Songs of a hidden orchid: Yuefu and Gexing by Li He (791-817)
Ukai, K.
Citation
Ukai, K. (2008, June 24). Songs of a hidden orchid: Yuefu and Gexing by Li He (791-817).
Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/13002
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Songs of a Hidden Orchid:
Yuefu and Gexing by Li He (791-817)
Proefschrift
ter verkrijging van
de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden,
op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof. mr. P.F.van der Heijden, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties
te verdedigen op dinsdag 24 juni 2008 te klokke 16.15 uur
door Kuniko Ukai
geboren te Yanagawa in 1956
Promotiecommissie:
Promotor: Prof. dr. Wilt L. Idema
Referent: Prof. dr. Stephen Owen
Overige leden: Prof. dr. Maghiel van Crevel Prof. dr. Ivo B. Smits
Prof. dr. Paul F. Rouzer
For Goro, Kuro, Chiro, Chiyo And My Parents
With Love
Preface/Acknowledgement
My thesis is an effort to study Li He’s yuefu and gexing in a broad literary context.
Especially for its part on gexing I have made a quite extensive survey of works belonging to this genre, approximately from the late Six Dynasties until the end of the Mid-Tang. In my book I have translated a large number of yuefu and gexing and also poems of other genres that have been written by Li He and many others. I have tried to establish the nature of the changes and developments that took place in the yuefu and gexing in the course of time, and have also endeavoured to map out the presence of diversity from a synchronic perspective. In doing so I have assumed – but perhaps I have gone too far - that it was also important to read, analyse and interpret individual poems with more care than is usually spent on it in studies of the development of a literary genre. In fact, I have considered the reading and interpreting of individual poems in themselves an important part of my study, which is the reason why my thesis has become so voluminous. My only hope is that my readers may perhaps have the kindness of at least enjoying the reading of a few poems they have at random chosen from my thesis and that my interpretations of these poems may be able to add a bit to their pleasure and understanding in reading them.
I have worked on my Ph. D for almost half of my life. During this long span of time, I have never become bored with it, have never disliked it and have never stopped writing. During these twenty-over years I have lived in four different counties, have held several different teaching jobs, and my life has undergone many other changes. But the writing of my thesis has always been with me, like a basso ostinato. Every small surprise I have encountered in the process of my reading hundreds of classical Chinese poems has been a source of delight for me. These pleasures, together with my various teaching jobs, and my efforts on behalf of the protection of animals, have already since long ago become a daily part of my life. But I must not selfishly speak only about my personal experiences.
Because I had taken up the task of writing a Ph. D thesis within the framework of a carefully scheduled programme devised for the training of future academics, I should not have allowed its research to drag on like this. I am only too clearly aware that in this way I have been causing trouble to many people. In this acknowledgement, besides expressing my gratitude, I would therefore also like to offer my apologies to those who have been involved in the writing of my thesis. However, Leiden University’s “promotie reglement” prohibits me from stating my gratitude to the members of the Promotion Committee, and I have to reserve doing this for another occasion. Here let me say a sincere thank you to a few of the many others who have helped me complete this book.
I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Barend ter Haar, who has always welcomed me when I needed to use the facilities of the library of the Sinological Institute of Leiden. He has also kindly helped me to obtain teaching jobs by writing letters of recommendation during financially difficult years. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to him.
I am also deeply beholden to Prof. Dr. Wim Boot for his kind encouragement.
Whenever I visited Leiden he would invite me for a drink and tell me many interesting things. In the cheerful conversations he has had with me over the years, he has often frequently given me new stimuli in a subtle way.
My heartfelt thanks are also due to the staff members of the library of the Sinological Institute of Leiden, who have always most willingly assisted me in my research by allowing me direct access to all the books, the old and rare ones included.
I would also like to thank the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange for the generous financial support they have provided me.
A special word of thanks also for Arie Pos, who although having to prepare his own Ph. D. for publication with the patience of an angel has helped me make pdf files and has with painstaking care corrected the Dutch of my summary. Without his kind help this book might never have seen print.
Last but not least I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my husband and my parents for the mental, as well as, practical support they have always given me.
The young Li He once wrote: “In your garden don’t plant trees, / If you plant trees, you will grieve the whole year round”. The passing of time indeed causes one to experience the pain of loss. How many hundreds of thousands of classical Chinese poems have been inspired by this pain, I do not know. But in exchange for the irrecoverable loss of dear things and beings, the passage of time gives one memories, which can be much more precious than even real life. Ultimately one’s existence is an accumulation of memories. Li He could not live long enough to become aware of this.
