HUANG T'ING-CHIEN'S "INCENSE OF AWARENESS": POEMS OF EXCHANGE, POEMS OF ENLIGHTENMENT.

• Author: SARGENT, STUART
• Position: Critical Essay

The writing of poems in association with objects that were exchanged as gifts became a common practice in eleventh-century China. Two sets of poems by Huang T'ing-chien written in 1086 in response to gifts of incense provide an index of his poetic techniques and an instructive contrast with the techniques of Su Shih. In the first set, Huang sees incense in terms of the process by which it is made or the ways in which it functions in the life of those who use it; there are both social and religious themes. Huang also explores in complex and subtle ways the multiple meanings of words, a central theme of his poetics. In the second set, Huang T'ing-chien enters into several exchanges of poems with Su Shih. Su characteristically makes us see his active mind interpreting the world and interacting with the other party to the poetic exchange; Huang also shifts his focus to his friendship with the other poet, but he does not depart from the incense theme, as Su does. Finally, an unrelated pair of poems written in jes t takes us back for a concluding look at Huang's primary interest: the contingent reality of both incense and words.

POEMS WRITTEN AS AN ADJUNCT or response to the giving of presents may be considered almost a new genre or subgenre in the Northern Sung. There are T'ang precedents, to be sure; Goyama Kiwamu gives the following statistics on the number of such poems in the works of major T'ang poets:

Li Po 1 Liu Yu-hsi 14 Yuan Chen 17 Yao Ho 6 P'i Jih-hsiu 10 Tu Fu 11 Chang Chi 5 Po Chu-i 20 Li Shang-yin 5 Lu Kuei-meng 10 But although these figures show a new development in T'ang, the real escalation comes in the Sung:

Mei Yao-ch'en 143 Shao Yung 30 Ssu-ma Kuang 27 Wang An-shih 11 Su Ch'e 26 Chang Lei 34 Ch'en Shih-tao 16 Ou-yang Hsiu 10 Wen T'ung 22 Liu Ch'ang 11 Su Shih 117 Huang T'ing-chien 147 Ch'ao Pu-chih 12 Ch'ao Yueh-chih 57 Goyama explains this escalation by the fact that the new era of relative peace and the expansion of commerce made special local products and luxury items more available throughout the country. One did not have to be an emperor or noble to appreciate and collect the rare and the beautiful. Once in circulation, these articles took on important functions. Political newcomers could increase their chances in the crowded competition for position by sending a gift to a potential patron. Factional allies could confirm their ties through presents. Gifts could also be traded for poems; to receive a thank-you poem from a prominent writer such as Huang T'ing-chien [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (1045-1105) would enhance one's prestige greatly. [1]

Many of Huang's poems on such things as tea, incense, wine, brushes, and inkstones, most of them presents, are ascribed to 1086 (though he had written such poems earlier, of course, and would continue to do so). One set of ten poems written in 1086 in response to a gift of incense provides an index of his poetic techniques; a second set written in connection with a similar gift stimulated a poetic exchange with Su Shih [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (1037-1101) and offers us a fruitful contrast in style. (Su Shih is the third most prolific Northern Sung writer of gift-associated poems, with two times more such works than the next most active poet in the sub-genre, Ch'ao Yueh-chih.) Su and Huang met for the first time in 1086, although they had corresponded since 1078. Despite their high regard for each other, each brings a unique approach to the poem-in-association-with-gift sub-genre.

In the first series Huang T'ing-chien sees the incense in terms of the process by which it is made, or the ways in which it operates in the life of those who use it; there are both social and religious themes. He also explores in complex and subtle ways the multiple meanings of words, a central theme of his poetics.

I

The occasion for the series arose when one Chia T'ien-hsi gave Huang T'ing-chien a kind of incense or fumigant and requested a poem (or poems). Huang used the ten words of the opening couplet of a poem by the T'ang poet Wei Ying-wu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (736-ca. 790) to set ten rhymes and wrote a decade of quatrains in response. Huang's "title" is "Chia T'ien-hsi kindly gave me a precious incense and entreated me for a poem. I made a poem to requite him, using the ten characters 'Weaponed guards, [a] forest [of] painted pikes;/[at the] feast [in the] chamber, congealing clear scent"' [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [2] Wei Ying-wu's couplet not only mentions incense; it is appropriately martial-Chia was a military man.[3]

The first poem reads,

A sense of peril [like] wandering 10,000 fathoms high; impatient desires engender the five weapons [within]. I lean on the armrest, with a single strand of incense; the Numinous Estrade is clear, empty, and bright.

