Pan Ku (32–92)
Preface to the “Fu on the Two Capitals”
The following is the first part of Pan Ku’s preface, which takes a laudatory view of the Han period fu, or at least of those works by high government officials that were clearly didactic in intent. (Wen hsüan 1.)
It has been said that the fu derives from the poetry (shih) of ancient times. Long ago, when kings Ch’eng and K’ang passed away, the hymns ceased to sound; when royal beneficence came to an end, poems were no longer composed.1 When the great Han dynasty first rose to power, each day was taken up with pressing tasks; but by the reigns of emperors Wu and Hsüan (140–49 B.C.) there was at last time to pay due honor to the officials in charge of rites and to give thought to cultural matters. Within the palace were set up the offices of the Metal Horse and the Stone Conduit; outside it were established the Music Bureau and the post of Harmonizer of Tones.2 Their purpose was to revive what had fallen into neglect, to restore what had been cut off, thus lending brilliance and color to our glorious dynasty. As a result, the numberless masses rejoiced and were content, and blessings and happy responses appeared in abundance. The songs of the white unicorn, the red goose, the fungus chamber, and the precious caldron were presented at the suburban sacrifices and the ancestral temples, and the auspicious omens of the sacred sparrow, the five phoenixes, the sweet dew, and the yellow dragon were employed in numbering the years.3 The courtiers who performed literary services, such as Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, Yü-ch’iu Shou-wang, Tung-fang Shuo, Mei Kao, Wang Pao, and Liu Hsiang, morning and night debated and pondered, daily and monthly presenting their works for consideration. In addition, high officials and great statesmen, such as the imperial secretary Ni K’uan, the master of ritual K’ung Tsang, the palace counselor Tung Chung-shu, the director of the imperial clan Liu Te, the grand tutor to the crown prince Hsiao Wang-chih, and others, from time to time found leisure to compose, some describing conditions on the lower level of society and thereby conveying a reprimand or lesson, some extolling the virtue of those in high places and giving full expression to the ideals of loyalty and filial piety. Mild and well-modulated, full of commendation and praise, such works will shine in generations after, second only to the odes and hymns of antiquity. Therefore, in the reign of Emperor Ch’eng the Filial (32–7 B.C.) they were discussed and recorded, and eventually over a thousand pieces were presented for imperial perusal. From this time on, the culture of our great Han shone with a brilliance matching that of the Three Dynasties of antiquity.
Pan Ku
Section on Fu from the “Treatise on Literature,”
History of the Former Han (Han shu 30)
In this passage, Pan Ku seems to be treating the history of both the fu and the shih forms, and it is not always clear which paragraphs refer to which. Here he takes a much sterner view of the Han fu, berating it for its lack of didactic purpose.
An old text says: That which is not sung but chanted is called a fu. He who, ascending to the high places, is able to present a poetic offering (fu) is worthy to be a high officia1.4 In other words, he is moved to composition by his reaction to the things he sees; and, possessing talent and knowledge of great depth and excellence, he is the kind who may be consulted in the conduct of affairs. Therefore he may be ranked among the high officials.
In ancient times, when the feudal lords, ministers, and high officials conducted diplomatic relations with neighboring states, they used subtle words to move one another. Faced with ceremonial occasions of bowing and giving way, they invariably recited selections from the Odes in order to convey their ideas. Thus it was possible to distinguish the worthy from the unworthy, and to perceive which states were likely to flourish and which to fade. Therefore Confucius said, “If you do not study the Odes you will be unable to speak!”5
After the Spring and Autumn period, the ways of the Chou dynasty gradually fell into disuse. The old diplomatic inquiries with their recitations of songs were no longer carried out among the various states and the men who studied the Odes retired from public life and lived among the common people. It was at this time that the fu by men of worth who had failed to realize their ambitions came to be written. The great Confucian scholar Hsün Ch’ing and the minister of Ch’u, Ch’ü Yüan, encountering slander and grieving for their states, both wrote fu in order to express their criticisms.6 All their works are imbued with a spirit of compassion and are in the tradition of the ancient poetry.
