[In the following essay, So argues that in contrast to the western models of philosophy, based primarily on the works of Plato and Aristotle, the Taoism of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu fosters a non-mimetic literature and art intent on depicting the inner harmony of the Tao rather than the outer fluctuations of nature.]

According to Plato, the highest order of reality is the Idea or the ideal Form which can be attained by thinking. Below it is the worldly thing which can be perceived by the senses and is indeed an imitation of the Idea. Still below the worldly thing comes its imitation, the arts.¹ Plato also assumes that all things fluctuate. Even the most stable worldly matters are merely shadows of the ultimate reality, and are apparent because they are the imperfect copies of the Idea.² The reason Plato ranks art below the worldly things is that the former is only an imitation of the latter and is further removed from the philosophical truth, the Idea. The inferiority of art extends to the poets whose job it is to start with emotion, or an imitation of people in action which is often uncertain or contradictory ([Raymond Larson ed., The Republic] X.603c-603d). While Plato banishes the poets, he praises man's faculty which is capable of applying intellection to conceive certainty, the harmonious order, or the Idea (VI.511-511d). Thus he comes to conceptualize the hierarchy of being in a descending order: Idea—world of senses—art.

Using his scheme of reality, Plato condemns poets who at best imitate things removed from reality and at worst fabricate deceitful illusions. The extension and modifications of his evaluation of poetry (including those of Aristotle's and Plotinus' that skip over the concern for Idea), however, lay the foundation of the Western mimetic concept of literature.³ In contemporary literary studies this mimetic theory gives rise to such influential treatment of representations of direct everyday life like Erich Auerbach's, and that of the reproduction of conscious existence and human labor, or broadly speaking social and historical developments like the Marxists.⁴ Consequently, literature in the West has repeatedly been viewed as representation of the sensible world though there are other theories such as the objective, expressive and pragmatic ones. Plato, therefore, begins as a philosopher and ends as an influential aesthetician or literary theoretician.

While Plato stands as a great figure in the West, so does Lao-tzu in the East. Both are philosophers treading a literary sideline. They all share something in common in their recognition of an ultimate reality. In Lao-tzu's term, that reality, or Ideal, is the Tao. It is the object of a spiritual contemplation, i.e., spontaneous and intuitive thinking rather than inferential and logical thinking; It is the ultimate quest and existence. However, unlike Plato, Lao-tzu does not rank worldly reality in the middle between art (literature) and Tao. Nor does he see art as a remote imitation and lower in value than as Tao. Because of his non-discriminating and comprehensive perception, Lao-tzu's view of literature, being one of the trail-blazers in Chinese thought, is responsible for explaining some unique characteristics of the Chinese literary tradition.

In this article, two things will be demonstrated. First, Lao-tzu's and Chuang-tzu's literary careers will be shown by means of their literary romantic consciousness. Second, their views will be explored to determine if they are compatible with the Western assumption that literature is the representation of reality.

Unlike Plato who concretely explains his notion of Form, Lao-tzu only points out the ineffability of Tao. He tries to use conscious means of communication but has to relapse to visionary and prophetic resonance to maintain its orality.

There is a thing formed of Chaos,
          born before heaven and earth.
It is soundless and shapeless,
                    peerless and never changing.
Omnipresent and is free from perils.
It may well be the mother of all things.
I do not know its name,
                    and call it Tao.
If I have to label it, it is the great.
Because it is great, if flows on and on.
Because of its flow, it reaches far;
          from afar it returns and assumes its original nature.
Therefore Tao is great.
Heaven is great.
Earth is great.
And the king is also great.
There are four great things in the universe,
And the king is one of them.
Man must take after the Earth,
The Earth Heaven,
Heaven the Tao,
And Tao naturalness.(5)

