The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

The Poet-historian Qian Qianyi

This book is the first English language study of Qian Qianyi (1582–1664)—a poet and literary critic during the Ming–Qing dynastic transition. Although Qian’s works constitute some of the greatest achievements in pre-modern Chinese lyric poetry, they have been largely understudied and are poorly understood. Qian was reputed for his own aesthetic that changed the character of late Ming and early Qing poetry. His name, however, was branded with infamy for his disloyalty to the Ming dynasty when it dissolved. Consequently, his works were censored by the Qing court and have been forgotten by most critics until recently. Lawrence C.H. Yim focuses on Qian’s poetic theory and practice, providing a critical study of Qian’s theory of poetic history (shishi) and a group of poems from the Toubi ji. He also examines the role played by history in early Qing verse, rethinking the nature of loyalism and historical memory in seventeenth-century China. Poetry of the Ming–Qing transition is distinguished by its manifest historical consciousness and the effort to give meaning to current historical events, an effort characterized by the pathos of introspection and mourning for the past. This pathos translates into what can be called a poetics of Ming loyalism, exemplified and championed by, intriguingly, the later works of Qian Qianyi himself. Lawrence C.H. Yim received his Ph.D. from Yale University and is now Associate Research Fellow in the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy at Academia Sinica, and Associate Professor of Chinese Literature, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. He has published articles on Ming– Qing poetry and literary theory and criticism.

Academia Sinica on East Asia Published in association with Academia Sinica, Taiwan Series Editor: Dr Ts’ui-jung Liu, Vice-President, Academia Sinica, Taiwan Academia Sinica was founded in Mainland China in 1928. During its early stage of development ten institutes were created, three of which were in the field of humanities and social sciences. Then came the turbulent years and in late 1948 Academia Sinica followed the government move to Taiwan. Only two of its institutes, History & Philology and Mathematics, ever arrived and these were established in Nankang, an eastern suburb of Taipei. From these difficult beginnings Academia Sinica has developed over the years into a prestigious full-scale research institution with 31 institutes and research centers. The fields of humanities and social sciences have eleven institutes and one research center between them and the extensive team of researchers are devoted to the study of archaeology, history, literature, linguistics, philology, philosophy, anthropology, economics, sociology, political science, and law as well as interdisciplinary research. The Academia Sinica on East Asia series will incorporate the Academia’s best research on East Asia from the humanities and social sciences institutes. Edited by Ts’ui-jung Liu, the series will strive to make an important contribution to the field.

Ts’ui-jung Liu Series Editor Taiwan in Japan’s Empire-Building An Institutional Approach to Colonial Engineering Hui-yu Caroline Ts’ai Divine Justice Religion and the Development of Chinese Legal Culture Paul R. Katz The Poet-historian Qian Qianyi Lawrence C.H. Yim

The Poet-historian Qian Qianyi

Lawrence C.H. Yim

First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2009 Lawrence C.H Yim All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yim, Lawrence C. H. The poet-historian Qian Qianyi / Lawrence C.H. Yim. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Qian, Qianyi, 1582–1664—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PL2701.Z5Y34 2009 895.1′146–dc22 2008045331 ISBN 0-203-87878-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–49460–5 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–203–87878–7 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–49460–1 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–87878–1(ebk)

To my mother Wong For-mui

Contents

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction

1

PART I

Qian Qianyi’s theory of shishi and historical contexts 1 2

13

Qian Qianyi’s theory of shishi and the poetics of Ming loyalism

15

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times

56

PART II

“Renouncing the pen for the sword”: three readings of Qian Qianyi’s shishi

79

Introduction to Part II: placing Toubi ji in context

81

3

The prophesying poet-historian

84

4

The poet as mentor and strategist

105

5

Loyalty and love at parting

122

Conclusion: Qian Qianyi’s shishi revisited Notes Bibliography Index

147 152 196 213

Acknowledgements

To Professor Kang-i Sun Chang I owe a debt like anyone working in the field, and more, for her mentorship at Yale University and beyond. This book originated from the doctoral dissertation I completed in 1998. I am immensely grateful to the readers of that dissertation, Professors Kang-i Sun Chang, Jonathan Spence, and Charles Laughlin, who provided vital comments and suggestions. My appreciation is expressed to Stephanie Johnson, Elizabeth Jackson, Lorin Stein, Geoffrey Higgins, and Chun-ting Chang, among others, who read and criticized all or portions of the manuscript with great generosity of time and thought. The anonymous readers for the press are acknowledged for their thoughtful and thorough review of the manuscript. This book is dedicated to my mother, Wong For-mui, with my love.

A portrait of Qian Qianyi, from Qingdai xuezhe xiangzhuan.

Introduction

Seventeenth-century China witnessed crises, transformations, and the Ming–Qing dynastic transition. The first two decades of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) encompassed the end of native Han rule and the establishment of an alien Manchu regime;1 they produced a remarkable body of poetry that has until recently been overlooked in favor of the works of Wang Shizhen 王士禛 (1634–1711) and his school, its immediate successors. Wang’s aesthetic of shenyun 神韻, “spirit resonance,” has at times been counted as the sole contribution of the middle and latter seventeenth century to Chinese verse. Yet in early-Qing poetry we find a very different ethos, one that reaches its most characteristic expression in the works of Qian Qianyi 錢謙益 (1582–1664), this study’s subject.2 The essence of shenyun, described as “metaphysical” by James J. Y. Liu, is “an ineffable personal tone or flavor in one’s poetry,”3 borne out in such manners as “detachment” and “restrained beauty.”4 The ethos of the poetry in the prior twenty years demands, by contrast, a collective, almost fervent effort to record and understand ongoing historical events, an effort often characterized by the pathos of introspection, retrospection, and mourning for the past. This pathos is most clearly expressed in the verse of the survivors of the Ming–Qing political changeover, particularly from those of Ming yimin 明遺民, the Ming loyalists (see below). It translates into what I shall call the poetics of Ming loyalism or the Ming loyalist poetics. This mode of writing develops a public narrative out of the mediated history of the perished Ming and Southern Ming resistance (1644–62) through the power of personal memory in its vicissitudes. Its chief material is the recollection of individual and cultural loss. The poetics of Ming loyalism is at once the sequel of a catastrophic experience and the witness to a strange, new world coming into being. The poetry of the Ming–Qing transition is distinguished by its intense focus on history, its manifest historical consciousness. The preoccupation with historical memory in these decades is phenomenal and owed as much momentum to historical exigencies as to the influences of such creative writers as Qian Qianyi and Wu Weiye 吳偉業 (1609–72). This book has two purposes. It is a critical study of Qian Qianyi’s theory of

2

The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

shishi, poetic-history or poet-historian, and its reception in Qing times, and it explores Qian’s own shishi practice, a group of Qian’s later poems, arguably his most ambitious, that the leader of the literary world composed during the Ming–Qing transition.5 Qian is a poet of great poetic vision and verbal power. This study interprets, evaluates, and introduces to readers a valuable but sadly neglected cluster of early-Qing poetry. It is also an attempt to come to grips with the role of history in early-Qing verse, to understand the power and temptation that history offered these poets, and to see, particularly, how Qian Qianyi engages historical memories intellectually, emotionally, and imaginatively in his poetic expression.

“Ming loyalist” and “Ming loyalist poetics” In word if not consistently in deed, Qian identifies himself as a loyalist of the fallen Ming house. We will read Qian’s poems in the light of the Ming loyalist poetics. This approach demands some justification, since Qian has been scorned by many, since his day and even more in later times, as a traitor to the Ming/Chinese order, and is officially labeled in Qing standard history as an erchen 貳臣 or “twice-serving official” (for a full account of the creation and reception of this image, see Chapter 2 of this book).6 The question naturally arises as to the sincerity of many of his post-Ming writings. There is no denying that his expressed loyalty to the vanished Ming might have come from an act of self-re-edification, as quite a few critics have suggested before. If he could inscribe himself on the monument of the loyalists, posterity would see him in a different, more favorable light. But this is as easy to prove as to disprove, and the question still remains, largely, unanswered or unanswerable. The term “loyalist,” as Jennifer Jay explicates it in her study of loyalism of the Song–Yuan dynastic transition, designates two groups of men: the zhongyi 忠義 (loyal and righteous martyrs) and the yimin (leftover, remnant, or surviving subjects).7 This is largely applicable to later, similar historical situations as well. Qian belongs to neither the zhongyi nor, strictly speaking, the yimin group: he did not die a Ming martyr in either 1644 or 1645 when the Ming capitals fell, and he served the new Manchu court in a high position. How, then, are we to make sense of his post-1644 writings, which are saturated with strong sentiments of Ming loyalism, such as the subject matter of Part II of this study? Yimin, literally “leftover subjects,” refers to the loyalists of a fallen political order. It occurs in such pre-Qin texts as Zuozhuan 左傳 (Zuo Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals) and Mengzi 孟子 (Mencius),8 there describing men who embrace a lingering loyalty to a former state. Yimin, as Lo and Schultz put it, “is primarily a political concept, and only by extension a literary one.”9 Ming loyalist, for want of a better word, translates Ming yimin in most of its occurrences in this study. My use of the term is advised by historian Lynn Struve’s definition:

Introduction

3

The term “Ming loyalist” could apply meaningfully to anyone who pointedly altered his or her life patterns and goals to demonstrate unalterable personal identification with the fallen order. The term need not be restricted to men who worked actively for a Ming revival or who clearly harbored seditious intentions. On the other hand, it should not be used indiscriminately in reference to men who wrote or spoke with enthusiasm or admiration for heroes and martyrs of the Ming demise.10 Thus understood, my association of Qian Qianyi with the Ming loyalists may raise some eyebrows, since he is still an erchen to many. Indeed, the designation of yimin should be reserved for the former Ming subjects—whether officials or not—who chose not to seek or accept official posts from the subjugating Qing empire. The identity of yimin and its antithesis can be readily established should our interest be in checking who did not or who did serve the Qing. In this sense, Qian Qianyi is not a Ming yimin because he served the Ming and then the Qing. Yet the idea of yimin concerns more than a mere political act in dynastic transition: it involves a wide variety of constituent conditions (besides political and historical ones), complex psychologies, behavioral and social performances, and textual and cultural constitutions of the self. A publicly and historically constructed identity and a scattered and textually constituted self of a certain person are at times tautologically equivalent, and at times at odds with one another. And ultimately, when we place a so-called yimin and a non-yimin side by side in the aforementioned contexts and situations, their distinction will, more often than not, begin to blur. Most importantly, if our interests lie in understanding the existential conditions of life, the literature, and the layers and contours of feeling and emotion of the writers of the Ming–Qing transition, we must go beyond what a political-ethical position would allow.11 I suggest the adoption of the notion of Ming loyalist poetics or a poetics of Ming loyalism to characterize the poetry of the Ming–Qing transition that verbalizes loyalty to and memory of the Ming. It includes writers from both the yimin and non-yimin camps (politically defined) to represent its particular praxis and own sense of poetic vocation. I use Ming loyalist poetics to invoke the early-Qing literature that is freighted with the burden of Ming loyalism— nostalgia, indignation, grief, despair, regret, shame, heroism, fantasy. The behavior of the authors should not affect this status: they might variously embrace eremitism, loyalism, or collaboration, to borrow Frederic Wakeman’s terms.12 All of the so-called Three Master Poets of Jiangnan (Jiangzuo sandajia 江左三大家) of the early Qing—Qian Qianyi, Wu Weiye, and Gong Dingzi 龔鼎孳 (1616–96)—served the Qing, yet their works are infused with sentiments of Ming loyalism. As it happens, Wakeman’s behavioral categories are of limited use in portraying the all-important subtleties of political sympathy in the Ming–Qing changeover.13 For instance, we know for a fact that many eremites and loyalists mingled with collaborators. Hongnam Kim

4

The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

recently observed of another erchen and a great scholar-connoisseur of contemporary art, Zhou Lianggong 周亮工 (1612–72), and his circle: No doubt all men of intellect and consciousness who lived through the Manchu conquest, loyalists and collaborators alike, experienced suffering and had misgivings about their chosen response. Collaborators and loyalists had an acute appreciation of each other’s role and the peculiar dilemma each other had to face. In fact, loyalists frequently depended on collaborators for support and protection, while collaborators depended on loyalists to express their heartfelt ideals.14 Or, as Chang and Chang described the playwright Li Yu 李漁 (1611–80) and his friends: The majority of the educated Chinese were survivors of the Ming’s downfall and wanted to continue to be survivors. They might have cherished some pro-Ming sentiments in their hearts, but that was all. Many of them collaborated with the Ch’ing [Qing] government, some whole-heartedly, some half-heartedly. Among Li Yü’s friends, some were loyalists, some collaborators, and many, like Li Yü himself, were neither.15

The private dimension of Ming loyalist writings The Ming loyalist poetics plunges the reader into highly personal autowritings, including eyewitness testaments and fantasies. The act of writing could allow the writer to reflect on the painful and confounding experiences of the political changeover, to confess his shame and guilt, or to reaffirm his integrity, dignity, and belief. The pangs of conscience compelled a generation of eyewitnesses to speak for the deceased, to fix the facts, to reckon and to mourn losses. The writing of poetry, traditionally and generically an act in solidarity with the past, provided a means for the traumatically torn survivors to persevere without giving way to utter despair. It created a fortifying sense of inner continuity even in the midst of imposed, alien values and practices. As Kang-i Sun Chang suggests: “To a large extent, the expressions of feelings in poetry has become, for the [Ming] loyalists, a way of taking action.”16 For some, therefore, loyalist writings were also a measure of resistance. The poet moored himself in a remembering self so as to defeat forgetfulness, to strengthen tenacity and resilience under difficult conditions, and to outlast a hostile regime, if only through literary immortality. For the more criticallyminded, poetry served as a vehicle to render moral judgment, even at peril, on the political and social realities of the day. Above all, in the face of the drastic political changes and the resulting cultural tumult, Chinese poetry provided the writers a make-believe haven of perfectly arranged poetic forms. One found solace, security, and order in the balance of even-and-oblique tones, in the symmetry of couplets, in the intoxicating effects of rhythm and rhyme.

Introduction

5

One sought the shared literary values, ethical virtues, diction, and wisdom of previous generations, too. It was a tiny yet boundless world—one could breathe, live, and die in it. In the words of Qian Qianyi: 不成悲泣不成歌 破硯還如墨盾磨 拌以餘生供漫興 欲將禿筆掃群魔 途窮日暮聊為爾 髮短心長可奈何 賦罷無衣方卒哭 百篇號踊未云多

It is not quite like wailing, nor like songs, I grind ink on my broken inkslab as on a shield. My remaining years, I live them as some random musings— Oh, that my sparse brush might sweep the demonhost away! There is no road ahead and the day is waning: I resort to this; My hair is thin, yet my mind loaded; what else can I do? Only when I am through chanting “Wuyi” will I stop crying; One hundred poems, all wailing and stamping— still not enough.17 Toubi ji: 55

This poem was written in 1662 as a reflection on an ongoing literary endeavor, the Toubi ji 投筆集, which will be the focus of Part II of this study. It emphasizes a sense of resistance. Line 2 recalls part of the line from an historical account, “grinding ink on a shield to write a war proclamation” (盾上磨墨作檄文).18 Qian is unambiguous in telling the reader in line 4 that his war proclamation is written against the “demon-host,” by which, as this study will show, he means the Manchus. In line 7, Qian associates his poetry with “Wuyi” 無衣 (Mao no. 133) from the Shijing 詩經 (Book of Odes), emulating Shen Baoxu 申包胥 of the Spring and Autumn period. An official of Chu, Shen went to Qin to cry for help when his state was vanquished by Wu in 506 . He remained standing in the Qin court for seven days on end, all the while wailing and refusing to take any food. In the end Duke Ai of Qin was greatly moved by Shen’s loyalty and stubborn tenacity. To Shen, the duke chanted the poem “Wuyi,” and an army was sent.19

The public dimension of Ming loyalist writings Although it was not uncommon for writers of this period to publish and circulate their works anonymously or under pseudonyms, Ming loyalist writings are often as much a private quest as a public engagement. Ming loyalist writings enjoyed a distinct, large audience. There are two related reasons for this. First, the thriving publishing enterprise on the Yangzi River delta in Jiangnan distributed printed materials widely20—sometimes too widely, as Li Yu’s unpleasant experience attests. When his collection of short stories

6

The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

Wusheng xi erji 無聲戲二集 (Silent Operas, Second Collection) came out in the late 1650s, Li Yu, who was then residing in Nanjing, bitterly complained: To my surprise, my new work had just appeared when the greedy merchants of Suzhou began to cover it. Fortunately, I got wind of their plans ahead of time and pleaded as strongly as I could with . . . the SuzhouSongjiang Intendant. . . . [But] no sooner had the Suzhou plot been snuffed out than I suddenly got a message from home to the effect that a Hangzhou publisher had finished reprinting the book and was going to put it on sale in a few days’ time.21 Loyalist writings may not have attracted an audience as huge as Li Yu’s entertaining, vernacular works did. However, the availability of printing, publishing, and distribution certainly stimulated some Ming loyalists to articulate their thoughts and feelings, for transmission or preservation. (Even when they did not publish their works themselves, their children or students often did for them after they died.) Second, loyalist writings found an immediate, serious reading public in numerous organizations in the form of wenshe 文社 and shishe 詩社, literary and poetry clubs. Beginning in the late Ming with the Fushe 復社 (Revival Society), these organizations had both literary and political bearings; after the demise of the Ming, many Ming loyalists were members or associates of these societies.22 Descriptions of their activities abound; here is one: After the fall of the Ming house, those gentlemen who had become despondent and marginalized but were of lofty ideals and literary talent assembled in poetry clubs. Through such writing activities, they gave expression to their nostalgia for the former country and emperor. Places south of the [Yangzi] River were full of such clubs. 明社既屋, 士之憔悴失職, 高蹈而能文者, 相率結為詩社, 以抒寫其舊國舊君之感, 大江以南, 無地無之.23 In 1653, Wu Weiye convened a meeting of the members of major literary societies in the Jiangnan area. No fewer than two thousand people from ten prefectures attended its three-day activities at Huqiu outside Suzhou.24 Besides spending their time networking, talking, drinking, and settling business, they composed, read, and discussed loyalist writings. Qian Qianyi’s writings were closely followed by readers in Jiangnan. His anxiety over the circulation of his “Gui shang shi” 桂殤詩 (Elegies for Gui) in 1658 shows this. These highly personal elegies were recognized as having strong pro-Ming sentiments embedded in them.25 After their initial release in manuscript form, Qian hastened to stop them from further circulation.26 He wrote this to his student and publisher Mao Jin 毛晉 (1599–1659), the owner of the famous Jiguge 汲古閣 publishing house which undertook most of Qian’s printing jobs:

Introduction

7

The “Elegies for Gui” were caused by the mourning and sorrow, of which I wished I could unburden myself a little bit. . . . However, there are several places in the poems that people have found fault with. This is quite unexpected. I am already in my declining years, and I am afraid that once these poems start to circulate, they will cause a great deal of carping criticism and will bring many troubles on my family. All because I was overwhelmed with grief, I overlooked those places. It is now too late for regrets. But I beg you to withdraw the printing blocks of the poems; under no circumstances should they be published. When we meet in person I will tell you all this matter’s complications. Then you will understand why these poems are really unfit to circulate. 〈桂殤詩〉實哀痛之餘, 假此少遣鬱塞. . . . 而中頗有一二語為傍人指擇者, 殊非意中之事. 然老人暮景, 恐此詩一出, 便有許多葛藤, 卻生家庭中荊棘. 此實一往哀傷, 點檢不到, 悔之莫及. 今乞仁兄為我將此刻收起, 萬勿流布, 待面時一訴委曲, 然後知此詩之不可出也.27 Clearly, the circulation of Ming loyalist writings was more than a possibility: it was a fact. We also see hues of Ming loyalist poetics in the works of younger poets who are not usually considered members of the loyalist circles, or only marginally involved in them. For instance, even the young Wang Shizhen flirted briefly with it before he launched his own “spirit resonance.” His set of four impressionistic poems entitled “Qiuliu” 秋柳 (Autumn Willow) (1657) is generally held to contain certain Ming loyalist symbolism (if not substance), or to “lament the Ming” (diao Ming 弔明), as traditional commentators have put it.28 According to this reading, the first poem in the series alludes to distant events in the first reigns of the Ming dynasty, while the other three revolve around recent historical events involving the Southern Ming Prince of Fu 福王 (the Hongguang 弘光 emperor; r. 1644–5). The number of poets who tried to match Wang’s set is believed to be in the hundreds;29 this immense interest testifies to the currency of Ming loyalist poetics. Observe the following: In the autumn of Dingyou [1657] of the Shunzhi reign, I [Wang] was visiting Ji’nan. It was during the autumn examination period, and all the well-known gentlemen converged on [Da]ming Lake. One day we met at the Shuimian Pavilion to drink. Below the pavilion there were a dozen or so willow trees stroking the water gracefully and appealingly. Their leaves had just turned light yellow, but when bathed in the autumn light, they looked as if they were about to wither. I turned sad and sentimental and composed four poems. On the spot several dozen people wrote rhymes to match mine. Three years later when I went to Guangling [Yangzhou], I found that my four poems had been widely circulated, and that a lot of people on both sides of the [Yangzi] River had tried their hand at

8

The poet-historian Qian Qianyi matching mine. It seems my “Autumn Willow” poems have become a household name in the realm of literature! 順治丁酉秋, 予客濟南. 時正秋賦, 諸名士雲集明湖. 一日會飲水面亭, 亭下楊柳十餘株, 披拂水際, 綽約近人. 葉始微黃, 乍染秋色, 若有搖落之態. 予悵然有感, 賦詩四章, 一時和者數十人. 又三年, 予至廣陵, 則四詩流傳已久, 大江南北和者益眾. 於是〈秋柳詩〉為藝苑口實矣!30

Among Wang’s then more famous contemporaries, such ardent Ming loyalists as Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613–82) and Xu Ye 徐夜 (Yuanshan 元善, Dongchi 東癡; 1613?–86?) matched “Autumn Willow”; so did another famous erchen, the poet-official Cao Rong 曹溶 (1613–85); and aspiring young poets (later Qing poet-officials) like Chen Qinian 陳其年 (1626–82) and Zhu Yizun 朱彝尊 (1629–1709).31 Qian Qianyi, nevertheless, declined to match the set when requested, perhaps because for him, the willow was already a well-worn subject (see Chapter 5).

