The Early Reception of Yu Xin in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries.

• Author: Luo, Yiyi

INTRODUCTION

The court literatus Yu Xin [phrase omitted] (513-581) has long been regarded as the most important poet of the sixth century. His meticulous employment of parallelism, dexterous use of historical references, and excellent command of rich emotions have long been recognized by literary critics. Standing at the tip of the collapse of southern literature, he was also said to have transformed the plain northern style by incorporating the refined southern style, thus helping to promote the convergence between the north and south in the realm of literature. But it is his traumatic experience of witnessing the collapse of the Liang dynasty and subsequent lifelong stay in the north that have fascinated later readers. This last account sees Yu Xin as a frustrated court writer inflicted with regret and reads his writings primarily against the backdrop of the decline and fall of the Liang in the 550s. However, this view is built on two problematic assumptions: first, that a man's writings are to be read as factual accounts of his experience; second, that an official would remain loyal to the court he had served, an idea that did not come into being until at least the thirteenth century. This interpretive framework, as compelling as it has been, has limited our scope of reading and exploring the vibrancy, subtlety, and polyvocality in Yu Xin's writing. It has also caused interpretive inaccuracies that are at times present in one of the most important poetic collections of Yu Xin, Annotated Anthology of Yu Zishan (Yi Zishan jizhu [phrase omitted]) by the early Qing scholar Ni Fan [phrase omitted] (fl.ca. 1705).

With so much said about Yu Xin*s life and work, (1) any comment on him comes from somewhere and needs to be understood in the historical context in which it grew. The dominant authorial image of Yu Xin as a nostalgic and disheartened writer is a powerful lens, but it is the end product of an incremental process that involved several shifts across history. To better understand the literary world in which he lived, read, and wrote, it is important to turn to his time period and the ensuing dozens of years closest to that world, so as to obtain a critical view of the early chain of the enduring process of Yu Xin's reception. This early phase starts from the late sixth century and ends around the middle of the seventh century, roughly corresponding to the second half of the Northern Zhou (557-581), the Sui (581-618), and the first years of the Tang dynasty (618-907). As will be shown below, the reputation of Yu Xin during this time period was far more complex than that of him being a nostalgic writer, an image primarily inspired by an impassionate reading of his "Rhapsody of Lamenting the South" (Ai Jiangnan fu [phrase omitted]; hereafter "Rhapsody").

Tracking the early reception of Yu Xin entails the following questions: how was he viewed in his own time and the years immediately following his death? Was there only one view, or were there multiple views? What were the possible context for these views, and how do we understand them? Although a comprehensive study of this early reception would entail the investigation of a wide range of texts, including official histories, anecdotal collections, literary prefaces, imitational compositions, and literary compendia (leishu [phrase omitted]). the current article engages primarily with four texts containing distinct evaluations of Yu Xin: a preface written by the Northern Zhou prince Yuwen You [phrase omitted] (d. 580) to his compilation of the poetic works of Yu Xin, his biography in the Zhoushu [phrase omitted], the Zhoushu historian's comment about literature of previous dynasties, and the preface to the "Collective Biographies of Literary Men" (Wenxue liezhuan [phrase omitted]) in the Suishu [phrase omitted]. (2) The first two texts are informational in their narration of Yu's family background, official career, and social network, and the latter two evaluate his writings in lieu of the literature of the Southern Dynasties. Although the four texts illustrate Yu Xin as a famed court writer, each represents different and sometimes conflicting attitudes toward the man. Read together they do not amount to a single portrait but rather present complementary sketches that are missing in our modern perception of him. Yuwen You's preface portrays Yu Xin as a court writer, who, despite remaining far from his southern home state, lived a happy and successful life among the northern court dignitaries. The Zhoushu biography appears to narrate Yu Xin's official career in a matter-of-fact tone but also begins to associate with him the sentiment of nostalgia, despite not over-emphasizing it. The Zhoushu postface and Suishu preface situate his role as a court writer in the ideological landscape of the early Tang, which tended to see the culture of the Southern Dynasties as reflection of the deteriorating wen [phrase omitted]. and hence declining morals of the world, and to view Yu Xin as representative of this downward trend.