Obviously, Lao-tzu's Tao is nondescript. It is an essence which contains a hierarchy—heaven, earth and king (the criterion of human values). It cuts across the three levels of existence and is beyond them. It excels them in magnitude without dwindling to become one of them. Not occupying space, Tao's governing principle is found in the natural state of all things. Since Tao is not physically definite, instead of saying what it is, Lao-tzu tells how it behaves; its pattern of motion is a cyclic one: big-flowing out-going afar-back to the original. While Lao-tzu may be begging the question in describing Tao, he has earnestly pointed out some of its characteristics by means of reductio ad absurdum: Tao is soundless, shapeless and has nothing to do with the senses. In the oft-quoted first chapter of his book ([Ch'han-t'u hu chu Lao-tzu Tao-teh ching] I, 1a-1b, 17), Lao-tzu says that the nameless and the named, though physically different, somehow coincide at their fountainhead. Desire and non-desire, too, have the same ultimate purpose. Elements, however conflicting, finally operate in the same orbit and belong to the same source, the mystery. That Lao-tzu is reluctant to pin down the characteristics of Tao may probably be due to the boundless and measureless depth of Tao. Any precise description of it will limit its nature and thus be a disservice to Tao. The closest elucidation he has of it is the word mystery. In tone and in expression he anticipates the twentieth century mystic Gibran:

And there are those who talk, and without knowledge of forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.

And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.

In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.⁶

In like manner, leaving much unsaid, Lao-tzu further considers it best not to apply artificial means to preserve Tao (III 17a-17b). Virtue or any other good deed cannot be a substitute for it. The advisable way to gain Tao is to perceive things in their uncalculated and natural form, at which stage they achieve a greater stability. This recognition of perceiving things in their own uncoerced course is certainty, the essence of a thing. Thus all things in their natural form essentially yield an image of the mystery or the Tao.

Despite the superficial similarity to Plato, Lao-tzu's fundamental approach to the physical world differs from the former. Lao-tzu's naturalness expressess a transcendental and aesthetically contemplative quest, while Plato's ultimate knowledge results from a cognitive and syllogistic process and is bound up with truth, justice and virtue. Lao-tzu's ultimate world is to be found where the king, or man-made virtues, discipline and propriety are absent. It defies external reality and empirical experience whether one calls it reason or passion. It should be a world of equanimity, disinterestedness, plainness and uninterrupted natural motions toward a spiritual rather than physical communion of satisfaction. It is achieved without having been eagerly sought after. This contention forms the basis of his ideal world of politics and aesthetics. It may be illustrated by an ancient ballad that praises such a simple and admirable society:

At sunrise, I start to work;
When the sun sets I return to rest.
I dig my well for water to drink,
And plow my field for food to eat.
What has the king's rule to do with me?(7)

Lao-tzu, like this ballad's singer, though living in a mundane world, is not at all willing to be tied down by everyday, particularly social and political reality. Nor does he truly intend to reflect on the specifics of his daily life. In fact, like the ballad singer again, he appears to be unaware and unconscious of social activities. He may be leading an active life but he meditatively assumes that there is an absence of human content and human worth. The king is but part of the human which has to take after the Tao. The microcosm need not be illuminated when there is yet the macrocosm to follow. But when he is forced to relate his message in worldly terms, he merely does so in order to ride with the grand movement of nature. In denying the necessity of social institutions, Lao-tzu has no plan to be a rebel or an anarchist. He only wants to resume an uncorrupted natural order for an individual rather than to be harnessed by a prescribed man-made order. This yearning for some kind of primitive freedom and agrarian simplicity makes him a political romanticist. In praising the natural course of beings, and affirming the ultimate good in things free from social values, he also acts like a literary romanticist. He maintains that worldly conflicting ideas and contrasting factors can be incorporated into unity to form the Ideal. Antinomy and asymmetrical elements, too, can contribute to the formation of harmony, not irony. Forsaking the preconception of value judgment and social criteria, he therefore, establishes his utopia while warning against ingenuity, i.e., reasoning which will ruin the dreamland. There is strong urge in his writings leading the readers to hurdle the concepts of yu, being, wu, non-being, and the face value of existence so as to proceed to the final harmony. Specifically, he employs a poetic technique which generations later the English Romantics happened to use, which is, “to defy external reality by creating a uniformity of tone and mood. The establishing of this uniformity, and the careful excluding of anything that would dispel it, is one of the constant and typical features of the best Romantic poetry.”⁸ Lao-tzu, however, does not dispel anything that is not uniform, for he includes everything in his all-embracing scheme of harmony, a discordia concors. He does not see the apparent differences in things. He only sees their inner traits which are constant. He has, therefore, set out a guide for the ordinary person to visualize harmony which is to excel over surface phenomena. The greatest art is something capable of providing him with a vision of Tao, or a harmonized state of the overall beauty. This beauty is not characterized by order, disorder, intensity, sensuous gratification or refined portraiture, but a sense of tranquility. It is a state of the intrinsic creative world of an artist. Thus, in demonstrating his extended metaphors, wit, puns and ambiguity, at times Lao-tzu writes like a poet of the English metaphysical school.⁹ Further, he suggests the inability of language to reveal the signficance of Tao.

