Plan of the Series... Almost the most prodigious asset of a country, and perhaps its most precious possession, is its native literary product when that product is fine and noble and enduring. Mark Twain* The advisory board, the editors, and the publisher of the Dictionary of Literary Biography are joined in endorsing Mark Twain s declaration. The literature of a nation provides an inexhaustible resource of permanent worth. Our purpose is to make literature and its creators better understood and more accessible to students and the reading public, while satisfying the needs of teachers and researchers. To meet these requirements, literary biography has been construed in terms of the author s achievement. The most important thing about a writer is his writing. Accordingly, the entries in DLB are career biographies, tracing the development of the author s canon and the evolution of his reputation. The purpose of DLB is not only to provide reliable information in a usable format but also to place the figures in the larger perspective of literary history and to offer appraisals of their accomplishments by qualified scholars. The publication plan for DLB resulted from two years of preparation. The project was proposed to Bruccoli Clark by Frederick G. Ruffner, president of the Gale Research Company, in November 1975. After specimen entries were prepared and typeset, an advisory board was formed to refine the entry format and develop the series rationale. In meetings held during 1976, the publisher, series editors, and advisory board approved the scheme for a comprehensive biographical dictionary of persons who contributed to literature. Editorial work on the first volume began in January 1977, and it was published in 1978. In order to make DLB more than a dictionary and to compile volumes that individually have claim to status as literary history, it was decided to *From an unpublished section of Mark Twain s autobiography, copyright by the Mark Twain Company organize volumes by topic, period, or genre. Each of these freestanding volumes provides a biographicalbibliographical guide and overview for a particular area of literature. We are convinced that this organization as opposed to a single alphabet method constitutes a valuable innovation in the presentation of reference material. The volume plan necessarily requires many decisions for the placement and treatment of authors. Certain figures will be included in separate volumes, but with different entries emphasizing the aspect of his career appropriate to each volume. Ernest Hemingway, for example, is represented in American Writers in Paris, 1920 1939 by an entry focusing on his expatriate apprenticeship; he is also in American Novelists, 1910 1945 with an entry surveying his entire career, as well as in American Short-Story Writers, 1910 1945, Second Series with an entry concentrating on his short fiction. Each volume includes a cumulative index of the subject authors and articles. Between 1981 and 2002 the series was augmented and updated by the DLB Yearbooks. There have also been nineteen DLB Documentary Series volumes, which provide illustrations, facsimiles, and biographical and critical source materials for figures, works, or groups judged to have particular interest for students. In 1999 the Documentary Series was incorporated into the DLB volume numbering system beginning with DLB 210: Ernest Hemingway. We define literature as the intellectual commerce of a nation: not merely as belles lettres but as that ample and complex process by which ideas are generated, shaped, and transmitted. DLB entries are not limited to creative writers but extend to other figures who in their time and in their way influenced the mind of a people. Thus the series encompasses historians, journalists, publishers, book collectors, and screenwriters. By this means readers of DLB may be aided to perceive literature not as cult scripture in the keeping of intellectual high priests but firmly positioned at the center of a nation s life. DLB includes the major writers appropriate to each volume and those standing in the ranks behind them. Scholarly and critical counsel has been sought ñîáá
mä~å=çñ=íüé=péêáéë ai_=pru in deciding which minor figures to include and how full their entries should be. Wherever possible, useful references are made to figures who do not warrant separate entries. Each DLB volume has an expert volume editor responsible for planning the volume, selecting the figures for inclusion, and assigning the entries. Volume editors are also responsible for preparing, where appropriate, appendices surveying the major periodicals and literary and intellectual movements for their volumes, as well as lists of further readings. Work on the series as a whole is coordinated at the Bruccoli Clark Layman editorial center in Columbia, South Carolina, where the editorial staff is responsible for accuracy and utility of the published volumes. One feature that distinguishes DLB is the illustration policy its concern with the iconography of literature. Just as an author is influenced by his surroundings, so is the reader s understanding of the author enhanced by a knowledge of his environment. Therefore DLB volumes include not only drawings, paintings, and photographs of authors, often