One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China by Anna M. Shields (review)

After publishing an erudite study on a Five Dynasties poetic anthology, Crafting a Collection: The Cultural Contexts and Poetic Practice of the Huajian Ji (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), Anna Shields has gone back a century and a half to examine the intellectual discourse and social practice of friendship in the literary culture of the mid-Tang, focusing on the 780s to 820s. Through textual analysis of the dyadic relationships of Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen, Han Yu and Meng Jiao, Liu Zhongyuan and Liu Yuxi, Shields tracks their individual and collective friendship within a community of about two dozen writers, including celebrity poets and essayists, and a chief councilor, Quan Deyu. She asserts that friendship became a critical component of literati culture and the circulation of their texts made the practice and performance of friendship visible and public. She selects and translates excerpts from poems, letters, and funerary writing to let the writers themselves weave the narrative of an enduring network of lifelong friends. Her thesis holds that the discourse and performance of friendship by these friends shaped mid-Tang literati identity and brought innovations to literary writing in the broader context of cultural, social, and political changes in Tang China after the An Lushan Rebellion (755–762).

In the introductory chapter Shields draws upon the classics such as Shijing and Lunyu to explain the terminology of friends, variously referred to as “one who knows me” (zhiwozhe 知我者, zhizhe 知者, zhiji 知己), “one who appreciates my talents” (zhiyin 知音), “one who shares my heart-mind” (tongxin 同心), and “one who knows my heart-mind” (zhixin 知心) (p. 44). The practice of friendship in the 780s–820s derived from the Confucian (ru 儒) fellowship that cherished the trust (xin 信) and knowledge (zhi 知) of oneself and each other.

At the outset Shields notes that mid-Tang friendship was not an alternative to political office; in fact, the discourse and practice of friendship integrated one’s literary, intellectual, political, and social life. Chapter 2 looks at the friends in their young adulthood flocking to the capital of Chang’an to pursue paths to political office. In post-rebellion mid-Tang, the expansion of the civil service examinations brought in new blood and broadened participation to less prestigious lineages from the provinces. Shields argues that the social and cultural environment facilitated the spread of literati friendship as young educated men selected friends of like minds and moral principles for companionship, mutual cultivation, and patronage ties to advance their success in the civil service examinations and subsequent political careers. While themselves seeking patrons through submission of their poetry and prose, friends looked out for each other, as in the case of Han Yu and Li Ao both writing to recommend Meng Jiao for office. Li Guan addressed his own patron, undermining his own chances, to strengthen support for the two friends whom he recommended. This period of young adulthood was recounted in texts to friends years later, as Yuan Zhen recalled engaging with colleagues in revels, drinking, and singing in the company of courtesans in Chang’an.

In the next two chapters we observe the community of friends sustaining their friendship through poetic exchanges and letters as volatile careers, political demotion, and other setbacks shifted them in and out of the capital. The poetic exchange, as “responsive poetic composition” or as linked verse, was the poets’ alternative to conversations and letters and involved composing poems to match the rhymes of earlier poems, sometimes written decades apart. Some were humorous and self-mocking, others serious, functioning as spiritual support to cope with ordeals. The literary production could be prolific, as in the case of Bai Juyi, who wrote nine hundred poems to Yuan Zhen through three decades of friendship. We read poignant excerpts from three prefaces to such poetry collections, including the one with Bai...