Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties

Chapter 8. Shishuo xinyu and the Emergence of Aesthetic Self-Consciousness in the Chinese Tradition

Chapter 8 ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Shishuo xinyu and the Emergence of Aesthetic Self-Consciousness in the Chinese Tradition Wai-yee Li Shishuo xinyu (A New Account of Tales of the World, ca. 430) plunges us into a finely observed and deftly articulated world of variations on human sensations, perceptions , and actions.1 Its dominant concern is the compass of beauty— the discernment, judgment, and delineation of physical, moral, verbal, intellectual, and spiritual beauty and the connections (or apparent lack thereof) among these categories. Lu Xun’s statement that Wei-Jin is “the era of literary self-consciousness” is by now something of a truism .2 Histories of Chinese literary thought never fail to note the rise of new aesthetic categories in works such as Cao Pi’s (187–226) Dianlun lunwen (A Discourse on Literature) and Lu Ji’s (261–303) Wen fu (Poetic Exposition on Literature). Yet the later fruits of Wei-Jin literary self-consciousness—notably Liu Xie’s (ca. 465–ca. 521) Wenxin diaolong (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons) and Zhong Rong’s (ca. 469–518) Shi pin (Classification of Poetry)—offer ambivalent and sometimes negative assessments of the Wei-Jin (especially Jin) literary-cultural legacy. By contrast, Shishuo xinyu depicts this legacy by and large sympathetically .3 It is also interesting to note that the materials included in Shishuo 237 lie outside the province of literature in the systematic classifications of genres in Wenxuan and Wenxin diaolong.4 Shishuo contains only sporadic, though often insightful and evocative, judgments of specific literary works and comments on literary and artistic creation. Somewhat less tangible and coherent, but also more pervasive and influential, is the discourse of beauty that emerges from the book. Paradoxically, it is precisely because Shishuo is not directly or deliberately confronting the meaning of literature and its place in the Great Tradition (and is therefore not constrained by theoretical and historical systems or obliged to address the competing claims of ethics and philosophy) that an emergent aesthetic self-consciousness freely unfolds. How did this happen? The aesthetic mode of apprehending and appreciating human existence in Shishuo displaces or represses politicalhistorical categories of significance, despite the fact that many entries in Shishuo bear structural similarities with anecdotes in historical writings, and quite a number of them duly make their way into the Jin shu (History of the Jin), compiled in the Tang dynasty.5 Consider the phenomenon of so-called “Pure Conversation” (qingtan , qingyan ). Many scholars have characterized Shishuo as a compendium of Pure Conversation. (As a record or recreation of that cultural practice, the book itself might have become “an aid to conversation.”)6 There is scholarly consensus on how Wei-Jin Pure Conversation evolved from late Han “Pure Critique” (qingtan ).7 Of the latter FanYe (398–445) writes in the Hou Han shu : By the time of the reigns of Emperors Huan and Ling , rulers neglected their duties and there was political decay. The fate of the country was put in the hands of eunuchs, and educated persons were ashamed to consort with them. That was why commoners protested in frustration, and scholars without official positions gloried in their arguments. Whereupon, with ever more extreme opinions, they enhanced their own names. They judged each other, evaluated the lords of the land, and sized up those deciding on policies. The mood of defiant probity thus became prevalent.8 Pure Critique started off as a system of local recommendations for office based on evaluations of talent and virtue; by late Han the system was corrupt and crumbling. The Pure Critique launched by the students of the Han imperial academy was a form of political intervention . It was when political life became too dangerous or apparently 238 WAI-YEE LI futile that the intellectual elite turned to the more abstruse and philosophical Pure Conversation. Whereas the word “pure” (qing ) in “Pure Critique” has distinct moral connotations, referring to the righteous opinions of the “pure stream” (qingliu ) attacking the corrupt elements in government, “pure” in the compound “Pure Conversation” denotes philosophical speculativeness, unworldly refinement, lofty detachment, and the ability to stay above the fray. In various early usages, the term seems to have no particular philosophical resonance and simply describes witty and felicitous verbal expression.9 The word “qing” also recurs in the approbation of characters in Shishuo, where it conveys associations of wit, refinement, perceptiveness...