depicting them at various stages in their careers, but also illustrations of their families and places where they lived. Title pages are regularly reproduced in facsimile along with dust jackets for modern authors. The dust jackets are a special feature of DLB because they often document better than anything else the way in which an author s work was perceived in its own time. Specimens of the writers manuscripts and letters are included when feasible. Samuel Johnson rightly decreed that The chief glory of every people arises from its authors. The purpose of the Dictionary of Literary Biography is to compile literary history in the surest way available to us by accurate and comprehensive treatment of the lives and work of those who contributed to it. The DLB Advisory Board ñîááá
Introduction As the title indicates, the scope of Dictionary of Literary Biography 358: Classical Chinese Writers of the Pre-Tang Period comprehends the entire history of China before the Tang dynasty (618 907). With such a vast period to cover, one might expect the volume to be much longer and include entries on many more writers; but, although the founding works of Chinese literature were composed during this period, little biographical information about the authors of these works is available. For example, Li sao (Encountering Sorrow), commonly accepted as having been written by Qu Yuan (340 278 B.C.), is traditionally considered the most important single poem in Chinese history. All that is known of Qu Yuan comes from his biography in the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), by Sima Qian (circa 135 circa 90 B.C.), which is not considered reliable by modern standards. As a result, the author of this monumental poem is not treated in this volume. Even less is known of the writers of many other great works from this period. Another problem is the great book burning ordered by Ying Zheng, who founded the Qin dynasty (221 207 B.C.) and took the name Qin Shi Huangdi (The First Qin Emperor). In an attempt to gain absolute control over the many schools of thought that arose in flourishing intellectual activity of China during the Warring States period (475 221 B.C.), Qin Shi Huangdi executed many philosophers and scholars and ordered all books except those concerning agriculture and medicine to be destroyed. Qin Shi Huangdi died in 210, and the Qin dynasty came to an end in 207. Court intellectuals of the interrupted Han dynasty (206 B.C.--A.D. 9, 25 220) recovered as many texts as they could, discovering some, written in ancient script, that had been hidden from the Qin government inside double walls of houses or buried in graves. As the Han dynasty consolidated its control over the land, scholars who had survived the Qin dynasty and had memorized burned texts were summoned to the court to give dictations of them. The task was not an easy one, as memories fail especially the memories of aging scholars such as those who dictated the texts. Court scholars edited the recovered and transcribed texts in an effort to reconstruct accurate and authoritative versions of the Confucian classics. Everything that is known about the literature that existed before the book burning is based on these recovered texts. It is impossible to tell how much was lost, and almost nothing is known of the authors of these works. The authors treated in this volume all lived after the Qin dynasty; thus, none of their works were consigned to the flames. But time, war, and chance took a toll on their writings. Some of the authors are known to have been great literary figures in their day, but little of their work remains. What did last was, in many cases, the works collected in anthologies such as Xiao Tong s sixth-century anthology Wen xuan (excerpts translated as Wen xuan; or, Selections of Refined Literature, 1982 1996). Much of the information about the lives of the authors is taken from their biographies in the official dynastic histories, but these biographies are often brief and sketchy. For these reasons, one cannot judge the importance of an author by the length of his entry in this volume. Nor does the lack of an entry necessarily mean that an author was not a major writer in pre-tang China. In 1899 Wang Yirong, the chancellor of the Directorate of Education of the Qing dynasty (1644 1912), was suffering from malaria. The imperial physician gave him a prescription, the ingredients of which included dragon bones. After filling the prescription, he looked at the dragon bones and was amazed to see bone fragments inscribed with characters that he recognized as older than anything known at that time. Since then, approximately six thousand characters have been found etched on ox shoulder bones and tortoise shells dating back as far as 3,200 years. Modern understanding of the written Chinese language begins with these characters. The bones and shells were used in divination ceremonies in the royal courts of the Shang (circa 1600 1046 B.C.) and Zhou (1046 256 B.C.) dynasties. After posing a question to the spirits, the diviner placed a hot poker on the bone or shell and read the resulting cracks for answers. The question and answer, and sometimes the actual outcome of the xix