Later there appeared Sung Yü and T’ang Le and, after the founding of the Han, Mei Sheng, Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, and Yang Hsiung. Each strove to outdo the others in ornate and extravagant language, thus obscuring whatever satirical or didactic function his works might have had. This is why Yang Hsiung in time repented that he had written such works, declaring: “The fu written by the poets of the Book of Odes are both beautiful and well-ordered; the fu of the rhetoricians are beautiful but unlicensed. If the disciples of Confucius had been fu writers, then we might say that Chia Yi had ‘ascended the hall’ and Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju had ‘entered the inner apartments.’ But since they were not, then what is there to be said?”7
From the time when Emperor Wu the Filial set up the Music Bureau (ca. 120 B.C.) and songs and ballads were collected, we came to have the ditties of Tai and Chao and the airs of Ch’in and Ch’u. All are expressions of sadness and joy which take their inspiration from some particular event. They serve to reveal the manners and customs of the people and to indicate whether their lot is a prosperous or a paltry one.
Tso Ssu (fl. A.D. 300)
Preface to the “Fu on the Three Capitals”
Tso Ssu inveighs against poetic license and calls for greater accuracy of fact in the fu. (Wen hsüan 4.)
The Book of Odes employs six principles, of which the second is called fu.8 Yang Hsiung remarks that “the fu written by the poets of the Book of Odes are both beautiful and well-ordered.”9 Pan Ku has said, “The fu derives from the poetry of ancient times.”10 The rulers of antiquity collected poems in order to observe the nature of the land. Thus, reading of “the green bamboo full and fair,” they knew what it was that grew on the banks of the Ch’i in the region of Wei.11 Reading the line, “He is in the house of planks,” they learned what the dwellings of the Western Jung barbarians in the wastes of Ch’in were like.12 So with complete ease they were able to distinguish the characteristics of each of the eight directions.
But when Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju in his “Fu on the Shang-lin Park” speaks of loquats ripening in summer;13 when Yang Hsiung in his “Fu on the Sweet Springs” presents us with “jade trees in their green luxuriance”;14 when Pan Ku in his “Fu on the Western Capital” exclaims over the catching of “paired-eye” fish;15 or when Chang Heng in his “Fu on the Western Metropolis” tells us that Jo, the sea god, was swimming about,16 we know that they are merely dragging in the names of these rare and outlandish objects in order to enrich and color their works. Instances of this sort of thing are not confined to the examples above. If we look into the matter of fruits and trees, we will know that the ones mentioned in the examples are not native to that region; and if we delve into the question of supernatural beings, we will know that the one cited here would hardly be found in such a locale! As far as words go, it is easy enough to fashion such adornments and fripperies; but from the point of view of meaning they are fictitious and without proof.
If the jade goblet lacks a bottom, no matter how rare it may be, it is useless. If fine words lack a basis in fact, no matter how beautiful they may be, they cannot endure. But although critics unanimously attack the works mentioned above for their lack of care and precision, yet the majority of writers persist in holding them up as models of style. And when an action is repeated, in time it becomes habitual—the outcome is inevitable.
I made up my mind that, using the fu on the two capitals as a model, I would compose my own “Fu on the Three Capitals.” For the mountains and rivers, towns and cities involved, I pored over maps of the area; for the birds, animals, plants, and trees, I checked with local gazetteers; the songs and dances mentioned are in each case those that belong to the folkways of the particular region; the heroes and great men are invariably drawn from the history of its past. Why have I done all this? Because he who puts forth words to make a poem should sing of the appropriate emotion; he who ascends the high places and presents his poetic offering should celebrate the sights before him; he who would proclaim the beauty of things must do so by honoring their true nature; and he who would praise actions must do so by sticking to the facts. If there is no truth and no factuality, then how is the reader to believe what he is told?
The importance of exacting tribute on the basis of what is native to each region is made clear in the Book of Documents; the need to exercise care in identifying things and placing each in its proper environment is stressed in the Book of Changes.17 I have touched here upon only one aspect of the matter, but the same principles should apply in the ordering of the entire literary work, so that all may be founded upon a sound knowledge of the past.
Liu Hsieh (early 6th cen.)