The public, the private, and the varied images of Qian Qianyi No matter how private and individualistic Ming loyalist verse appears to be, it is still by nature a public, historical construct. Its authors were sensitive to their reception; they wrote both for their contemporaries and for posterity. Among them, the desire to leave behind a calculated, though not necessarily insincere, self-portrait surfaces again and again. As Kang-i Sun Chang suggests: “Such [Ming loyalist] scholars, conscious of their ambiguous position and their alienation from contemporary society, were trying to give new meaning to their cultural mission in history. They were anticipating how future generations would see them and were trying to mold that vision.”32 Qian Qianyi’s urge to shape his own image is particularly intense. Qian exerts himself to inscribe his personal history on the grand Ming loyalist narrative, and to couple personal and public memory. This complicates our understanding of his poetry. He means not only to preserve the past, but also to adapt it to impact the present—his present—and the future. Qian’s conduct at the fall of the Hongguang regime in Nanjing and his service to the Qing shortly after was the ultimate source of his dishonor. Qian has been regarded by historical sources—as well as in the book of morality—as a morally ambivalent, politically opportunistic figure, gaining a certain infamy in the course of the Ming–Qing dynastic changeover. Yet according to him, himself, he lived shamefully under the Manchu rule. Since the self-image that Qian presents is often at odds with the historical image of the poet, we should perhaps begin with a brief historical account.33 Qian Qianyi flourished in the late Ming as a pre-eminent literatus and an aspiring court official; in the latter, he suffered many difficulties and cruel frustrations. He clearly exerted an influence on court politics, but never secured a truly prominent official position, nor ever managed to hold a post

Introduction

9

for a substantial length of time. Qian did, however, become a leader of the Donglin Party 東林黨, the supposedly “pure stream” (qingliu 清流) in politics of the day, which carried him to greater success, but his own political fortunes also rose and sank with those of the Donglin Party in the maddening lateMing partisanism. Every time a Ming ruler considered Qian for an important post, an influential official in the rival camp slandered and ousted him. With the commencement of the last Ming reign in 1628, Qian’s star rose briefly. The Chongzhen 崇禎 emperor (r. 1628–44) made him Vice Minister of the Board of Rites and Reader in the Hanlin Academy, with good prospects of attaining a position in the all-important, prestigious Grand Secretariat, his lifelong ambition. But soon Qian was impeached by rival official Wen Tiren 溫體仁 (1573–1639) that he had a prior involvement in a bribery case. In 1629, Qian was stripped of all of his official titles and duties. He spent the next fifteen years in retirement in his native region, where he established himself as a leader of the literary and learned communities and as one of the most eloquent writers of his day. In 1644, when news of the fall of Beijing reached the southern capital, Nanjing, the senior officials gathered there, Qian included, hastened to form a new imperial court. After a great deal of partisan politics—as was usual in Ming matters of state—they managed to set the legitimate successor to the late Chongzhen, the Prince of Fu, on the throne as the Hongguang emperor. Qian became Minister of the Board of Rites in the new court: this was the highest official position he ever attained. To his misfortune, Hongguang’s reign lasted barely a year. When Nanjing fell, Qian surrendered to the Manchus at the city gate along with other senior officials. He even went so far as to help prepare propaganda for cities in the Jiangnan areas, to urge the populace to welcome the Manchus with open arms—he was believed to have penned the slogan “Heaven favors [the Qing] and the people embrace [the new dynasty]” (tianyu rengui 天與人歸) for the victorious Manchu prince Dodo.34 Thereafter Qian served the new Manchu court at Beijing, holding the position of Vice Minister of the Board of Rites (Libu Shilang 禮部侍郎) with the adjunctive appointment of Vice-supervisor of the Ming History project (Mingshi Fuzongcai 明史副總裁). (Note that serving as a Vice Minister is tantamount to a demotion in Qian’s career trajectory.) For reasons that are not clear to us, Qian begged leave to retire six months later. Many of Qian’s contemporaries criticized his surrender and service to the Qing, brief as it was; later generations scorned even more bitterly. More than one hundred years after his death, Qian aroused the wrath of the Qianlong 乾隆 emperor (r. 1736–95), who ingeniously created a section called “Erchen zhuan” 貳臣傳 (Biographies of the Twice-serving Officials) in the Qing official history—a section devoted, in large part, to condemning Qian’s example and branding him as a traitor to both the Ming and the Qing dynasties. All of Qian’s writings, scholarly and literary, were banned from circulation on orders from Qianlong. Political infamy has tended—even in some

10

The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

contemporary circles—to overshadow Qian’s role as a lasting writer and an important scholar of seventeenth-century China. Legends have it that Qian’s beloved concubine Liu Shi 柳是 (Rushi 如是; 1618–64) implored him to die a martyr’s death when Beijing fell. Had Qian done so, the poems that assured his literary immortality would never have been written. There is no denying that Qian had firmly established himself in the art of poetry and prose even before the fall of the Ming;35 his greatest works, however, deal with the Ming–Qing transition and his own experiences in it. His later verse recalls historical events to illuminate the recently fallen Ming and the new Qing dynasties, and against this backdrop, he verbalizes his own traumas. China’s late-imperial lyrical tradition was enriched by Qian’s treatment of Ming loyalist aesthetics. Qian’s post-1644 poetic writings, his most mature, provide a window on his own particularly troubled mind and on the collective memory of the survivors of the Ming–Qing transition. Part I of this study is divided into two chapters. The first chapter discusses the historical and theoretical contexts which affected the poetics of Ming loyalism in the early Qing period. It examines a poetic theory advanced by Qian which synthesizes the paramount values of both the historiographical and the poetic traditions. This theory revives the critical concept of shishi 詩史, which can mean either the poet who relates history, or the poem in which history is related, and hence the English translation “poet-historian” or “poetic-history,” for want of better phraseology. We will see how Qian, armed with this theory, founds an aesthetic for the surviving Ming subjects. Chapter 2 offers a historical survey of Qian’s reception in Qing and earlyRepublican times. I will conduct a formal discussion of the Qianlong emperor’s extended condemnation of Qian and of Qianlong’s campaign of literary inquisition as part of his attempt to foster an ideal of morality in his officials in the 1770s and 80s. Part II’s three chapters present close readings of three cycles of poems. These are taken from Qian’s last major poetic endeavor, the Toubi ji, a collection of thirteen cycles of poems bearing the title “Hou ‘Qiuxing’ ” 後秋興 or “After ‘Autumn Thoughts’ [By Du Fu].” They will be discussed against the backdrop of the single most important moment of the Ming loyalist revival activities, Zheng Chenggong’s 鄭成功 (1624–62) Yangzi military campaign against the Qing in 1659. The first cycle in the Toubi ji was written when Zheng’s imposing fleet was closing in on Nanjing, and the second and the third resulted from Zheng’s disastrous defeat in the same city. I will use this specific historical context to illustrate Qian’s use of history in poetry and his relation to the cause of Ming restoration. Chapter 3 explores the theme of war in the first cycle of the Toubi ji, and Qian’s fervent response to the revival forces. Ethnic conflicts between the Chinese and the Manchu conquerors inform the idea of legitimate authority in these eight poems. This chapter will also examine the different historical

Introduction

11

personae Qian adopts to justify his surrender to the Qing at the fall of the Ming. Chapter 4 focuses on the second cycle of the Toubi ji, the earliest account of Zheng’s defeat by Manchu forces at Nanjing. By investigating Qian’s rhetoric of admonition and encouragement, I will analyze the poems’ depiction of Qian as a strategist and Zheng’s mentor. Chapter 5 examines the third cycle of the poems, where Qian registers his unswerving faith in the Ming revival movement and in its darkest phase assumes the role of participant. I will show that this cycle expresses Qian’s dedication to the Ming cause as much as his love for Liu Rushi. This chapter also argues against the conjecture that Qian and Zheng met during or shortly after the composition of this cycle. The concluding chapter offers an appraisal of the theory and practice of shishi that Qian put forward.

Part I

Qian Qianyi’s theory of shishi and historical contexts

1

Qian Qianyi’s theory of shishi and the poetics of Ming loyalism

In considering the poetics of the Ming–Qing transition, one may well begin with several fundamental questions: What did the poetic vocation mean to the survivors of the foreign invasion? When a city as rich in history and culture as Yangzhou had been utterly flattened by war in a matter of days, when human lives were as fragile as the morning dew, to use a Chinese metaphor, what did it mean to be a poet? Did the dynamics of tragedy generate a new, distinctive poetics? If so, how did this new mode of lyrical expression differ from the late-Ming verse and its obsession with individuality and strangeness, or from the Qing poetry prevailing towards the close of the seventeenth century and its paradigm of “elegance” and “correctness” (yazheng 雅正)? In this chapter, I address these issues by discussing Qian Qianyi’s vision for the poetics of Ming loyalism formulated after the fall of the Ming house. Qian’s theory of shishi synthesizes paramount values of Chinese historiographical and poetic traditions.1 Although he draws heavily on ancient intellectual and literary precursors, let me suggest at once that his purpose is not to restore the values of antiquity. Qian strives, rather, to demarcate a poetic space for Ming loyalism, a space and value Qian no doubt desires to share with the Ming loyalists; and to devise, for this line of writing, a hermeneutic strategy for his contemporaries and posterity. We will expose elements of this theory in a close reading of Qian’s important essay, “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” 胡致果詩序 (Preface to Hu Zhiguo’s Poetry),2 and an examination of related literary, cultural and historical contexts. Despite its brevity, this essay is of great significance, critically and polemically, in the contexts of Ming poetics and the Ming–Qing dynastic transition. More specifically, it not only reflects the general literary temperament of the Ming remnants, but it also provides a critical apparatus with which to approach the kind of poetry Qian himself labored over in his later years, which became his most celebrated. Although an excellent place to observe the special features of the poetics of the Ming–Qing transition, “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” is no easy read. The entire essay is saturated with historical and topical references and is at the same time highly allusive and lyrical. It demands an extensive commentary.

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

Dating of “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” was not dated, but it was most likely composed sometime in the spring of 1656, on Qian’s visit to Nanjing: In his essay, Qian mentions that he met with Hu Zhiguo in Jinling 金陵 (Nanjing). Between 1645 and 1664, his “retirement” from the Manchu court and his death, Qian stayed in Nanjing on four occasions. The first was from 1647 to 1649, when he was arrested and put on trial in Nanjing because of his implication in Ming restoration activities. In early winter 1651, in late 1655 to spring 1656, and in winter 1657, Qian came back for visits. In another undated essay, “Zengbie Hu Jingfu xu” 贈別胡靜夫序 (In Bidding Hu Jingfu Farewell), Qian says that he had written a preface to Hu’s collection of poems on his previous visit to Nanjing, and that seven years later he met with Hu again and composed another preface to Hu’s poetry, the “Zengbie” essay.3 The generic meaning of zengbie 贈別—a word that frequently occurs in the titles of poems or essays dedicated to a departing visitor—indictates a visit that Hu paid Qian and a farewell gesture on the part of Qian. Even though such a visit by Hu to Qian’s home in Changshu 常熟 is not documented, for reasons that we will give shortly, it would be wise to follow historian Chen Yinke’s 陳寅恪 (1890– 1969) suggestion of dating Hu’s trip and Qian’s “Zengbie Hu Jingfu xu” to 1662.4 Chen’s date can be inferred from the contents and circumstances of two poems, one by Qian and another by Hu. During his visit of 1656 to Nanjing, Qian wrote a poem-series named “Bingshen chun jiuyi Qinhuai, yu Ding jia shuige, jia liangyue, linxing zuo jueju sanshi shou liubie liuti, bufu lunci” 丙申春就醫秦淮, 寓丁家水閣, 浹兩月, 臨行作絕句三十首留別留題, 不復論次. Musings on his Nanjing friends and acquaintances comprise the bulk of these thirty poems, no. 18 of which was dedicated to Hu.5 This attests to the fact that the two men met in 1656. In Wu zhi ji 吾炙集, a compilation of poems by contemporary poets collected by Qian mostly between 1656 and the early 1660s (see below), we find three verses by Hu. The one that holds the greatest interest for us is entitled “Yushan gui ge, shang da Zongbo Muzhai fuzi” 虞山檜歌, 上大宗伯牧齋夫子 (Song of the Juniper Tree of Yushan, Presented to Master Muzhai the Grand Minister), in tribute to Qian. Portions of the poem read: 矯矯虞山檜 夭挺虬龍姿 高柯應北辰 清風貫四時 .......... 樵人礪斧曷敢近 神物抱節誰能窺 我時翹首不得見

Towering is the juniper tree of Yushan, Whose robust stature resembles a coiling dragon. Its tall branches reach up to the North Star, Pure winds blow through the four seasons. The woodcutter’s gleaming axe dares not approach it, This holy creature has an integrity that few comprehend. So many times I raised my head yet failed to gain a glimpse;

Theory of shishi and poetics of Ming loyalism 再拜先生冰雪儀 .......... 七年遙隔杜鵑夢 二月重逢楊柳絲 花霧霏微舊陵闕 白頭喬木兩含悲

17

Now I bow, once again, to its pure, awe-inspiring appearance. Seven long years separating the dreams of the cuckoos, In the second month, amid the tender willow strands we meet again— Misty flowers so light by the former mausoleum, Two white-headed tall trees suffused with melancholy.6

The location of the gui 檜 tree, the metaphor adopted by Hu for Qian, is specific—the tree is rooted in the soil of Yushan, Qian’s home area. The tree’s images conjured here are concrete and vivid, too, giving the impression that they came from an actual viewing, not from Hu’s poetic imagination. This lends credence to the idea that Hu did make a trip to Changshu to see Qian. The poem also relates that it was in the second month of the year that he and Qian met again, after a duration of seven years. This matches the time frame of their reunion that Qian cites in the “Zengbie” essay. Both Hu’s “Yushan” poem and Qian’s “Zengbie” essay are likely to have been occasioned by Hu’s visit to Yushan. As a meeting between the two in 1656 is attested by the “Bingshen chun jiuyi Qinhuai” poem, and there is no other mention of their having met except in the two places that we just examined, it is natural for us to assign 1662 for their reunion—between 1656 and 1662 lies a period of roughly seven years—and to assume that seven years before, in Nanjing, Qian had composed “Hu Zhiguo shi xu.” Attributing other dates to “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” is less desirable for the following reasons. From 1647 to 1649, Qian did spend substantial time in Nanjing, but he was in detention; it does not appear to provide conditions under which he could have written “Hu Zhiguo shi xu.” Moreover, Qian begins the “Zengbie” essay with this sentence: “On my previous visit to Nanjing” (wang yu you Jinling 往余游金陵). The word you 游 implies a leisurely visit; the dreadful experience of Qian’s detention and trial would not have allowed the use of the word. One might argue that at the beginning of the trial, the circumstances were very black against Qian—as Qian complains in “He Dongpo ‘Xitai’ shiyun liu shou” 和東坡西臺詩韻六首 (Rhyming with Su Dongpo’s “At the Censorate,” Six Poems), written in 1647 about the event7—but after the first few months, Qian’s situation seems to have improved significantly. Qian could have written “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” in the latter part of his 1647–9 Nanjing stay.8 Indeed, in the collection of his 1648 and 1649 poems, Qian appears to be taking part in some social and literary activities, and by 1649 he had regained enough peace of mind to pen quite a few poems and essays and to consult materials in local libraries for a literary project he was working on. But if “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” had come from this point in time, it would then place the “Zengbie” essay in 1656. However, as

18

The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

Hu’s poem reveals, the reunion of the two took place in the second month of that year in Yushan. Yet, from the late winter of 1655 to the spring of 1656, Qian was away from home in Nanjing. This precludes the likelihood that Qian wrote “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” in 1649. Nor does 1651 seem likely to be the year. In around November that year Qian traveled to Nanjing to avoid the birthday fuss. After arriving in Nanjing, he very quickly retreated into a Buddhist monastery for the company of a few monk friends and for discussions of Buddhist doctrines. Very little interaction between Qian and members of the Nanjing literati circle is recorded for this one-month visit. The only other possible date remaining is 1657, when Qian spent the winter in Nanjing. But as there exists no record, or hint, of the two men’s meeting in this particular year, and as all related materials favor 1656 more, we shall leave 1657 out. Who was Hu Zhiguo, for whom Qian Qianyi wrote the particularly rich and nuanced essay “Hu Zhiguo shi xu,” and what was Hu’s motive in visiting Qian in Changshu? About Hu Zhiguo we know precious little, but he was surely not a prominent figure in the Ming–Qing transition. We know neither his dates nor, with any certainty, what he did during his life. The very limited information that we do have gives the impression that he led a reclusive, loyalist life in Nanjing after the demise of the Ming. He won some recognition from his contemporaries for his poetry, but only among fellow Ming loyalists, as we find very little mention of him outside loyalist circles. Hu’s poetry is extant only in part.9 In Qian’s “Bingshen chun jiuyi Qinhuai” poem, Hu Zhiguo is depicted as a reclusive scholar. From “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” and “Zengbie Hu Jingfu xu,” Hu emerges as a serious poet. As my discussions below will show, Qian paints Hu in the colors of a Ming loyalist in “Hu Zhiguo shi xu,” too. Qian’s descriptions of Hu accord more or less with a brief biographical sketch of Hu in Zhuo Erkan’s 卓爾堪 (1653–after 1712)10 Yimin shi 遺民詩 (An Anthology of [Ming] Loyalist Poetry), in which thirteen poems by Hu were included. From Zhuo’s anthology we learn that Hu’s name was Qiyi 其毅, Zhiguo being his zi, and Hu adopted the style name Jingfu 靜夫. Hu was native to Jiangning 江寧 (Nanjing), and he wrote a collection of poetry called Jingzhuozhai gao 靜拙齋稿 (Writings from the Quiet and Artless Studio), which is no longer extant. Zhuo suggests that Hu was a “humble” (qianjin 謙謹) and “self-possessed” (zichi 自持) man, and that Hu’s poetry shows a “limpid and calm” (chongdan 沖淡) quality. Among all of Hu’s existing poems, almost none, in my opinion, match the style that Qian attributes to Hu in “Hu Zhiguo shi xu.”11 There is, of course, the possibility that what Qian had read of Hu was very different from the poems we have of Hu’s today. Even less is known about the reason for Hu’s visit to Yushan, but Chen Yinke has speculated about it. Chen holds that Qian had been a secret leader of the Ming revival movement in Jiangnan, coordinating activities and loyalists; and that Hu went to Changshu to update Qian with the latest information about Nanjing in the wake of Zheng Chenggong’s defeat by the Qing

Theory of shishi and poetics of Ming loyalism

19

forces in 1659. What particularly prompted Hu’s 1662 trip, Chen further asserts, was the recent death of the Qing Shunzhi 順治 emperor (r. 1644–61), which compelled the Ming loyalists to network and evaluate situations at hand.12 Chen’s theory can be supported, at least in part, by further reading of Hu’s “Yushan gui ge” poem. The poem contains this passage: 百草萎霜困鶗鴂 羣萌向暖復崴蕤 獨此潛根凍壑走 依然拔地蒼雲垂

All the plants have withered in the frost, paining the cuckoos; Those sprouts, facing the warming sun, grew into vigorous plants again. Only this tree spreads its hidden roots under the cold ravine; Nonetheless, it thrusts up from the ground into the hanging clouds.

To the initiated reader of Chinese poetry, the images of the first two lines here, of the flowers fallen in the cold and the sprouts gaining strength by embracing the warmth, have echoes of Qu Yuan’s 屈原 melancholic poem, “Li sao” 離騷 (Encountering Sorrow), where the poet uses “fragrant flowers” (fangcao 芳草) to symbolize men of virtue, who are forced out by sycophants in the court of the king. This symbolism is developed by its further association with the image of a cuckoo—which appears here as the tijue 鶗鴂 and above as the dujuan 杜鵑—not in the original “Li sao” context. In the Chinese poetic tradition, the cuckoo invokes nostalgia and sadness for the lost country. This orients “Yushan gui ge” towards the particular political and historical situations of the Ming–Qing changeover and creates the impression that the Ming loyalists are unable to prevail against the evermore-powerful Qing dynasty, and that many people are courting imperial favor and seeking ways to return to official life again. In this connection, the tree in the following two lines appears as one willing to stand even alone for his principles and belief in the face of overwhelming adversity. From the images of its roots hiding yet still spreading, and of its trunk rising sheer from the ground, one might suggest that he has earned admiration and respect from the like-minded community. Another two lines of the poem characterize him as a leader worthy of a place in the history books: 丞相黃冠指南錄 尚書赤舄居東期

The Grand Councilor put on a yellow [Daoist] cap, [but he left behind] the book Pointing the Way; The Imperial Secretariat wore red shoes, [and emerged with his ministership after] a long retirement on Eastern Hills.

This is a couplet designed to lionize Qian. Hu Zhiguo compares Qian to Wen Tianxiang 文天祥 (1236–83) of the Southern Song dynasty in the first line,

20

The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

and to Xie An 謝安 (320–83) of the Eastern Jin in the second. Author of Zhinan lu (Pointing the Way), Wen was the legendary Song martyr who directed the last Song resistance to the Mongol–Yuan invasion. Wen had since become an icon of steadfast loyalty to the country and many Ming loyalists aspired to his example. Xie An saved the Eastern Jin by orchestrating the defeat of Fu Jian’s conquering army at the famous battle at Feishui. One particular detail of Xie’s life is alluded to here, that Xie was recalled to the imperial court only after a long, forced retirement. The hopeful undertone of this couplet is that, when the time comes, Qian would reemerge as a national leader, honored, for his sterling worth and faithful service, with the most prestigious official post. Clearly, Hu Zhiguo does not look to Qian Qianyi as a mere mentor of literature. The richly nuanced symbols and metaphors and their implications in “Yushan gui ge” unambiguously suggest that Hu and Qian were bonded by the shared Ming loyalist morals, sentiments, and values, if not by their common involvement in a certain Ming revival campaign, as Chen Yinke maintains. Hu’s “Yushan gui ge” provides a window into how some Ming yimin perceived Qian. We thus expect that Qian would reveal certain aspects of Hu’s Ming loyalist experience in “Zengbie Hu Jingfu xu” as well. But unfortunately for us, Qian’s “Zengbie” essay, in contrast, only dwells on Qian and Hu’s friendship and ideas of poetry. Hu appears in the essay as a serious, sensitive, and passionate poet, and that is about all. To know more about Hu, we will have to turn to other places, such as “Hu Zhiguo shi xu,” the main subject matter of this chapter. But even there, where we are shown more of Hu’s thoughts and feelings, not much information about Hu as a historical person is available.13

The classical thesis on the bond between history and poetry: “praise and blame,” “praise and satire,” and rhetoric of “subtlety” Qian Qianyi’s “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” begins as follows: Mencius said: “When songs were left uncollected, the Spring and Autumn Annals was composed.” All the poems written before the Spring and Autumn Annals are histories of states. It was known that Confucius had edited the poems, but not that he meant to construct a history [out of them]. It was known that Confucius had composed the Spring and Autumn Annals, but not that he meant it as a continuation of those poems. The Book of Odes, the Book of Documents, and the Spring and Autumn Annals are one book in sequence, [but people] divided it and made it into three. Since the Three Ages, history concerns itself only with history, and poetry only with poetry, yet it cannot be that the significance of poetry is not drawn from history. 孟子曰: “《詩》亡然後《春秋》作.”《春秋》未作以前之詩,

Theory of shishi and poetics of Ming loyalism

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皆國史也. 人知夫子之刪詩, 不知其為定史, 人知夫子之作《春秋》, 不知其為續《詩》. 《詩》也,《書》也,《春秋》也, 首尾為一書, 離而三之者也. 三代以降, 史自史, 詩自詩, 而詩之義不能不本于史.14 Theorists, traditional and modern, who maintain that there is a direct link between the Book of Odes and the Spring and Autumn Annals rely on Mencius’ remark: When the sway of the kings was gone, songs were left uncollected. When songs were left uncollected, the Spring and Autumn Annals was composed. The Sheng of Jin, the Taowu of Chu, and the Spring and Autumn Annals of Lu are of the same nature: the chronicled events concern Dukes Huan of Qi and Wen of Jin, and the style belongs to that of historians. Confucius said: “As to the didactic quality therein, I, Qiu, have appropriated it.” 王者之迹熄而詩亡, 詩亡然後春秋作. 晉之《乘》, 楚之《檮杌》, 魯之《春秋》, 一也: 其事則齊桓, 晉文, 其文則史. 孔子曰: “其義則丘竊取之矣.”15 This Qian invokes at the beginning of the essay. According to Mencius, Confucius composed the Spring and Autumn Annals out of immense anxiety: “While the world degenerated and the true way was lost, unorthodox teachings and acts of violence sprang up again: there were cases in which ministers murdered their lords, and sons their parents. Confucius was appalled and composed the Spring and Autumn Annals” (世衰道微, 邪說暴行有作, 臣弒其君者有之, 子弒其父者有之, 孔子懼, 作《春秋》).16 In another passage, Mencius states Confucius’ target of criticism: “When Confucius completed the Spring and Autumn Annals, the disloyal officials and unfilial sons trembled with fear” (孔子成《春秋》而亂臣賊子懼).17 Qian Qianyi’s position—that the Book of Odes, the Book of Documents, and the Spring and Autumn Annals form “one book in sequence”—should not be understood as a mere reiteration of Mencius’ comments. Mencius suggests that there was a causality in the appearance of the Annals after the Odes, and implies that both the Odes and the Annals could help “the sway of the kings.” Mencius also asserts that the Annals is a historical writing. Yet nowhere in the whole book of Mencius does Mencius ever advise that the Odes has a historiographical bearing of its own. Mencius quotes Confucius’ claim to endorse the idea that didacticism plays an important dimension in the Annals, but Mencius does not say that the moral lessons found in the Annals are also observable in the Odes. Qian departs from Mencius by asserting that (1) the Odes, the Documents, and the Annals are of the same nature; (2) Confucius’ editing of the Odes in effect shaped the poems into history; and (3), later in the essay, the critical terms of the Annals’ hermeneutic—“subtlety,” “Deviated Rhetorical Rules,” “subtle words”—may be used with equal validity to discuss the stylistic