Introduction DLB 358 case, were recorded by etching characters on the bone or shell, thus forming an archive. These archives, and the histories based on them, played an important role in Chinese society. Although during the Shang dynasty people believed in a supreme god, known as Tian or Di, by the later Zhou dynasty Tian had become an abstract conception of cosmic power and natural principles that can be translated as Heaven. Without a god to confer authority on the ruler, the Zhou dynasty established the notion of the Tian Ming (Mandate of Heaven): the belief that Heaven bestowed the authority to rule the human realm on the most moral member of the royal class. The Chinese relied on candid historical records to evaluate the actions of the rulers and determine their legitimacy or lack thereof. Each dynasty after the Han compiled at least one history of the preceding dynasty, extolling the praiseworthy rulers and criticizing the bad ones. These historical archives form the basis of the Chinese literary canon. Confucius (551--479) was an archivist in the feudal state of Lu under the Zhou dynasty. Observing the gradual disintegration of the Zhou political system and social structure, he took it upon himself to teach all who were willing to learn the traditional Zhou rituals, ethics, and morals. In the process he codified a system of political and social order that guided Chinese society for more than two millennia. Although Confucius insisted that he was only a transmitter of tradition, he became the founder of Chinese culture as it is known today. The list of works considered the Confucian classics has changed over the centuries, but the core group includes the Lunyu (Analects), which records Confucius s sayings and dialogues, and several books that he edited: the Shangshu (Book of Documents), a collection of Shang and Zhou dynasty political documents; the Yijing (Book of Changes), a divination manual; the Shijing (Book of Odes), a collection of court ritual songs and popular folk songs that were submitted to the court as a mirror of public opinion; the Zhou li (Rites of Zhou), Yi li (Rites of Ceremony), and Li ji (Records of Rites), ritual and etiquette manuals; and the Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals), Confucius s interpretations of the historical annals of the state of Lu, revealing his teachings on ethics, ritual, and etiquette. Also included are three early commentaries that provide historical contexts for the often quite brief entries in the Chunqiu: the Zuo zhuan (Commentary of Mr. Zuo), China s first anecdotal history; and the Guliang zhuan (Guliang Commentary) and Gongyang zhuan (Gongyang Commentary), which are devoted to analyzing and explaining the language of the Chunqiu. Finally, often included in the list of Confucian classics is the glossary Erya (Close to Elegant Speech). Confucius s greatest contribution to Chinese literature was, perhaps, his acute attention to philology and rhetoric. As he edited the historical archives, retelling history as he taught ethics and morality, he paid close attention to the meanings and implications of the words he used. The words he did not use were as important as the ones he did use: the Chunqiu is so concise that without the Zuo, Gongyang, and Guliang commentaries it is nearly impossible to understand. Confucius also placed great emphasis on the songs collected from the populace and submitted to the court as a mirror of the public views on current policies and conditions. He again selected and edited these songs for use in his teachings, resulting in the Shijing. The ability to quote or allude to the poems in the Shijing in political debate was a sign of erudition during the later Zhou and afterward. Confucius s greatest contribution to Chinese culture in general was his policy of liberal education. In a time when education, the literary arts, etiquette, and ritual were an exclusive right of the nobility, Confucius accepted as a student anyone who had a sincere desire to learn. He opened the realm of scholarship and moral and intellectual debate, and thus of political power, to the common people, thereby creating a new social class: the shi (retainers, counselors, gentlemen-in-waiting, or errant scholars). The shi traveled from state to state, offering advice on government and seeking rulers willing to retain them as counselors on government policy. They studied the Confucian texts, expounding their own interpretations of Confucius s ideas, and went on to build their own politico-ethical theories. Their activity made the Warring States period one of the most intellectually vibrant in Chinese history; the writings of this age are collectively referred to as the Zhuzi baijia (Masters of the Hundred Schools). During this time the essay matured as a genre; the less formal genre of the history, or story, was born; and the Chu ci (Songs of [the Southern State of] Chu; translated as Ch u Tz u: The Songs of the South: An Ancient Chinese Anthology, 1959) appeared. Together, the Shijing and the Chu ci form the foundation of all later Chinese poetry and rhymed prose. The Chu ci is said to have been compiled by Liu Xiang (76--5 B.C.). Many of the songs in the collection are attributed to Qu Yuan and Song Yu (circa 290 circa 223), but, as is usually the case with pre- xx
