Preface
Hsiao T’ung (501–531)
When we look to the first beginnings and scrutinize from afar those primordial conditions—in times of winter caves and summer nests when men devoured undressed game and drank blood1—times then were rude and people plain; writing had not yet appeared. Then we come to the rule of Fuhsi, who first traced the Eight Trigrams and invented writing to take the place of government by knotted cords; from this time written records came into being.2
The Classic of Changes says, “Observe the patterns in the sky to discover the seasons’ changes; observe the patterns among men to transform All-Under-Heaven”—so far-reaching are the times and meanings3 of pattern (wen)!4 Now the Imperial Chariot had its origin in the oxcart, but the Imperial Chariot has none of the crudeness of the oxcart. Thick ice is composed of accumulated water, but accumulated water has not the coldness of thick ice. Why so? The original form is preserved but elaborated on, or the essential nature changed through intensification. This is true of things, and it is also true of literature (wen). It changes with passing time, and to describe it is no easy task. But to make the attempt:
The Preface to the Classic of Songs says,5 “There are six modes of the Songs. The first is instruction (feng); the second is description (fu); the third is simile (pi); the fourth is metaphor (hsing); the fifth is ode (ya); the sixth is hymn (sung).” Later poets deviated from the ancient [practice], and of the [six modes of the] ancient poetry, the moderns took over only the term fu. It appeared first of all in the works of Hsün Tzu6 and Sung Yü,7 and was continued subsequently by Chia Yi8 and Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju;9 from this time on the ramifications were many. Descriptive of cities and sites there are [the fu of Chang Heng and Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju with their imaginary interlocutors His Honor] Insubstantial10 and [Master] No-Such[-Person].11 Directed against hunting are the “Ch’ang-yang”12 and “Hunting with Plumes” [fu of Yang Hsiung]. When it comes to fu describing one event or celebrating a single object (such as those on Wind, Clouds, Plants, and Trees, or the ones about Fish, Insects, Birds, and Beasts), considering their range, it is quite impossible to list them all.
There was also the Ch’u poet Ch’ü Yüan, who clung to loyalty and walked unsullied; the prince would not accept it when the subject offered advice unwelcome to his ears. Though his understanding was profound and his plans far-reaching, in the end he was banished south of the Hsiang River. Injured for his unbending integrity and with no one in whom to confide his sorrow, he stood on the verge of the abyss, determined to embrace the stone; he sighed by the pool, haggard in appearance.13 It is from him that the writings of the sao poets derive.
Poetry is the product of the emotions: the feelings are moved within and take form in words.14 In “The Osprey” and “The Unicorn” appears the Way of the Correct Beginning;15 “The Mulberry Grove” and “On the Banks of the Pu” represent the music of a defunct state.16 Truly the way of the feng and the ya may be seen in them at its most brilliant. From the middle period of Fiery Han17 the paths of poetry gradually diverged. The Retired Tutor (Wei Meng) wrote his “Poem in Tsou,”18 and the surrendered general (Li Ling) wrote the poem on the bridge;19 with them the four-word and five-word [meters] became [recognized as] distinct classes. In addition, there were [meters] with as few as three words and as many as nine words, the several forms developing at the same time, [like horses] galloping together though on separate traces.
Eulogy (sung) serves to broadcast virtuous deeds; it praises accomplishment. Chi-fu made his pronouncement, “How stately!”;20 Chi-tzu exclaimed, “Oh, perfect!”21 Elaborated as poetry it was expressed like that; composed as eulogy it is also this way.
Next are Admonition (chen), which arises from ameliorating defects, and Warning (chieh), which derives from setting to rights. Disquisition (lun) is subtle in making logical distinctions, and Inscription (ming) is generous in narrating events. When a good man dies, a Dirge (lei) is made; when a portrait is painted, an Appreciation (tsan) is supplied.
Further, there are these branches: Proclamation (chao), Announcement (kao), Instruction (chiao), and Command (ling); these types: Memorial (piao), Proposal (tsou), Report (chien), and Memorandum (chi); these categories: Letter (shu), Address (shih), Commission (fu),22 and Charge (chi); these compositions: Condolence (tiao), Requiem (chi), Threnody (pei), and Lament (ai); these forms: Replies to Opponents (ta k’o) and Evinced Examples (chih shih); these texts: Three Word (san yen) and Eight Character (pa tzu); Song (p’ien), Elegy (tz’u), Ditty (yin), and Preface (hsü); Epitaph (pei) and Columnar Inscription (chieh); Necrology (chih) and Obituary (chuang). A multitude of forms have shot up like spear-points; diverse tributaries have joined the main stream. Yet they might be compared to musical instruments made of different materials—some of clay, some from gourds, yet all are to give pleasure to the ear; or to embroideries of different colors and designs—all are to delight the eye. This accounts for just about all that writers have written.