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

qualities of certain poems in the Book of Odes. Such propositions, we maintain, are significantly facilitated by Han-dynasty (206 –220 ) hermeneutics of the Confucian canon. To the modern reader, among the Five Classics believed to have been handed down from Confucius, the Spring and Autumn Annals stands out for its dullness.18 It is a chronicle of events—accessions, deaths, battles, and unusual natural phenomena—between 722 and 481  concerning Confucius’ native state, Lu. Until perhaps the Gushi bian 古史辨 (Disputing Ancient History) iconoclastic movement of the past century, however, the Spring and Autumn Annals enjoyed a dual identity as history and moral-ethical philosophy among Chinese (and certain Chinese-reading Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese) readers, who combed the dry text for evidence of Confucius’ sagacity, a guide to what is just and what is profane. The Annals, read through the prism of its three canonical commentaries, has exerted tremendous influence over Chinese intellectual traditions.19 Exegeses to the Annals stem from the supposition that there exists a discrepancy between the literal and intended meanings of the Annals: a text and a subtext. It was believed that through “editing” (bixiao 筆削), or the selective presentation of historical accounts, Confucius passed moral and political judgments on political events and personages, either to “praise” or to “blame” (baobian 褒貶) them. Yet, since the convention of the times prevented Confucius from speaking uninhibitedly and the Annals carries judgments on events involving the kings of Zhou and the dukes and officials of the feudal states, whom Confucius was in no position to judge—as Mencius has advised, this should have been the prerogative of the Zhou king—Confucius resorted to a rhetoric of “subtlety” (wei 微).20 The “great significance” (dayi 大義) of the Annals—ethical and political criticism—is embodied in “subtle words” (weiyan 微言 or weici 微辭).21 One of the early commentators of the Annals, Du Yu 杜預 (222–84 ) proposed that five principles guide the Annals’ various rhetorical devices: (1) subtlety that is nevertheless revealing; (2) terse diction; (3) roundabout narrative configuration; (4) exhaustiveness; and (5) condemnation of evil and support of good (微而顯, 志而晦, 婉而成章, 盡而不汙, 懲惡而勸善).22 The first of these five principles, subtlety, which can, to a large extent, describe also the second and the third, is overtly invoked in a passage of Qian’s essay that we will discuss below. Related closely to these five principles is another pair of critical terms of traditional Annals scholarship: the “Rhetorical Principles” (li 例) and the “Deviated Rhetorical Principles” (bianli 變例), the latter of which Qian also cites later in the essay. “Rhetorical Principles” govern the parallel narration of similar events throughout the Annals. “Deviated Rhetorical Principles” govern the anomalies, passages in which subject matter, sequential structure, and, most important, wording abandon this parallelism. Such passages have long been interpretive playgrounds for commentators, who treated their irregularities as evidence of hidden criticism, concealed in the subtlest of

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words. The avowed task of traditional commentators is to spell out the concealed “praise” and “blame” by speculating on the deviations (tui bianli yi zheng baobian 推變例以正褒貶).23 Parallel developments occurred in the interpretation of the Book of Odes during Han times, the heyday of allegoresis. Under the Mao-school (Maoshi 毛詩) exegetical strategies, the verbal expressions of a poetic text in the Book of Odes are always interpreted as references to a nonlinguistic, temporal reality, historical or social. The authorial intention (zhi 志) is amplified, and the moral lesson is taken for granted. The poet is assumed to have a definite didactic purpose in composing a particular poem, either to “encourage” (quan 勸) the ruler or to “remonstrate” (jian 諫) with him by virtue of “praise” (mei 美) or “satire” (ci 刺).24 To yield the best “transformative power” (hua 化) from the text, the poet also “aims for subtle compositions and remonstrates obliquely: he who speaks does not invite trouble, he who hears is sufficiently warned” (主文而譎諫, 言之者無罪, 聞之者足以戒).25 Thus, viewed as an activity of persuasion, poetry is akin to history: both have moral and ethical purposes.26 Rhetorically, “subtlety” in historical writing and “obliquity” in its poetic counterpart both rely on the suggestive, symbolic, signifying powers of the text. It is against the backdrop of this time-honored hermeneutic tradition that Qian muses on the relationship between “subtlety,” “Deviated Rhetorical Principles,” and “subtle words” of the genres of historiographical and poetic writings in the following sections of the essay. “Subtle words,” put simply, represent a system of symbolism constituted in ambiguities, opacity, euphemisms, and circumlocution. As these concepts are of enormous importance to our understanding of the special rhetoric of Ming loyalist poetry Qian invoked below, please indulge me with a necessary digression. I will give two examples from the Annals which manifest the quality of “subtlety” to which Qian refers. First, an entry believed to have been composed according to the “Deviated Rhetorical Principle.” The Annals has it that, in the 27th year of Duke Zhuang of Lu, [The] Cao [people] killed one [?] of their Grand Masters. 曹殺其大夫.27 Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (574–648 ), in his Correct Significance to the Zuo Commentary, refers the reader to a similar entry in the 7th year of Duke Wen of Lu: “The Song people killed [two of ] their Grand Masters” (Song ren sha qi dafu 宋人殺其大夫), on which the Zuo Commentary elaborates: [The Annals] does not mention the killer’s name because it involved more than one person. In addition, [the Annals does not give the names of the victims,] indicating that those killed were innocent. This exhibits the “Deviated Rhetorical Principle” invented by Confucius. 不稱名, 眾也, 且言非其罪也. 是仲尼新意變例也.28 As a rule, the Annals makes known the identity of the victim so as to

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condemn him, in the event that the killing was justified and proper. Deviating from this rule amounts to laying blame on the killer. Yet, in this particular case, the name of the killer is not given because, on the one hand, it involved more than one person, and, on the other, the killers were innocent of the bloody deed, too. The victims were killed by accident in a just revolt. The following exemplifies “subtle words.” The Annals offers a very terse line for the first entry of Duke Ding of Lu: [It was] the first year [of Duke Ding of Lu], in spring; the king [of Zhou’s] 元年. 春, 王29 Almost unintelligible, this line differs from all other entries about the commencement of a duke’s reign. Of eleven other dukes of Lu, on such an occasion, the Annals follows two rules in narration, either [It was] the first year [of Duke X of Lu], in spring; in the king [of Zhou’s] first month, the duke ascended the throne (7 times). 元年. 春, 王正月; 公即位. or [It was] the first year [of Duke X of Lu], in spring; in the king [of Zhou’s] first month (4 times). 元年. 春, 王正月. Duke Ding’s entry does not mention “the king [of Zhou’s] first month” nor the duke’s ascending the throne. The Gongyang Commentary seizes this opportunity to expound on Confucius’ rhetoric of “subtle words”: Why does [the entry for Duke] Ding have no “first month”? [The mention of ] the “first month” is to legitimize [a duke’s] ascending the throne. Ding does not have the “first month” because he ascended the throne on a later date [of the year]. Why did he ascend the throne on a later date? It was because [the coffin of the late] Duke Zhao was still kept outside [the state]. Whether it would be allowed to enter [the state] or not remained a question. Why was it a question? It all depended on [the attitude of] the Ji family [on this matter]. In [the entries about Dukes] Ding and Ai there are many “subtle words.” Even if the rulers had read what was written and inquired about its interpretation, they would not know whether they were charged with crime or not. 定何以無正月? 正月者, 正即位也. 定無正月者, 即位後也. 即位何以後? 昭公在外, 得入, 不得入, 未可知也. 曷為未可知? 在季氏也. 定哀多微辭, 主人習其讀而問其傳, 則未知己之有罪焉爾.30 The first part of the comment gives the impression that Confucius was criti-

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cizing the powerful Ji family of Lu, which controlled the affairs of the state. Yet the second part suggests that this particular entry, which contains some “subtle words,” was directed at the rulers, in this case the dukes of Lu. The Gongyang Commentary, however, does not state what the criticism is about. Kong Yingda, in his Correct Significance to the Gongyang Commentary, presents a viable analysis of these “subtle words.” Kong asserts that this entry was composed to censure Duke Zhao and Duke Ding, and that it reveals the critical political situation of Lu at this time: Generations before Ding’s succession to the ducal seat, the rulers of Lu had been weak and incompetent while the Ji family had gradually come to overpower the ducal house. In 517 , Duke Zhao, himself by no means an able ruler, launched an attack upon the Ji family, hoping to reverse the situation. The attack, however, resulted in Duke Zhao’s own exile. Duke Zhao eventually died abroad in 510 . According to Kong, it was against the rites and custom that a feudal lord should flee his hereditary state: Duke Zhao should have died “on his seat.” With Duke Zhao’s exile, the state of Lu should be viewed as doomed. Duke Ding’s succession to Duke Zhao at the latter’s death was, following Kong’s argument, illegitimate. Consequently, there is no mention of the “first month,” the symbol for legitimacy, in the entry.31 The discussion above of the Han classicists’ hermeneutic of the Spring and Autumn Annals and the Book of Odes retrieves the context and parameters of the canonically-sanctioned interpretive/creative traditions that Qian draws on to conceive of poetry as a specially potent medium to embody history. Qian aims to blur the generic boundaries between poetic and historical writings, joining the time-honored “praise and satire” of poetry to the “praise and blame” of history, and thereby appropriating for poetry the whole panoply of values that goes with history.32 In Qian’s literary vision, great poetry is not only strongly marked by individual talent, it is also empowered, especially in times of national and cultural crisis, by larger historical, social, and cultural energies. Harking back to early intellectual and poetic traditions, and appropriating early values, Qian lays the foundations on which he will advance his proposal for writing and reading poetry of the Ming–Qing transition.

The dual identity of shishi: “poet-historian,” “poetic-history” The Annals and the Odes, though canonical and magisterial in Chinese intellectual and literary traditions, were products of the distant past. To convince the reader that the creative and interpretive approaches derived from these two books are practicable and desirable, Qian Qianyi underpins his argument with some not-so-ancient examples. Having established a link between history and poetry, Qian moves beyond the Han dynasty. In the following passage, Qian presents a genealogy of poetic works from the Six Dynasties (222–589) up to the Tang (618–907). For the Tang period, Qian exalts Du

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

Fu’s 杜甫 (712–70) poetry and regards Du Fu’s shishi as the paradigm of this line of poetic development. Qian writes: In Cao [Zhi]’s “Zeng Baima[wang Biao]” [Presented to Biao, the Prince of Baima], Ruan [Ji]’s “Yonghuai [shi]” [Singing of Thoughts], Liu [Kun]’s “Fufeng [ge]” [Fufeng Song], Zhang [Zai]’s “Qi ai [shi]” [Seven Lamentations Poems], we find all sorts of feelings, exclamations, grief and indignation over the rise and fall, flourishing and decline of the thousand ages, and all this is expressed in [the form of ] poetry. Then eventually came Shaoling [Du Fu]; [in him] history is fully embodied in poetry. Everybody under heaven called him shishi. 曹之〈贈白馬〉, 阮之〈咏懷〉, 劉之〈扶風〉, 張之〈七哀〉, 千古之興亡升降, 感歎悲憤, 皆于詩發之. 馴至少陵, 而詩中之史大備, 天下稱之曰詩史.33 Shishi translates either as “poet-historian” or “poetic-history,” depending on context. It was first employed by Meng Qi 孟棨 (fl. 841–86) to designate Du Fu and to characterize Du’s poems, which treat such contemporary political and historical events as the An Lushan Rebellion (755–63): Du [Fu] suffered from the turbulence of the [An] Lushan Rebellion and [was compelled] to wander aimlessly in [the areas of ] Long and Shu. [Du] projected all [his wartime experiences] into poetry. Reading between the lines [of his poems] we will discover the hidden messages; not a single important event has been overlooked. For this reason, [Du’s] contemporaries called him shishi. 杜逢祿山之難, 流離隴蜀, 畢陳於詩, 推見至隱, 殆無遺事, 故當時號為詩史.34 This view is echoed in the biography of Du Fu in Xin Tang shu 新唐書 (New Standard History of the Tang). In invoking shishi, Qian has shifted the chronological focus of his essay from the distant to the more recent past.35 Far more important is the theoretical character of shishi, which Qian exploits for his own purposes. Shishi secures for both the text and its author a dual identity. When shishi is taken to mean the text, it refers to a composition that bears the formal attributes of poetry, but embodies the historical (shi 史) along with the qualities of the poetic (shi 詩). When shishi is taken to mean the author, it refers to a versifier who assumes both the sensitivity of a poet and the authority of a historian. Shishi presupposes a dialogue between the text/author and larger social, political, and historical conditions. It is expected that these nonlinguistic, non-personal elements are reflected in, and therefore can be reconstructed from, the shishi text. This character of shishi owes much to its original association with Du Fu, who wrote with moral, social, political, and historical conscientiousness. Moreover, Du Fu is the classic model of the poet of social conscience, the critic of the ills of his time. In his poetry, Du Fu voices with

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eloquent sincerity the needs, desires, and complaints of the deprived and underprivileged. Shishi has, from the beginning, relied on the contemporary, the immediate, the serious, and the particular, and its developments in late imperial eras have fashioned it into an art form of crisis and witness (see below).36 Qian’s construct of shishi has a more visionary quality. Meng Qi stresses shishi’s topical nature, associating the poetic text with the public sphere; Qian implies that in shishi, personal, private feelings can intermingle with political and historical situations as well. For this reason, the poems of Cao Zhi, Ruan Ji, Liu Kun, and Zhang Zai are cited as Du’s forerunners. Or, put another way: Qian implies that in Du Fu’s shishi—as in those of his predecessors— intense, personal feelings abound, but that Du has expanded the poems’ social, historical and political horizons. In Du Fu’s shishi, rhetoric, moods, and tones are amplified, and versifying is to be taken as a psychological event through which the poet externalizes unrelieved tensions and strivings, and at the same time interweaves the historical, the didactic, and the aesthetic. In this version of shishi, one can see the patterns and particulars of history and the feelings and conditions of men. It seems, then, that shishi is the ideal kind of lyricism for Qian to bring poetry and history together. However, in Qian’s day, commanding shishi for this purpose is no easy task. A brief account of the reception of shishi in Ming times is in order. (We will turn to shishi’s transformation in the Song– Yuan transition in the following section.) After its introduction in the Tang, the concept of shishi was taken up with more enthusiasm than consistency in the Song. According to Song literary critics, Du Fu deserves the praise of shishi for any of the following reasons: (1) his poems reflect or relate contemporary political events; (2) he gives dates, geographical names, and details of the events concerned in his poems; (3) his poems are marked by a descriptive realism; (4) his use of allusion is flawless; (5) the wording of his poems is most precise; (6) he excels in all poetic forms; (7) feelings in his poems are always earnest and sincere; or (8) his poems embody the principle of “praise and blame” from the Spring and Autumn Annals.37 These qualities are not, of course, totally exclusive of one another, but generally speaking, (1) to (3) characterize Du’s choice of subject matter and its related stylistic impressions; (4) to (6) praise Du’s versifying skills; (7) celebrates Du’s sincerity; and (8) states the relationship of Du Fu’s poetry to pre-Tang writing traditions. To be sure, Du Fu was worshiped by Song and Ming poets and critics, but with different foci. The Song poets tended to philosophize (zhuli 主理), to reason (yilun 議論), and to narrate and elaborate (shangshi 尚事): they extolled the descriptive and discoursive aspects of Du Fu. Du Fu’s shishi was considered one of the highest achievements of poetic endeavors. The Ming archaist poets and critics in the second half of the sixteenth century, at the peak of Ming poetry, strove to recreate the intensity of feelings of Tang poetry by imitating the so-called High-Tang (sheng Tang 盛唐) literary

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models. There is no denying that the eighth-century poet Du Fu was still their foremost model, but they did not emulate the narrative and discoursive elements in Du’s verse. The Ming ingredients for poetry now were mainly “feelings” (qing 情), “rhythm” (diao 調), “color” (se 色), and “flavor” (wei 味). Naturally, the Ming poets and critics placed primary importance on the imagistic and metaphorical qualities of Du Fu. As for the metaphysics, argumentation, and narration of Song poetry, the Ming poets kept them at arm’s length.38 Du Fu’s shishi became a subject of assault for Ming critics, even though one feels that the Ming critics’ attack was often directed at Song poetics rather than at the “poet-sage” (shisheng 詩聖), Du Fu. Among the Ming critics, Yang Shen’s 楊慎 (1488–1559) attack on shishi was probably the severest. He argues that it is fundamentally wrong to blur the generic boundaries between poetry and history, and he regards those poems by Du Fu that bear narrative and censorious weight as the most inferior in his oeuvre: Because Du Zimei [Fu] could record contemporary affairs in rhyming words39 the Song critics called him shishi. How vulgar was the spirit of the Song! They were not qualified to discuss poetry. . . . As a matter of fact, restraint and reserve abound in Du Fu’s poetry. However, the Song poets did not emulate these qualities. Regarding [Du’s works which] relate uninhibitedly contemporary affairs, are they not like slander and traducement? Those are Du’s lowest “vehicle” and his least significant “role.” Yet the Song poets picked them up and claimed them as unrecognized gems. They even made up the term shishi to lead latecomers astray. If poetry can incorporate history, both the Book of Documents and the Spring and Autumn Annals can be discarded! 宋人以杜子美能以韻語紀時事, 謂之詩史. 鄙哉宋人之見, 不足以論詩也. . . . 杜詩之含蓄蘊藉者, 蓋亦多矣! 宋人不能學之. 至於直陳時事, 類於訕訐, 乃其下乘末角, 而宋人拾以為己寶, 又撰出詩史二字, 以誤後人. 如詩可兼史, 則《尚書》,《春秋》可以併省.40 Of the “six principles” (liuyi 六義) or “six arts” (liuyi 六藝) of traditional Chinese poetics, we can take, with the inevitable oversimplification, three as concerning compositional technique, namely: “direct presentation” (fu 賦), “analogy” (bi 比), and “stimulus” (xing 興). Fu, bi, and xing as compositional devices and, in turn, interpretive and critical concepts create an issue so complex as to defy any neat definition.41 Suffice it to say, fu is predominantly descriptive and narrative, whereas bi and xing are manifestly imagistic and metaphorical, and potentially allegorical. The Song poets had a leaning toward fu: they exalted it in Du Fu’s poetry and cultivated it in their own. Their passion for fu was central in their advocacy of shishi. The Ming poets championed bi and xing, stressing those qualities in Du Fu’s poetry, and aspiring to them in their own. The Ming poets found shishi’s mingling with fu demeaning to the art of poetry, and distasteful, if not viscerally repugnant.

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In the late Ming, Chen Zilong 陳子龍 (1608–47), another prominent voice in poetics, did try to justify Du Fu’s employment of the fu mode.42 Yet Chen still maintained: “In a gentleman’s rhetoric, . . . the six principles coexist, yet [for the effect of ] profundity [one resorts to] bi and xing” (君子之修辭也 . . . 六義並存, 而莫深於比興之際).43 There is a splendorous beauty in Chen’s own poetic imagery and diction. Despite its artful expression, Chen’s poetry is also marked by themes of social and political realism depicting the challenges facing the country and humanity. Yet, as an adherent of archaist aesthetics, Chen did not suggest the application of too strong a dose of fu in one’s poetic formulations. It was Qian Qianyi who first revived the concept of shishi during the Ming– Qing transition. In the essay under discussion, shishi is once more dignified with a new and significant twist: Qian invests shishi with a lyrical, emphatic dimension, capable of “all sorts of feelings, exclamations, grief and indignation over the rise and fall, flourishing and decline of the thousand ages.” Furthermore, Qian’s attitude toward bi and xing is intimated by his rejection of overtly descriptive and narrative expressions (see below); he is calling for the art of “subtlety.” Bringing the values of “subtlety” into shishi has the effect of emphasizing bi and xing in shishi, to the detriment of the fu element commended by Song poetics. Yet, to steer shishi in the advantageous direction he envisages, Qian has to answer one fundamental question: Is shishi, particularly Du Fu’s shishi, a proper vehicle for the principle of “praise and blame” from the Spring and Autumn Annals? Or, put another way: Can the type of critique found in the Annals be applied to literary works conditioned by different historical settings—in the present case, the historical situation of the Tang? And, by extension, can this critique be applied to other historical contingencies, such as those of Ming–Qing times? We find the answer, in the affirmative, not in the essay under discussion but in one of Qian’s most labored-over scholarly projects: the Qian zhu Dushi 錢注杜詩 (Qian Qianyi’s Annotation and Commentary of Du Fu’s Poetry).44 Qian began this book in his prime, continuing it late into life, and carrying it out even on his deathbed. The results of more than forty years of Qian’s scholarly investment were published posthumously.45 In Qian’s exegeses of Du Fu’s poetry, we find him using critical analyses not unlike those employed in the Annals’ commentaries; didactic intent and rhetorical devices are interpreted in terms of the “writing style of the Spring and Autumn Annals” and “subtle words.” We give a few examples of such applications. In the gloss of the official title “Puye” 僕射 in “Xin’an li” 新安吏 (The Official at Xin’an), Qian speaks of an implicit criticism embedded in subtle wording: After Fenyang [Guo Ziyi 郭子儀; 697–781] was defeated at Jueshui, he presented himself to the imperial court and begged for a demotion.

30

The poet-historian Qian Qianyi Consequently, he was demoted to the position of Vice Director of the Left [of the Imperial Secretariat]. Not long after, he was appointed to the additional post of Minister of Education, and later was promoted Director of the Secretariat. Here he is still called “Vice Director” in view of his defeat in Xiangzhou. Designating him by the official title he received on his demotion follows the “writing style” of the Spring and Autumn Annals. In “Xi bingma,” he is addressed differently, as “Minister Guo.” 汾陽初敗於潏水, 詣闕請貶. 降為左僕射, 已而加司徒, 進中書令. 此復稱僕射者, 本相州之潰. 舉其初貶之官, 亦春秋之書法也. 〈洗兵馬〉則目之曰郭相.46

In the gloss of “Lü Shang” 呂尚 in “Xi you” 昔遊 (An Outing in the Past), Qian maintains that “subtlety” in the spirit of the Annals is observable in Du’s composition: This probably refers to Master Fang [Guan 房琯; 697–763], who was first removed from his ministry, and afterwards enfeoffed by imperial decree the Duke of Qinghe Prefecture. The suggestion is that when [Fang Guan] was enfeoffed a territory for his own, his career as a high minister was also brought to an end. From “Chushan” onwards, [Du Fu] expresses his disappointment at being overlooked. It is difficult to determine whether the flow of meaning continues or not. This is what we call “[entries about Dukes] Ding and Ai contain many subtle words.” 似指房公罷相後, 冊封清河郡公也. 言國邑雖封, 而相業則已矣. 楚山以下, 自傷其不遇也. 其文意似斷續不可了, 所謂定哀多微詞耳.47 In the commentary on “Dongri Luocheng bei ye Xuanyuanhuangdimiao” 冬日洛城北謁玄元皇帝廟 (On a Winter Day I Traveled to the North of the City of Luoyang to Pay a Visit to the Temple of Emperor Xuanyuan), Qian expounds on Du Fu’s rhetoric of “subtlety” and “praise and blame”: The four lines starting with “pei ji” say that it was improper for the rites pertaining to the Ancestral Temple [of the Imperial House] to be employed at the Xuanyuan Temple. The four lines starting with “bi wa” satirize the fact that the configuration of the temple halls went far beyond the standard rules. The line “shijia yi jiushi” points out that the Records of the Grand Historian does not place [Laozi] in the section of “Hereditary Houses” [where the biography of Confucius is located]. Despite the fact that during the Kaiyuan era, [Laozi] was moved up to head the section of “Biographies” by imperial decree, Laozi still could not be elevated to “Hereditary Houses.” These are [Du Fu’s] “subtle words.” The line “daode fu jinwang” intimates that even though the Xuanzong emperor produced an annotation of the Daode jing, and patronized and promoted Daoism, he may not have known the essence of the Way and Virtue. These are also “subtle words.” The lines following “huashou” describe the paintings [of Laozi in the temple] by Wu [Daozi;