DLB 358 Introduction Qin writings, and even with many Han writings, there is little chance of ascertaining who wrote what. Whereas the odes in the Shijing were collected for their political value, the Chu ci lyrics are mainly religious in nature and probably originated in shamanistic ritual songs. The shi (lyric) poems of the Shijing often consist of stanzas built with two or more couplets consisting of four-character lines; those of the Chu ci tend to be longer and are not as clearly divided into stanzas. The language used and the landscapes described are also different from those of the Shijing, betraying their southern origins. Many of the lyrics describe a shaman s journey to the spiritual world in quest of union with a god or goddess. Others call the souls of deceased lords back to the human realm. In 221 B.C. the state of Qin conquered the last of the Warring States, unified China under a centralized empire, and standardized weights, measures, currency, and the writing system. It was succeeded in 206 by the Han dynasty. Through the efforts to reconstruct the texts that had been destroyed by the Qin emperor, a group of lexicologists and philologists arose in the Han court. These scholars, such as Mei Cheng and Yang Xiong, made use of their learning to compose fu (rhapsodies or rhyme-prose), a genre derived from the lyrics in the Chu ci. It comprised an introduction, interjections, and, often, an epilogue, all in prose, and a main text in rhymed verse describing a topic in exhaustive detail. During the Han dynasty Sima Qian took over the lifelong goal of his father, Sima Tan, of composing an all-encompassing history of civilization as known to the Chinese at the time. The result was the monumental Shiji, which not only set the standard for all subsequent official histories but also is venerated for its beautiful yet concise prose style. The Han dynasty also gave rise to yuefu (Music Bureau) poetry. The genre began with a collection of folk songs gathered by the Han Music Bureau or composed by the bureau for ceremonies, much in the tradition of the odes of the Shijing. As the poems were sung by nonliterate peasants, the yuefu tend to be shorter and composed in less formal language than the fu. The style of composition was continued and elaborated by later poets. One of the most famous yuefu is Mulan shi (The Song of Mulan), about a girl who goes in her father s place when he is drafted into the military. Most of the yuefu are of anonymous authorship. At its height the Han dynasty was regarded as having the ultimate form of government, one based on the moral, ethical, and ritual system prescribed in the re-created Confucian texts. Officials were recruited on the basis either of their knowledge of one of the Confucian classics or of their moral stature. It was believed that a government based on Confucian principles and run by men of outstanding character would last for eternity. Human nature being what it is, however, some ostensibly moral behavior was actually a mask for corruption. In addition, military and fiscal realities set in when nomadic peoples of Central Asia such as the Xiongnu began raiding the northwestern frontier lands of the Han empire. As the costs of either fighting these aggressors or paying tribute to them increased, tensions grew within the government. The Yan tie lun (Debates on Salt and Iron) records discussions between government technocrats and Confucian scholars in 81 B.C. on the role government should play in the economy. The technocrats argued that the costs of the battles and pacification payments required the government to raise taxes and establish a monopoly on the sale of salt and iron, while the Confucians maintained that it was not the government s place to interfere with and compete in the free market. The Confucians won the debate but were unable to save the empire. As the Han dynasty fell into decline at the end of the second century A.D., a new style of poetry began with the anonymous Gushi shijiu shou (Nineteen Ancient Poems), composed in five-character lines and bemoaning the hardships of life, such as war and mortality. This genre grew out of the shi poetry of the Confucian Shijing: with four characters in a two-plus-two pattern in each line, the Shijing required two lines to express an idea completely. By adding an additional character in a two-plus-three pattern, the poems of the Gushi shijiu shou could express an idea fully in one line, as the additional character could be an action word. The addition of the extra character greatly enhanced the expressive power of the shi poem. A further development of the shi genre introduced seven-character lines in a twoplus-two-plus-three pattern. In the tradition of the Shijing, the lines of all shi poems were paired into couplets, with the rhyme in the second line of each couplet. In 220 the Han throne was assumed by the king of Wei, Cao Pi (187--226), who proclaimed the founding of the Wei dynasty. The end of the Han threw the Chinese intelligentsia into crisis: if the traditional feudal system of government had not worked since the protracted demise of the Zhou dynasty, the legalistic system instituted by the Qin had proved to be a political disaster, and the moralistic Confucian system of the Han had failed, what political structure was left to bring peace and stabil- xxi
