The Southern Garden Poetry Society: Literary Culture and Social Memory in Guangdong

6. The Southern Garden During the Late Qing

Chapter Six The Southern Garden During the Late Qing You can still feel the community pack This place; it’s like going into a turfstack, A core of old dark walled up with stone A yard thick. When you’re in it alone You might have dropped, a reduced creature To the heart of the globe. No worshipper Would leap up to his God off this floor. Founded there like heroes in a barrow They sought themselves in the eye of their King Under the black weight of their own breathing. And how he smiled on them as out they came, The sea a censor, and the grass a flame. —Seamus Heaney, “In Gallarus Oratory” The memory of the Southern Garden Poetry Society persisted throughout the Qing dynasty, inspiring an occasional poem from local literati. This memory lingered despite the conflagration of the original buildings on the site during the difficult transition from the Ming to the Qing and the subsequent desolation of the spot. Among those affected by this historical memory was Liu Xinlie 劉信烈 (jinshi 1699) from Xiangshan; he composed a panegyric at the Southern Garden when a group of poets met there for a quiet retreat, after which they visited an adjacent Buddhist site. When Liu mentions practicing Chan meditation in a secluded corner of the garden, this seems to be the first poem on the Southern Garden to touch on any Buddhist elements.1 Another local poet to versify on the Southern Garden was Xian Yingyuan 冼應元 (fl. 1795) from Nanhai, otherwise unknown. His lüshi entitled “Veranda for Screening the Wind” is preserved by Qu Xiangbang in his Guangdong shihua; Qu’s comment on this verse is that “Those who discuss the Southern Garden have to be familiar with this poem.”2 It does not appear to be particularly noteworthy, but one memorable couplet stresses the great personalities around whom the original society and its Later Invigoration revolved: “The former badge holders bowed their heads before Sun Xi’an,/Mostly the Later Invigoration relied on the disciples of Chen Zizhuang” 前徽首下西庵拜，後勁多依禮部門.3 A visitor from Jiangsu provides an outside perspective on the course of poetic elegance in Guangdong. Pan Lei 潘耒 (1646–1708) graciously accepted the poetic pedigree that started with Sun Fen of the Five Former Masters and ran through Ou Daren and Liang Shixing of the Five Later Masters. But for the Qing of the early seventeenth century, he paired Li Suiqiu with Deng Yunxiao, who appeared above in connection with Deng’s founding of the Phoenix Terrace Poetry Society: Pan Lei, “Miscellaneous Chants on the City of Rams” 羊城雜詠 4 南園詩社明初盛 The Southern Garden Poetry Society flourished at the beginning of the Ming, 典籍才華最初群 Sun Fen’s talent stood out the most from the crowd. 中葉歐梁推秀婉 During mid-dynasty, Ou and Liang promoted delicate gracefulness, 末年黎鄧擅清芬 At the end, Li and Deng monopolized poetic purity and fragrance. 地偏未染諸家病 Being remote, it escaped infection by other schools’ failings, 風景堪張一旅旗 With its lovely sites, it could spread one brigade’s banner.5 韶石淒清珠海濶 The Shao Stones are deserted, the Pearl River and sea broad, 湘靈雅調至今聞 Yet elegant tunes of the Xiang spirit are still heard even today.6 A younger contemporary, He Mengyao 何夢瑤 (zi Zanzhou 贊周, 1693–1763), mentioned getting drunk with a friend in the same Veranda for Screening the Wind on his way back from a visit to Yuexiu Hill.7 A later poem about the veranda by Han Hai 韓海 (zi Weiwu 緯五, 1677– 1736), from Panyu, indicates no hint of sociality of any kind.8 But Tan Xiang 譚湘 (early 18th century), a poet from Shunde, composed a piece entitled “In Late Spring Convening an Elegant Gathering to Discuss the Matter of Reconvening the Poetry Society” 暮春雅集議修社事, because, as the first line reads, “The airs and elegance of the Southern Garden have 120 The Southern Garden Poetry Society long decayed” 南園風雅久凋零. The poem concludes very optimistically: “Anciently or at present, there has never been a better place for versifying and drinking,/Let us sit amid the flowers and chant, drunk like at Lanting” 今古不殊文酒地，坐花吟醉擬蘭亭.9 There is no hint in recorded history whether the discussion ever amounted to anything. Chen Dalu 陳大璐 (gongsheng 1760) recalled the Southern Garden as both an ideal place for poetry as well as the site of a Shrine to the Sires of the Southern Garden 南園公祠. His poem starts in the garden and then meanders to the shrine as it draws a moral from the transience of life: “Acolytes in the Southern Garden celebrate in...