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c. 700–760]: fringes of pearls are placed on the crown, while banners and pennons [around the figure], all designed to dazzle the senses, almost like child-play. The kernel of the “five-thousand-words” from Laozi lies in quietism and inaction, ruling a state or cultivating one’s self. Accordingly, when [Laozi] retreated from the world, the Zhou dynasty degenerated; and when the book of Laozi prevailed, the Han dynasty flourished. Even if [Laozi] had lived [till the Tang], he would have concealed his name and played the fool. He would never agree to be portrayed, at someone’s discretion, as a demon or a deity or whatever, availing himself of the worship of the ruler. The four lines following “shen tui” show most pertinently the criticism of the whole poem. 佩極四句, 言玄元廟用宗廟之禮, 為不經也. 碧瓦四句, 譏其宮殿踰制也. 世家遺舊史, 謂《史記》不列于世家. 開元中勅升為列傳之首, 然不能升之于世家. 蓋微詞也. 道德付今王, 謂玄宗親注《道德經》及置崇玄學, 然未必知道德之意. 亦微詞也. 畫手以下, 記吳生畫圖, 冕旒旌旆, 炫耀耳目, 為近于兒戲也. 老子五千言, 其要在清靜無為, 理國立身, 是故身退則周衰, 經傳則漢盛. 即令不死, 亦當藏名養拙. 安肯憑人降形, 為妖為神, 以博世主之崇奉也. 身退以下四句, 一篇諷諭之意, 總見于此.48 Besides its employment of the Spring and Autumn Annals type of critique in reading Du, Qian zhu Dushi has yet another dimension of shishi that interests us. As has been observed, Qian’s book created a new paradigm in poetry commentary on Du Fu. A score of Qing-dynasty scholars, in its wake, adopted Qian’s model in their exegeses of other poets such as Li Shangyin 李商隱 (813–58) and Su Shi 蘇軾 (1038–1101). In the long and immensely rich tradition of poetic criticism of Du Fu, Qian’s book is distinctive for its erudition and its historicist approach to the poetic texts: Qian historicizes Du’s poetic expressions by anchoring and explicating them in the context and terms of contemporary, Tang-dynasty history and politics; and, conversely, enriches our understanding of Tang times with the details given in Du’s poems. Qian’s commentary and annotation of Du marked a new development in late-imperial Chinese hermeneutics, which has been characterized as “using history to testify to poetry” (yi shi zheng shi 以史證詩) and “using poetry to flesh out history” (yi shi zheng shi 以詩證史). Despite its scholarly character and ambitions, Qian zhu Dushi is also known for its lyrical quality, and, more intriguingly, because certain readings of Du in Qian’s book are believed to be self-serving and self-focused. It has been suggested that Qian took liberties with history—the Tang history contained in Du’s poetry—to criticize the political situation of the late Ming period; and to gloss (or gloss over, if you will) his own experiences during the Ming–Qing changeover. Qian’s younger contemporary and friend, Fang Wen 方文 (Erzhi 爾止; 1612–69), opined: “Yushan’s [Qian’s] commentary of Du came after his debacle in the Secretariat elections. Qian’s commentary is

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

peppered with veiled criticism [of contemporary political events and figures]; he purposefully expresses it through Du’s poetry” (虞山箋杜詩, 蓋閣訟之後, 中有指斥, 特借杜詩發之).49 Chen Yinke has put it this way: If you look closely at the longer comments that Muzhai [Qian] produced, you will find that all of them are meant to quietly use the historical events of the Tang dynasty to comment on the contemporary historical events of the Ming. And, what’s more, Qian exerts himself there to give meaning to his own situations against the shifting political currents of the late Ming. His commentary is itself a marvelous literary work that fuses classical and contemporary allusions together. 細繹牧齋所作之長箋, 皆借李唐時事, 以暗指明代時事, 并極其用心抒寫己身在明末政治蛻變中所處之環境. 實為古典今典同用之妙文.50 In this connection, we are to understand, for example, the sympathetic portrayal of Li Mi 李泌 and Fang Guan of the Tang as lamenting his own plight in the late-Ming power struggles, from which Qian often emerged defeated; that criticism of the Xuanzong 玄宗, Suzong 肅宗, and Daizong 代宗 emperors of the Tang house in Du’s poetry is analogously transferable to the rulers of the late Ming, particularly the Chongzhen emperor; that sharp words on Helan Jinming 賀蘭進明 and Li Fuguo 李輔國 of the Tang are meant also to condemn such figures as Wen Tiren 溫體仁 and Zhou Yanru 周延儒, Qian’s political rivals in the Ming imperial court; and that ruminations on the Tang generals’ using foreign troops to save the Tang dynasty from the An Lushan Rebellion are to shed light on the Ming general Wu Sangui’s 吳三桂 alliance with the Manchus in suppressing the rebel forces led by Li Zicheng 李自成. In his commentary on Du’s poem-series “Qiuxing” 秋興 (Autumn Thoughts), Qian exclaims: “This old man does not forget his emperor even though he is becoming very old. A thousand years have since past, but we two can really face each other and weep” (此翁老不忘君, 千歲而下, 可以相泣也).51 Critics have read Qian’s self-identification and undying loyalty to the Ming rulers in these words. The elements of Ming loyalism and self-invention in Qian’s critique of Du have gained much critical attention, but it is not widely known that certain aspects of Qian’s commentary betray a somewhat accommodating and compromising attitude toward the Manchus, as well. In his critique, a cultural, rather than racial, position known as “transforming the barbarians with the Xia [Chinese] civilization” (yong Xia bian yi 用夏變夷) from the Spring and Autumn Annals is intimated.52 All in all, in this textual strategy of “manipulating the past to symbolize the present” (jie gu yu jin 藉古喻今), Qian fuses multiple layers of meaning together in his “creative” criticism of Du. The reader is invited to savor Qian’s comments not unlike a shishi poem. The involved meaning is at least twofold—a literal one based on Du’s original shishi: the history in Du’s poetry and Du’s poetry as history; and a metaphorical, or even allegorical,

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one coming from Qian’s fusing with Du: the shishi of the Tang dynasty drives the shishi of the Ming–Qing transition and Qian’s own life.

National trauma, shishi, yeshi and poetic witnessing in Song loyalist poetry Granted, shishi is practicable and desirable, worthy of the art of poetry, but was there an urgent need for its resurgence? Qian’s next move, which we might take as an answer to this question, is the most decisive thrust of the whole essay. He expounds on the historical imperative in the poetry of the Song–Yuan dynastic transition with a mind to ushering shishi back into the literary world of his own time. He addresses the poets and Ming loyalists among his contemporaries, rather than a general audience, reconceptualizing shishi in a yimin or loyalist context: Poetry of the Tang [style] declined in the Song [960–1279]. When the Song dynasty fell, poetry flourished. [Xie] Gaoyu’s [Ao] “weeping at Xitai,”53 [Lin?] Yuquan’s lament for “Zhuguo,”54 [Wang] Shuiyun’s “drunken songs,”55 and those “chants of Yue” in [the anthology of ] Guyin56 are like severe winter and freezing cold, swift wind, austere air, sorrowful laments, angry howling; all kinds of sounds, hustle and bustle. Poetry of the old and new [styles] all changed at this time, and all flourished at this time. Recently, the new history [composed by Cheng Minzheng] has gained wide circulation, but [in it] the historical events of Kongkeng57 and Yaishan,58 and the [legends of those] survivors and elder statesmen all disappear like ashes, vanish like smoke. However, if we look for them in the poems from those days, those personages are still perceptible, their events told. [Although those writings only survive] in scraps and in moth-eaten pieces, they will ascend to [the positions of the] sun and moon with the “books in the metal chest and the stone building.”59 [If you] say: “Poetry is not able to perpetuate history,” are you not lying? 唐之詩, 入宋而衰. 宋之亡也, 其詩稱盛. 臯羽之慟西臺, 玉泉之悲竺國, 水雲之苕歌,《谷音》之越吟, 如窮冬沍寒, 風高氣慄, 悲噫怒號, 萬籟雜作. 古今之詩莫變于此時, 亦莫盛於此時. 至今新史盛行, 空坑, 厓山之故事, 與遺民舊老, 灰飛煙滅. 考諸當日之詩, 則其人猶存, 其事猶在, 殘篇齧翰, 與金匱石室之書, 並懸日月. 謂詩之不足以續史也, 不亦誣乎?60 Here the idea of shishi is tacitly reoriented in a loyalist poetic tradition. The first part of this passage enumerates several noted poems by eminent Song loyalists, some of which attained the status of shishi in the poet’s lifetime, such as those by Wang Shuiyun 汪水雲 (1241–after 1317), and some of which gained the reputation of “unofficial history” (yeshi 野史) shortly after publication, like those from Guyin 谷音 (Tunes of the Recluse). Stylistically these poems by the Song loyalists are very diverse; some of them are explicit

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and clear in historical references, while others deliberately adopt an allegorical mode in order to be evasive. What they have in common is a historical import relevant to events in the Song–Yuan political, social, and cultural transition, treating a fallen Han-Chinese imperial house and the painful inception of a new, alien regime.61 The dissolution of the country and its culture drove many writers at the Song–Yuan transition to despair and depression. The turbulence they witnessed and experienced was analogous to what Du Fu had experienced during the An Lushan Rebellion. This couplet by Shu Yuexiang 舒岳祥 (1217–98) in “Ti Pan Shaobai shi” 題潘少白詩 (On Pan Shaobai’s Poetry) is vividly telling: 燕騎紛紛塵暗天 少陵詩史在眼前

Hordes of horses descend from the north, dust veils the heavens— I see Shaoling’s shishi as it naturally happens.62

And Du’s poetic model of shishi suited their purposes just as well. Shishi, yeshi or poetic witnessing emerged as a major preoccupation among the surviving Song subjects when they committed their thoughts and feelings to paper. All the poems cited in Qian’s passage have this character. Take Wang Shuiyun as an example. Wang Shuiyun’s given name was Yuanliang 元量 (zi Dayou 大有), Shuiyun being his style name. Wang was a court musician-poet for Empress Dowager Xie of the Song. When the Song house fell to the Mongols, he voluntarily accompanied the imperial family to Qubilai’s capital in Dadu (now Beijing), where he spent some ten years. Wang returned in 1288 to Jiangnan, to become a Daoist monk. Thereafter he traveled and bonded with various groups of Song loyalists. Painfully lyrical, often in extended song series, Wang versified many episodes of the destruction of the Song imperial house—the palace intrigues, the experiences of the imperial family on their journey to the Yuan capital, and the condition of the imperial family in Dadu. His contemporaries called his poems shishi, and Wang certainly deserved the credit.63 Wang wrote a nuanced poem entitled “‘Qie boming’ cheng Wenshan daoren” 妾薄命呈文山道人 (“Oh My Miserable Life”: Presented to Master Wenshan [Wen Tianxiang]).64 The persona of this poem is a chaste and loyal wife who urges her husband to fulfill the meaning of loyalty (zhong 忠) by sacrificing his life. She ends the poem by saying: 豈無春秋筆 為君紀其功

Don’t think no one possesses the Spring and Autumn brush— Be assured, your great deeds will be chronicled.65

Given that Wang presented the poem to Wen Tianxiang, who was at the time held captive by the Mongols in Dadu, it will not be amiss to consider the wife’s words here as embodying Wang’s emphatic zhi 志 (ambition), that he

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vows to take up the historian’s brush to record the exemplary deeds of loyal officials. In another poem, “Da Lin Shitian” 答林石田 (A Reply to Lin Shitian), Wang presents himself as a writer of yeshi: 我更傷心成野史 人看野史更傷心

I hurt so much that I had to write these yeshi, And people hurt more, reading my yeshi.66

While Wang modestly called his works yeshi, his contemporaries, as mentioned above, accorded them the stature of shishi. His friend Li Jue 李珏 (1219–1307) offers this comment in “Shu Wang Shuiyun shi hou” 書汪水雲詩後 (A Postface to Wang Shuiyun’s Poetry): One day, my friend Wang Shuiyun from Wu showed me his [Hushan] leigao, in which he relates the sadness of the demise of the country, the pain of needing to leave the motherland, and the pangs of hardship, melancholy and desolation—all this is expressed in his poems, which are subtle yet distinct, concealing yet revealing, plaintive yet not bitter; his laments illustrate profound grief, resounding even more loudly than bitter wailing, not even the poems from A Collection of Weeping Blood can compare to them. The events of the Tang house were recorded by Caotang [Du Fu], and people of later ages viewed those works by Du as shishi; Shuiyun’s poems are also shishi, of the demise of the Song house, and his poems emulate those of Caotang. Shuiyun’s feelings of melancholy and depression cannot be lightened, even graver than what Caotang had experienced. 一日, 吳友汪水雲出示《類稿》, 紀其亡國之戚, 去國之苦, 艱關愁歎之狀, 備見於詩, 微而顯, 隱而彰, 哀而不怨, 欷歔而悲, 甚於痛哭, 豈《泣血錄》所可並也? 唐之事紀於草堂, 後人以「詩史」目之, 水雲之詩, 亦宋亡之詩史也, 其詩亦鼓吹草堂者也. 其愁思壹鬱, 不可復伸, 則又有甚於草堂者也.67 Ideas and emphases from the commentarial traditions of the Spring and Autumn Annals and the Book of Odes are mustered here to exemplify the features of Wang’s figurative language. Most importantly, “subtle yet distinct” (and, by extension, “concealing yet revealing”) is taken directly from the five rhetorical principles of the Annals that Du Yu formulated (see above). And “plaintive yet not bitter” (ai er bu yuan 哀而不怨) is derived both from “plaintive yet not given to self-injury” (ai er bu shang 哀而不傷) and “bitter yet not indignant” (yuan er bu nu 怨而不怒),68 the time-honored “moral of the Odes” (shijiao 詩教) that recommends the virtue of emotional reserve and verbal cautiousness (see discussion below). What interests us most here is not Li Jue’s discussion of Wang’s literary sensibilities, per se. Rather, it is Li’s almost seamless synthesis of the critical elements from the Annals and Odes hermeneutic in the characterization, accurate or not, of Wang’s shishi. Or, put otherwise, he sees that there is a historical imperative in Wang’s lyricism,

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and the gravity of Wang’s poetry comes from—aside from Wang’s own chequered and unfortunate life—the hidden social commentary and criticism couched in an idiom of restraint. The emphasis on “praise and blame” and the alignment of the values of poetry and history in shishi by the Song loyalist writers made their view very close to Qian Qianyi’s vision of it during the Ming–Qing transition.69 And writers of the Song–Yuan transition were imaginatively innovative in fleshing out the spirit of “praise and blame.” For example, Wen Tianxiang, before he was killed by the Mongols, patched lines from Du Fu (ji Du 集杜) to make his own shishi, centos made entirely of Du’s originals. Wen writes in the self-preface to his Ji Dushi 集杜詩 (Centos Made of Du Fu’s Lines)—also known as Wenshan shishi 文山詩史 (Wen Tianxiang’s Shishi)—a collection of two hundred poems, accentuating the spirit of “praise and blame” in Du’s shishi and in his own “re-creation”:70 . . . What my heart wanted to say, Zimei had said it all before me. . . . Zimei and I were separated by several hundred years, but his words serve my purposes perfectly; it must be that we are akin in feeling and character! People in the past have dubbed him shishi because he employed the language of poetry to chronicle historical events, and what’s more, in his verse messages of disapproval and approval and praise and blame shine brightly, you might even call it history. My patched lines from Du illustrate all the troubles I experienced, as well as the changes of the world and human condition. However, in the beginning I did not aim to produce poetry. Historians in the age to come please take note of this. . . . 凡吾意所欲言者, 子美先為代言之. . . . 子美於吾隔數百年, 而其言語為吾用, 非情性同哉! 昔人評杜詩為詩史, 蓋其以詠歌之辭寓紀載之實, 而抑揚褒貶之意燦然於其中, 雖謂之史可也. 予所集杜詩, 自余顛沛以來, 世變人事, 概見於此矣. 是非有意於為詩者也. 後之良史, 尚庶幾有考焉.71 Wen could have expressed himself more clearly and forcefully were he to adopt Mencius’ famous quote of Confucius on composing the Annals, to this effect: “The original events concern the Tang dynasty, the style belongs to Du Fu, but I have appropriated the didactic quality of praise and blame therein to comment on our times.” Wen’s practice of making centos created a new poetic passion that attracted many followers; “patched lines from Du” became a serious and nuanced part of the literature of the Song–Yuan transition.72 That Du Fu’s voice speaks for others across time and history is testimony to Du’s literary immortality and the fact that Du and the Song loyalists lived through similar historical and human conditions.73 Wang Yuanliang, Wen Tianxiang and many others embraced shishi, in different forms, to give expression to their feelings and emotion and to register their criticism of current affairs.74 Observably, during the Song–Yuan transition many shishi became increasingly symbolic and allegorical, both in content and intention,75 while others

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were marked by an acute sense of historicity, laced with topical references. Whatever their disposition, the tones in which they were expressed are often the same: sorrowful and wounded. Commenting on Lin Jingxi’s 林景熙 (1242–1310) poetry, He Menggui 何夢桂 (1228–?) describes the overall aesthetic of poetry of the period in relation to shishi: I have brooded over the vicissitudes of poetry. Back in those days when we gathered in school we loved to talk in idealistic and hazy terms, . . . we shunned the Mutated Airs and Mutated Elegantiae, let alone those poems from Wei, Jin, Liang, Chen times onwards that are filled with distress and hurt as if spoken by commoners, young men of humble station, travelers, and widows. Then came the past ten years which saw the styles of the scholars’ poetry all changed into a tone of distress and hurt; my dear friend Jishan [Lin Jingxi] is no exception. Alas, is it that the world has abandoned literature, or, is it that literature has abandoned the world? People of the past and present regarded Du Shaoling’s poems as shishi; his poems, long and short, that are truly brilliant and unique resulted from his involuntary travels and wandering and emotional turmoil. I have read only thirty poems by Jishan—the wording and emotion are both delicate and sorrowful, one feels like a remnant from a past age reading them. . . . That is why I am so very touched by Jishan’s poetry, and that is why I am so very touched by the vicissitudes of poetry. 竊於詩之變而有感焉. 方庠序群居, 高談闊論, . . . 變風變雅, 不忍言之矣; 況復齒及魏, 晉, 梁, 陳以下, 窮苦愁怨等語, 如細夫, 窶人, 羈旅, 寡婦之為者! 相望十年間, 而士大夫聲詩率一變而為窮苦愁怨之語, 而吾霽山詩亦若此. 世喪文邪, 文喪世耶? 古今以杜少陵詩為詩史, 至其長篇短章橫騖逸出者, 多在流離奔走失意中得之. 霽山詩僅見三十篇, 其辭意皆婉娩悽惻, 使人讀之如異代遺黎. . . . 吾是以重有感於霽山之詩也, 吾是以重有感於詩之變也.76 This helps elucidate Qian Qianyi’s rather terse comment at the beginning of the passage under discussion, that “poetry of the Tang declined in the Song,” but “when the Song fell, poetry flourished.” He Menggui is understandably apologetic of the late Southern Song poets—he is in their rank—but later literary critics, Qian in particular, are often less merciful. They would endorse the opinion that the outlook of the poets was transformed greatly in the wake of the fall of the Song, but would certainly object to He’s glossing over the poets’ poor performance towards the end of the dynasty, which was remembered to have produced minor poetry, represented by the so-called Yongjia si Ling 永嘉四靈 (Four Lings of Yongjia) and Jianghu shipai 江湖詩派 (Rivers and Lakes Poetry School). The late Southern Song poets showed an “inward,” “everyday” turn, so to speak, submerged in their own miseries and treating often seemingly trivial subject matters (wind, cloud, moon, dew, monk, bamboo, tea, wine, so on and so forth).77 The Song philosopher Zhu

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Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) once exclaimed in talking about the late Southern Song poetry: “It emits such an aura of sick Qi!” (shi duoshao shuaiqi 是多少衰氣).78 It was the Song–Yuan dynastic changeover that forced the poets to look squarely at the larger world and their role in it. The intensity of thought, feelings and emotion translated into an imperative of poetic witnessing. And that was precisely the anxiety that “the world has abandoned literature” or “literature has abandoned the world”— humanity and civilization, metaphorically—that propelled the poets to transcribe their, and the world’s, experiences upon the pages of poetic writ, to reassure themselves of the meaning of their existence and survival, and to create a testimony and record for posterity. Shishi demands and commands both poetry and history to live up to its calling, and it became one of the most favored modes of poetic expression during the Song–Yuan transition. The political changeover and the ensuing transformation crisis caused widespread suffering, disorder and unrest both in the Song–Yuan and the Ming–Qing transitional epochs. Shishi explored the tragic dynamics and consequences and proved to be most powerful and potent when based on personal experiences. Wang Yuanliang is perhaps the most celebrated shishi writer from the Song–Yuan transition, for his verse is as much historical as it is autobiographical, articulating the public with the private. Qian Qianyi sees the virtue of combining the objective with the subjective in the shishi of the Ming–Qing changeover as well. In the same poem-series of 1656 in which Qian versifies Hu Zhiguo, Qian writes about Qian Chengzhi’s 錢澄之 (1612– 93) poetry: 閩山桂海飽炎霜 詩史酸辛錢幼光 束筍一編光怪甚 夜來山鬼守奚囊

Over the Min hills and the Gui sea you suffered much heat and cold; You endured hardship and toil to produce shishi, Qian Youguang. These many pieces comprise something very bright and peculiar— In the night, a mountain ghost comes down to guard the poetry bag.79

Qian Chengzhi’s poetry occupies a special role in one of Qian Qianyi’s own shishi endeavors. Around 1656, Qian Qianyi started assembling a volume of poetry entitled Wu zhi ji (A Collection of My Own Roast),80 which consists of poems that are especially appealing to him either for their refreshing aesthetic qualities or their particular historical value, or both. Qian Chengzhi’s inclusion, sixty-eight poems in all, in the collection81 is distinctive for its shishi element. Qian Chengzhi joined the Ming revival cause in Jiangnan and South China from 1645 to 1650; his poems in Wu zhi ji represent his suffering and trial in the Southern Ming partisan strife and then his hardship and sorrow while serving the fugitive Southern Ming courts in Guangxi and Guangdong. They also contain much inside information about the Ming resistance and the

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royal family. In a collection containing his poems from 1645 to 1648, the Shenghuan ji 生還集 (Survived), Qian Chengzhi urges the reader to view his poems, if not as shishi, as his “chronological biography” (nianpu 年譜): . . . I named this collection Survived to acknowledge my good fortune. The difficulties that I experienced, the testing course of my travels and travails, as well as the wonders of mountains and rivers, the peculiarities of customs and manners, the vicissitudes of the world and human life are all manifest in these pages. Dear readers of this book, please regard this as my chronological biography; it does not have to be called shishi. . . . 目曰《生還集》, 志幸也. 其間遭遇之坎壈, 行役之崎嶇, 以至山川之勝概, 風俗之殊態, 天時人事之變移, 一覽可見. 披斯集者, 以作予年譜可也, 詩史云乎哉.82 Qian Chengzhi’s intention to shape the poems into personal and national historical memories is obvious. His poems are littered with references to people’s names, place names and dates. To elucidate the events that led to the writing of the poems and to strengthen the expression of his feelings, Qian Chengzhi makes use of long titles and subtitles, explanatory additions and interlinear notes. These devices allow the reader to more readily relate to the poet’s experiences, but, more importantly, allow the poet to preserve information pertaining to the historical contexts.83 Qian Chengzhi’s precedents are apparent in such Song loyalist shishi writers as Wang Yuanliang and Shu Yuexiang.84 Wang Yuanliang would appear to be a good model for the poets of the Ming–Qing transition. However, in Ming times only a fraction of Wang’s verses were available. Much had been lost in the passage of time. It was Qian who accidentally recovered, in 1631, more than two hundred and twenty poems of Wang’s. (Apparently a copy of Wang’s poetry was in Qian’s family collection, and Qian chanced upon it when he was airing his books in the sun.) Qian writes in “Ba Wang Shuiyun shi” 跋汪水雲詩 (A Postface to Wang Shuiyun’s Poetry): “Huzhou ge” [consists of ] ninety-eight pieces, “Yuezhou ge” twenty, and “Zui ge” ten, in which [Wang] relates the events of the demise of the country and the [forced] move north [of the Song imperial family to the Yuan capital]; [the contents of the poems are] elaborate, [and their tones] sad—[Wang’s poems] can be seen as shishi. 〈湖州歌〉九十八首,〈越州歌〉二十首,〈醉歌〉十首, 記國亡北徙之事, 周詳惻愴, 可謂詩史.85 Qian’s opinion of the book is not unlike those of Wang’s contemporaries during the Song–Yuan transition: Qian considers Wang’s successful elaboration of historical events surrounding the disintegration of the Song house and Wang’s deep, sympathetic involvement with his subject to be the two defining features of Wang’s shishi.