“Elucidating the Fu,”
from The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons
(Wen-hsin tiao-lung, sec. 8)
Liu Hsieh’s Wen-hsin tiao-lung is the most detailed and important work of early Chinese literary criticism, treating in its fifty sections both the history of individual literary forms and the broader questions of method, style, and value in literature. In the translation of the section on fu which follows I have been greatly aided by the English translation of the work by Vincent Yu-chung Shih, The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), and the Japanese translation by Kōzen Hiroshi, Sekai koten bungaku zenshū XXV (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1968).
The Book of Odes has its six principles, of which the second is called fu. Fu means p’u, “to set forth”; setting forth colors, unfolding patterns, one gives form to objects and expression to ideas. In ancient times the Duke of Shao called upon the lords and high officials to present their poems and the music masters their admonitions and fu.18 An old text says, “He who, ascending to the high places, is able to present a poetic offering (fu) is worthy to be a high official.” In the Preface to the Odes, fu is treated the same as the others of the six principles, while in the explanations of the Kuo yü and Mao Commentary it is regarded as a different form. If one investigates the gist of these passages, however, they will be seen to refer to a single root and branch. Liu Hsiang clarified the matter by stating that the fu was not sung but chanted,19 and Pan Ku declared it derived from the poetry of ancient times.
When we come to works such as the “Great Tunnel” of Duke Chuang of Cheng or the “Fox Fur” of Shih Wei, we see that they kept the words succinct and the rhymes few, and the compositions are of their own making. But though they accord with the fu form, they represent a dim light that has yet to grow brighter.20 Later, when Ch’ü Yüan composed his Li sao, then for the first time the sounds and sights were given full expression. Thus we see that the fu received its life from the poets of the Book of Odes and was shaped and developed by those of the Ch’u tz’u. With the works on “Ritual” and “Wisdom” by Hsün Ch’ing and “The Wind” and “Fishing” by Sung Yü, it was presented with the title of fu or rhyme-prose, marking it off as a territory separate from that of shih or poetry. As one among the six principles of the Odes, it had been a mere dependent state; now it flourished and grew into a great country. It began its development through the use of the “host-and-guest” form,21 and then exploited its literary possibilities through an exhaustive treatment of sounds and sights. Thus it became for the first time a separate form from the shih poetry, and under the name of fu made its own beginning.
The Ch’in dynasty was not given to literature, though it produced a few works in a mixed fu form. The rhetoricians of the early Han followed fashion and wrote new works, Lu Chia the first to pick up the strands, Chia Yi carrying on with the weaving, Mei Sheng and Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju racing with the same wind, Wang Pao and Yang Hsiung galloping with all their might. Mei Kao, Tung-fang Shuo, and others inferior to them turned to the delineation of every conceivable object; a multitude of works accumulated in the reign of Emperor Hsüan (73–49 B.C.), and in the time of Emperor Ch’eng (32–7 B.C.) were examined and collated, a collection of fu presented for imperial inspection numbering over a thousand pieces. Thus my inquiry into the origins of the fu form has revealed that in fact it came into being in the state of Ch’u and reached its flourishing under the Han.
Works on capitals and palaces, gardens and hunts, or those which described journeys or set forth ideas all helped to “give form to the state and order to the outlying regions,”22 and their purpose is to honor glory and greatness. Having broached the subject in the opening chords of the hsü or preface, they brought the last stray ends to conclusion in the final luan or reprise, the preface stating the themes and introducing the emotions that underlie the piece, the reprise bringing order to the work as a whole, fulfilling the requirements of the fu as a literary form. (It may be noted that the last stanza of the “No” was called by its author, Min-ma Fu, a luan.23 So we know that the men of Yin used the luan or reprise to bring a harmonious end to their hymns, and the men of Ch’u used it to order their works in the fu or rhyme-prose form.) All these compositions fall within the realm of masterful creation and represent the very core and crux of graceful literature.
As for those works that deal with the world of plants, the tribes of birds, the numberless kinds of things in all their profusion of species, the writer encounters a certain object and is moved to feeling, observes the way in which it changes and draws a moral. In delineating the form and appearance of the object, he strives for delicacy and conciseness of language; in conveying the symbolic meaning appropriate to each object, he prizes the kind of reasoning that follows naturally from the object itself. These are compositions that belong to the domain of lesser creations, the essence and epitome of skill in the unusual.