Introduction DLB 358 ity to the world? The answer seemed to be brute military force. A series of governments were established and quickly overthrown. Eventually, China was divided into northern dynasties controlled by non- Chinese and the exiled southern dynasties. As society fell deeper into disarray, many intellectuals used literature, and especially poetry, to express their anxieties and frustrations. Consequently, this period, like many eras of crisis, was a golden age of intellectual and literary fertility. Buddhism and metaphysical Xuanxue (Learning of the Mysterious), or neo-daoism, combined with disillusionment in Confucianism to allow a rejection of the scholasticism and ritual of the Han dynasty. The poetry of Ruan Ji (210--263) explored the depths of mind and emotion. Xi Kang (223--262) wrote essays on cultivating immortality. Tao Yuanming (365--427) rejected all social advancement; happy to get drunk on wine with no regard for host or etiquette, he advertised his aloof disassociation from the social realm in beautiful rustic poetry. In the chaos that followed the fall of the Han, the traditional social hierarchy broke down. The aristocratic families who had gained power through hereditary grants of land during the Han lost that source of legitimacy when the north fell to the nomadic invaders. The aristocrats fled to the southern dynasties, where they had to rely on their skills in the literary arts to defend and maintain their social status. Poetry competitions held in the salons of such rulers as the Liang crown prince Xiao Gang (503--551) enabled them to reaffirm their status as highly educated and literate members of the social and political elite. Xiao Gang s elder brother, Xiao Tong, elevated Chinese literature to new heights when he compiled the Wen xuan. Up to this point Chinese culture did not have a concept of purely literary writing; the purpose of beautiful written language was to express the writer s intentions and ambitions. The Zuo commentary on the Chunqiu records Confucius as saying, Speech is to express one s ambitions and intentions [zhi]; decorative language [wen] is to express the spoken word. If one does not speak, who will know one s ambitions and intentions; if the language is not decorative, it will not go far. Not until Xiao Tong compiled the Wen xuan, for which he chose writings on the basis of their literary merits, did literature for the sake of literature come of age in Chinese culture. The newfound social and political importance of poetic skill, along with the new recognition of the value of literature purely for beauty s sake, encouraged the development of ever more sophisticated forms of poetry. At the same time, Buddhism became popular in the northern and southern dynasties, and many Sanskrit Buddhist sutras found their way into China. In translating these sutras, monks and scholars became aware that the metrical patterns of the Sanskrit texts were based on long and short vowels. This discovery gave Shen Yue (441-- 512), Xie Tiao (464 499), and their colleagues insights into their own language. The standard spoken Chinese of the time had four tones, which were categorized into ping (smooth) and ze (oblique) groups. The meters of the Sanskrit text could be duplicated in Chinese by positioning words of different tone groups in a contrastive arrangement. Shen and his colleagues developed rules of juxtaposition and of patterns to be avoided, and thus was born a new form of shi poetry, lüshi (regulated verse), which became the most popular form during the height of the Tang dynasty. Chinese Writing, Transliteration, Pronunciation, Naming Conventions, Calendar, and Books Written Chinese is unique: it is not based on a system of phonetic symbols but consists of characters, or logographs, each of which represents a word or idea. Before the Qin dynasty unified weights, measures, and the writing system, there were regional written dialects, just as there were dialects of the spoken language. The Qin unification allowed one written language to be used to communicate across vast areas, despite mutually unintelligible spoken dialects. As written Chinese is not based on a system of phonetic symbols, it is possible to understand the meaning of a Chinese character but to have no idea how to pronounce the word. In this respect the Chinese written language can be compared to the mathematical system of notation: the meaning of the numeral 1 is understood by people around the globe, although it may be pronounced one, eins, uno, or ichi. Chinese words and names are commonly transliterated into modern Standard Mandarin Chinese. The pronunciation of some names in modern Mandarin is controversial, and so there may be variations. Among the writers treated in this volume, for example, the name Mei Cheng is also often written as Mei Sheng and Xi Kang as Ji Kang. This volume uses the more common transliteration unless the contributor felt it to be incorrect. The most widely used system of romanization of Chinese until the mid twentieth century was the Wade-Giles, established in 1859 by Sir Thomas Francis Wade and modified by Herbert Allen Giles in A xxii