Tao as an existence is blurring and shapeless.
In its shapelessness and blurness, there are images.
In its blurness and shapelessness, there are the forms.
So dim and so dark, there is the essence.
That essence is very true, there is credibility in it.

(II, 9b, 34)

This passage may be said to contain suggestions of mysticism. Actually, Lao-tzu tries to make his explanation simple. His implication is that language, a thing of the real world, is an insuffucient tool to bear out the ultimate. Language tries to deal with defined meaning, yet the ultimate is a process of constant creation and is not definable. Short of finding sufficient linguistic means to convey his perception of the ultimate, he relies on a fundamental rhetorical device, antimetabole. That is, repetition of words in reverse order to achieve variation and emphasis. Besides, he also uses anadiplosis—repeating the last word of one line to begin the next—not to conceal but to display the insufficiency of the rhetorical art. Yet, despite the fact that Tao is indefinable, there are truth and credibility in it. It may be revealed in images, or rather, demonstrated by the rhythmic and cyclic motions of things. The suggestion then forms a visionary intuition. Viewed in this light, the inability of language to convey Tao, or the rift between word and truth, and the excelling character of images, may be taken as one of Lao-tzu's theories of art. To him, the significance of images is beyond the material world and, for that matter, art, a manifestation of image, is beyond the material world that it superficially resembles. While the mystery of art is similar to the mystery of Tao, the two are treated as being equal by him.¹⁰ Using words as medium of communication, Lao-tzu does not discuss what Tao is, or what its effects are, but how it reveals itself through physical forms. In this regard, physical reality is only the means with which to bear witness to the existence of Tao and is of secondary importance, if not unimportant. Reality acts as a foil for the art objects to express the all-encompassing Tao. Accordingly, art objects do not imitate imperfectly the Tao but mystically and tranquilly reveal the intrinsic features of Tao.

As the patriarch of the Taoist school, Lao-tzu is no more and no less than a theorist. Basically his ideas belong to the realm of philosophy. Yet in so far as literary theory is a branch of philosophy, his thoughts are as much literary as they are metaphysical, epistemological and ontological. Besides contributing to a framework of literary dimension, his thoughts also serve as an aesthetic doctrine, that is, a precept to measure works according to some external principle. His philosophical revelation therefore qualifies him to deal with “the nature of literary activity and of the literary production of human beings” which is one definition of literary theory.¹¹ Like other literary theorists, Lao-tzu does not concern himself with evaluating individual works or style; nonetheless, he specifies the realm of one kind of literary activity: the transcending and mystical type of literature. Though his discourse is rather elusive and ambiguous, he sets forth a major criterion to measure the beauty of such literature. To him, the most worthy kind of literature is one that reveals transcendent harmony. Thus, Lao-tzu, the theorist, establishes an aesthetic principle to measure the Taoist experience of literature. It takes Chuang-tzu, a disciple writer (369-286 b.c.)¹² to illustrate his theory.

Like Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu's idea of Tao has more significance in art than in morals.¹³ To Chuang-tzu, all things are concrete revelations of Tao, not representation or imperfect reflections of it. All things are objectively equal. Differences are the results of subjective and thus superficial evaluation. The highest attainment of any existence, including that of the self, is explicitly stated in his “ch'i-wu lun” (On the Equalization of All Things):

Heaven and earth coexist with me,
The myriad things unify with me.

(II, 13a)¹⁴

This proclamation epitomizes the idea of Taoist harmony. The ultimate virtue for all existence is to forget about its own self and to merge into Nature. Likewise, all things can be taken as part of one's self. This idea of fusing with the animate as well as with the inanimate worlds is in itself transcendental. Thus the heart of this fusion carries the hallmark of mystical simplicity. The dialogue on self-forgetfulness between Confucius and Yen Hui, one of the master's disciples, best illustrates it (IV, 19a-19b).

