry within the functioning of Chinese culture and society. Why should verse writing continue to play such a vital role among the educated classes? What did such classes think they were doing when they wrote poetry? And how did these conceptions change over time?
The presentations in this panel all focus on moments in the history of Chinese culture when a poet or poets used verse writing as a tool to accomplish certain aims that lie outside the (Western-defined) realm of "literature." In each of these cases, it is not merely that Chinese poetry "reflects" its society; rather, poetry-writing itself played an essential role in locating their authors within the matrices of larger social, cultural, and political concerns. This begins in as early a text as the Li sao; from then on, verse writing (especially the shi) has played an essential part from Han to the Republic in clarifying, defining, or (in some cases) mystifying the social and cultural construction of male elites. However, although the importance of poetry has always remained in evidence, how poetry was used throughout the past two millennia has depended largely on the problematics of intellectual history, of social and cultural development, and of politics. In such cases, only new methodological approaches on the scholar's part can enable us to work through the text's contextual significance.
Warring States era scholarship has tended to emphasize the development of philosophy; poetry has remained the concern of philologists, and little attempt has been made to see how it might contribute to early intellectual history. Gopal Sukhu's presentation on the political dimensions of the Li sao suggests that this text also has much to contribute to the understanding of social and governmental attitudes under the vibrant Chu state; just as the legacy of Chu culture has become clearer to us through archaeological work, the separation of this early text from the accretions of later Han exegetes will add significantly to an archaeology of Warring States thought.
The history of poetry during the medieval period suggests a gradual increase in complexity, both in artistic and in societal terms (social verse, court composition, regulation). Paul Rouzer views such developments in the light of "gendered texts"-namely the erotic verse of the 6th century anthology, the Yutai xinyong. Focusing on the role of poetry in male salons, Rouzer suggests that versification (even of an erotic nature) is mostly concerned with contributing to male aristocratic solidarity. The construction of the "feminine" masks male competition, bonding, and establishment of hierarchies within the rigid proprieties of a court society.
Michael Fuller's examination of the Southern Song poet Liu Kezhuang claims a place for poetry in the middle of the intellectual debates surrounding daoxue. At a time when versification is believed to have no longer contributed to literati's delineation of themselves and the world, Fuller argues that (on the contrary) Liu is inscribing a position for poetry that actually grants privileged access to the dao.
Finally, the continuing significance of shi poetry for the intellectual in the twentieth century is demonstrated by Jon Kowallis' examination of Lu Xun's classical verse; examined in the light of the poet's biography, Kowallis has the opportunity of viewing poetry through the twin lenses of "traditional" and "modern"-to observe how the conventions and compulsions of literatus verse are reinterpreted by a modern intellectual concerned with the problems of modernity and alienation.
These case studies contribute vitally not only to a sense of what Chinese poets "do" with poetry, but also what we might accomplish when freed from some of the more traditional Western approaches to "literary" texts.
The Political Philosophy of the Li Sao
Gopal Sukhu, City College of New York, Queens
In the past decade, scholars have continued to study the Li Sao from the perspective of literature, society, and archaeology; new evidence has demonstrated the vibrant cultural life of the state of Chu, and new insights into the contributions of the South to Han society have been suggested. However, little work has been done as yet in locating the text within the history of ideas. The author of the text (whom I see as distinct from the Han historical creation of Qu Yuan), engages in many of the questions surrounding good government that challenged thinkers of the Late Warring States-e.g., relationship between ruler and minister; the ideology of authority; and (above all) the role of ritual and religious belief in establishing a just and fair government. The author's position (one that I plan to explore in depth) locates him at a fascinating and novel position in opposition to Confucian ritualists, legalists, and proponents of Huang-Lao laissez-faire. A consideration of these issues will help us to strip away many of the Han accretions to the text and assist us not only in understanding Chu culture better but also in comprehending attitudes to statecraft that were in circulation during the later days of the rise of Qin.