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The second part of the passage in “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” under discussion explains why there is the need for a loyalist poetics. Qian asserts that poetry is more enduring and effective than history in times of crisis. To make his case, he critiques Cheng Minzheng’s 程敏政 (1445–99) Song yimin lu 宋遺民錄 (Records of the Song Loyalists).86 The Song yimin lu was a Ming compilation—completed in 1479, first published in 1525—but apparently it only gained wide circulation in the wake of the Manchu conquest. In this book Cheng collected writings and later eulogies of eleven Song loyalists who were not treated in official histories.87 He explained that he was upset by this omission, and hence labored to assemble the Song loyalists’ works for posterity. His book was the first of its kind in subject matter and format, and it covers the same era as do the loyalist poems mentioned above. Qian nevertheless accuses the book of failing to record certain significant personages and events (qiren 其人, qishi 其事), such as the end of the Southern Song and the activities of Song loyalists. Besides the passage under discussion, Qian also complains in an earlier essay, “Ji Yuequanyinshe” 記月泉吟社 (About the Chanting Club of the Moonlit Fountain): Cheng Keqin [Minzheng] of the present dynasty [the Ming] compiled the Song yimin lu, . . . yet only eleven personages are recorded therein. . . . Of the undocumented literature and the barely known events that I have come across in reading, no fewer than several dozen [Song] loyalists from the areas of Wu and Yue [should have been accounted for]. I intend to assemble these materials to make up for the deficiencies of the new history. . . . 本朝程克勤輯《宋遺民錄》 . . . 僅十有一人. 余所見遺民逸事, 吳 , 越間遺民已不啻數十人 , 欲網羅之 , 以補新史之闕. . . .88 Qian contends that these details can be reconstructed from the Song loyalists’ verses. The rhetorical question placed at the very end of the passage recapitulates the whole of Qian’s thesis, that poetry exceeds history.

Historical memory, emotion and creativity: Shishi at the Ming–Qing dynastic changeover Above, we have considered the first half of Qian’s essay in the larger contexts of literary and intellectual traditions; discussed the propensity of shishi to weld the values of history into poetry, as well as the difficulties Qian encountered in advancing his agenda; and observed how Qian reoriented shishi in the historical condition of Song loyalism. In the second half of the essay, Qian brings the idea of shishi home, to the Ming–Qing dynastic changeover, with greater emphasis on historical memory, emotion and creativity. He addresses his contemporaries while musing over the expressive qualities of Hu Zhiguo’s poetry: Since the recent catastrophe, I do not write poems any more. Even when I

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happen to look over someone else’s poem, I feel so heavy-hearted that I can seldom read to the end. I met Hu Zhiguo in Jinling and read his recent works. The thoughts of the poems are somber, and the words melancholy. They are so distressing and sorrowful that I could not help but sigh and sob, as if intoxicated with grief, and pace to and fro, as if at a loss. It was like listening to the lute of Yongmen, the chanting of Zhuang Xi, or feeling myself carried away by Miss Cai’s song. Zhiguo edited his own poems and characterized their spirit with the word “subtlety.” What profound sentiment! He must have known sorrows and troubles! The [Zuo] Commentary [on the Spring and Autumn Annals] says that the Spring and Autumn has “Deviated Rhetorical Principles,” and [the Gongyang Commentary says:] “[The entries about Dukes] Ding and Ai contain many subtle words.” [In this light,] the great import of history also hinges on subtlety. The mutations of the two Elegantiae bring forth [such lines as] “The glorious Zhou capital” and “There is a crow that wishes to land.” The language of poetry has become quite explicit. Nevertheless, explicitness brought about by exposing everything is not necessarily candor, while exercising restraint and subtlety does not necessarily end up in obscurity. Be it explicit or be it subtle, it is mere leaves and branches of rhetoric, it is not the roots and origins in writing poetry. One should broaden one’s learning to enrich one’s sources; nourish Qi to support one’s will; start with a heart that is loyal, filial, and humane; and mold oneself through the lesson of “gentleness and genuineness” [from the Book of Odes]. [Poetry] originates from one’s nature and affections, and learning; but its roots lay in the ultimate subtlety in the mutations of the oppressive Yin and the regenerative Yang forces between heaven and earth. Subtlety! Subtlety! I can speak of poetry only with one who understands this! Zhiguo draws on old traditions and sets his mind firmly on learning: he is earnest and erudite. He cuts and trims, revises and corrects his poems. Those he finds banal or frivolous, he discards. From here he should press on, immerse himself in the art and gain mastery of it. Zhiguo will present an example for those who talk about shishi in the future. They will say: “After the Tianbao era of the Tang dynasty, we find once again, [in Zhiguo], pieces like [Du Fu’s] ‘Zhaoling’ and ‘Beizheng.’ ” Would it not be delightful? I am already in my declining years, but I take heart and wait for Zhiguo’s poetry. 余自刦灰之後, 不復作詩. 見他人詩, 不忍竟讀. 金陵遇胡子致果, 讀其近詩, 穆乎其思也, 悄乎其詞也. 愀乎悠89 乎, 使人為之欷歔煩酲, 屏營徬徨, 如聽雍門之琴, 聆莊舄之吟, 而按蔡女之拍也. 致果自定其詩, 歸其指于微之一字. 思深哉! 其有憂患乎? 傳曰: 《春秋》有 “變例”, “定, 哀多微詞”. 史之大義, 未嘗不主于微也. 二雅之變, 至于 “赫赫宗周”, “瞻烏爰止”,

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi 《詩》之立言, 未嘗不著也. 揚之而著, 非著也; 抑之而微, 非微也. 著與微, 修詞之枝葉, 而非作詩之本原也. 學殖以深其根, 養氣以充其志, 發皇乎忠孝惻怛之心, 陶冶乎溫柔敦厚之教. 其徵兆在性情, 在學問; 而其根柢則在乎天地運世, 陰陽剝復之幾微. 微乎! 微乎! 斯可與言詩也已矣. 胡子汲古力學, 深衷博聞. 其為詩, 翦刻陶洗, 刊落凡近. 過此以往, 深造而自得之, 使後世論詩史者, 謂有唐天寶而後, 復見 〈昭陵〉,〈北征〉之篇, 不亦休乎! 余雖老而耄矣, 尚能磨厲以俟之.90

Which expressive qualities in Hu Zhiguo’s poetry elicit such a strong emotional response from Qian? The answer is intimated characteristically in a series of allusions to the lore of music: the particular, classical analogies that Qian draws between Hu’s verse and the legends of Yongmen 雍門, Zhuang Xi 莊舄, and Cai Yan 蔡琰. Yongmen of the Warring States era (403–221 ) was not only well known for his wonderful performance on the lute but also for his relentless criticism of Lord Mengchang, the famous princely patron. When the two men met, Yongmen criticized Mengchang’s indulgence in sensual pleasures and his reckless diplomacy. Yongmen played for the prince, rendering his criticism into a string of soul-stirring musical notes. The prince shed tears, saying: “Your playing of the lute, Sir, makes me feel as if I were a man of a ruined state whose domain is lost” (先生之鼓琴, 令文立若破國亡邑之人也).91 Also of the Warring States era, Zhuang Xi was a native of Yue, but he served the court of Chu in a prominent position. The people of Chu thought he must be content with his life in their state, considering Zhuang’s rather humble origin in Yue. Yet on the occasion when Zhuang fell ill, filled with nostalgia, he could not refrain from chanting the tunes of Yue, expressing yearnings for his homeland.92 Cai Yan (Wenji 文姬; b. c. 178 ), a highborn, talented young widow from the Eastern Han, was abducted by troops during a civil war and became a prisoner, held in detention by the Southern Xiongnu “barbarians.” She was married to one of the Xiongnu leaders and bore him two sons. After living among the Xiongnu for twelve years, she was ransomed back to the Han. Three autobiographical poems traditionally attributed to her tell of her traumatic abduction and her involuntary stay among the Xiongnu.93 Qian alludes to the longest of the three, “Hujia shi ba pai” 胡笳十八拍 (Song of the Barbarian Reed-whistle). Certainly the Ming loyalists would feel for Lord Mengchang, Zhuang Xi, and Cai Yan, for they themselves were now truly subjects of a fallen state, their “homeland” lost and having to live among the “barbarians.” Defeat, nostalgia, and indignation permeate their lyrics.94 The remark “What profound sentiment” (si shen zai 思深哉), seemingly casual in classical Chinese, is actually a line from a famous passage in the Zuo Commentary. Qian is making an implicit reference to yet another piece of

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classical music lore, coupling aesthetics with politics. As the story goes, Prince Zha 公子札 of Wu could intuitively apprehend the particular moral qualities of a certain state by listening to its music. On a ceremonial visit to Duke Xiang of Lu in 543 , the Prince requested that the Duke’s musicians perform the music of Zhou for him. His comment on the music of the Tang95 holds the greatest interest for us, because he said: “What profound sentiment! The Tang inherited some leftover subjects from the tribe of Taotang, didn’t they? Otherwise, how could [their odes] express such deep sorrows? How could they have such odes if they were not the descendants of virtuous ancestors?” (思深哉! 其有陶唐氏之遺民乎? 不然, 何憂之遠也? 非令德之後, 誰能若是).96 Qian effectively appropriates this comment to characterize the survivors of the Manchu conquest—like Hu Zhiguo and himself, they are “leftover subjects” of the fallen country, their “ancestors,” the Ming rulers, were virtuous, and their poetry communicates a strong sense of nostalgia and melancholy.

Anxiety and criticism of the grand master It should be apparent by now that Qian’s discussion of Hu Zhiguo’s poetry revolves around a “fallen state” (wangguo 亡國). Even Qian’s citations from the Book of Odes—“The glorious Zhou capital,” “There is a crow that wishes to land”—return to this theme. Both lines come from the poem “Zhengyue” 正月 (Mao no. 192), the former from the eighth stanza and the latter from the third. At first glance, the quotations might appear to be random, given as examples of a certain type of poem in the Book of Odes. Why, then, does Qian not present the two lines in their original sequence, first the line from the third stanza and then the line from the eighth? After examining the respective stanzas of “Zhengyue” in their entirety, we come to realize that these two lines serve a special purpose. They define the anxiety that plagued a particular group of survivors: the former high officials of the Ming court. “Zhengyue” is narrated through the voice of a Grand Master (Dafu 大夫). (One is reminded that Qian was Minister of Rites of the Southern Ming, a “grand master” himself.) According to tradition, there are two possible dates for this poem: one points to the eve of the destruction of the Western Zhou dynasty, and the other the period shortly after the destruction.97 The third stanza of “Zhengyue” reads: 憂心惸惸 念我無祿 民之無辜 并其臣僕 哀我人斯 于何從祿 瞻烏爰止 于誰之屋

My heart is laden with depression and worry, I brood over my ill fortune. These people are innocent, Yet enslaved they will be, their servants along with them. Oh, how miserable I am! Where will I get support from? There is a crow that wishes to land, But on whose house?

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And the eighth stanza reads: 心之憂矣 如或結之 今茲之正 胡然厲矣 燎之方揚 寧或滅之 赫赫宗周 褒姒滅之

Alas, my heart is distressed, As if it were knotted up. The rule of the current court— How unruly, harsh it is! The flames are rising, Will there be one to put them out? The glorious Zhou capital Is destroyed by Bao Si!98

According to the “Xiaoxu” 小序 (Minor Preface) to the poem: “In ‘Zhengyue,’ a Grand Master satirizes King You” (正月, 大夫刺幽王也). Traditional commentaries ascribe to the poem two interrelated subjects of criticism: the miseries and decline of the kingdom; and King You’s infatuation with his favorite concubine, Bao Si, a Helen-like temptress whose beauty brought warring and destruction. Anxieties over the fate of the imperial house and its people and criticism of the government are evident in these two stanzas. The “crow” in the third stanza is a fitting symbol for the grieved official facing the impending dissolution of the country. Criticism of Bao Si and, implicitly, King You appears in the eighth stanza, particularly in the last two lines. The initial line of the run-on couplet, which Qian quoted, invokes the second line like a refrain. It is noteworthy that Qian cites these lines out of order, an act that both minimizes the importance of the order of the stanzas and substitutes a mini-narrative of Qian’s own devising: 赫赫宗周 褒姒滅之 瞻烏爰止 于誰之屋

The glorious Zhou capital Is destroyed by Bao Si! There is a crow that wishes to land, But on whose house?

The kingdom has been destroyed, or is on the brink of destruction. The kingdom’s subjects, particularly court officials like the speaker of the poem, are destitute. This cutting-and-pasting not only makes “Zhengyue” conform more snugly with the references to loyalists who long for the lost state, but it also accentuates the poem’s political element. In this connection, more has to be said about “Zhengyue” in relation to the “Daxu” 大序 (Great Preface) to the Book of Odes. The “Great Preface,” elaborating on the suggestive powers of poetry in terms of music, maintains there are three “tones”: (1) “The tones of a turbulent age are bitter and indignant, attesting that its government is chaotic” (亂世之音怨以怒, 其政乖); (2) “The tones of a fallen state are plaintive and contemplative, attesting that its people are in distress” (亡國之音哀以思, 其民困). These two are the opposite of (3), the one heard in times of peace

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and order: “The tones of a peaceful age are calm and joyful, attesting that its government is harmonious” (治世之音安以樂, 其政和).99 Traditionally, poems that represent the “tones of a peaceful age” were idealized as “Orthodox” (zheng 正), whereas those that reflect “a turbulent age” or “a fallen state” are regarded as “Mutated” (bian 變).100 The social realities leading to the appearance of Mutated poems have been accounted for in the “Great Preface” as well. They emerged from historical and social upheaval: When the kingly way declined, rites and righteousness fell into oblivion, and the government lost its sway over people’s minds. As a result, states had different practices and families varied customs. This gave rise to the appearance of Mutated Airs and Mutated Elegantiae. 至於王道衰, 禮義廢, 政教失, 國異政, 家殊俗, 而變風 , 變雅作矣.101 In accordance with traditional criticism, Qian cites “Zhengyue” as an example of Mutated Elegantiae (er ya zhi bian 二雅之變), and revisualizes it as one which exhibits the “tones of a fallen state.”102 In the whole Book of Odes, the Mutated poems contain the most explicit historical and social references, and thus enable the reader to associate the poems with concrete historical events. Critical tradition has always read a didactic intent in the Mutated poems. The exegesis in the Book of Odes of the Han dynasty takes full advantage of the textual evidence of the Mutated poems. (In actuality, in the spirit of allegoresis and historicism, it often takes liberties.) “Zhengyue” is the second poem in a group of ten headed by “Jie Nanshan” 節南山.103 The “Prefaces” advise that eight of these ten poems are composed to satirize King You, who was blamed for the final demise of the Western Zhou dynasty. Among these eight poems, five are narrated in the voice of the Grand Masters, “Zhengyue” being the first. Based on the historical, social, and cultural realities leading to the appearance of the Mutated poems, Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200 ) of the Eastern Han proposes a chronology of the different sections of the Book of Odes in his Shi pu 詩譜 (Chronological Tables of the Odes). As for the Mutated Airs and the Mutated Elegantiae, Zheng asserts: After [King Yi], there came King Li and King You. Government and teaching became particularly corrupt, and the Zhou house was on the brink of total collapse. Such songs as “Shiyue zhi jiao,” “Min lao,” “Ban,” and “Dang” all appeared at once. The different states were in disorder, and [songs of ] satire and criticism followed upon each other. In the last days of the Five Hegemons, the Son of Heaven and the earls in the regions became equally powerless. Who was there to encourage the good, to condemn the evil? Law and order came to naught. In view of this, Confucius compiled those songs from the eras of King Yi 懿 and King Yi 夷, ending with the poem concerning the licentious affair of

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi Duke Ling of Chen. These poems are known as Mutated Airs and Mutated Elegantiae. 自是 [懿王] 而下, 厲也, 幽也. 政教尤衰, 周室大壞, 〈十月之交〉,〈民勞〉,〈板〉,〈蕩〉勃爾俱作, 眾國紛然, 刺怨相尋. 五霸之末, 上無天子, 下無方伯, 善者誰賞, 惡者誰罰, 紀綱絕矣! 故孔子錄懿王, 夷王時詩, 訖於陳靈公淫亂之事, 謂之變風 , 變雅.104

“Shiyue zhi jiao,” an example of the Mutated Airs and Elegantiae, also belongs to the group of “Jie Nanshan,” and it appears directly after “Zhengyue.”105 Both Zheng Xuan and Qian Qianyi invoke the same group of poems in the Book of Odes to illustrate the characteristics of the Mutated poems. Zheng Xuan’s historicist stance is fully apparent in the manner in which he attributes political and social meanings to the odes. Most importantly, Zheng Xuan maintains that Confucius included the Mutated poems in the anthology to “encourage” (shang 賞) the good and to “condemn” (fa 罰) the evil. Qian taps the powers of didacticism, historicism, and allegoricism in this imposing, long-lasting hermeneutic tradition to formulate a kind of poetry that has the potential to become political and social criticism.106 Although Qian would certainly appreciate the moral-ethical aim behind the act of writing, he would not promote the manner of expression that goes with the Mutated poems, at least not that of “Zhengyue.” In Qian’s vision, as we have discussed above, the purposes of satire and criticism can be achieved by a poetic language much more restrained, symbolic and suggestive. In “Hu Zhiguo shi xu,” Qian is formulating a poetics of “subtlety,” a rhetoric of symbolism and euphemism akin to the one employed by Confucius in his Spring and Autumn Annals, the features of which we have visited above.

Identity crisis and the poetic self It is time to speculate on some of the implications of Qian’s essay for the particular difficulties faced by the survivors of the Ming–Qing political changeover. In word if not in deed, Qian identifies himself as a loyalist of the vanquished Ming empire, and, by extension, as an heir to the tribulations recorded by the Song loyalist poets whom he mentions. The Song and Ming loyalists were faced with analogous situations: they were subjugated by a foreign people, by force of military strength. For the Song it was the Mongols, and for the Ming, the Manchus. Both the Mongol Yuan and the Manchu Qing succeeded in dominating the entire Chinese nation. Never before the Mongols did any non-Chinese ruling group accomplish this enterprise. The fallen Song was remembered by its loyalists as an era of sovereign benevolence and flourishing culture, in spite of its military impotence and political debility. The Mongol conquest shook the Chinese people’s confidence in their cultural and political superiority. The circumstances of the

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Ming loyalists were even more bewildering than those of the Song loyalists. To begin with, the Qing imperial court’s policies caused considerable distress to those eminent Chinese who wished to remain non-committal to the new dynasty. Shao Tingcai 邵廷采 (1648–1711), a sympathetic historian of Southern Ming personages, remarked: Alas! The demise of the Ming is like that of the Song. Are not the Ming loyalists like their counterparts of the Song? I venture to say that they exhibited the same integrity of spirit, but the conditions of their times are somehow different. After the demise of the Song, the former minister Ma Tingluan (1223–89) and his like could still enjoy freedom in the cliffs and valleys for over ten years, no one forced them to come out [and serve the new imperial court]. Besides Xie Fangde (1226–89), who was indeed forced to come out and died as a result of it, I know of no other example. After the demise of the Ming, however, the surviving officials and upright gentlemen often had to seek refuge in the monastery, so as to sustain their will. Those who chose not to sometimes were obliged to accept public office. 於乎! 明之季年, 猶宋之季年也. 明之遺民, 非猶宋之遺民乎. 曰節固一致, 時有不同. 宋之季年, 如故相馬廷鸞等, 悠游岩谷, 竟十餘年, 無強之出者. 其強之出而終死, 謝枋得而外, 未之有聞也. 至明之季年, 故臣莊士, 往往避于浮屠, 以貞厥志, 非是, 則有出仕矣.107 Meanwhile, the ghost of the Ming continued to haunt them, enveloping them in a maze of murky memories and psychology. Zhu Yuanzhang 朱元璋 (r. 1368–98), the Founding Emperor of the Ming, vanquished the Mongols and re-established a strong and, above all, Chinese empire for his subjects. The Ming dynasty was remembered as an age that held promise of Chinese revival and resurgence of culture, and it enjoyed a longevity akin to that of the Song.108 Yet Chongzhen, the last Ming emperor in Beijing, was believed to have spoken these malevolent words before committing suicide: “It is all because the officials have failed me” (jie zhu chen zhi wu zhen ye 皆諸臣之誤朕也).109 Chongzhen laid all the blame for the doom of the empire on his officials. The loyalists who held official positions under the Ming lived in shame and guilt in the Qing, if they chose to live at all, and many took Chongzhen at his word. Of course, some felt misjudged, and turned bitter or even angry. We know, for instance, that some held Chongzhen partly responsible for the country’s demise, faulting his instability of mind and ruling incompetence.110 These loyalists internally resisted Chongzhen’s curse—they nevertheless remained loyal to the Ming, but to the Ming as a political, cultural, or ethnic identity, and not necessarily to Chongzhen (or later, the several ill-starred Southern Ming emperors and princes). Most Ming loyalists, I believe, felt ashamed of living under the Manchu regime; in them we find a strong element of denial and fantasy, a refusal to face the reality that the Ming was gone. In the first two decades of Manchu rule, many

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continued to entertain thoughts of a Ming revival. The Ming loyalists were tormented by senses of loss, shame, remorse, guilt, and bitterness, anger, hope, and fantasy, and their writings are tinged with all these sensations. What compelled them to write was an intense yearning to mourn, to defend, to criticize, or to record. Many articulated their innermost feelings and thoughts through the most ancient yet immediate, deeply personal yet universal, genre: poetry. Nevertheless, the Ming loyalist poets were faced with a dilemma similar to that of Confucius many centuries before—it would appear transgressive and inappropriate for them to openly criticize the former Ming emperors and high officials; and they might invite problems if they bluntly pointed out the evils of the current ruling house, the Qing. The art of subtlety and nuance should hold a special appeal for them. Viewed in this light, Qian’s entire essay can be seen as targeted at the Ming loyalists and their sympathizers, in their day and in the future. A promise to the loyalists and a guide to posterity, the message can be interpreted on three levels. First, it issues an assurance: Qian assures the Ming loyalists that posterity will remember them, through their writings, just as the Ming people remember the Song loyalists. It is meant to impress on every loyalist the urgent necessity to record. Second, there is a summons: Qian urges the Ming loyalists to write shishi, the most effective record of their times. Third, Qian offers a reading strategy for posterity: read between the lines to flesh out the Ming loyalists’ intent as embodied in those “subtle words.” For the loyalists, Qian’s promise is an immortality secured by writing a particular kind of verse, in a time when the loyalists were marginalized and had no authority except in the realm of letters and language. And of course, the writing of “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” might be an act of selfredemption on Qian’s part, too. Qian knew that if he could inscribe his own name on the monument of the loyalists, posterity would form a more favorable impression of him and save him from the disgrace he had to bear in his mortal life.