DLB 358 Introduction Chinese-English Dictionary (1892); but more recently, the hanyu pinyin system, finalized by the Committee on Language Reform of the People s Republic of China in 1958 and made official in 1979, has gained favor. Which system is better has no clear answer, as either is only a partial representation of the modern Mandarin pronunciation of words that had quite different pronunciations during the period treated in this volume. Nevertheless, DLB 358 uses the pinyin system, which is found in most modern library catalogues and is becoming the dominant standard in Western publications. In the bibliographies of secondary sources in the entries, however, the reader will almost certainly encounter the Wade-Giles or even less-common systems of romanization. The following rules of pronouncing hanyu pinyin are meant to serve as a convenient aid to the reader in approximating the general pronunciation of modern Mandarin, but they should not be mistaken for a comprehensive guide. Some of the more unexpected pronunciations in pinyin include the letter c, which is pronounced as the ts in the English fits or the zz in pizza; q sounds like the ch in cheap; and x is pronounced like the ci in special. G is always hard, as in goat. Ch, sh, and r are pronounced as in English but are retroflexive, meaning that the tongue is turned back in the mouth; zh is a retroflexed voiced fricative similar to the g in frigid. When these four consonants are followed by i, they are pronounced without a vowel sound, or as if followed by -er: for example, zhi is pronounced like the ger in merger. Elsewhere, i is pronounced like ee in teeth. Vowels are generally pronounced as in English but without as much variation. A is always soft, as in father. U sounds like the oo in moo when it follows all consonants except j, q, and x; in those cases it is pronounced like the German ü (a close approximation is the ew in few). In pinyin a ü can occur after n or l; it is also pronounced like the German ü. E is pronounced like the a in abut. Combinations of vowels are individually pronounced, resulting in diphthongs and triphthongs; thus, wei sounds like way, you sounds like one half of yo-yo, and biao sounds like be out minus the final t. Names in premodern China can be confusing, even for the initiated. The most basic form of address for Chinese is the xing, which is the clan name similar to the Western surname. Every Chinese person had a xing. Before the Han dynasty, some larger clans also adopted a shi, or clan branch name; but by the time of the Han dynasty the shi was integrated back into the xing hence the combined term xingshi. The next level of address was the ming, similar to the Western given name. Not everyone in premodern China had a ming, but members of upper-class families would generally receive ming as young children. Children were addressed by both elders and peers by their ming, which was also used as superiors form of address to inferiors. At twenty, a Chinese man came of age and entered society through the capping ritual, in which his hair was tied in a headknot and a cap was placed over it. As the ming could never be used as a form of address for an elder, a superior, or an equal who was not a relative or close friend, a new name was required for younger people, subordinates, and nonintimate peers to use in addressing the new adult. This name was the zi, translated as courtesy name, style name, or appellative. After the capping ceremony, the young man would choose a zi or would receive one from an elder such as a parent or teacher. Women would take on a zi at marriage. The ming could continue to be used by the individual in deprecatory self-reference and by elders, superiors, and close friends in addressing the individual; all others would use the zi. In written texts, authors would often refer to themselves by their ming as a form of modesty. When referring to others in formal texts, the author would use either the ming or the zi, depending on the context. In more-formal situations the ming and zi could be combined, with the ming first. The Chinese calendar is a lunisolar one, with twelve twenty-nine- and thirty-day months and an intercalary, or leap, month added approximately every eight years. Traditionally, the Chinese counted years beginning with the founding of the ruling administration. For example, in Chinese histories the Western year A.D. 128 was referred to as the third year of the Yongjian administration of the Han emperor Shundi. As this system would mean little to most English-speaking readers, in this volume years have been converted to the Western equivalents. The result is usually satisfactory, except that the beginning of the Chinese year usually occurs from mid January to mid February. Thus, again using the third year of the Yongjian administration as an example, the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month would fall in 129. As references to such problematic dates are rare in these entries, the choice was made not to adjust the year. Thus, in this example the year would still be converted as A.D. 128. Paper came into common use as a medium for writing in China in the second century. Previously, books had been written on wooden or bamboo strips that were bound with string to form juan (scrolls). Strips have been discovered with between eight to forty characters each. The length of a book was xxiii