When not busy with my duties as Heir Apparent, I have spent many idle days looking through the garden of letters or widely surveying the forest of literature, and always I have found my mind so diverted, my eye so stimulated, that hours have passed without fatigue. Since the Chou and the Han, far off in the distant past, dynasties have changed seven times and some thousands of years have elapsed. The names of famous writers and men of genius overflow the green bag;23 the scrolls of winged words and flowing brushes fill the yellow covers. If one does not leave aside the weeds and select the flowers, it is impossible, even with the best intentions, to get through the half.
Now the writings of the Duke of Chou and the works of Confucius are on a level with sun and moon, as mysterious as ghosts and spirits. They are the models of filial and respectful conduct, guides to the basic human relationships; how can they be subjected to pruning or cutting?
The works of Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu, of Kuan Tzu and Mencius are devoted primarily to establishing a doctrine; they are not immediately concerned with literary values. In the present anthology they, too, have been omitted.
When it comes to the excellent speeches of the sages and the straightforward remonstrances of loyal ministers, the fine talk of the politicians and the acuity of the sophists,24 these are “ice melting25 and the fountain leaping,26 gold aspect and jade echo.”27 They are what are referred to as “sitting on Mount Chü and debating beneath the Chi Gate.”28 Chung-lien’s making Ch’in’s army withdraw,29 Yi-ch’i’s getting Ch’i to submit,30 the Marquis of Liu’s raising eight difficulties,31 the Marquis of Ch’ü-ni’s proposing the six strategies:32 their accomplishments were famous in their own time and their speeches have been handed down from a thousand years. But most of them are found in the records or appear incidentally in the works of the philosophers and historians. Writings of this sort are also extremely numerous, and though they have been handed down in books, they differ from belles-lettres, so that I have not chosen them for this anthology.
As for histories and annals, they praise and blame right and wrong and discriminate between like and unlike. Clearly they are not the same as belles-lettres. But their eulogies and essays concentrate verbal splendor, their prefaces and accounts are a succession of flowers of rhetoric; their matter derives from deep thought, and their purport places them among belles-lettres. Hence I have included these with the other pieces.
From the Chou House of long ago down to this Holy Dynasty, in all it makes thirty chapters. I have named it simply the Anthology. The following texts are arranged by genres. Since poetry and fu are not homogeneous, these are further divided into categories. Within each category the sequence is chronological.
Translated by James Robert Hightower
Literary Selections (Wen hsüan) is by far the most important and influential anthology of Chinese literature. Indeed, as a bisyllabic word in modern Sinitic languages, its title has come to mean simply “anthology.” The preface to Literary Selections is included here as a relatively concise statement of the large number of genres and subgenres of elite Chinese literature that existed in the early sixth century. Hsiao T’ung (Prince Chao-ming of the Liang dynasty) and his collaborators most probably drew extensively upon the formulations established by Liu Hsieh (c. 465–c. 520) in his The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons [i.e., Ornate Rhetoric] (Wen-hsin tiao-lung), the first book-length treatment in Chinese of the major issues involved in the study of literature. Whereas the latter was partially inspired by certain Buddhist ontological and epistemological concepts, Ts’ao P’i (187–226; see selection 139 [unnumbered note]), Lu Chi (261–303), and Hsiao T’ung seem to have remained more or less immune—at least consciously so in their critical formulations—to the theoretical positions of this foreign religion.
It should be noted that this preface is not simply a straightforward piece of expository prose. It is written, rather, in the mannered parallel style (see selections 163 and 164), and logical exposition frequently gives way to the demands of symmetry.
1. “Formerly the ancient kings had no houses. In winter they lived in caves, which they had excavated, and in summer in nests, which they had framed. They knew not yet the transforming power of fire, but ate the fruits of plants and trees, and the flesh of birds and beasts, drinking their blood, and swallowing also the hair and feathers” (from the Record of Rites [Li chi], translated by James Legge).
2. This is quoted verbatim form the opening lines of the “Preface” to the Classic of Documents (Shu-ching) attributed to K’ung An-kuo (fl. c. 156–c. 74 B.C.E.; a descendant of Confucius in the eleventh generation). There are conflicting legends and myths concerning the invention of writing in China (compare selection 167).
3. The same encomium occurs repeatedly in the Classic of Changes (Yi-ching).
4. The word for literature and writing (wen) originally meant “pattern.”
5. It is impossible to translate the terms satisfactorily, for they have meant many things to different commentators, but at least the nature of the difficulty can be defined. Three of the six items—feng, ya, and sung—are the names of the chief divisions of the present Classic of Odes, (or Classic of Songs, Shih ching) and, while there is no general agreement about their significance there, they are certainly not the names of tropes. Fu, pi, and hsing are variously interpreted and inconsistently applied by the commentators on the Classic of Odes. For our present purposes, the important question is how Hsiao T’ung understood the items, and it is apparent from the rest of this paragraph that he was concerned solely with the occurrence of the word fu as something associated with the Classic of Odes. It provides his point of departure in sketching the development of the fu genre, though he must have been aware that the genre was not identical with the trope, as indeed his statement in the next sentence (“the moderns took over only the term fu”) implies.