Looking into the matter, we find that Hsün Ch’ing put together riddling works, in which the subject often ends by explaining itself; Sung Yü set forth exaggerated tales, the beginning, in fact, of “unlicensed beauty”; Mei Sheng in his poem on the Rabbit Garden conveyed the principals of the scene while adding a touch of newness; Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju in his “Shang-lin Park” used a profusion of species to create an effect of lushness; Chia Yi in his fu on the owl applied eloquence to the treatment of emotion and ideas; Wang Pao in his work on the hollow flute exhausted all the variations of sound and sight; Pan Ku’s rhyme-prose on the two capitals is clear and refined, correct and well turned out; Chang Heng’s rhyme-prose on the two metropolises is fast moving and unusual, copious and rich; Yang Hsiung’s work on the palace at Sweet Springs breathes an air of profundity and rareness; Wang Yen-shou’s work on the Ling-kuang Palace is imbued with all the energy of movement or flight. These ten writers were all masters of the fu style of the Han rhetoricians.
Later we come to Wang Ts’an, admirable and concise, who when he broaches a theme always moves forward with alacrity; Hsü Kan, learned and perceptive, who at times achieved true vigor and brilliance; Tso Ssu and P’an Yüeh, whose achievement lay in the fashioning of large-scale models; Lu Chi and Ch’eng-kung Sui, who made their mark in more popular forms; Kuo P’u, polished and clever, with eloquence and ideas to spare; Yüan Hung, who expressed deep passion, yet managed to neglect neither style nor euphony. These were the chief fu writers of the Wei and Chin periods.
Looking into the statement about “ascending the high places,”24 we find that one observes certain objects and is inspired to feeling. Because the feeling is inspired by a particular object, the ideas of the poem will inevitably be clear and refined. And because the object is observed in terms of the feeling it inspires, the words of the poem will necessarily be well chosen and beautiful. Beautiful words and refined ideas will match and complement each other, like the apportioning of red and purple threads in a piece of woven goods, or the application of black and yellow pigment in a painting. The patterns, though novel, will be supported by sound substance; the colors, though varied, will be laid on a firm base. This is the essential point in fashioning a fu.
As for those writers who chase after secondary concerns and display only contemptuous neglect for fundamentals, though they read a thousand fu, they will only become more confused about the essentials of the form.25 They will persevere until they achieve such a profusion of blossoms that it breaks the stem, such plumpness of flesh that it injures the bone. Their works show no respect for earlier models of the form and serve no purpose in encouraging good and censuring evil. This is the reason that Yang Hsiung in later life regretted having indulged in such “carving of insects,” that he condemned such works as mere “mist-like gauze.”26
Tsan:27
The fu derives from the shih poetry form,
A fork in the road, a different line of development;
It describes objects, pictures their appearance,
With a brilliance akin to sculpture or painting.
What is clogged and confined it invariably opens up;
It depicts the commonplace with unbounded charm;
But the goal of the form is beauty well-ordered,
Words retained for their loveliness when weeds have been cut away.
NOTES
1. Ch’eng and K’ang were rulers in the golden age of the early Chou (eleventh and tenth centuries B.C.), when most of the hymns and other songs of the Book of Odes were said to have been composed.
2. The offices within the palace had surveillance over literary and scholarly activities; the Music Bureau and Harmonizer of Tones were charged with collecting folk songs and composing hymns for state ceremonies.
3. All these creatures were omens of heavenly favor whose appearance was either celebrated in song or honored in a nien-hao, or era name. At this time it became customary for the ruler to declare a new era on the appearance of such an omen and begin the numbering of the years of his reign again. The four era names mentioned here—“sacred sparrow,” “five phoenixes,” etc.—belong to the end of Emperor Hsüan’s reign, the period 61–49 B.C.
4. The source of the first statement attributed to the “old text” (chuan) is unknown. The second is quoted from the Han period Mao chuan or Mao Commentary on the Book of Odes, poem #50, where a list of nine types of literary composition which qualify one to be regarded as a high official is given.
