Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (review)

Reviews 447 the People's Republic ofChina since 1978is a useful addition to the literature on Deng Xiaoping's "second revolution." It fills a great need. More importantly, it challenges China scholars to probe further into the various aspects ofadministrative reform in post-Mao China. Stephen K. Ma California State University, Los Angeles Ronald C. Egan. Word, Image, and Deed in the Life ofSu Shi. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994. xix, 474 pp. Hardcover $38.00. Ronald Egan deserves applause for his massive effort. This erudite and judicious volume offers comprehensive coverage ofthe Song dynasty's multifaceted and complex genius, Su Shi (1037-1101). Egan's study makes nearly full use of a vast literature about Su to produce an intellectual biography that also studies Su's prose, poetry (shi and ci), painting, and calligraphy. Egan's book excels in scholarly rigor, exhaustiveness, and in careful judgment. Word, Image, and Deed (WID) provides a complete moveable feast of Su Shi's life and works; it will prove essential reading for any Su Shi fans and for any students ofSong China, traditional biography, and literature. After the feast, it's time to pick a few bones. Two flaws prevent WID from winning unqualified praise. First, it suffers from an incomplete appreciation of Daoism's importance in Su Shi's world. In discussing "Daoism," this review will first treat religious Daoism, not limited to high church Daoism, but including a variety ofmore-or-less popular techniques ofinternal and external alchemy. Then we shall move on to the Zhuangzi. Egan does cover Su Shi's efforts at Daoist cultivation during the years of exile. But Egan attempts to dismiss such efforts by constantly stressing Su's doubts, bouts ofdisbelief, and inconsistent devotion to Daoism. However, when discussing Su's Confucian and Buddhist sides, Egan does not dismiss them just because Su failed to become a Confucian sage or bodhisattva, just because Su also entertained doubts and bouts ofdisbelief about , TT . Confucianism and Buddhism. In fact, all three systems ofthought—in varying© 1995 by University' b ofHawai'i Pressdegrees throughout Su's long and varied career—provided him with important intellectual and spiritual resources. No need to disparage any one leg of the tripod simply because, in the end, Su did not become a full-fledged "believer." Interest- 448 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 ingly, the chiefomission from Egan's bibliography is Zhong Laimin's Sm Shi and Religious and Philosophical Daoism (Taibei, 1991). Studying this important, though one-sided, monograph would have helped Egan achieve a more balanced treatment ofreligious Daoism. Harder to understand, WID also displays tremendous indifference toward the influence ofthe Zhuangzi on Su Shi. Aside from identifying allusions, Egan mentions the Zhuangzi only twice: on page 156 he admits the Zhuangzi as the source for Su's ideal of"responding to things," but claims Chan Buddhism as the "more immediate source"; on page 196 he notes Su's Zhuangzi-like fascination with the relativities of space and time, but claims Chan as the "more immediate source." The problem with such a dismissal is not just that the Zhuangzi underpins all Chinese Buddhism and especially Chan—then we could forgive Egan's "more immediate " distinction. But Su's writings—particularly his works discussing Chan— absolutely overflow with words, quotations, ideas, and outlooks from the Zhuangzi. The climactic citation Egan uses to prove Chan enlightenment as an important influence on Su ends with a quotation from the Zhuangzi (p. 168). Surely the most famous Su Shi quote omitted from WID is his awed "what I envisioned within my heart but could not express in words, only upon viewing the Zhuangzi could I grasp" (from his brother's "Funerary Inscription"). To indicate how silly things get when we try to dissever Chan from the Zhuangzi, on pages 155-156 Egan tries to prove "Chan rather than Zhuangzian influence" with a citation of the Chan monk Guanghui. Egan argues that the key term wuqing equates to the Chan term wuxin. But not only is wuqinga famous Zhuangzi term (Concordance 5.54-58), wuxin also finds its locus classicus in the Zhuangzi (22.24). By ignoring the Zhuangzi as a...