Rectifying Lasciviousness through Mystical Learning: An Exposition and Translation of Ruan Ji’s Essay on Music

Mystical Learning is a form of Neo-Taoism effused with Confucianism. It dominated several important social circles during the Wei-Jin dynastic periods, including the Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove, a loose association of musical philosophers. One of these Seven Worthies, Ruan Ji, adopted the "pure talk" form of debate through the rhetoric of written assertions. Ruan's most convincingly authenticated work, Essay on Music, emerged in this setting during the first half of the third century. Essay on Music passionately advocates a return to traditional notions of propriety. It is a fundamentally subversive work, pointing out the licentious behavior of those then in power. Commenting shrewdly on the corrupt practices of his day, Ruan leans on the authority of legendary stories to prove his thesis. Essay on Music begins by evaluating third century society's adherence to traditional Confucian values, as laid out by the Book of Rites, and concludes with a discussion of the interplay between emotion and song through-out history. Part of a larger dialogue among the Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove, Essay on Music and other discourses on the emotive content in music explore the contemporaneous fascination with the connection between human sentiment and the cosmic relationship of heaven and earth.

Notes about the Translation

During the process of translating Essay on Music, whenever possible, I have tried to remain faithful to Ruan Ji's grammatical structures to maintain the flavor of his reasoning. The result may seem, at times, formulaic and repetitive, but if that is the case, it is only because the original has these characteristics. As Ruan's sentences are often intentionally vague, I have sought to translate his ideas in such a way that the ambiguities remain unresolved, while still transmitting every clue for their interpretation that exists in the original. Where extra explanation is required, it is included in typical footnote format. I have also attempted to use consistent terminology, but where appropriate I have varied the word choice to enliven the text for the modern English reader.

Because Essay on Music has not been translated previously into English, I relied substantially upon two modern Chinese translations. Oftentimes they would open my eyes to different ways of reading the text, but other times I felt that the modern Chinese translations added too many unreliable connotations, particularly when creating compounds from single classical Chinese terms. More often than not, after consultation with one or both of these translations and unsatisfied with their answers to difficult translation issues, I was obliged to wrestle one-on-one with the original terms to find suitable English equivalents. However, I am greatly indebted to the authors of those two modern Chinese translations, Lin Jiali and Ji Liankang , without whom I could not have finished this project.

The phonetic system I have employed is pinyin. Over the last few decades, pinyin has become the most universally understood system of Romanization for Chinese characters. Therefore, though Ruan Ji's name in pinyin is most standard, for instance, readers should be advised that in older systems of Romanization, he is catalogued under such spellings as Juan Chi or Yüan Chi. For simplicity's sake, this paper uses only pinyin unless other phonetic systems occur in the title of a book or article for which converting them into pinyin would prove unhelpful.

Reclusion and Disengagement²

Disturbed by the political upheavals that were so pervasive in the aftermath of the fall of the Han dynasty, several legendary literati lost hope in the applicability of teachings from the "Confucian" school of thought. The strong leaders were corrupt, and the upstanding rulers were weak. Various competing factions had broken the kingdom into pieces. The most notable ruling party was the Sima clan. In the midst of societal commotion and instability, legend has it that one particularly uninhibited young man identified as Ruan Ji³ from the principality of Chenliu⁴ would occasionally withdraw from literati circles at court, joining his nephew and five close friends for excursions among groves of bamboo.

Word of the utopian...