5. Analects XVI, 13; Confucius addressed the remark to his son.
6. The works attributed to Ch’ü Yüan (fl. ca. 300 B.C.) and preserved in the Ch’u tz’u or Songs of the South resemble the fu in both style and content and are often regarded as part of the same line of literary development. On the fu of the philosopher Hsün Ch’ing, see Appendix II, this page.
7. Fa yen, sec. 2. The allusion is to Analects XI, 14: “Yü has ascended the hall but has not yet entered the inner apartments.” In other words, had Confucius approved of works of pure literature such as the Han fu, then Chia Yi might be regarded as very promising and Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju as truly accomplished.
8. The six yi or principles are six terms that from early times have been used in discussions of the Book of Odes. Three of them, hsing, pi, and fu, refer to stylistic devices, the other three, feng, ya, and sung, to the various sections into which the anthology is divided. Fu is taken to mean “description,” that is, those poems or parts of poems that are mainly concerned with the description of a scene or action. Because the same word came later to be used to designate the rhyme-prose works of the Han, it allowed writers such as Yang Hsiung and Pan Ku to establish what seemed to be a link between the Book of Odes and the fu form.
9. Fa yen, sec. 2.
10. In the preface to his “Fu on the Two Capitals,” translated above.
11. Odes #55, “Airs of Wei.” An older interpretation would take “green bamboo” as the names of two plants; but for the sake of the parallelism I believe Tso Ssu intended the words to be taken as in the translation.
12. Odes #128, “Airs of Ch’in.”
13. Lu-chü, from which the English word loquat derives, is also used at times to designate a type of citrus fruit. See Edward H. Schafer, The Vermilion Bird: T’ang Images of the South (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 185. It is uncertain which fruit Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju intended.
14. According to some commentators, these were artificial trees fashioned out of jade. The objection is presumably to the fact that Yang describes them as though they were living, though they may possibly have been a variety of tree not native to the capital.
15. Pi-mu, a type of fish which always swims in pairs, native to the eastern region.
16. Chang Heng has the sea god swimming in the lake in the palace grounds.
17. References are to the “Tribute of Yü” section of the Documents and the explanation of the wei-chi hexagram in the I Ching.
18. The statement is based on a passage in the Kuo yü or “Conversations from the States,” Chou yü: “The Son of Heaven, when hearing government affairs, had the lords, high officials, and others, down to the gentlemen in their ranks, present their poems, the blind musicians present their lists of precedents, the historiographers present their documents, the music masters their admonitions, those with pupil-less eyes their fu,” etc.
19. See p. 135; Liu Hsieh identifies the author of the quotation as Liu Hsiang because Pan Ku adopted most of his material from an earlier work on bibliography by Liu Hsiang.
20. “Great Tunnel” and “Fox Fur” are brief rhymed works recorded in Tso chuan, Yin 1 and Hsi 5 respectively.
21. I.e., the dialogue form, used by Hsün Ch’ing; see Appendix II, this page.
22. Chou li, section on Heaven, “T’ai-tsai.”
23. The poem is #301 in the Odes, first of the hymns of Shang or Yin. A passage in Kuo yü, Lu yü 2, applies the term luan to the end of the hymn.
24. The statement in the Mao Commentary, quoted on p. 135, which tells how men of old ascended to high places and, inspired by the scenery about them, recited or composed poems.
25. A reference to the words attributed to Yang Hsiung: “If you read a thousand fu, you will be good at writing them.” See Introduction, this page.
26. Fa yen, sec. 2: “Someone asked me if I was not fond of writing fu in my younger days. I replied, ‘Yes—as a little boy carves insects or engraves seals. But suddenly one day I said to myself, a grown man does not do such things!’… Someone asked, ‘Is not mist-like gauze the most beautiful of all woven goods?’ I replied, ‘It is an abuse of the weaving woman’s skill!’ ” Yang Hsiung is comparing the “mist-like gauze,” difficult to produce and of little practical use, with the extravagant works in fu form of his time.
27. A passage, usually in rhymed four-character lines, that sums up the principal points in an essay, biography, or other piece of writing.