Verses from the Muddy Wei: Eroticism, Play and Male Bonding in Palace Poetry
Paul F. Rouzer, Columbia University
Recent discussions of sixth-century erotic verse ("palace poetry" or gongti shi), have stressed the role the verse has played in creating a male literatus vision of the ideal woman: in particular, as Maureen Robertson has described it, the creation of a "self-iconizing voice" that presents itself to a voyeuristic male gaze. While granting the applicability of this reading, I approach palace poems from the perspective of social praxis, stressing instead the role such verse plays in cementing bonds between male gentry, in allowing them a space to exercise competition within the realm of literary production, and to manipulate gender hierarchies in a way to explore the workings of political and social hierarchies between themselves. The figure of the female thus becomes the depersonalized mediational link that allows social activity between men to become possible.
Although palace poetry as practiced in the court circles of Liang China emphasized the "light," apolitical manipulation of a superficial wit, the poets create verses that in turn re-create them (the poets) as active controllers of social/sexual relationships or as the passive recipients of such control. The female voice of their yuefu imitations can thus be seen not only as a way of controlling women's self-expression; it is also a role adopted by the male poet that places him in a complex hierarchical relationship to his fellow males. A close examination of a number of texts will clarify how these relationships function through verse.
Poetry Decentered: The Weight of Philosophy in the Writings of Liu Kezhuang
Michael A. Fuller, University of California, Irvine
At least until the end of the Northern Song dynasty, the literary and historical traditions of China embodied modes of knowledge and systems of values beyond the immediate claims of politics and abstract ethics. The daoxue philosophers, in attacking all time-bound knowledge-the "knowledge of seeing and hearing"-challenged the cultural traditions in a profoundly new way. Southern Song thinkers came to see the categories of human experience most fully articulated by the textual traditions-qing (affect) and yi (intention)-as the most implicated in temporal process and as the sources of delusion (Yang Jian is a particularly interesting example). Given this turn in intellectual climate, what is the status of the particularity of the person (ren xin)vis-à-vis the dictates of the absolute (dao xin)? More simply, what happens to poetry? (Bourdieu, for example, makes this correlation of issues in "The Production of Belief").
Liu Kezhuang was part of the generation of daoxue advocates who grew to maturity after Zhu Xi's death. He was a complex figure: he was both a fully committed member of the daoxue community who suffered as an official for his rigorous moral positions, and he was also an important writer who developed a sophisticated defense of the claims of poetry against the more extreme daoxue positions. He firmly grounds both his broad appreciation of earlier poetry and his own practice as a writer on the canonical authority of the "intention of the writers of the Shi [jing]."
A Defense of Poetry: Lu Xun's Classical-Style Poetry and the Question of
"Occasional" Verse
Jon Kowallis, Williams College
Of Lu Xun's poetic output in the old forms, we now have only sixty-four extant verses. This is, nevertheless, a far greater number than his baihua poems. Although he obviously destroyed many of his compositions, this core body of his classical-style poetry remains one which he himself, for the most part, scrupulously recorded in his diary and which others treasured and preserved in his distinctive calligraphy.
This poetry is highly allusive and resonates with a depth and insight similar to that of his best fiction, the sanwenshi of Yecao, and his most acerbic essays. Although it is particularly challenging, the interplay between modern reality and the classical literary tradition it constantly invokes is one of the most intriguing events of the twentieth-century literary stage. What limitations, if any, does the so-called "occasional" nature of much of Lu Xun's poetry impose? How did the increasing censorship of the 1930s figure into this equation and what, indeed, was the erstwhile "Father of Modern Chinese Literature" doing composing more and more in the "dead" classical language and the "moribund" poetic forms of the Chinese past during his most radical period as an intellectual spokesman for the opposition and an irascible cultural critic? This paper will suggest answers to these and other questions of intertextuality and interpretation involved in the study of some of Lu Xun's most highly charged writings.