Rediscovering Wen Tingyun: A Historical Key to a Poetic Labyrinth

Introduction

Introduction 1 The Tang Dynasty is the golden age of Chinese poetry. The Late Tang is a harvest season of the golden age, an era prolific in great poets. Wen Tingyun (798–868?) was a great master of poetry of the Late Tang and the herald of a newly emerging poetic subgenre of his time, the ci poetry that became prevalent in the Song Dynasty and has captivated generations of Chinese readers up to modern times. The aim of this book is to rediscover Wen Tingyun the man, so as to reevaluate Wen Tingyun the poet. We will find out what Wen writes about in his poetry and how he writes it. To this purpose, apart from exploring Wen’s intricate life with an understanding of his unique poetic style, we will also use the uncovered historical events related to his life as a key to enter and travel through his poetic labyrinth. This book is thus titled Rediscovering Wen Tingyun: A Historical Key to a Poetic Labyrinth. THE TIME OF WEN TINGYUN: RAMPANT EUNUCH POWER For all its cultural exuberance and prosperity, the Late Tang was a time filled with troubles both internal and external. The eunuch usurpation of court power was its most conspicuous and serious political problem. As an outgrowth of the highly centralized imperial supremacy, this problem arose during the An-Shi Rebellion (755–763).1 In the decades after the rebellion the emperors seem to have taken a wrong lesson from it, by lessening their con- fidence in the court officials, but entrusting increasing power to the eunuchs, their “safe” household slaves. Once this transfer of power was institutionalized and became a fait accompli, the eunuchs were no longer isolated palace slaves at the emperors’ mercy. Not only did they take control of religious and economic affairs, but they also played a part in military manipulations and political decision making at the top level. They even became able to enthrone and dethrone the emperors, and had the lives of emperors at their disposal.2 This eunuch infiltration of the power structure greatly accelerated and finally precipitated the downfall of the dynasty. Controlling the emperors as an emblem of their supremacy, the eunuchs generally aggravated the dissension among the court officials and intensified factional strife. As a result of this situation , the “Southern Office” (court officials), vis-à-vis the “Northern Office” (the eunuchs), polarized into two factions, the Niu Faction and the Li Faction. Initially and essentially, the two factions stood for different political responses to the Yongzhen Reform (805), even though their later factional proclivities were often not easy to define. Faced with the factional struggles prevalent under eunuch power, any honest literary man would encounter great difficulties in establishing a successful political career for himself. Out of a concern for their own vested interests, court officials in power from either faction often adopted a vacillating, if not ambiguous, attitude toward initiating strong measures to deal with the eunuchs. This vacillation can account in part for the failures of the “Southern Office” in both the Yongzhen Reform and the Sweet Dew Incident (836), the two events most representative of its efforts to curb the eunuchs. The Yongzhen Reform attempted to get rid of eunuch power, while the Sweet Dew Incident was aimed directly at the annihilation of the eunuchs themselves. In both cases, however, the court officials never closed ranks, but remained at odds with one another over the effectiveness of radical actions. Actually, the literati in general were willing, but not daring and firm enough, to oppose the eunuchs. As a result, the participants in the two events were politically too weak to be a match for the eunuchs, even though they succeeded in enlisting the support of the emperors. Most of the Yongzhen reformers were condemned to lifelong banishment, and all the Sweet Dew Incident plotters suffered clan extermination . It was not until toward the end of the dynasty, 901, when absolution came in form of an “Amnesty,”3 that they were rehabilitated. Since the eunuch power existed in a kind of symbiosis with the Tang royal clan, some people preferred to join forces with them to guarantee a smoother official course of action, or a more favorable official position and career. In fact, anyone in office had to come to terms and cooperate with them in order not to invite failure. The so-called “Yuanhe Restoration...