Propagation and mutation of the shishi idea Qian Qianyi may be shishi’s most eloquent advocate in the early Qing, but he was hardly alone in his persuasion. Shishi was a way of unburdening one’s soul favored by the whole generation of literati who witnessed the dynastic changeover. Wu Weiye (zi Jungong 駿公, hao Meicun 梅村),111 another brilliant poet of the Ming–Qing transition, committed himself to preserving history via poetry no less than Qian. In a preface written in 1660 for a friend’s collection of poetry, Wu expresses a view about the relationship between poetry and history of the remote past very similar to Qian’s: In ancient times, poetry and history were closely related. That is why, when the Son of Heaven collected poems, if the poems reflected the order

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and disorder of the times and the merits and demerits of the present government, even if they were by farmers or idle women, he would still without exception deposit them with the bureau of history. They did not have to be the compositions of officials. When the Grand Scribe submitted poems, if the poems reflected the order and disorder of the times and the merits and demerits of the present government, even if they were by farmers or idle women, he would still without exception present them to the Son of Heaven. They did not have to be about the history of the courts and the states. 古者詩與史通, 故天子採詩, 其有關於世運升降, 時政得失者, 雖野夫游女之詩, 必宣付史館, 不必其為士大夫之詩也. 太史陳詩, 其有關於世運升降, 時政得失者, 雖野夫游女之詩, 必入貢天子, 不必其為朝廷邦國之史也.112 And Wu took pride in his poems such as “Linjiang Cenjun” 臨江參軍 (The Adjutant of Linjiang; 1639?), his elegy for the Ming loyalist and martyr Yang Tinglin 楊廷麟 (?–1646), which he characterized as shishi.113 Qian and Wu were not Ming loyalists in the strict political sense of the word (both served the Qing), but their opinions on the bond between poetry and history were shared by many staunch Ming loyalists, of the same generation or even the much younger one, such as Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610–95) and Qu Dajun 屈大均 (1630–96). Huang Zongxi writes contentiously in his preface to Wan Tai’s 萬泰 (1598– 1657) collection of poetry: In my opinion, Mr [Wan]’s poetry ought to be published at once and without delay. There are people who commend Du Fu’s poetry, regarding it as shishi; no doubt they are unerring. It is obvious to me that the commentators of Du Fu’s poetry use history to validate Du’s poetry, but to my knowledge none of them uses Du’s poetry to make up for the deficiencies of history. We speak of shishi; of course the raison d’être of history does not come from poetry. But when we reach a time of great devastation, the official historiographers of the East Temple and the Orchid Tower114 only care to record those grand narratives. But if the world is not completely destroyed and orthodox teaching persists, often it is owing to [the efforts of ] the people of a fallen state. Their hearts bleed; their blood dries up like the morning dew. Thereupon history vanishes. It is fortunate that private writings are still composed in remote places; sorrowful words will not easily disappear. All these sensations linger in those moldering sheets and that dim ink, now explicit, now implicit. [These words] are powerful enough to break the ground and make the soil fragrant. These writers must have known that when history comes to an end, poetry ensues. . . . When the Ming house collapsed, . . . it was not uncommon for us to hear distressful and sorrowful words from its officials, who sacrificed their lives; or from its subjects, who wandered dispiritedly amid

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi mountains and lakes. I have chanced to read the works of more than ten such persons: Shizhai [Huang Daozhou 黃道周, 1585–1646], Ciye [?], Jiezi [Huang Yuqi 黃毓祺], Xiazhou [Wu Zhongluan 吳鍾巒, 1577– 1651], Xisheng [Qian Sule 錢肅樂, 1606–48], Cangshui [Zhang Huangyan 張煌言, 1620–64], Mizhi [Fang Yizhi 方以智, 1611–71],115 and others. They were not commissioned to write, but their works ring with [feelings for] the fallen state and cannot but be viewed as history. Mr [Wan] was one of these ten or so people. For the better part of his life he did not write poetry. The poems we now have from [his collections of] Xusaotang, Hansongzhai, and Yue cao were all composed when he was living through his life’s adversities. He hid in places remote and somber, asked for the [stories of the] deceased and sought after the living. He was overwhelmed by turmoil and filled with nostalgia. No matter where he might be, he would collect the neglected stories and record the legends of those recluses. Eventually, Mr [Wan]’s poetry became doleful and gloomy and could not be lightened. . . . In this regard, Mr [Wan]’s poetry is true shishi, the kind of poems even Confucius would not strike from his anthology. 余謂先生之詩, 不可不急行也. 今之稱杜詩者以為詩史, 亦信然矣. 然註杜者, 但見以史證詩, 未聞以詩補史之闕; 雖曰詩史, 史固無藉乎詩也. 逮乎流極之運, 東觀, 蘭臺但記事功, 而天下之所以不毀, 名教之所以僅存者, 多在亡國之人物. 血心流注, 朝露同晞, 史於是而亡矣. 猶幸野制遙傳, 苦語難銷, 此耿耿者明滅於爛紙昏墨之餘, 九原可作, 地起泥香, 庸詎知史亡而後詩作乎?. . . . 明室之亡, . . . 其從亡之士, 章皇草澤之民, 不無危苦之詞. 以余所見者, 石齋, 次野, 介子, 霞舟, 希聲, 蒼水, 密之十餘家, 無關受命之筆, 然故國之鏗爾, 不可不謂之史也. 先生固十餘家之一也. 生平未嘗作詩. 今《續騷堂》, 《寒松齋》,《粵草》, 皆遭亂以來之作也. 避地幽憂, 訪死問生, 驚離吊往, 所至之地, 必拾其遺事, 表其逸民, 而先生之詩, 亦遂淒楚蘊結而不可解矣. . . . 故先生之詩, 真詩史也, 孔子之所不刪者也.116

Qu Dajun maintained: In the past, before the Spring and Autumn Annals was composed, [the Annals’] import resided in songs. When songs were no longer collected, their import was transposed to the Spring and Autumn Annals. In this light, the Spring and Autumn Annals was what Confucius composed to perpetuate the songs. Its import is the same as that of the songs. Without the Spring and Autumn Annals, the import of the songs would have been impenetrable. The songs are the classic, and the Spring and Autumn Annals its commentary. 昔者《春秋》之未作也, 其義在《詩》, 《詩》亡而其義乃在《春秋》. 故《春秋》者,

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夫子所以繼《詩》者也, 其義皆《詩》之義, 無《春秋》則《詩》之義不明.《詩》為經,《春秋》乃其傳也.117 And he urged: In the past Confucius composed the Spring and Autumn Annals to perpetuate [the tradition of ] the songs; although the [influence of the] songs subsided, the Spring and Autumn Annals succeeded. In this light, it was in the Spring and Autumn Annals that the songs found a new life. The Confucian gentlemen who live in an age of crisis and aim to document and compile [history] should first preserve the bygone era and after that what is surviving; if it is not possible by [the mode of ] the Spring and Autumn Annals, then one should preserve them by [the mode of] the Odes. 昔夫子作《春秋》以繼《詩》, 《詩》雖亡而《春秋》不亡. 故 《春秋》者, 《詩》之所賴以不亡者也. 士君子生當亂世, 有志纂修, 當先紀亡而後紀存, 不能以《春秋》紀之, 當以《詩》紀之.118 Like Qian Qianyi, both Huang and Qu rely on a link between history and poetry. Huang Zongxi holds that poetry supplements history, and that poetic works possessing a historical potency should be regarded as shishi. Qu Dajun dwells on the affinity between history and poetry, and contends that in a time of crisis, poetry supersedes history. In short, both Huang and Qu assert that poetry is an alternative—and, under certain circumstances, a superior— medium for preserving history and communicating historical truth. What is new in Huang and Qu’s essays is that they launch the argument in a specific time frame, the Ming–Qing transition, and associate shishi directly with the Ming loyalists. While this temporality is implied in Qian’s essay, Qian’s younger contemporaries spell it out. In this sense, the theoretical agenda initiated by Qian is further developed by figures like Huang and Qu. A profound thinker, Huang Zongxi was one of what Chinese scholars call the “Three Great Confucian Scholars” of the early Qing.119 Qian was deeply impressed by the moral courage and scholarship of Huang, with whom he formed a genuine friendship. Huang was also a poet in his own right. Qu Dajun was a native of Panyu (today Canton), far in the south of China proper. When he was eighteen Qu took part in the heroic and tragic resistance against the Manchus. He was an eccentric, brilliant poet-scholar whom Chinese scholars call one of the “Three Masters of Lingnan” of the Ming– Qing transition.120 Yet Qian Qianyi differed from Huang Zongxi and Qu Dajun in that he had more than a theory to offer. Besides what we have pondered above, two of Qian’s post-1644 major literary projects—one editorial and one creative— grew directly out of his imperative for shishi. After the fall of the Ming, Qian compiled the Liechao shiji 列朝詩集 (A Collection of Poems from the Different Reigns [of the Ming Dynasty]), a multi-volume anthology of Ming poetry that students of pre-modern

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

Chinese literature and history still find very useful.121 The Liechao shiji, however, was not an attempt to canonize Ming poetry; rather, Qian aspired to make it stand as the Ming’s shishi. The making of the anthology itself bridged the Ming–Qing dynastic changeover. The idea for the compilation grew up in the 1620s between Qian and his dear friend Cheng Jiasui 程嘉燧 (1565–1644).122 With the latter’s death, the project succumbed to the chaos of the time. After the fall of the Ming, Qian returned to the project with a new fervor. In a letter to a friend, Qian accounts for this impetus: After the dynastic changeover, I fear that the poetry of the Ming dynasty will soon be forgotten. I intend to model on Yuan Yishan’s Zhongzhou ji, assembling and editing [Ming poems] into an anthology, so that the spirit of the poets of the [Ming] dynasty can dwell on the pages. This will be a delight in my declining years. 鼎革之後, 恐明朝一代之詩, 遂致淹沒, 欲仿元遺山《中州集》之例, 選定為一集, 使一代詩人之精魂, 留得紙上, 亦晚年一樂事也.123 The anthology saw the light in 1652, and for it Qian composed a particularly impassioned preface: When the printing of the Lichao [Liechao] shiji124 that my student Mao Zijin undertook was complete, I stroked the volumes and sighed sadly. Mao asked: “Master, why did you sigh?” I said: “Did I? If so, I must have been thinking of Mengyang [Cheng Jiasui].” Mao asked: “Master, why did you sigh thinking of Mengyang?” I said: “Do you know where the idea of putting together these volumes of poetry came from? It came from Mengyang’s reading of the Zhongzhou ji. Mengyang had this to say: ‘In Yuan’s compilation, the poems are grouped under the poet, and each poet is given a biographical account. The poetry of the Zhongzhou ji is in effect the history of the Jin dynasty. I want to follow Yuan’s example and compile an anthology [of Ming poetry]. I will assemble the poems, and you will prepare the history—I trust you will find this agreeable.’ ” 毛子子晉刻《歷朝詩集》成, 余撫之, 愾然而歎. 毛子問曰: “夫子何歎?” 予曰: “有歎乎! 予之歎, 蓋歎孟陽 [程嘉燧] 也.” 曰: “夫子何歎乎孟陽也?” 曰: “錄詩何始乎? 自孟陽之讀《中州集》始也. 孟陽之言曰: ‘元氏之集詩也, 以詩繫人, 以人繫傳,《中州》之詩, 亦金源之史也. 吾將倣而為之. 吾以採詩, 子以庀史, 不亦可乎?’ ”125 The Zhongzhou ji 中州集 (Anthology of the Central Plain) is a collection of Jin dynasty (1115–1234) poetry compiled by Yuan Haowen 元好問 (zi Yishan 遺山; 1190–1257), a distinguished poet and scholar who witnessed the changeover from the Jin dynasty to the Yuan.126 The authoritative Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 四庫全書總目提要 (Annotated Catalogue of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries) describes the Zhongzhou ji: “This anthology

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assembles poems from all eras of the Jin dynasty. . . . Its organizational principle is that each poet is given a short biographical account, in which activities of the poet are detailed, and comments on his poems offered. . . . Its main purpose is to preserve history through poetry . . . ” (是集錄金一代之詩 . . . 其例每人各為小傳, 詳具始末, 兼評其詩 . . . 大致主於借詩 以存史 . . . ).127 Despite Qian’s self-professed claim to be following Yuan, Qian’s anthology differs significantly from Yuan’s in one respect: Qian’s Liechao shiji has an explicit political purpose.128 This is borne out in the anthology’s overall design, which Qian explains metaphorically: Mao asked: “The sections in Yuan’s anthology run from jia to gui; why does ours end with ding?” I said: “Gui means to return. In the hexagram [of the Book of Changes], it symbolizes restraint and concealment. Among the seasons, it designates the winter. When the months reach gui, it is otherwise known as ‘the end.’ Ding on the contrary suggests ripeness. A year represented [by ding] is called ‘the robust and vigorous.’ The myriad things flourish in bing, mature in ding, and exuberant in mao. Among the seasons, it is zhuming [the summer]. In one’s life, forty marks full maturity. [Ding] lies in the hour when the moon has not yet waned and the five stars double their brightness. [With ding] everything is in full blossom, glorious, sufficient, vigorous. [Ding] is the heart of heaven and earth, and with it the blossoming of literature is in full view.” Mao said: “May I ask, why you named it Collection rather than Selections?” I said: “It was my modest aim [to present the anthology as] a reference. The materials I included here reflect the manners and customs [of the people]. I excluded some superfluous and repetitive pieces, but strived to represent less known works and those not readily accessible. It is meant to represent the dispositions of the different reigns of the Ming dynasty and make manifest its literary trends. . . .” 曰: “元氏之集, 自甲訖癸; 今止於丁者何居?” 曰: “癸, 歸也. 於卦為歸藏, 時為冬令. 月在癸曰極丁. 丁, 北 [狀] 成實也. 歲曰疆圉. 萬物盛於丙, 成於丁, 茂於戊, 於時為 [朱明],129 四十強盛之時也. 金鏡未墜, 珠囊重理, 鴻朗莊嚴, 富有日新, 天地之心, 聲文之運也.” “然則何以言集, 而不言選?” 曰: “備典故, 採風謠, 汰冗長, 訪幽仄, 鋪陳明朝,130 發揮才調, 愚竊有志焉. . . .”131 In another place, Qian boldly declares: “I have appropriated [Confucius’] didactic principles to edit the poems [of the Liechao shiji].”132 The wording in the original, yu qie qu shanshi zhi yi 余竊取刪詩之義, alludes to Confucius’ enterprise in editing the Book of Odes (shan shi 刪詩), as well as what Confucius said about his Spring and Autumn Annals: “As to the didactic quality therein, I, Qiu, have appropriated it.” Qian intended to shape this copious corpus of Ming poetry into a living record of the Ming dynasty. The pages of verse are not meant to be specimens of a lost past, but a great well of

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

inspiration, its growth continuing. Qian imparted a wish to the Liechao shiji, to breathe new life into the perished Ming.133 The manner in which Qian dated this essay divulges his intention, too. The highly cryptic date reads: “This anthology was completed in the year of Xuanyizhixu, and the preface was written on the thirteenth day of its tenth month” (集之告成, 在玄黓執徐之歲, 而序作於玄月十有三日). Xuanyizhixu 玄黓執徐 is a roundabout way of saying Renchen 壬辰 (1652 by Western reckoning). In the Ganzhi 干支 system, Xuanyi stands for ren 壬, and Zhixu for chen 辰.134 Qian supplants the more conventional expression Renchen with Xuanyizhixu, I believe, for the latter’s markedly malleable literal meaning. Both characters in Xuanyi denote darkness or gloom. In Zhixu, zhi is to be understood as zhi 蟄, hibernating animals, and xu means to stretch out. These four characters thus create a picture of creatures becoming active and agile again after a long, dark hibernation. These roundabout images clearly anticipate a Ming resurgence. The sentence under discussion is expunged from the Youxue ji text. The blank space therein testifies loudly to the fact that Qian’s message is too politically sensitive to risk further exposure. And lastly, between 1659 and 1663, Qian himself produced the largest shishi in regulated verse form that classical Chinese literature had ever seen, or would see: one hundred and eight poems in all (Part 2 of this study will conduct close readings of three cycles of these poems). Collected under the title Toubi ji (Renouncing the Pen), these poems did not see the light until 1910, almost two and a half centuries after Qian’s death. They consist of thirteen cycles of seven-word regulated poems bearing the common title of “Hou ‘Qiuxing’ ” or “After ‘Autumn Thoughts.’ ” Qian was unambiguous in his wish to make these verses shishi. He emulated Du Fu, who in his forced wanderings in Sichuan caused by the An Lushan Rebellion composed the celebrated “Qiuxing” or “Autumn Thoughts,” in a series of eight poems, which he used to contrast the golden era of the Tang with the contemporary disintegration of society and to give expression to his feelings of loneliness and sorrow. The first cycle of Qian’s “After ‘Autumn Thoughts’ ” was dated August 18, 1659, and the last cycle appeared in June of 1663. Two supplementary poems were appended to the twelfth cycle, and another two to the thirteenth, as an afterthought. The year 1659 was all too significant in early Qing history. It was the year when Zheng Chenggong brought his formidable navy into the Yangzi River, vowing to recover China from the Manchu’s yoke. Zheng’s campaign marked the most—and the last—significant Ming-loyalist military resurgence that the Qing house had to face. The details of this historical panorama and Qian’s own feelings and thoughts became the chief materials of the first few cycles of the poems, but the collection did not end there. Qian’s poems continued into 1663, spanning the eventful years from Zheng Chenggong’s Yangzi campaign to Zheng’s death in Taiwan. Qian named the collection Toubi ji, in allusion to the

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expression toubi congrong 投筆從戎, “renouncing the pen for the sword.”135 He died one year after penning the last poem in the collection. No less an authority than Chen Yinke considered this corpus of poetry the shishi of the Ming–Qing transition, surpassing the achievement of Du Fu’s original.136 Qian ended the first cycle of “After ‘Autumn Thoughts’ ” by saying: 孝子忠臣看異代 杜陵詩史汗青垂

To make a model for filial sons and loyal officials for posterity, Du Ling’s shishi will be inscribed on the pages of history.137

This bespeaks more Qian’s personal ambition and intended image than it glorifies Du Fu. And, in all fairness, Qian’s Toubi ji must be considered as one of the pinnacles in the history of shishi, of Ming loyalist poetics, and of classical Chinese verse. However, because of its strong anti-Qing sentiments and the Qing censorship of all of Qian’s works in the eighteenth century, the Toubi ji remained unpublished (except for one cycle)138 and in relative obscurity until the dawn of the twentieth century, when, on the brink of the fall of the Qing dynasty, it became one of the spiritual and literary resources for the revolutionaries. Be it accurate or not, the revolutionaries did present Qian Qianyi to modern readers as a model of loyalty and commitment.

2

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times

Qian Qianyi and Wu Weiye as shishi writers As discussed in Chapter 1, although Qian Qianyi may be shishi’s most vocal and eloquent advocate in the early Qing, he was by no means the only poet who essayed and succeeded in it. We have mentioned Wu Weiye and Qian Chengzhi. Like Qian, Wu and Qian Chengzhi committed themselves to preserving history by virtue of shishi. Shishi was the kind of lyricism favored by the whole generation of survivors who witnessed the dynastic changeover to verbalize their feelings and unburden their memories of the Ming. Qian and Wu were good friends and had a great deal in common. Like Qian, Wu was conversant with the Spring and Autumn Annals at an early age.1 Like Qian, Wu passed the jinshi examination in his youth with flying colors and started his official career with the post of Junior Compiler at the Hanlin Academy. (Wu also held the adjunct position of Senior Compiler of the True Records Institute 修纂實錄官.) His early affiliation with official historiography earned him the respectable style-name Taishi 太史, hence Wu Taishi or Grand Historian Wu. After Beijing fell to the Manchus, he also accepted an appointment from the Hongguang court in Nanjing. However, Wu soon resigned his office, sensing that the Hongguang court was doomed. Under the Qing, he chose to lead a reclusive life until 1653, when circumstances compelled him to serve the Manchu court, to become an erchen like Qian—his biography is also placed in the disgraceful “Twice-serving Officials” section of the official Qing history. He eventually rose as high as Chancellor of the National University 國子監祭酒. Wu nevertheless remained a strong presence in literary and scholarly circles and was regarded as “a leader of the virtuous scholars of the country” (hainei xiandafu lingxiu 海內賢大夫領袖).2 A distinguished poet himself, Wu excelled in writing long songs (gexing ti), a form of Old Style poetry. After the Ming’s demise, Wu composed several dozen highly lyrical and expressive poems, in which he remembers his friends and lovers tenderly, impassionedly laments the disintegration of the dynasty, and, with great shame, regrets serving the Manchu court. His style was celebrated as “Meicun ti” 梅村體 or the Style of Meicun. Zhao Yi 趙翼

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times 57 (1727–1814), a historian and literary critic who lived about a century later, had this to say about Wu: Meicun himself witnessed the dynastic changeover, and many of his poems are concerned with major historical events of the time. Works like “Linjiang Cenjun” [The Adjutant of Linjiang] . . . are of enormous import. The stories are memorable themselves, and hence the poems about them are memorable as well. Meicun was obsessed with certain events and he exerted all his strength to compose several dozen poems. Within them he strived for [a literary] immortality. The poet chose subject matter with discernment, showing unusual sensitivity. Bai Xiangshan’s [Juyi] “Changhen ge,” Yuan Weizhi’s [Zhen] “Lianchanggong ci,” and Han Changli’s [Yu] “Yuhe shengde shi” are precedents of the same nature. 梅村身閱鼎革, 其所詠多有關於時事之大者. 如〈臨江參軍〉 . . . 皆極有關係, 事本易傳, 則詩亦易傳. 梅村一眼覷定, 遂用全力結撰此數十篇, 為不朽計, 此亦詩人慧眼, 善於取題處. 白香山 〈長恨歌〉, 元微之〈連昌宮詞〉, 韓昌黎 〈元和聖德詩〉, 同此意也.3 Zhao Yi succinctly displays the historical value of Wu’s poetry. Although Zhao sounds rather judgmental and disaffected, Wu would nonetheless have endorsed Zhao’s comment. Wu himself explicitly labeled his poems like “Linjiang Cenjun,” an elegy for the Ming loyalist and martyr Yang Tinglin, shishi:4 I knew Jibu [Yang’s zi] most intimately; while he served as an adjutant I stood by him much longer than his other friends. For this reason, what I have expressed in the poem is most genuine, and my account of his activities truly reliable. If you call it shishi I will not feel uncomfortable at all. 余於機部相知最深, 於其為參軍周旋最久, 故於詩最真, 論其事最當, 謂之詩史可勿愧.5 Some critics rank Wu’s accomplishments higher than Qian’s, paying particular attention to Wu’s shishi compositions. For instance, Cheng Muheng 程穆衡 (jinshi 1737), an early commentator on Wu’s collection of poetry, remarked: Of the late-Ming poets, Qian and Wu are often mentioned together as a pair of equals. There are, however, places where Qian simply cannot match Wu. Wu’s superb skill lies in employing the perfect diction to relate the event concerned. In the poem, not a single word lacks topical significance. Wu’s works are worth the epithet of shishi. 明末詩人, 錢吳并稱, 然錢有迥不及吳處. 吳之獨絕者, 徵詞傳事, 篇無虛詠, 詩史之目, 殆曰庶幾.6 Although I do not subscribe to the view that Wu was a finer poet—Cheng is

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comparing apples and oranges, since Qian’s regulated verse and Wu’s Old Style lyrics are made for different ends7—Cheng is nevertheless correct to confer the honor of shishi on Wu. Of all the comments on Wu’s poetry, I find this couplet by Chen Wenshu 陳文述 (1771–1843) to be the most expressive and pertinent characterization of Wu’s post-Ming poetry: 千秋哀怨托騷人 一代興亡入詩史

Grief and grievance of a thousand autumns seek expression by this poet, The rise and fall of the [former] dynasty enters his shishi.8

Throughout the Qing dynasty and in our time as well, Wu Weiye met acclamation thanks, in part, to the rich literary merits of his poetry and, in part, to the admiration of the most influential, self-appointed art arbiter of the eighteenth century, the Qianlong emperor.9 After reading Wu’s poetry, the emperor composed this poem: 梅村一卷足風流 往復披尋未肯休 秋水精神香雪句 西昆幽思杜陵愁 裁成蜀錦應慚麗 細比春蠶好更抽 寒夜短檠相對處 幾多詩興為君收

This collection of Meicun’s poetry is so rich in enticing charm— Over and over I turn the pages, simply can’t stop. Its spirit is pure as autumn water, and its lines are like fragrant snow; Its sensitivity comes from the Xikun style, its grief recalls that of Du Ling. The beauty of its texture puts even a Shu brocade to shame; So fine, it’s like silkworms in springtime, it reels out further and further. On a cold night by a table lamp, we face one another— I am completely enthralled by your verses.10

Qianlong shows some critical insight in calling attention to the elaborate style of Wu. Neither does the emperor fail to notice the strong sense of melancholy that permeates the poet’s lyrics. Wu had a genius for narration and description, with a vocabulary and meter of melodic and accessible musical appeal. Like Qian and many of his contemporaries, Wu was obsessed with the recent Ming history. But unlike Qian, who spoke of the Ming as if it were still alive, Wu told stories of the Ming as of a lost age, memories, in which Wu himself had a part. Wu and Qian differ even more markedly because Wu’s shishi shies away from sensitive political issues, particularly those concerning the changeover of the imperial authority from the Ming to the Qing.11 Wu’s shishi is devoid of Qian’s subversive powers and his potential threat to the Qing house. Thus, the Qianlong emperor could openly glorify Wu. Moreover, the virtues and values that Wu celebrates in his works resemble those Qianlong demanded of his officials in the 1770s and 80s (see below). For example, Wu ends “Linjiang Cenjun” with praise of Yang’s martyrdom:

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times 59 風雨懷友生 江山為社稷 生死無媿辭 大義照顏色

In all this rain and wind, how I miss you my dear friend— You had fought for the rivers and mountains of the imperial house. Be it life or death, you left no word of regret; Great righteousness glowed on your countenance.12

Yang Tinglin died fighting against the incipient Qing dynasty. His loyalty to the sovereign, held to the death, fulfills the Qianlong emperor’s ideal of an official. As will be shown below, Qianlong’s principle is that an official must be willing to sacrifice himself for his imperial house: Ming officials must die for the Ming, and Qing officials for the Qing, when circumstances demand it. Qianlong found no fault with the poets of the former Ming memorializing the fallen imperial house, as long as the Ming was conjured as a thing of the past, and provided that those poets did not bad-mouth the empire of the present age. This partly explains why Qianlong found Wu particularly charming, and Qian so unbearably hateful.