After being instructed twice by Confucius on the inadequacy of forgetting benevolence, righteousness, propriety and music, Yen Hui becomes the master the third time he returns. He comes to tell Confucius that he has mastered the great principle of Tao. He has reached the stage where he no longer depends on benevolence, righteousness, propriety and music to discipline himself. Overcoming all man-made rules and regulations, Yen Hui has achieved self-forgetfulness, a state of naivete and simplicity. There is naivete in that he has done away with intelligence and all outer forms of behavior. It is not that the Taoist philosopher is anti-intellectual. It simply signifies that he wants to do away with wily knowledge which is the cause of worldly troubles. Worldly knowledge only delays transcendence. A naive and unassumed mind provides a direct link between the self and Tao. There is also simplicity in that Yen Hui reports how his own self has quietly absorbed the changes in the world and achieved the grand harmony. He no longer worries about the constants and the variables. He has finally united with Nature. He is a man not only free from the bondage of his self but also from the world he lives in. Besides, his mind is not self-determined, but is determined by the context where he finds himself. That very mind accommodates the diverse situations and behaviors of his environment.¹⁵ He fuses with the world around him and so does the world into him. They form a oneness. It is a spiritual state of the mind where the part contains the whole and the whole exists in the part. In a poetic sense, it means the seeker identifies himself with heaven and earth to lead a form of simple and carefree life.

One of Chuang-tzu's better known allegories that advocates absolute freedom regardless of actuality is the big fish K'un in “hsiao-yao yu” (“Roaming Free”) (I, 1a-4b). The gigantic k'un fish is transformed to become a mammoth bird P'eng. Though during the bird's flight a vast space is seemingly covered, time has yet to be overcome. Chuang-tzu, the narrator, further compares the winged action of the P'eng bird with two tiny birds, tiao (cicada) and hsueh-chiu (little dove), which are satisfied with their short-distance flights. The tiny birds think that they do not have to fly 90,000 li to enjoy it. Nor do they need to fly with the blue vault on their back before they land again. In fact, they do not understand why the P'eng bird has to fly such distances and at such heights. Together the big bird and the tiny birds alike have to fly within a specific time and space. In that connection, whether the limits vary from the highest to the lowest, or from the largest to the smallest, one still has to succumb to time and space—therefore, one does not have absolute freedom. The narrator's choice of the mystical transformation, the extraordinary feats of action and the unusual juxtaposition of the big bird with the tiny ones are only techniques to relate to a fantastic world beckoning with some possible absolute freedom. On another level, the story also satirizes people when they exercise their ability to the utmost while not realizing their own limitations, thinking quite romantically that they have already achieved the ultimate freedom in action and behavior. Ultimately, the big and the small, the exotic and the ordinary, the far-sighted and the near-sighted coincide because they all depend on the same variables for their acts (I, 5a). But instead of craving for some inordinate desire, if all things are content with their endowed natures, or the natural course of things, that will be the answer to ultimate freedom.

Among Chuang-tzu's numerous fables, the one of Emperor Shu (Lax) and Emperor Hu (Abrupt) exemplifies graphically the idea of naturalness.

The emperor of the South Sea was called Shu, the Emperor of the North Sea was called Hu, and the emperor of the Central Area was called Hun Tun. Shu and Hu often met at Hun Tun's land. Hun Tun treated them very nicely. Shu and Hu thought of repaying Hun Tun's kindness. They said, “All men have seven cavities so that they can see, hear eat and breathe. Hun Tun alone has none of these.” They tried to drill openings for Hun Tun. Each day they bore one hole. By the seventh day Hun Tun died.

(IV, 26b)

The reason why the assistance Shu and Hu offered does not work out for Emperor Hun Tun (Chaos) is because it is an artificial means imposed on the latter and thus robs him of his true nature. The best treatment Shu and Hu can do to Hun Tun is to leave him alone to his own well-being and existence, to lead a plain life of content rather than to emulate others. What man often strives for, thinking it a blessing, may well be the beginning of calamity. This narrative interpretation of the plight of Hun Tun is prefigured by Lao-tzu who puts it in this manner: “Calamities are caused by blessings, blessings are the implantation of calamities” (III, 58). But Lao-tzu is not so much interested in probing the meaning of mutability as in depicting the realization that defect and normalcy often coalesce. Such a contradictory yet prophetic tone recurs in the visionary Gibran centuries later:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

(The Prophet, 29)

Lao-tzu, the Eastern sage, and Gibran, the Lebanese poet, seem to have been expecting one another. Unanimously, they recognize that while calamities and blessings, sorrow and joy form opposite extremes, these divergent natures also pair with one another. A person needs to be aware that the other extreme is constantly lurking behind and he should maintain balance between the two ends. “Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced,” suggests Gibran (The Prophet, 30).

