/ Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi C. RONALD EGAN Published by the Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, and the Harvard-Yenching Institute and distributed by the Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London 1994 Copyright 1994 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College Printed in the United States of America The Harvard-Yenching Institute, fo~nded in 1928 and headquartered at Har vard University, is a foundation dedicated to the advancement of higher educa tion in the humanities and social sciences in East and Southeast Asia. The In stitute supports advanced research at Harvard by faculty members of certain Asian universities, and doctoral st~?ies at Harvard and other universities by junior faculty at the same universmes. It also supports East Asian studies at Harvard through con.tributions to the Harvard-Yenching Library and publica 0/ tion of the Haruard Journal Asiatic Studies and books on premodern East Asian history and literature. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to use quotations or reproduce illustrations: Oxford University Press, for James R. Hightower's translations of Tao Qian in Chapter Eight; The Research Center for Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, for D. C. Lau's transla tion of Yan Shu in Chapter Ten; James R. Hightower, for his translations of Liu Yong in Chapter Ten; and The National Palace Museum, Taipei, for Figures 1, 3, 4, and 5. Endpapers: Su Shi, attrib., Tree, Rock, and Bamboo. Handscroll. Location un known. From Zhongguo gudai huihua xuanji (Beijing: Renmin meishu chu banshe, 1963), fig. 37. Index by Susan Stone Library of Congress Catalogibg-in-Publication Data Egan, Ronald c., 1948- Word, image, and deed in the life of Su Shi / Ronald C. Egan. p. cm.-(Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series; 39) Texts of Su Shi's poems in Chinese and English. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-95598-6 1. Su, Shih, 1036-1101.-Criticism and interpretation. I. Su, Shih,1036-1101. Poems. English and Chinese. Selection~. 1994. II. Title. III. Series. PL2685.Z5E34 1994 895.1'142-dc20 93-46196 CIP For Susan and Louisa L Contents , ;'I Preface Xlll Chronology of the Life of Su Shi XVlll I. FIRST FAME AND REMONSTRATIONS: THE DECREE EXAM 3 On Rites, Human Nature, and Governance 8 On Historical Figures. 16 The Essay on Zhang Liang 2 I 2. NATIONAL POLITICS: OPPOSITION TO THE NEW. POLICIES 27 Initial Dissent 33 Protest Poetry from the Provinces 39 Arrest and Trial 46 3. TOWARDS THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE AND SELF 54 On the New Learning and Other Fallacies 56 Commentaries on the Changes and Documents 68 4. NATIONAL POLITICS AGAIN: YUANYOU-PERIOD FACTIONALISM 86 The Split with Sima Guang VB . ~ L b CONTENTS The ~isput~ with Cheng Yi 93 " "Saymg White Is Black and West is East 9 8 5· PROVINCIAL ACTIVISM I~ AND OUT OF OFFICE 108 Famine Relief in Hangzhou _ 108 Other Undertakings as Prefect 122 Private Initiatives 127 6. A THOUSAND ARMS AND EYES: BUDDHIST INFLUENCES 134 The Centrality of Compassion 135 Chan, Pure Land, BOdhisattvas 142 No-Mind and Responding to Things 15 0 Non-Attachment 157 Lingering Reservations 162 7· THE MIRROR IN THE MI~D: POETRY IN THE SHI FORM 9 16 The Uses of Play i69 Imaging the Poet in the World 179 The Problem of the Emotions_ 197 8. THE LITERATURE OF EXIl~ 7 20 The Cirumstances of Exile 208 Philosophy and Its Limitations 221 East Slope, Tao Qian, Determined Contentment 229 Transcending the WOrld of Men 237 Poetry of Resentment and Defiance 25 0 9· CALLIGRAPHY AND PAINTi~G BROADENING Guwetz Views on Calligraphy Expressing New Meaning 27 2 The Moment of Execution 27 6 Two Approaches to Painting 28 I Signification of the Painted Subject 5 28 Pattern, Lodging, Kno'Vledge 293 Painting and Poetry 29 6 The Question of Motivation 299 Vlll CONTENTS 10. WASHING AWAY THE SILKS AND PERFUMES: SUBJECTIVITY IN THE SONG LYRIC (C/) 310 Reasons for a New Style 317 Xiaoling: Abroad in the World 330 Manci: Fading Visions, Fleeting Thoughts 338 II. CONCLUSIONS 352 Early Appraisals 352 Ambivalence over Aesthetic Pursuits 363 The Meanings of Wen 369 The Utility of a Multidimensional View 374 Abbreviations Used in the Notes 384 Notes 385 List of Works Cited 433 Chinese Title Index 453 Glossary-Index 457 lX Figures I. Illustration by Wu Yuanzhi of Su Shi's "Rhapsody on Red Cliff " 225 2. "Plum Blossoms" in calligraphy of Su Shi 252 3· "Cold Food Festival" in calligraphy of Su Shi 255 4· Painting of bamboo by Wen Tong 286 5· "Rhapsody on Red Cliff" in calligraphy of Su Shi 307 I f Preface I Su Shi peers over the edge of a boat to see the reflection of his face in the water. Suddenly, waves disturb the image, and he watches as it spreads outward and multiplies, creating the illusion of a hundred Su Shis. But abruptly these disappear and a single face forms again in the stilled water, staring up at him.':- Readers of Su Shi's works are likely to feel that they are witness to similar dazzling transformations. Given that Su was so broadly accomplished across separate fields (a fact that is invariably mentioned regarding him), he speaks with an array of dis tinct voices. Even a short list would have to include statesman, Bud dhist, gastronome, alchemist, classicist, dissident, hydrology engineer, philosopher, and, above all, poet, calligrapher, and connoisseur of the arts. What, then, is the balance among these many Su Shis and how are they connected? The problem, moreover, goes beyond this multiplicity of voice and role. On many particular subjects Su Shi's writings are so voluminous and, given the conventions of his day, so occasional and piecemeal that divergences and apparent contradictions are numerous. It has not been my goal to tie the diverse aspects of this life neatly and systematically together. Any account of Su Shi's life and works should accommodate a certain