The Qianlong emperor’s condemnation and censorship of Qian Qianyi In 1770, after reading Qian Qianyi’s collection of pre-Qing writings, the Chuxue ji, the Qianlong emperor composed this emotionally charged poem: 平生談節義 兩姓事君王 進退都無據 文章那有光 真堪覆酒甕 屢見詠香囊 末路逃禪去 原為孟八郎

He who spoke all his life about integrity and righteousness Was the same one who served two imperial surnames. What to do and what not to do, no precept told him; How could his compositions shine? Use this drivel to cover the wine jars! In numerous places you see him sing for the perfumed pockets.13 In dire straits, he sought refuge in Chan Buddhism— But who truly was he? A Meng Balang.14

Qianlong’s hatred of Qian was, as we will see, phenomenal, and his wild accusations against Qian fashioned the almost uncontested negative view of the poet that prevailed for the rest of the Qing period, and, to some extent, beyond. When the monarch himself took the effort to disparage Qian, who would bother to rehabilitate him? Qianlong’s great-grandfather, the Shunzhi emperor, looked, in comparison, much more tolerant. In his 1674 (?) preface to the Youxue ji, Zou Zi 鄒鎡 (Shijin 式金) relates: There were some people who tried to frame Mr Qian by finding fault with the [sensitive] words and sentences in his writings. But Shizu [the Shunzhi emperor] had this to say: “If a former Ming official did not miss the Ming, he would not make a loyal official at all.” These were truly

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi great words from a great ruler. Our sage dynasty does not persecute an author for his writings, a great tradition indeed. Readers of Mr Qian’s writings should try to understand his [unfulfilled] ambitions. One might criticize Mr Qian’s unbecoming conduct, but his writings surely compel admiration. 或有以字句過求先生者, 世祖嘗言: “明臣而不思明者, 即非忠臣.” 大哉王言, 聖朝不以文字錮人者久矣. 學者覽先生之文, 即當諒先生之志. 縱或訾先生之人, 不能不服先生之文.15

From the publication of the Youxue ji in 1674 (?)16 until 1761 when Shen Deqian 沈德潛 (1673–1769) presented his anthology of early Qing poetry, the Guochao shi biecai ji 國朝詩別裁集 (A Select Anthology of Poems of the Dynasty), to the Qianlong emperor, Qian suffered no official condemnation.17 Shen Deqian unreservedly praised Qian and started his compilation with a selection of Qian’s poems (mainly pre-Qing ones), saying: The Minister was unusually gifted, and he boasted a vast and profound scholarship. In poetry, he favored Letian [Bai Juyi], Dongpo [Su Shi], and Fangweng [Lu Yu]. Of Ming poets like Li [Mengyang], He [Jingming], Wang [Shizhen], and Li [Panlong] he decried them all. The rest, like the two Yuan brothers [Hongdao and Zongdao], Zhong [Xing] and Tan [Yuanchun], were simply not of Qian’s class. People of Qian’s day all accepted his view with praise and admiration. It has been a hundred years [since his death] now, but his lingering influence is still strong enough to overwhelm our generation. . . . Recalling that Qian was a leader of the [Donglin] Party early in his life but late in his life he sought solace in Chan Buddhism, we readers of his poems should feel sadness. 尚書天資過人, 學殖鴻博. 論詩稱揚樂天 , 東坡, 放翁諸公; 而明代如李, 何, 王, 李概揮斥之; 餘如二袁, 鍾, 譚在不足比數之列. 一時帖耳推服. 百年以後, 流風餘韻, 猶足讋人也. . . . 至前為黨魁, 後逃禪悅, 讀其詩者, 應共悲之.18 Shen states that he included those of Qian’s poems which would bring out the good in the reader: “[I have included Qian’s works which] encourage integrity and moral courage, lament the rise and fall [of the Ming dynasty], concern the mores [of the time] and have transforming powers” (推激氣節, 感慨興亡, 多有關風教者).19 The comments of Zou and Shen give us the impression that Qian’s poetry had been widely read, and his influence strongly felt in the hundred years following his death, regardless of his politically expedient act and disputable moral conduct during the Ming–Qing transition. Shen was a favorite poetscholar of Qianlong, already in his nineties when he submitted his compilation to the monarch, whom he hoped would grace it with an imperial preface. Had Shen’s anthology passed with the monarch’s blessing, Qian would have been canonized, at least in the literary realm, when the Qing dynasty’s political and cultural might reached its apogee. Shen could not have

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times 61 anticipated that Qian would cause him to fall out of the emperor’s favor, yet after reading Shen’s anthology, Qianlong was furious. A preface was written which reserved only slightly harsher censure for Qian than for Shen. For the first time since his death, Qian’s reputation faced official criticism: . . . [Shen] presented his anthology to me and I gave it a cursory read. I found that the poets placed in the front of the book were people like Qian Qianyi. . . . He who lived under our dynasty and yet dared to long for the former Ming dynasty must be considered as a rebellious subject. There exists a national law [punishing this sort of behavior]. Worse yet, Qian was an eminent Ming official, but he was also willing to serve our dynasty. We tolerated that for the time being, because it was during the transition when our dynasty was newly established. However, seriously speaking, Qian cannot be reckoned as a man. [Qian’s] poems have been in circulation, and we shall let that pass. Under no circumstances, however, should he be chosen to lead [the poets] of our dynasty. . . . Consider, what is poetry? Loyalty and filiality, no more and no less. If one departs from loyalty and filiality speaking about poetry, I do not see how that can be poetry at all. As for Qianyi and his ilk, were they loyal? Were they filial? . . . 因進其書而粗觀之, 列前茅者, 則錢謙益諸人也. . . . 夫居本朝而妄思前明者, 亂民也, 有國法存焉. 至身為明朝達官, 而甘心復事本朝者, 雖一時權宜, 草昧締構所不廢. 要知其人則非人類也. 其詩自在, 聽之可也. 選以冠本朝諸人, 則不可. . . . 且詩者何? 忠孝而已耳. 離忠孝而言詩, 吾不知其為詩也. 謙益諸人. 為忠乎? 為孝乎?20 Shen’s anthology was entrusted to other Hanlin scholars for corrections before reissue—thus began Qianlong’s extended indictment of Qian. The bad luck that Qian brought on Shen did not end here. Eight years later, in 1769, Qianlong issued an edict banning Qian’s Chuxue ji and Youxue ji from circulation and demanding that all copies of Qian’s books in private collections be turned over to the court, to be condemned to fire. Since Shen had included Qian’s poems in his anthology, Qianlong believed that Shen must possess copies of Qian’s works. The governor-general of Liang-Jiang was ordered to search Shen’s house and impound any of Qian’s books that Shen might have hidden away. Shen was allowed to see the edict sent to the governor-general. This must have shattered the always docile, obedient ninety-six-year-old. He died a month later. Unexpectedly, the first “victim” of Qian’s writings was Qianlong’s favorite court poet. The governor-general duly reported to the emperor—shortly after Shen’s death—that no trace of Qian’s books was discovered in the old poet’s house. After reviewing the report, the emperor composed an elegy for Shen, remembering him fondly. Qianlong’s 1761 preface to the Guochao shi biecai ji and his 1769 indictment of Qian set a precedent for the contents and tone of a score of other edicts to condemn Qian. The 1769 edict reads in part as follows:

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi Qian Qianyi was a person who had talent but no virtue. From the former Ming dynasty, he had obtained eminent official positions. When our dynasty was newly established, he was one of the first who readily surrendered and was placed, again, among the ranks of officials. Qian deserted his principle; he is not to be classed as a man. On an earlier occasion, when I prefaced the Guochao shi biecai ji compiled by Shen Deqian, I had made a point to castigate the evil behavior of Qian Qianyi and his ilk. I ordered that his poems be expunged from the anthology. My concern was to uphold the infallible principles of the “bonds,” the “virtues” and the proprieties.21 At that time, I had not seen Qian’s complete works. I thought since his poetry was already in circulation, I would let it be. Now, I have examined his Chuxue ji and Youxue ji, writings that are most absurd and improper, abounding with slanders against our dynasty. If Qian Qianyi had remained loyal to the Ming dynasty and sacrificed his life, even if he was given to slanderous utterances in his writings, it would still be within reason. But he defected to serve our dynasty. How could he include such barking fits in his books? What he wanted was to gloss over the shame caused by his dishonorable behavior. How despicable! How shameful! Qian Qianyi is long dead, perished. I shall spare him the charges. His books, however, are too corrupt, too depraved to be allowed to circulate any longer. They must all be destroyed as soon as possible. I hereby charge every governor-general and governor to see to it that the bookstores and private libraries under his jurisdiction hand over their copies of Chuxue ji and Youxue ji. As for the village schools and country bumpkins in far-off mountain nooks and out-of-the-way valleys, one should be conscientious and patient in enlightening them. Two years shall be the time limit for all copies to be confiscated. You shall not let even one copy of Qian’s works remain in private possession. Qian Qianyi was a native of Jiangnan; the woodblocks [of his books] must still be available in that area. Also, the other provinces where his books were reprinted and sold must have woodblocks of his books. You should order that [whoever possesses such woodblocks must] surrender the complete set over to the capital. Not a single page of Qian’s books will be allowed to remain. My edict is issued for the world’s Way and public morality. I mean to denounce and ban his books, not to hold anyone responsible for this matter. All officials in the capital and provinces take notice. 錢謙益本一有才無行之人, 在前明時身躋膴仕, 及本朝定鼎之初, 率先投順, 洊陟列卿. 大節有虧, 實不足齒於人類. 朕從前序沈德潛所選《國朝詩別裁集》曾明斥錢謙益等之非, 黜其詩不錄, 實為千古綱常名教之大關. 彼時未經見其全集, 尚以為其詩自在, 聽之可也. 今閱其所著《初學集》,《有學集》, 荒誕悖謬, 其中詆謗本朝之處, 不一而足. 夫錢謙益果終為明朝守死不變, 即以筆墨騰謗, 尚在情理之中; 而伊既為本朝臣僕, 豈得復以從前狂吠之語, 列入集中? 其意不過欲借此以掩其失節之羞, 尤為可鄙可恥!

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times 63 錢謙益業已身死骨朽, 姑免追究. 但此等書籍, 悖理犯義, 豈可聽其留傳? 必當早為銷毀, 其令各督撫將 《初學》, 《有學》集於所屬書肆及藏書之家, 諭令繳出, 至於村塾鄉愚, 僻處山陬荒谷, 並廣為曉諭, 定限二年之內盡行繳出, 無使稍有存留. 錢謙益籍隸江南, 其書板必當尚存, 且別省有翻刻印售者, 俱令將全板一併送京, 勿令留遺片簡. 朕此旨實為世道人心起見, 止欲斥棄其書, 並非欲查究其事. 通諭中外知之.22 In the following year Qianlong wrote a poem about the Chuxue ji, the one that we quoted above. Qianlong does not deny Qian’s talent (what kind of talent Qianlong saw in Qian, however, is not stated). In the beginning, he criticizes Qian on moral grounds: Qian switched his allegiance from the Ming to the Qing house, yet continued to express his longings for the Ming. In view of this, Qian should be considered a “rebellious” subject of the Qing dynasty. At the same time, Qian was a high Ming official, but he served again under the Qing. Therefore, Qian was a man of no principle. These two trespasses, in Qianlong’s eyes, are grave enough to discredit all of Qian’s writings. Qianlong did not, however, censor Qian’s poetry in 1761, but later in 1769. As this edict indicates, the charges against Qian were geared up after an interval of eight years, because the emperor found anti-Manchu comments in both Chuxue ji and Youxue ji. From this point on, the moral charges were coupled with a political one, and it was the latter that compelled Qianlong to ban and destroy Qian’s books. Carrington Goodrich, in his study of Qianlong’s campaign of literary inquisition, underscores two aspects of this edict important to the censorship and suppression of “seditious” books in the next two decades of Qianlong’s reign. First, this edict marked the beginning of serious literary inquisition into anti-Manchu writings.23 Second, the charges against Qian would become the “formula for every author similarly accused, used time and again with ever greater success in the next twenty years.”24 The decade that followed saw Qianlong’s repeated, frenzied indictment of Qian—in 1770, 1775, 1776, 1777, 1778, and 1781 (twice), respectively. These years fall in what is sometimes called the late-Qianlong era, during which the aspiring “philosopher-king” initiated momentous state-sponsored literary and historiographical projects, from the compilation of the monumental bibliographical collection of Siku quanshu 四庫全書 (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries) to the composition of a series of scholarly works on Southern Ming history, and the Manchu language and history.25 Almost every important edict relating to these projects focused severe criticism on Qian Qianyi. To understand its full significance, Qian’s case must be considered against the backdrop of Qianlong’s book suppression campaign, particularly the suppression of seditious anti-Manchu writings, on the one hand; and against Qianlong’s attempts to foster an ideal of morality in his officials, on the other. For the literary inquisition, Qian was a symbol of sedition, and his writings

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

“idioms of protest,” to borrow Kent Guy’s words. In tracing the origins of the literary inquisition of the 1770s, Guy perceptively observes: From the point of view of content, the Ch’ien-lung Emperor and those around him seemed like peacetime generals who were determined to fight the last war; they focused not so much on eighteenth-century challenges to Ch’ing rule, as on seventeenth-century idioms of protest. It simply would not do for a secure, legitimate and powerful Chinese ruler to tolerate racist slurs particularly when, as the emperor had every reason to expect, such works could be fairly easily eliminated.26 With respect to Qianlong’s ideal of morality, Qian represented all that was opposed to the emperor: disloyalty not to one but to two ruling houses; the choice to live and serve in disgrace under a new dynasty rather than to die in honor for a former lord; duplicity in writing, and so on and so forth. Qianlong’s obsessive concern with his image and place in history is widely recognized. Immediately following his enthronement in 1736, the emperor established what Crossley has described as “an overt representation of himself as a universal ruler that amounted to an ideological revolution.”27 In his sixty-year-long reign, every campaign that Qianlong launched—political, military, scholarly, literary—was to aggrandize his self-image as “a paragon of multi-literacy, the aesthete of all cultures, and the universal emperor.”28 It has been observed that a shift in Qianlong’s literary and scholarly interests took place in the 1770s, a shift reflected in his patronage of scholarly projects in the same period. During his long reign, the Qianlong emperor commissioned over ninety scholarly works. Among them, fifteen dealt with Manchu language, Manchu history, or the history of the last years of the Ming era. Eleven of these were commissioned between 1772 and 1781, and two which had been commissioned earlier were expanded and reissued in the late 1770s. The result of all these undertakings was a new, officially sanctioned record of the Manchu rise to power and a standardized system for transliterating Manchu and Mongol names into Chinese.29 It is more relevant to our interest, however, that during the same period, a state-sanctioned history of the Southern Ming emperors and officials was produced, and biographical accounts of Manchu and Chinese officials in the preceding reigns ordered. These were also the years of Qianlong’s harshest attacks on Qian. Two reasons can be offered to explain this. First, it was the time when Qianlong was formulating his version of the historical accounts of the Southern Ming and its officials. Qian was, no matter how sinful in Qianlong’s eyes, an indelible figure of the Ming–Qing transition. Second, even though it is difficult to prove, it seems possible, if not probable, that Qianlong found Qian still too imposing an authority in matters of historiography and literature. While Qianlong strived to proclaim himself the supreme judge of these issues, he felt Qian still contesting his hegemony from the grave. I will elaborate on this first, and then proceed to discuss Qianlong’s formal criticism of Qian in the

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times 65 contexts of Qianlong’s literary inquisition and the Southern Ming historiographical projects. There is no denying that the Qianlong emperor came to the throne with a far more sophisticated understanding of Chinese history and the classics than any of his Manchu—and many of his Chinese—predecessors.30 Once he ascended the throne, he commissioned scholars to edit the thirteen classics of the Confucian canon and the twenty-one dynastic histories. His reign embraced official historiography with unparalleled vigor. The 1769 edict reflects Qianlong’s reading of both the Chuxue ji and Youxue ji (about the former Qianlong wrote the 1770 poem). We may assume that Qianlong read Qian’s works over a span of two years. One should not overlook the fact that Qianlong’s reading was done around the same time his scholarly interests turned towards historiography. Qianlong must have found this essay of Qian as engaging as hateful: A guest came to me, asking: “Jigu[ge] printed the ‘classics’ first, and the historical works next. Why so?” I replied: “The ‘classics’ are as the weights [in a steelyard], history books are as the beam, [on which there are different marks] showing what is lighter and what heavier. The ‘classics’ are like a table of measures, and history books a ruler, [on which there are different marks] representing what is longer and what shorter. In the past, scholarship of the ‘six classics’ was divided into different schools, led by different experts. [Students of the ‘six classics’] all adhered to their mentors’ teachings. As a result, regarding the subtle words and profound meaning of the sages and the worthies, their key link was grasped and every detail fell into place, and their structure was made clear whereas their texture was expounded. Only when the weights, the beam, the measures, and the ruler were firmly established in their chests would they engage themselves in the composition of history books. With their weights and rulers, they told the greatness or insipidity of historical figures, showed the historical patterns of a hundred generations, and classified matters of varying importance and different natures. Even if they had to measure the smallest thing, such as a grain of millet, they could do so with complete ease. When they reached this stage of cultivation, they fully understood the principles and were able to put forth practical measures—they were what we regard as great Confucian scholars, the embodiment of heaven, earth, and man. . . .” 客有問於余曰: “汲古之刻, 先經而後史, 何也?” 余曰: “經猶權也, 史則衡之有輕重也. 經猶度也, 史則尺之有長短也. 古者六經之學, 專門名家, 各守師說, 聖賢之微言大義, 綱舉目張, 肌劈理解, 權衡尺度, 鑿鑿乎指定於胸中, 然後出而從事於史, 三才之高下, 百世之往復, 分齊其輕重長短, 取裁於吾之權度, 累黍杪忽, 罄無不宜, 而後可以明體達用, 為通天地人之大儒. . . .”31 Here Qian discusses the ideal progression of Confucian scholarship in the

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

classics and historiography. Despite the complexity of his metaphors, his message is rather simple. Qian posits a close relationship between the two fields of knowledge and counsels that only when one is well versed in the classics should one undertake historiography, because the former necessarily informs the latter. He goes on to ridicule those who do not follow this trajectory and to warn of the harm these persons might do to the learned world: Then there is the sort of person who declares: “I know what is heavy and what is light, and I understand what is long and what is short.” When you ask him about weights and measures, he is at a total loss. It is as if this person is blind yet he has his eyes wide open. His fault is that he embarks on history before he is versed in the classics. Then there is the sort of person who says: “I know the weights, I know the measures.” If you ask him which is lighter or heavier, longer or shorter, he is at a total loss as well. . . . His fault is that he is not versed in history but engages himself in the classics. His classics do not relate to his history, and his history does not relate to his classics. Eventually, he will practice his biased, trivial, messy, trifling handicraft and pollute the whole world. For this reason the ancients were very cautious about learning [the classics and history]. The classics were taken as the warp and history as the woof. . . . 有人曰: “我知輕重, 我明長短.” 問之以權度, 茫如也. 此無目而諍目, 不通經而學史之過也. 有人曰: “我知權, 我知度.” 問之以輕重長短, 亦茫然也. . . . 不通史而執經之過也. 經不通史, 史不通經. 誤用其偏詖蒐瑣之學術, 足以殺天下, 是以古人慎之. 經經緯史. . . .32 Hereafter Qian discusses the uses of history in relation to morals and government, and the advantage of a comprehensive mastery of all the dynastic histories: The guest asked: “. . . Why do you recommend [mastering] the complete [dynastic] histories?” I said: “History is like a museum between heaven and earth, trigonometry in mathematics, a handbook for rulers and officials, the boundaries of a country, a mine of underlying truth and principles, a pool of schemes and plots, a haunt of talents, and the garden of literary compositions. If we envision the whole Spiritual Continent as a chessboard, history represents its transcriptions. . . . A good player will always take the whole game into consideration. By the same token, a good reader wishes to read the whole set of history books. This was the way the ancients read history; it was also their methodology of learning.” 客曰: “. . . 何取乎全史也?” 曰: “史者, 天地之淵府, 運數之勾股, 君臣之元龜, 內外之疆索, 道理之窟宅, 智諝之伏藏, 人才之藪澤, 文章之苑圃. 以神州函夏為棋局, 史為其譜. . . . 善奕者取全局, 善讀者取全書. 此古人讀史之法, 亦古人之學範也.”33

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times 67 Qian wrote this essay, “Jiguge Maoshi xinke Shiqi shi xu” 汲古閣毛氏新刻十七史序 (A Preface to the Seventeen Histories, Newly Released by Mao Jin’s Jiguge), in 1656. As I will demonstrate below, Qianlong would readily agree with the first and third passages. The second passage, however, would have incensed him. At a moment of what must be considered as rare modesty, early in his reign, Qianlong shared this with his commissioned historiographers: My talent is far from enough to understand the past fully, and in learning I have not yet reached the stage of being versed in the classics. Now that I have to shoulder the responsibility for upholding the impartial spirit of the historian’s pen, I am afraid I am feeling a bit dazzled. . . . Praise and blame must be strictly carried out through the words. I mean our book to continue in the tradition of the Spring and Autumn Annals, as an aid to the Way. Attentive readers of the book will find it enlightening. Let us, I, the emperor, and you, my officials, encourage one another in our effort. 朕材謝知古, 學未通經. 當此史筆之公, 實恐目光之炫. . . . 予奪嚴乎辭語內. 敢曰繼春秋之翼道, 於此昭來茲之鑒觀. 我君臣其共勉之.34 Coming upon Qian’s second passage, the emperor must have felt ridiculed. Qianlong confesses here that his learning of the classis and history is not great, yet the emperor is supervising a historiographical project to match the Spring and Autumn Annals! Qian would have said: “This person is blind yet he has his eyes wide open.” (The emperor himself admitted: “I am afraid I am feeling a bit dazzled.”) This sentence in Qian’s passage probably galls Qianlong most: “Eventually, he will practice his biased, trivial, messy, trifling handicraft and pollute the whole world” (誤用其偏詖蒐瑣之學術, 足以殺天下). The “world” belongs to none but the Son of Heaven, and he is indeed trying to produce something that would impact on the whole world. In matter of fact, Qianlong’s ideas on historiography are similar to Qian’s in quite a few areas. (This probably irritated Qianlong even more. How could a rascal like Qian come up with ideas as brilliant as those of the sage emperor!) Both of them considered the Confucian classics and the historiographical writings to be consanguineous. Qian wrote: The “six classics” are the origins of history. History runs throughout the “six classics,” not only in the Spring and Autumn Annals and its Three Commentaries. When the “six classics” evolved into the two posts of historian,35 Ban Gu and Sima Qian’s works are what can be regarded as the classics in history. 六經, 史之宗統也. 六經之中皆有史, 不獨《春秋》三傳也. 六經降而為二史, 班 , 馬其史中之經乎!36 Qianlong expressed a similar view: History is what enables the classics to pass down their teachings. The Book of Documents, the Spring and Autumn Annals, and their inner and

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi outer commentaries are supreme examples. Sima Qian created the Annals–Tables–Monographs–Biographies format to structure his Records of the Grand Historian. Ban Gu and later historians emulated Sima Qian’s example. . . . After I ordered the editing and publishing of the critical edition of the Thirteen Classics with Annotations and Commentaries, I considered the fact that history is the necessary complement to the classics, and I was troubled that the [woodblocks of the] National University edition [of the dynastic histories] had become battered. In view of this, I ordered the collating and editing [of the books] for broader reissue. . . . History furnishes examples of encouragement and punishment and makes manifest law and discipline. The reasons for order and disorder, stability and instability in the past several thousand years; the accounts of men of loyalty and virtue, and of wickedness and impropriety; and rights and wrongs, gains and losses can all be found in history books. The reader lives in the present yet he learns from the past; he can review the past and reflect on the future. 史者, 輔經以垂訓者也, 《尚書》,《春秋》, 內外傳, 尚矣! 司馬遷創為紀, 表 , 書, 傳之體, 以成《史記》. 班固以下因之. . . . 朕既命校刊《十三經注疏》定本. 復念史為經翼, 監本亦日漸殘闕, 併敕校讎, 以廣刊布. . . . 夫史以示勸懲, 昭法戒, 上下數千年, 治亂安危之故, 忠賢奸佞之實, 是非得失, 具可考見. 居今而知古, 鑒往以察來.37

