Restoration of a poetry anthology by Wang Bo.

• Author: Keung, Timothy Wai

The abundant scholarly and literary work that Wang Bo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (650-676?) produced during his short life astonishes students of Chinese literary and intellectual history. (1) Prompting his prolific literary career was an eagerness to demonstrate his talents so as to impress people who had an influence on his official life, a practice traditionally called ganye [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (2) Ganye involved the presentation and publication of written works, usually in the form of shi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (poetry), fu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (rhapsody), and song [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (eulogy), typically arranged by the author into a collection. Among Wang's extant corpus we find numerous products of the ganye practice, but no self-edited collection of ganye works. Indeed, despite the prevalence of the ganye tradition in the Tang, no ganye poetry collection dating from the early Tang is extant, the earliest being Liu Zhangqing's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (d. 789 or 791) eight-poem set entitled "Zayong" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (3)

This loss of Wang Bo's ganye poetry collections hinders both our understanding of his prolificacy and appreciation of his art. One lost collection, produced at a key juncture of Wang's short career, has been of particular interest to scholars because its preface has been preserved though its poems have been scattered. This self-edited compilation of thirty poems was entitled An Anthology of Poems on My Journey to Shu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (hereafter Shu Poems). Although scholars have suspected that the content of the Shu Poems may be hidden amongst Wang's extant corpus, lack of evidence has frustrated the restoration of this important anthology. (4) The present study offers textual and historical evidence to restore the anthology as well as its "social energy." (5)

Wang's testimony to his compilation of the Shu Poems is contained in the preface he wrote for it. Let us first look at this preface below, paying special attention to Wang's mood and what motivated him to "record my journey," and above all, his intention of making the anthology available to interested readers.

 On the gui-mao day of the fifth month in the second year of the Zongzhang reign-period (669), I set out from Chang'an to begin my sightseeing journey to the Shu region. I went through the narrow Bao-Xie [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Pass, then came upon the treacherous roads of Mounts Min [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and E [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] where I cut across obscure gullies and traversed halcyon mounds. A full month later I arrived. With regard to the selection of magnificent vistas of rivers and mountains in the area, I observed the wondrous craftsmanship of Heaven and Earth. There, cinnabar ravines vie against one another with their flowing torrents; green peaks rise in undulation; heaving waves descend and drain away, rumbling as though in anger; towering sky- high bluffs loom obstructively. These are indeed the most marvelous views in the universe. How can Zhuang Zhou's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] awe at the steepness of Mount Luliang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], or Han Hou's

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] fear of the cragginess of Mount

Mengmen [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], be worth mentioning in

comparison? Truly, upon ascending heights or hills, one aspires to climb Mounts Heng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Huo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and upon touring a brook or a rill,

there ferments in one the intention of retreating to rivers and

lakes. How much more valuable is seeing this superior scenery in

person, and treading on its numinous precincts with my own feet? Mist and rosy clouds are requisites of dawns and dusks. Forests and springs consummate my writings on wind and moonlight. Alas, how deeply I am moved and inspired by mountains and rivers. How could I lack passion? Thereupon I finished some melodious writings, as a means to record my journey and singing. I have compiled them into an anthology of thirty poems that I will present to connoisseurs. (6)

1. DETACHED AND REATTACHED

In its early textual history the Shu Poems underwent a process of detachment. I use the term "detachment" to refer to the process of removing a composition from one textual environment for the purpose of appending it to a new one. Individual poems in the Shu Poems collection were detached and reappear in various sources. Thus detached, the works comprising the collection lose the coherence of their original organizing principle, affecting the way we read and interpret them. As Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel observe, a collection "may well present its text(s) according to its own agenda, as worked out by the person who planned and supervised the production of the manuscript." (7) In what follows I attempt to reattach the scattered works of the Shu Poems to a presumption reconstruction of the anthology and recover the agency of the manuscript, so as to offer insights into the relationship between Wang Bo and his anticipated readers.

The arrangement of literary works in a Song reproduction of the Tang edition of Luo Binwang's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (ca. 626-684) collected works yields clues to the process of the detachment of Wang's Shu Poems. Shortly after Luo's death, Xi Yunqing [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] searched for Luo's scattered works and compiled them at request of Emperor Zhongzong (r. 684, 705-10). (8) In this compilation, Luo's works were organized by genre, as follows:

 Table 1: Contents of Luo Binwang wenji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Juan Title

Genre(s) included 1 Fu

Fu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (rhapsodies) 2-5 Shi Shi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (shi poems) 6 Biao qi Biao and qi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Memorials and communication) 7 Qi shu Qi and shu

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (communication and letters) 8 Zazhu Xu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Miscellaneous writings)

(preface) and duicewen

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

(answers to examination

questions) 9 Zazhu Poems entitled pian [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (verse piece) and lubu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (unsealed [military] memorandum) 10 Zazhu Xi

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

(proclamation), yingjie

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

(response to condemnation),

zhuang

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

(conduct description), jiwen

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

(elegies), wan'ge

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

(burial songs) (a) a. Luo Binwang wenji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Song Shukeben Tangrenji congkan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], vol. 1 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1994). Some of the translations are adopted with modifications from David R. Knechtges, Wen xuan or Selections of Refined Literature, vol. 1: Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1982), 21-22.

Organization of literary works by genre, a common practice since the time of Wenxin dialong [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Wenxuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], were guidelines to the compilation of literary works in the early Tang. (9) If the earliest compilation of Wang's works by Yang Jiong [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (650-ca. 694) were organized similarly, then we would expect that Yang would have separated Wang's poems from their prefaces. In an early Tang compilation, prefaces are categorized as "prose" and shi poetry as "verse." (10) This separation is illustrated not only in works collected in Wenxuan but more significantly in the works of early Tang writers such as Lu Zhaolin [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (ca. 634-ca. 683) and Luo Binwang. In these latter cases, a poem and a preface that were originally written on a given occasion and included in the same manuscript on that occasion would later be recopied in two different sections, one in "shi" and the other in "xu." (11) Thus editors from early times would have compiled the preface and poems of the Shu Poems separately, thereby destroying the textual structure embodying the social energy of the Shu Poems. This dismemberment does, however, make the present study possible, because it is likely that the Shu Poems were not totally lost, just scattered.

2. WANG BO'S SHI IN SONG TIMES

A survey of Wang Bo's works in circulation prior to Song times yields useful hints to our investigation. Early bibliographic records, as listed below, display the status of other editions of Wang's works, aside from the thirty-juan corpus, extant in the Song: (12)

 Table 2: Bibliographic records of Wang Bo's works in Song and pre-Song times Title of Anthology Source Xinzhu Wang Bo ji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] KZSM 49a (14 juan) Wang Bo shi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (8 juan) SS 208.5330 Zhouzhong zuan xu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] SS 208.5332,

(5 juan) JTS 60.1618 Zaxu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (1 juan) 208.5330

Some important facts can be established. First, the abundance of Wang's poems in these Song editions compared to extant versions of Wang's corpus dating from the Ming indicates a serious loss of material sometime between the Song and the Ming. Most Ming editions of Wang's complete works consist of only two juan, while the entry Wang Bo shi is listed in eight juan. Unfortunately, no other record supports the existence of this eight-juan edition. (13) Second, the Shu Poems had ceased to circulate as a separate anthology by the Song, presumably because its practical use as ganye had lost its dynamic after Wang achieved his goal of impressing the authorities for his official assessment after his return to Chang' an in 671. Third, the work entitled Shixu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] demonstrates that Wang's works were anthologized by genres as early as the early Tang, as I have argued elsewhere. (14) This...