These diverse perspectives did not enjoy equal attention in later times. Some overshadowed others and exerted a profound influence on the ways in which later literati and critics interpreted Yu Xin's writings. While how this diversity diminished historically constitutes another topic, the current article centers on these views proper. Due to their different natures and the distinct occasions on which they were produced, each needs to be examined in its own context. Moreover, they should not be read merely as statements of historical fact, but as compositions that denote certain cultural values and fulfill social functions. Our focus thus is to reconstruct these different portraits of Yu Xin and to explore their historicity, especially as related to the early Tang historians' evaluations of the Southern Dynasties.

To do that, we need to (re)contextualize and careful reread these four texts, each of which has received some scholarly attention and yet in most cases has only been mentioned in passing to illustrate the landscape of literature of the Southern Dynasties in broad strokes, and sometimes not even with a focus on Yu Xin. (3) Before proceeding to the contextualization, however, we need to be aware of its limitations. Any attempt to recover or reconstruct a historical scenario in a certain moment in Yu Xin's life (or, in fact, that of any writer in early medieval times) is constrained by the scarcity of historical sources. Our efforts to reconstruct the early reception of Yu Xin will thus not permit the deduction of any strong argument or give rise to an integrated and satisfying picture, but, as we shall see below, the vibrancy and diversity of voices and attitudes that emerge even within the paucity of historical materials deserve attention, and a careful reading of the transmitted texts can shed new light on the complexity of the literary and intellectual world in which early medieval poets lived and wrote.

A critical analysis of the four texts below situates their differing representations of Yu Xin's reputation in their broader literary-historical frameworks to illuminate how authorial voices were constructed in early medieval Chinese poetry criticism. The process in which Yu Xin's posthumous fame was created is but one of the many examples of how famed poets in medieval China were made, a process that involved selection, omission, interpretation, and imitation. (4)

YUWEN YOU'S PREFACE TO THE POETIC COLLECTION OF YU XIN

We begin with Yuwen You's preface to his compilation of Yu Xin's work ("Yu Xin ji xu" [phrase omitted] hereafter referred to as "Preface"). (5) Yuwen was known for his literary talent, and his writings circulated widely among his contemporaries. (6) As he was killed in 580 by Yang Jian [phrase omitted] (541-604), founder of the Sui dynasty (581-618), we know little else about his literary activities. Of his collection in eight juan only one poem and two prose pieces remain, including the "Preface." (7) The dire paucity of his surviving work prevents us from getting a clear picture of his literary caliber, but the "Preface" in its use of allusions and flowery writing style indicates that he was a highly skilled writer.

Yuwen You appears to have been an admirer of Yu Xin's work. Aside from compiling a now-lost anthology for his senior friend and writing a preface to it, Yuwen also supported him financially. (8) Yu Xin on his part was aware of the prince's compilation and preface, for he expressed his gratitude to him in one of his letters. (9) The fact that Yu Xin was the primary audience of the "Preface" explains its overall laudatory tone--it is a public display of respect and friendship between the two men. The "Preface" was also addressed to the cultural elites at the time (and in the future), who might hold an interest in reading, preserving, and circulating the collection of Yu Xin's works. Yu's reputation as the best writer and scholar of the day would have been necessary to promote the significance of his collection.

Aside from serving as an introduction to the anthology, the "Preface" also reads like a biography of Yu Xin. Its delineation of his career path and personality through selected episodes of his life is less in keeping with what modern scholar Chu Binjie [phrase omitted] wrote about "prefaces to anthologies" (ji xu [phrase omitted]) in traditional China--which, as Chu states, typically discuss the circumstances under which the compilation took place, illuminate the format of the collection, or introduce its content--but rather resembles the conventions of biographies in dynastic histories. (10) The "Preface" adopts an admiring tone and complements Yu Xin's pedigree, character, and abilities, sometimes to the point of exaggeration. Despite his higher political status, Yuwen You assumes the role of a junior scholar. Although its narrative is dotted with key historical events and official positions...