This is excerpted from the preface Qianlong wrote for the state-sponsored edition of the complete twenty-one standard histories. The ideological influence of this imperial edition cannot be overlooked. As a National University publication, this edition must have been consulted, and some of its contents committed to memory, by countless degree candidates. Besides its scholarly purpose, the edition was also meant as an extension of imperial authority, shaping the Qing subjects’ intellectual and cultural formation. It must have immensely vexed Qianlong to find that Qian and his student Mao Jin—with the Jiguge publishing house as an institution by itself—had ventured to issue the complete seventeen standard histories before he did, and in his place. Like Qian, Qianlong held that the Spring and Autumn Annals is laden with Confucius’ wisdom, inferable from the book’s political, ethical, and historical judgments: Of all the books from the medieval past, the Spring and Autumn Annals is the greatest. . . . The Great Sage [Confucius], with the critical principle of selective narration, edited the old chronicles of the state of Lu into a model book of praise and blame. 中古之書, 莫大於《春秋》. . . . 大聖人就魯史之舊, 用筆削正褒貶.38 Qianlong vowed to continue this line of historiography, and even declared

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times 69 that no one but the monarch himself was in a position to undertake it. Qianlong’s claim was, of course, based on Mencius’ famous statement (III.B): The Spring and Autumn Annals should have been the prerogative of the Son of Heaven. That is why Confucius said: “There will be people who understand me through the Spring and Autumn Annals! And there will also be people who condemn me because of the Spring and Autumn Annals!” 《春秋》, 天子之事也. 是故孔子曰: “知我者其惟春秋乎! 罪我者其惟春秋乎!” Of all the students of Chinese history through the ages, no one had ever taken Mencius to the word more seriously than Qianlong. Qianlong opined: [Composing a book like] the Spring and Autumn Annals is the prerogative of the Son of Heaven. With all the princes, dukes, and civil and military officials, [in judging] their rights and wrongs, merits and demerits, I strictly adhere to the principles of absolute disinterestedness and supreme justice. . . . [The drafts of their biographies] should be presented to me; I will take the trouble to edit and finalize them myself. I will make sure that praise and blame be fully, strictly carried out in critical, selective narration. 蓋《春秋》者, 天子之事. 朕於本朝王公文武大臣, 是非功過, 一秉大公至正. . . . 候朕親自裁定, 庶幾華袞斧鉞, 凜然共見筆削之嚴也.39 And: I take [composing books in the manner of ] the Spring and Autumn Annals to be the prerogative of the Son of Heaven; [the judgments of ] right and wrong shall be based on justice that can stand for ten thousand ages. 朕以《春秋》天子之事, 是非萬世之公.40 Even early in his rule, Qianlong openly claimed to have the makings of a great historian.41 Later in his life, he placed himself in the ranks of Confucius, Sima Qian, Sima Guang 司馬光 (1019–86), and Zhu Xi.42 In one ecstatic moment, Qianlong exclaimed: 學探司馬治平要 書慕文公體例優 亦曰此心無予奪 敢云我志在春秋

For learning I study the principles of government and pacification set out by Sima [Guang]; As for style I follow the example of Wengong’s [Zhu Xi] superb execution. Like them, I can claim I have no prejudgment in mind; I dare say, I aim to compose another Spring and Autumn Annals.43

Unlike Qian, who always admired and encouraged serious, private

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

historiographical endeavors, Qianlong asserts that the composition of historical works like the Spring and Autumn Annals and even, by extension, all historical works is the privilege and duty of the monarch. Qianlong must have considered Qian’s historiographical projects, especially drafting the Ming history, a usurpation of imperial authority. One feels that in the 1761 and 1769 edicts as well as the 1770 poem, Qianlong had said what he was obligated to say. Qian’s case should have been closed. However, Qian proved to be too valuable for Qianlong to discard, and the emperor beat the dead horse again and again. We shall now turn to the second stage of Qianlong’s condemnation of Qian from 1775 to 1781. In 1775, well over a century after the last Southern Ming emperor was captured and killed by the Qing, Qianlong initiated a groundbreaking historiographical practice: recognizing, at least in theoretical terms, the legitimacy of the Southern Ming regimes of Princes Fu, Tang, and Gui. A historical account of their reigns was commissioned.44 Shortly after, Qianlong granted posthumous honorary titles, shihao 諡號, to the Ming martyrs. Each individual’s entry included a brief account of his martyrdom.45 These two projects flew in the face of the general Qing practices of denying the legitimate authority of the Southern Ming, or erasing its history altogether.46 It was when formalizing the Southern Ming history that Qianlong reopened the indictment of Qian after an interlude of five years. Qianlong left absolutely no room for Qian to be associated with those Ming loyalists who were being lionized: My principles are that of absolute disinterestedness and supreme justice. The late-Ming officials who died honorable deaths for their country have my unreserved respect and praise. As for Qian Qianyi who boasted of being one of the incorruptible, but surrendered to our court without blushing, and Jin Bao, Qu Dajun and their ilk who cravenly clung to life rather than braving death, who took orders in the monkhood merely for the sake of survival, they were, without exception, heartless, shameless. These people, if they had laid down their lives for their imperial house, would have received commendation and praise today. But they cared about nothing more than saving their skins. They did not sacrifice themselves and manipulated words and language to conceal their true intentions of dragging out an ignoble existence. For this reason, we should mercilessly decry their misdeeds, so as to punish their crude and unfeeling souls. In our praise and blame, sanction and censure shall be made manifest, so that the whole world and the endless ages to come will know that I count on reason to guide my likes and dislikes. All this is to uphold the infallible and unalterable principles by which we demonstrate our encouragement and condemnation. 朕惟以大公至正為衡, 凡明季殉節諸臣, 既能為國抒忠, 優獎實同一視. 至錢謙益之自詡清流, 靦顏降附, 及金堡, 屈大均輩之倖生畏死, 詭託緇流, 均屬喪心無恥.

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times 71 若輩果能死節, 則今日亦當在予旌之列. 乃既不能捨命, 而猶假語言文字, 以圖掩飾其偷生, 是必當明斥其進退失據之非, 以隱殛其冥漠不靈之魄. 一褒一貶, 袞鉞昭然, 使天下萬世共知予準情理而公好惡, 以是植綱常, 即以是示彰癉.47 At the close of the following year, 1776, another edict, rhetorically similar to the one above, was issued to the Siku Commissioners, who had been energetically collecting books for the Four Treasuries for several years by then. This edict was to ensure that the commissioners would never include Qian’s works in the Four Treasuries. It reads in part as follows: Books from the late-Ming authors, should they contain words violating our dynasty, must of course be put on the list of prohibitions. . . . For example, Qian Qianyi already held a high official post in the Ming dynasty yet later he served also our court. Then there are people like Jin Bao and Qu Dajun who took refuge in monkhood. All of them failed to die honorably for their country, all drew out shameless lives. Nevertheless, they often spoke as if they were still loyal to the former dynasty, and were given to barking fits [against ours]. These people cannot even be reckoned as men. How can we allow their books to remain? [Those officials concerned] should conduct a thorough inquisition of their writings and destroy them all. This is to encourage integrity among the officials and to correct the morals of the people. 明末諸人書集, 詞意抵觸本朝者, 自當在銷毀之列. . . . 如錢謙益在明已居大位, 又復身事本朝, 而金堡, 屈大均, 則又遁跡緇流, 均以不能死節, 靦顏苟活, 乃託名勝國, 妄肆狂狺, 其人實不足齒, 其書豈可復存? 自應逐細查明, 概行毀棄, 以勵臣節, 而正人心.48 This edict can be seen as an outgrowth of Qianlong’s 1774 edict suppressing anti-Manchu literature—the central document of the literary inquisition— and as a continuation of the critique of Qian. It coincided with the uncontrolled growth of the literary inquisition between 1776 and 1782, which went hand in hand with the Siku project’s bibliophile activities.49 If the 1775 imperial project on Ming martyrs was an act of “praise,” the 1777 creation of the “Erchen zhuan” or “Biographies of the Twice-serving Officials” in Qing’s official history must be viewed as an initiative of “blame.” These two undertakings served the emperor’s intention to cultivate an ideal of morality among his officials.50 Simply put, Qianlong demanded unconditional and willing sacrifice from his officials, even of their lives, for one and only one ruling house, the Manchu Qing. Qian was singled out as the most dreadful of all the erchen. Qian’s biography also inspired Qianlong to fine-tune the structure of the “Erchen zhuan.” Two edicts were issued to this end, both displaying Qianlong’s unabated abhorrence of Qian. The first edict was issued in early 1777, to order the creation of the “Erchen zhuan.” The part invoking Qian reads:

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi Qian Qianyi was wavering, covetous, and shameless: he should be put in the “Biographies of the Twice-serving Officials.” One should be particularly candid in recounting his misdeeds in order to render the biography trustworthy and accurate. 錢謙益反側貪鄙, 應入國史 “貳臣傳”, 尤宜據事直書, 以示傳信.51

In the following year, Qianlong charged the director-general of the Historiography Institute 國史館總裁 to improve on the “Erchen zhuan” by establishing two divisions in it, so as to distinguish the erchen who were loyal to the new ruling house, i.e., the Qing, and those who only served half-heartedly. Naturally, the former group of erchen received relatively more lenient treatment. And Qianlong left the compilers of his history in no doubt that Qian must be put in the more disgraceful one: . . . Qian Qianyi was always immoral in character. When the Ming house crumbled, he was among the first to surrender to our mandate. Still, he dared to secretly defame our dynasty in his poems and essays. Qian had no principle governing what to do and what not to do, he cannot even be classed as a man. . . . If he is to be placed on a par with such figures as Hong Chengchou in the “Biographies of Twice-serving Officials,” and the difference between them not shown, how can we make manifest the principle of praise and blame? . . . 錢謙益, 行素不端, 及明祚既移, 率先歸命, 乃敢於詩文陰行詆毀, 是為進退無據, 非復人類. . . . 若與洪承疇等同列 “貳臣傳”, 不示差等, 又何以昭彰癉?52 The 1770s and early 1780s also found Qianlong giving shape to early Manchu history, recording Manchu customs, and standardizing Manchu language with great ardor and determination. Besides their general purposes of revising the historical documents concerning the Manchu people and refreshing cultural memories among the more and more “Sinized” Manchu descendants in China, these projects also further secured the legitimacy of the Manchu rule in China proper. The sequence of works on Manchu history reached its culmination in 1781 when, in a single year, three new studies of Manchu customs were ordered.53 Intriguingly, it was also in this year that Qianlong was moved to criticize Qian twice. The first indictment confirms our view of Qianlong’s intentions in glorifying the Ming martyrs and defaming the erchen: . . . When our dynasty secured control of the country, many late-Ming officials surrendered to us in the face of our imposing prestige. There is no denying that such officials as Hong Chengchou, Zu Dashou, and Li Yongfong were disloyal to their perished dynasty’s emperor; they were, however, officials who exerted themselves for our dynasty. I ordered that they be put in Division A of the “Biographies of the Twice-serving Officials.” As for figures like Qian Qianyi, Gong Dingzi, and Feng Quan,

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times 73 who had no principle governing what to do and what not to do, and who surrendered half-heartedly in order to save their skins, I ordered that they be put in Division B. That was to show impartiality of both praise and blame. . . . 我朝定鼎之初, 明末諸臣, 望風歸附. 如洪承疇, 祖大壽, 李永芳等, 在勝國雖為不忠於主, 在本朝則為宣力之臣. 特命入於 “貳臣傳” 之甲編. 其進退無據, 謬託保身如錢謙益 , 龔鼎孳, 馮銓諸人, 則入乙編, 以昭褒貶之公.54 That same year, Qianlong penned the important essay on legitimate authority, “Ming Guanchen lucun Yang Weizhen ‘Zhengtong bian’ yu” 命館臣錄存楊維楨正統辨諭 (An Edict Ordering Officials of the Historiography Institute to Copy and Archive Yang Weizhen’s “Discourse on Legitimate Authority”). On this occasion, Qianlong found a historical figure even more despicable than Qian: The Spring and Autumn Annals’ doctrine of “Great unification [of domain]” lies in “venerating the [Zhou] king and repelling the hegemons.” By this, [Confucius] meant to lay down an unalterable principle for the unending ages to come: [In assuming legitimate authority] the ruling house must possess a legitimate cause with rightful claim. It rises from a genuine Mandate of Heaven and enjoys clear popular support. . . . [Yang Weizhen in his treatise] proposes to take the Yuan dynasty as the ruling house that legitimately succeeded the Southern Song dynasty, not the Liao or the Jin dynasty. That is indeed a valid thesis. . . . Weizhen was a Yuan official. It is true that he did not serve the new court of the Ming [after the Yuan fell], but he nonetheless responded to the summons of the Founding Emperor of the Ming dynasty. Moreover, he presented [the Ming emperor] with the song “Naoge guchui qu,” in which he flattered the new dynasty and defamed his former country. . . . Weizhen had no principle governing what to do and what not to do. When compared to Qian Qianyi, who at least affected in his writings that he did not forget his former emperor, Weizhen appears even more ignoble. I have already denounced him quite a few times in my poems and essays. Weizhen’s discourse on legitimate authority, however, should not be dismissed because of his person. “Legitimate succession” means succeeding the authority of the former dynasty with a new mandate. . . . Our dynasty avenged the Ming demise and punished the rebels [led by Li Zicheng]. We established our dynasty in China proper and unified the whole country. Our dynasty is the most legitimate ruling house that has existed since times immemorial. Yet, I still allowed one year of the reign of Prince Fu be recorded in the Tongjian jilan. Had he been able to maintain the Southern Capital [Nanjing], he could have inherited the legitimate authority, as did the Southern Song, and continued the [Zhu] imperial house. However, in the face of his inexorable doom, Heaven disowned him and his people shunned him. He courted the destruction of his own

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi imperial house. My view has absolute disinterestedness and supreme justice—everybody will find it agreeable, and it will meet with universal approval in the thousands of ages to come. 《春秋》大一統之義, “尊王黜霸”, 所以立萬世之綱常, 使名正言順, 出於天命人心之正. . . . 其 [楊維楨] 欲以元繼南宋為正統而不及遼, 金, 其論頗正. . . . 夫維楨身為元臣, 入明雖不仕, 而應明太祖之召, 且上 〈鐃歌鼓吹曲〉, 頌美新朝, 非刺故國, . . . 其進退無據, 較之錢謙益託言不忘故君者, 鄙倍猶甚, 向於詩文中斥之. 而維楨正統之辨, 則不可以人廢言也. 夫正統者, 繼前統受新命也. . . . 我朝為明復仇討賊, 定鼎中原, 合一海宇, 為自古得天下最正. 然朕猶於《通鑑輯覽》內, 存福王建國之號一年, 使其能保守南都, 未嘗不可如南宋之承統, 綿延不絕, 而奈其當陽九之運, 天弗與, 人弗歸, 自覆其宗社也. 此實大公至正, 天下萬世可以共見共守之論.55

This is not the place for a detailed discussion of Qianlong’s theory of political legitimacy. Suffice it to say that here and in other places, Qianlong endorses most of the traditional criteria of conferring legitimacy—the Mandate of Heaven, political and geographical unification, consanguinity, moral superiority, cultural achievements, etc.—but he departs from traditional discourses on the matter in one significant aspect: Qianlong maintains that when an alien ruling power succeeds in justly establishing unified political control in China proper, it should enjoy a legitimacy equal to that of Han-Chinese dynasties.56 His was a realistic and culturalistic position, opposing the racial attitude that had predominated since the Southern Song era and intensified in the Ming–Qing transition. Qianlong’s wording at the very beginning of the quotation is revealing. When he invokes the doctrine of the Spring and Autumn Annals, Qianlong quietly changes the standard phrase “venerating the [Zhou] king and repelling the barbarians” (zunwang rangyi 尊王攘夷) to “venerating the [Zhou] king and repelling the hegemons” (zunwang chuba 尊王黜霸), thereby eradicating race as a determining factor in legitimate authority and accentuating the supremacy of political and military triumph.57 In Qianlong’s mindset, his Manchu–Qing dynasty has rightfully replaced an imperial house that had lost its sway over China proper; it was hopeless, albeit noble, for any former Ming official or subject to resist this new mandate.58 As Qianlong must have remembered, there are numerous places in Qian’s Youxue ji that diametrically oppose his vision of legitimacy, such as this: It has been a family tradition that the Qians receive training in the Spring and Autumn Annals. When I was small, I studied Hu [Anguo]’s commentary [on the Annals]. Once I grasped the general idea of the book, I started entertaining doubts and making arguments in my mind, but of course I dared not make them known then. When I grew up, I made it a point to investigate the origin and transmission [of Hu’s commentary]. I

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times 75 found that the book served as study material for the emperor’s court lectures; he consulted it as a guide to right and wrong while formulating national policies. Early in the [Ming] dynasty, both [Hu’s] and Zhang Qia’s commentaries were popular, but not long after, Hu’s book predominated. The reason was that Hu’s book underscores the doctrine of “venerating the Zhou [king] and repelling the barbarians.” This helped enhance the Chinese people’s pride, providing a source of inspiration for the needs of the time, and was used to glorify the political reality after the Jin and Yuan dynasties fell and the barbarians were wiped out. It does not mean that [Hu’s commentary] is the only correct interpretation of the classic. . . . I was bedridden in a deserted village, my head covered with a scarf, and all of a sudden I received your elegant words on the Spring and Autumn. I casually opened the book, dim-sighted, my head still swimming. In no time my eyes were blazing, I was wild with joy. It was as though one had lost something and suddenly recovered it at a most unexpected moment. My memory [of the book] is still very fresh. I do not know how to put it, I am simply overjoyed and elated. 僕家世授《春秋》, 兒時習胡《傳》, 粗通句讀則已, 多所擬議, 而未敢明言. 長而深究源委, 知其為經筵進講, 箴砭國論之書. 國初與張洽傳並行, 已而獨行胡氏者, 則以其尊周攘夷, 發抒華夏之氣, 用以斡持世運, 鋪張金, 元已來驅除掃犁之局, 而非以為經義當如是也. . . . 荒村臥病, 冒絮蒙頭, 門下忽以 《春秋》大聲擲下, 忽漫開卷, 頭目涔涔然. 俄而目光迸發, 心華怒生, 如向所失物, 取次得之. 記憶宛然, 口不能喻, 惟有歡喜踴躍而已.59 And this: In a bamboo hut with mere paper windows, I was bedridden by a bad cold. Paging through the table of contents of Li Xiaoyou’s Biographies of the Song Loyalists, I found that the book carries a preface by Hebin [Li Kai 李楷, zi Shuze 叔則]. I [turned to it and] came upon these sentences: “China survived as long as the Song dynasty stood. When the Song fell, China perished at that same moment.” I stroked the page and rose to my feet, exclaiming: “This is exactly why on the fall of the Chen dynasty the Yuan jing maintains: ‘Thereupon five countries perished.’ ”60 竹屋紙窗, 中寒彊臥, 繙李小友《宋遺民傳》目錄, 得河濱序文. 至 “宋存而中國存, 宋亡而中國亡”, 撫卷失席曰: “此《元經》 陳亡而書五國之旨也.”61 In the first passage, Qian suggests that the driving force behind the Ming scholarship on the Spring and Autumn Annals was a political one, that the Ming court sponsored Hu Anguo’s 胡安國 (1073–1138) commentary, the Chunqiu zhuan 春秋傳 (Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals), to harness its ideological powers. A product of the late Northern Song, Hu’s commentary put emphasis on the Annals’ counsel of “repelling the

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi

barbarians,” and thus was favored by the Han-Chinese Ming dynasty which recovered China from alien Yuan rule after almost a century. If in the first half of the first passage Qian seems to express some reservations about the quality of Hu’s commentary, in the second half Qian casts off all his scholarly temper of mind. By the “lost” something (shi 失), I believe Qian means the Han-Chinese Ming China that was lost to the alien Manchus. Qian was perhaps not so much excited by a new study of the Spring and Autumn Annals as by the memory of the Ming that this study aroused. In the second passage, Qian endorses Li Kai’s assertion that China vanished when the Song dynasty fell. Qian compares this to the remark of Wang Tong 王通 (584–618) on the demise of the Chen house (557–89) of the Southern Dynasties, that five dynasties had thereby fallen. In Wang’s idea, the Chen represents the Eastern Jin, Song, Qi, and Liang dynasties, an embodiment of Chinese orthodoxy, cultural and racial.62 Historically, these five dynasties all established their capitals in Jiankang (later Nanjing). The Chen dynasty was replaced by the Sui (581–618) that descended from the Northern Dynasties, the first of which was the Northern Wei 北魏 (386–534), founded by the Xianbei tribal people who originated from Liaodong. While Wang Tong saw the fall of China in the doom of the Chen, Li Kai saw the same in the end of the Song. In this, both the Chen and the Song dynasties serve not merely as particular imperial houses, but as China tout court, in cultural and racial terms. Both Wang Tong and Li Kai’s words stir Qian, and between Qian’s lines we might read: China lives as long as the Ming dynasty holds; when the Ming disintegrates, so does China. The Chen–Sui, Song–Yuan, and Ming– Qing experiences are fused into one in this vision. Around 1657, one year after Qian penned the essay under discussion, Gu Yanwu wrote this famous passage: There is a difference between the fall of a country and the end of the world. . . . A change of imperial house and reign name is what is meant by the fall of a country. When humanity and righteousness fail, resulting in beasts eating men and human beings eating one another, that is what is meant by the end of the world. 有亡國, 有亡天下. . . . 易姓改號謂之亡國. 仁義充塞而至於率獸食人, 人將相食, 謂之亡天下.63 Gu and Qian’s understatements are similar.64 For obvious reasons, Qian does not make explicit his view that the Manchu Qing cannot be accepted as Chinese, nor does Gu clearly say he sees beasts in the Manchus. But it can be observed that both Qian and Gu, owing to their cultural upbringings, harbor a deep resentment against the Manchus, who declared themselves legitimate rulers of the Chinese people and the Chinese land. This political position and the challenge it posed to the Qing legitimacy must be considered as one of the major reasons why the Qianlong emperor would not let Qian Qianyi rest in his grave.

Qian Qianyi’s reception in Qing times 77

The afterlife of Qian Qianyi’s figure and shishi writings The majority of anti-Manchu writings were successfully proscribed, and some destroyed for good, by Qianlong. Fortunately, most of Qian’s works survive to this day. A later reader of the Toubi ji relates: Mengsou’s [Qian’s] Toubi ji was never put into print. The reason was that the net of literary inquisition at that time was cast very wide. The wording of this collection is very subtle, and the criticism [of the Manchus] extremely severe. This collection naturally touches on too many sensitive and taboo issues. As a result, it was kept secretly and never released to the reading public. However, many private libraries in the Jiangnan area owned copies of it. Gentlemen in the Southeast who had a mind to collect historical materials and who still missed the fallen country all had a burning interest in reading it. For this reason the collection was widely copied and circulated. 蒙叟《投筆集》一書, 世未有刊本. 則以當時文網甚密, 而此書微吟深諷, 易觸忌諱, 故秘而未刊. 然江南藏書家多有寫本, 東南人士之留心文獻, 不忘故國者, 恆以一得見其書為快, 故傳鈔殆遍.65 Qian’s works were revived by the revolutionaries towards the close of the Qing dynasty. Under their auspices, Qian’s books were reissued and used as a source of inspiration for the anti-Qing/anti-Manchu revolution and for modern Chinese nationalism. Qian found an enthusiastic promoter in the revolutionary scholar Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (zi Taiyan 太炎; 1869–1936): [Zheng] Chenggong once studied under him [Qian]. When Chenggong led his navy into the Nanjing area, the prefectures north to Anhui all pledged allegiance to the Ming again. Qianyi was roused to compose “After Du Fu’s ‘Autumn Thoughts,’ ” as songs of triumph, in which he announces that a new Son of Heaven has emerged who will lead the Ming back to its old glory, and that he will lie down on a straw mat to await punishment. At that time, Qianyi believed that the Southern Capital could be recovered in any minute, and he could simply stay home and await the order of recall. However, Chenggong was defeated. Two years later, Wu Sangui murdered the last [Ming] emperor in Yunnan. Qianyi was moved to match the rhyme-scheme of “Autumn Thoughts” again, giving expression to his anguish. The previous and the new poems count almost a hundred pieces, and Qianyi put them together under the title Toubi ji, in which we find laments for the fall of the Central Kingdom and anger at the intrusion of dogs and goats [the Manchus]. Its sadness is felt across time. Qianyi died in the third year of Kangxi’s reign. During the Ming–Qing transition, the twice-serving officials Wu Weiye from Wu and Gong Dingzi from Hefei were both known as distinguished poets. Their poems are charged with intense emotions. Weiye’s words are particularly covert and elusive, and sincerity of his poetry is never a

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The poet-historian Qian Qianyi question. Yet, most people think what Qianyi had written were words to blot out his misdeeds, not to reveal his genuine feelings. Consider the range of feelings one can have towards the fallen country: the twiceserving official Chen Mingxia [d. 1654]