6. In spite of their shared name, the riddles in rhyme of the “Fu” chapter of the Hsün Tzu have nothing in common with the fu (“rhapsody” or “rhymeprose”) of Han times.
7. Four fu attributed to Sung Yü (290?–222 B.C.E.) are included in the Literary Selections.
8. Chia Yi’s “Owl fu” (see selection 123) is the earliest fu of which the text is given in a contemporary Former Han period source (Records of the Grand Historian [Shih chi] by Ssu-ma Ch’ien [145–90? B.C.E.]).
9. See selection 129.
10. A character in the “Rhapsody on the Western Capital” by Chang Heng (78–139).
11. Occurs in the rhapsody by Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju entitled “Sir Fantasy.”
12. Titled after the palace of that name at Ch’ang-an where the game was brought in cages and released.
13. Paraphrased from Ch’ü Yüan’s biography in the Records of the Grand Historian, ch. 84.
14. A famous formula expressed in the Anonymons “Great Preface’ to the classic of Odes, which dates to the late Western Han.
15. Classic of Odes (see selection 16), songs 1 and 11.
16. As stated in the Record of Rites.
17. The Han dynasty ruled by virtue of the Fire element.
18. Wei Meng (second century B.C.E.) was tutor to three generations of princes of Ch’u, the last of whom he found intractable and against whom he “wrote a satirical poem as a remonstrance.” He retired to his native Tsou, where he wrote another poem, presumably the one referred to by Hsiao T’ung.
19. Referring to his farewell poem to Su Wu (c. 143–60 B.C.E.), which begins: “We clasp hands on the river bridge / By nightfall where will the traveler have gone?” It is now generally accepted that all the Li Ling (d. 74 B.C.E.) poems in the Literary Selections are forgeries.
20. Classic of Odes, song 260: “Chi-fu has made this eulogy, / Stately its clear melody.” This poem is a eulogy of Chung Shan-fu, but it is not in the “Lauds” section of the Odes; nor is the preceding eulogy of the prince of Shen (Odes song 259) with its similar concluding lines.
21. Chi-tzu is the “Duke’s-son Chao of Wu,” who came on a state visit to Lu. The Chronicle of Tso (Tso chuan) (see selection 159) gives a long account of his reception, particularly of the musical performance which he requested and which included selections from the major sections of the Odes. After each piece he made appropriate remarks. His exclamation “Oh, perfect!” came after he had heard the “Lauds” section of the Odes and is followed by an enthusiastic catalog of its perfections.
22. This is written with a different sinograph than that for “rhapsody” or “rhymeprose” discussed extensively above.
23. A reference to Hsün Hsü (d. 289) who devised the four bibliographic categories to include all books, which he stored in green bags and tied with yellow cords.
24. A reference to Han Ying’s Illustrations of the Didactic Application of the Classic of Odes (Han shih wai chuan): “The superior man avoids the three points: he avoids the brush-point of the literary man; he avoids the spear-point of the military man; he avoids the tongue-point of the sophist.”
25. Probably refers to Tao te ching (see selection 9), ch. 15: “Yielding as ice as it starts to melt,” where it is used to characterize the excellent officers of antiquity.
26. This may refer to a line from the Grave Inscription for Ts’ao Ch’üan (“Plans like a spring gushing”) by Tseng Chao.
27. This probably alludes directly to Wang Yi’s preface to “Encountering Sorrows” (see selection 122): “The writings of Ch’ü Yüan are truly far-reaching in their influence…. Of them it can be said that their aspect is of gold, their substance of jade, peerless in a hundred generations.”
28. A lost work, Lu Lien Tzu, is quoted by the distinguished annotator of the Literary Selections, Li Shan (630?–689): “T’ien Pa, a sophist of Ch’i, argued on Mount Chü and debated beneath the Chi-cheng Gate. He defamed the Five Emperors and incriminated the Three Kings, in one day putting down a thousand opponents.”
29. In the Intrigues of the Warring States, ([Chan-kue ts’e]) see selection 200), it is told how Lu Chung-lien dissuaded Chao from recognizing the ruler of Ch’in as emperor (as advocated by the general Hsin Yüan-yen of Wei), and the report of his indictment of Ch’in led the latter state to withdraw its armies which were besieging Han-tan.
30. In the Records of the Grand Historian, it is told how Li Yi-chi persuaded Ch’i to join with Liu Pang in the wars that led to the founding of the Han dynasty.
31. Further in the Records of the Grand Historian, it is told how Chang Liang, marquis of Liu, dissuaded the Han emperor Kao Tsu from reestablishing the Six Feudal States (as Li Yi-chi had advocated) by citing eight precedents and pointing out the differences in circumstances.
32. Ch’en P’ing, marquis of Ch’ü-ni, became chief minister under the Han emperor Kao Tsu. According to Ssu-ma Ch’ien in his Records of the Grand Historian, the six strategies had been kept secret and he had no way of knowing what they were.