amount of disconnectedness and tangential interests, which are, after all, part of his richness and uriique appeal. At the same time, there is a need for an updated comprehen- *See pp. 205-206 below. Xlll PREFACE sive treatment of this remarkable person. The interests of history and biography alone justify a critical survey of the entire range of this most celebrated life, though no single volume could ever do justice to all of it. My approach is intended to have special utility regarding Su's achievements in literature and the arts. This is not to deny the impor tance of other aspects of his life (on the contrary, I stress it), nor is it to question the usefulness of literary studies of Su that do not include the non-literary aspects of his life. Such studies have and will continue to enhance our appreciation of Su's poetry and its place in the literary tradition. However, the broader treatment of Su's accomplishments, as in this study, puts his artistic achievements in a different light. The first and simplest contribution such a treatment makes is to remind us that Su Shi was great not only in the field of poetry, and indeed, not only in literature and the arts generally. Inasmuch as this fact immediately dis tinguishes Su Shi from most earlier major poets, it deserves a place in literary history. There are also less obvious insights to be gained. When the critic restricts· himself to literary or stylistic analysis, questions of motivation (e.g., why did the poet develop a particular style or express himself a certain way?) are notoriously elusive. It hap pens that with Su Shi, a poet who also led a prominent and controver sial life in the divisive politics of his day, connections can be discerned between political and intellectual disputes he engaged in and the direc tions he took as artist. Naturally, such connections between the poet and his times, in a vague and simple sense, may be discovered for many writers. But with Su Shi the situation is special. It has been observed that just as one cannot imagine Du Fu without the An Lushan rebellion, so, too, one cannot conceive of Su Shi without the reform movement led by Wang Anshi and Su's opposi tion to it. But merely to say -this is to understate Su's involvement in the momentous social and political events of his day and their rele vance to his art. In Du Fu's case, the An Lushan rebellion is something that befell or overtook him. He was more of a witness to than partici pant in the military and political struggles that ensued. Su Shi, by contrast, became an important player in the drama of the New Policies and the struggles it brought about, which stretched over his entire . J career and, indeed, cast their shadow over virtually every aspect of late Northern Song intellectual and political history. Su's poetry, more over, became a crucial part of his public persona as it matured through the contentious politics of the time. Su was imprisoned and brought to trial because of the political criticism his poetry contained. Years later, he became the leader of a political faction whose identity owed itself, XIV PREFACE in part, to the special interest its members took in poetry and related arts. As leader of this faction, Su was banished to the distant south (eventually even "across the sea"), where he remained until just before his death, continuing all the while to express himself in verse. There is good reason, then, to want to bring to a reading of Su's poetry knowl edge of the non-literary controversies of his day, which he helped to define. That is why the chapters on Su's literature and art are saved for the latter part of this volume. These aspects of Su Shi remain the culmi~ation of our study of him-as they will always be--and certainly they have value and meaning that transcend the biographical circum stances of his life. Y ~t, his art springs from those circumstances and is conditioned in countless ways by them, just as it, in turn, affected them. My goal is to analyze Su's art in this larger context of his life and thought. The inclusive treatment of this many-faceted person also better prepares us to appreciate the apparent divergence between our percep tion of Su (inherited from late imperial times) and his own self-image. We think of Su Shi first as a poet, but his own mind seems filled with ambivalence and vacillation on this point. Occasionally, he states clear ly that it is his achievements outside of literature and the arts that he considers primary (and his followers reiterate this opinion concerning him). No matter how we finally choose to think of him, the existence of this discrepancy itself has ramifications for our conception of his poetry. Attention to his work in non-literary fields sharpens our appre hension of this issue. In recent. years a prodigious amount of scholarship has appeared on Su Shi, greatly advancing our understanding of his life, politics, thought, and literary work. In China, five separate volumes of col lected articles on Su have appeared, based on national Su Shi confer ences held during the 1980s. These collections, some of which focus on a single genre of Su's writing or a single period of his life, have raised biographical knowledge of Su Shi and critical appreciation of his works to new levels. Several other volumes devoted to Su have also appeared, including biographies (e.g., by Zeng Zaozhuang), interpretative studies (Chen Yingji, Liu Naichang, Zhu Jinghua), collections of anecdotes and historical criticism (Yan Zhongqi,Li Fushun), and annotated anthologies of his works (Wang Shuizhao, Wang Siyu, Yan Zhongqi), as well as a study of the textual history of his writings (by Liu Shang rong). Special mention should be made of major new editions of Su's complete prose and poetry, which were published separately during the 1980s. The complete poetry reproduces the extensive and indis pensable commentary by the Qing scholar Wang Wen'gao. The com- xv