But the memories of those who have helped me in the course of these long years have become something so dear to me that they will continue to give me warmth and moral courage for ever.
Songs of a Hidden Orchid:
Yuefu and Gexing by Li He (791-817)
Vol. I
CONTENTS Vol. I I. INTRODUCTION
1. Introduction 1
2. Previous Studies on Li He and His Poetry 3 3. Major Assumptions of the Research
a. Problems in Demarcating the Poem 8
b. Interpretation and Semiotics 11
c. The Relevant Area of Intertextuality,
Communal Texts and Terminological Tools 14 4. A Demonstration of the Use of Western Terminological Tools
for Analyzing Classical Chinese Poetry: The First Example 16 5. Traditional Chinese Poetics and the Biographic Attitude to Poetry 30
6. The Biography of Li He 35
7. Restoring the Whole: The Second Example 38
8. Restating the Chinese Assumptions 42
9. Explanation of Some Key Terms
a. Fictional, Fictitious and Fiction 46
b. The Poet and the Speaker of the Poem 46
c. Hypogramme 47
10. A Story of Reading: The Third Example 47
II. NOTES ON A HISTORY OF POETRY 57
II-A. THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD –
THE LAST DECADES OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY
1. A General Sketch of the Transitional Period 60 2. Some Problems in the Conventional Approaches 62 3. Some Characteristics of Poetry of the Transitional Period
a. Some Representative Poems of the Transitional Period 68
b. The Poetic Mind 71
c. Poetry as a Verbal Artifact and the Approval of Poetic Change 74 d. The Mixing of Conventional Motifs and Themes 76 e. Conversion of Conventional Motifs and Themes 81
f. New Motifs and Themes 84
g. Personal Matters and Referential Effect 88
h. Jokes and Humour 90
i. A Broader Range of Genres and Historical Styles 92
II-B. POETRY OF THE MID-TANG
1. Jade Natural and Jade Overwrought: The High Tang and the Mid-Tang 94
2. Theorizing about Poetry 104
3. The Rediscovery of Li Bai and Du Fu 115
4. The Importance of Poetry 122
5. Poetry Vying with Creation 132
6. Trying Out All Poetic Possibilities 136
a. Conventional Themes and Motifs Treated in a New Way 140
b. New Themes and Motifs 144
c. A New Poetic Language 157
d. Laughter 167
7. Jade Overwrought: The Improper in Mid-Tang Poetry 171 II-C. SOCIO-POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS 174
1. The Increase in the Number of Producers of Poetry
and the Increase in Social and Spatial Mobility 174
2. Decentralization 180
3. The Cities and Urban Culture 182
4. The Development of a Money Economy 186
III. THE GENRE YUEFU
1. Delineation of the Genre Yuefu 193
2. The Assumptions of the Genre Yuefu:
Musicality, Ancientness, Communality and Pointing a Moral 201 3. The Genre Yuefu:
Commemoration, Palimpsest, and Fictional Pleasure 209
4. Yuefu Poetry in the Mid-Tang 225
5. The Decline of the Genre Yuefu 251
IV. LI HE’S YUEFU
1. Li He’s Yuefu 263
2. A Subtly Distorted Classicality 265
a. A Wrongly Coloured Grief: “After He’s and Xie’s
‘The Singing Girls of the Bronze Phoenix Terrace’” (F.114) 269 b. A Courtesan with the Lips of a Xingxing:
“Melody of the Great Dike” (F.18) 287
Appendices to 2.b 311
3. A Shattered Remembrance 317
a. A Wildly Orchestrated Elegy: “The Ladies of the Xiang” (F.45) 321
Appendices to 3.a 353
b. Narrative Deferred: “Ballad of the Prefect of Goose Gate” (F.17) 358
Appendices to 3.b 380
4. Subversive Structures 388
a. An Anti-Yuefu: “Lady Li” (F.43) 397
Appendices to 4.a 439
b. A Never-Ending Dream: “The Song/Grave of Su Xiaoxiao” (F.20) 443
Appendices to 4.b 481
List of Abbreviations
F.: The numbers after “F.” are those given to Li He’s poems in J. D. Frodsham, The Poems of Li He (791-817).
W.: Li Changji Geshi Huijie, annotated and commented by Wang Qi. The numbers after W. refer to the pages of Li He’s poems in question in the Li He Shige Jizhu in which Wang Qi’s edition has been included.
QTS: Quan Tang Shi QTW : Quan Tang Wen WYYH : Wenyuan Yinghua YFSJ : Yuefu Shiji
YTXY: Yutai Xinyong YWLJ : Yiwen Leiju
