The Book of Literary Design

12. Laudations and Epitaphs

Laudations and Epitaphs Inscriptions and laudations first appeared in the the Zhou period, when virtue reigned supreme. One definition for a major minister was that in the presence of death he could laud. To laud is to lump together, to lump together the virtuous deeds of the dead, in order to extol them, so that they do not die. Before Xia and Shang times inscriptions and laudations were unknown; and even when they were introduced during the Zhou, their application was not yet extended to the "knights"; further, "the humble do not laud the great, the young do not laud their elders", and kings were at the mercy ofheaven for a laudation. Laudations were cited for the determination of posthumous titles, always at ceremonies of great pomp. For the first time a "knight" was honoured with a laudation after the battle of Sheng Qiu fought by Duke Zhuang of Lu. The passing of Confucius was the occasion of the composition of a laudatory piece by Duke Ai. Hardly a work of genius, with its talk of "too niggardly to spare" and so on and its "alases", it must be regarded as an early model for later performances. Liuxia Hui was lauded by his wife, in plaintive language that lasted. In Han times the tradition continued. Yang Xiong lauded Empress Yuan at length and laboriously. A short abstract from this was given by the Hanshu and led Zhi Yu into thinking that this was all that Yang Xiong had written, without reflecting that a detailed account of honour and virtuous deeds could hardly be covered in four lines. Du Du's laudations were themselves lauded. But even though his complimentary piece on Wu Han was finely executed, he failed to be consistently good, and it would be unreasonable for us to rate all his efforts Laudations and Epitaphs I 43 highly only because Emperor Guangwu liked one of them. Fu Yi in his compositions was always well organized; Su Shun and Cui Yuan were generally neat and elegant. They narrated as if they were writing standard biographies, in a graceful and melodious language, and must be regarded as major craftsmen in the art of laudation. Pan Yue, writing centuries later, learned his craft from Su Shun, and developed a great skill in the expression of sorrow, in a style that seemed easily affective, thus enhancing the reputation of his predecessor of several generations before. As for Cui Yin lauding Mr Zhao and Liu Tao lauding Mr Huang, both were methodical, and both managed to be to the point. Cao Zhi who enjoyed a large reputation as a writer was really slow and cumbersome in laudation: at the end of the tribute to Emperor Wen he wrote at length on his own plight, thus violating the very first principles of the genre. When, earlier on in history, the Shang people wished to laud the life ofKing Tang, they recalled and commended the blessings of his ancestors in the "Swallow". And when the scribes of Zhou wished to glorify King Wen they went back to the great deeds of Hou Ji. This was how poets commemorated and lauded their forefathers. The reconstruction ofsorrow was less linear, more by association. When Fu Yi wrote the laudation on Prince Beihai, he had to say, "Darkened rays of the sun, total darkness in the rains' torrents"; he had to say this before describing his emotions, and his procedure became a model which his admirers imitated to great advantage. The laudation requires the selective chronicling of the celebratee's words and deeds in biographical form and eulogistic language so that a life of honour is rounded off with proper grief. Whatever is darkly in the life of its subject it should make visible, and the passing itself should be the theme ofsoul-wounding sorrow. Such is the making of the laudation. An epitaph which is set over a tomb is a tombstone and as a stone helps to store (for in this etymology a stone stores). In early ancient times when titanic kings worshipped heaven and earth and wished to see their titles recorded they set up slabs of stone to help the hills store their achievements, and commemorative stones were brought into being and graced with the name. King Mu of Zhou had his roamings recorded on a stone on Mount Yan. This was a stone inscription in the ancient sense. In these ancient times in the ancestral temples there often were slabs of stone in...