"Weapons," Wei Ying-wu's first word, fixes the rhyme. There are various lists of what arms constitute the "five weapons," but in this poem the phrase clearly stands for inner conflicts or disequilibrium caused by restless desires or ambitions.[4] These desires or ambitions cause fears and anxieties, but in the second half of the poem the two activities of leaning on an armrest and burning incense overcome those emotions. The article referred to as "armrest" could either be a small table or an armrest placed beside one on a sitting mat or raised dais. This piece of furniture was surely rare in Sung times, as the Chinese had largely converted to high furniture, so its mention here is either a fiction or an indication of antique-slyle furnishings.[5] Leaning on one's chi [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is a gesture as old as Mencius and Chuang Tzu; the action can convey an attitude of aloofness and control: in another 1086 poem, Huang wrote, "He leans on the armrest, lightly caressing the myriad [things in their] motions."[6] As for the incense, it is also an emblem of spiritual ease. The poet's mind (for which Numinous Estrade [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is a Taoist term [7]) achieves an ideal state of tranquility and pure awareness free of attachment to concepts or objects, and the point of the poem is that it is the incense that has helped bring this about.

The second quatrain takes up a motif familiar from earlier poems by Huang, the avoidance of the common or vulgar world. The first half of the poem suggests two aspects of the daily routine of a practicing Buddhist--the midday meal (the last of the day for a monk [8]) and meditation. The "dais" [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in the first line is a "dais for living creatures:' a feeding station placed in a secluded place for the benefit of birds and small animals.

Midday meal: birds peer at the dais;

sitting in peace: the sun passes the steps.

Vulgar atmosphere has no way to come near;

the smoke drifts up and forms a massed defense.

Wei [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "guard" or "defense," is the rhyme-word from Wei's couplet. Incense defends against the su, the "common," or "vulgar." Huang T'ing-chien tends to set up these oppositions between the power of the gift and forces to be defeated by it; his 1086 poems about tea repeatedly come around to the drink's ability to conquer sleep. [9] Strictly speaking, this poem is self-contradictory, for the phrase we translate "sitting in peace" [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is explained at some length in the Vimalakirti-nirdesa-sutra as a profound state in which one is both in this world and enlightened. [10] The opposition between the incense and the "vulgar atmosphere" runs counter to the connotations of "sitting in peace"; perhaps Huang's habit of setting up oppositions was too strong for his Buddhism, or his Buddhism did not seek a union of the mundane and the enlightened.

The third poem strikes out in a new direction. It concerns the manufacture of the incense.

"Stone honey" transforms snail's armor;

in quince [juice] is boiled aloeswood.

[From the] Po-shan [censer] a lone smoke rises;

facing this [scene,] I shiver with awe.

(Sen, which means "forest" in Wei's couplet, here becomes sen-sen [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] a reduplicative binom indicating fear or shivering.) In the first couplet, Huang alludes briefly to four ingredients of ho-hsiang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "blended incense." [11] Some recipes for blended incense call for onycha, made from the operculum of a certain snail. This "armor" or "plate" had to be treated with honey or wine to be usable; this explains Huang's first line. [12] The third line tells us something about the vessel in which the incense is heated or burnt. The Po-shan incense burner is familiar to anyone acquainted with Han-dynasty art; the perforated lids of these burners were in the shape of a Mount Po [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] that is supposed to rise out of the sea. Sung-dynasty burners with this style of lid have been excavated; presumably they appealed to the antiquarian interests of Huang's age. [13]

There are antecedents in the T'ang for poems of the type we are exploring. Stephen Owen, introducing a poem on a vinewood staff by Han Yu and one on a sword by Li Ho, notes that poems on treasures owned by friends were "a common subgenre in T'ang poetry, one of the requirements of polite society...." [14] However, Sung-dynasty poets showed a special interest in the materials and processes that went into the manufacture of elegant items such as ink, brushes, paper, and incense. Technical knowledge largely replaces the supernatural elaborations of a Han Yu or a Li Ho. The present poem is testimony that technical knowledge had become a suitable theme for poetry; it is also evidence that Huang T'ing-chien must have taken special pride in his ability to fit part of the recipe for blended incense into two lines of a quatrain, no mean technical feat...