In the cavity drilling incident, when Hun Tun does not possess the seven holes, he lives a healthy and meaningful life; but when Shu and Hu come along to help him gain what does not belong to him, they literally destroy him. Not to have, in this instance, is better than to have—an echo of Lao-tzu's doctrine of abstaining from desire (III, 46). Chuang-tzu, however, uses a literary form to illustrate what Lao-tzu presents in his philosophy. Lao-tzu generalizes and hits his mark, although at times his language is obscure, while Chuang-tzu uses simple literary expressions to demonstrate and concretize his notions. Both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu delve into the realms of life and death, this world and the one above, heaven and earth, the material and the spiritual, the human and the divine, artificial strategies and the natural course of things. Their common concern is the search for Tao. However, the two complement one another without using the same mode of expression. Lao-tzu realizes that there is the way of heaven and the way of man. The two are analogical but not equivalent. Yet both are structured after and are part of the Tao of naturalness. Chuang-tzu, to be sure, assumes that Tao and the objective world are integrated and inseparable. While Lao-tzu sees fit to have Tao transformed predominantly in the context of a political framework, Chuang-tzu pursues Tao from the standpoint of the panoramic nature.¹⁶ In addition, Chuang-tzu does not end with things in nature. He turns things around to provide him with a frame of mythopoiesis—creating myth as well as evolving philosopical thinking at the same time.¹⁷ The junior master, Chuang-tzu, therefore expands Lao-tzu's literary dimension.

Chuang-tzu's techniques may thus be summed up in this manner. He uses fable as an essential form to convey his message of a deeper level. His approaches often entail one of these three modes: yu-yen (fictional figure or event to support arguments), chung-yen (assigning an incident to a historical figure who did not actually play the role), and chih-yen (any spontaneous fictional account to deal with the occasion).¹⁸ By choosing such a mode, Chuang-tzu cannot avoid using exaggeration, imagination and putting aside objective reality in his narration. Since transcendence is the ultimate goal, his approach is pervasively non-worldly and broadly spiritual. Hence, he brings forth an early notion of a Chinese romanticism that excels a prescribed boundary of time and space in narration. In transcendence, Chuang-tzu intends to show us that all things desire to return to their original nature. Only at that point can things find their creative vitality and harmony. Things therefore do not exist alone. They constitute part of the Great Nature.

This idea of fusing into Nature, seeing self in Nature, and participating in the Unity forms the kernel of the Chinese romantic consciousness. Landscape painters of later ages particularly take up this idea. Thus one usually finds a loner, a fisherman woodcutter, or sightseer, however small in proportion, put amidst the landscape or waterscape. Furthermore, the mountain or water is never sharply portrayed. It is often veiled with mist to illustrate that even tangible things exist between the form and the formless state. Indeed, Taoist harmony means existence between likeness and unlikeness, simplicity and complexity. This Taoist vision of being and nonbeing virtually reflects the artist's inner serenity rather than his observation of the outer world. A sense of partaking in the primordial formation is more pronounced than fulfilling practical worldly needs. Indeed, the Taoist world is always materially simple and devoid of decorative beauty. The world of serene simplicity is a way of living that enables one to stay aloof from mundane reality and to interfuse into the omnipresent Tao. Furthermore, the mutual merging of the self and the Tao regenerates a life of creativity in Nature. This is not the same kind of Nature in Western romanticism which poets often held in awe and with surprised enchantment.¹⁹ Nor is it the kind of world that writers of the nineteenth century European naturalism were obsessed with in their search for color, form, time and space of the objects.

Indeed, Lao-tzu's philosophy and Chuang-tzu's narratives differ fundamentally from Western aesthetics and spark an original concept in Chinese literary thinking. Later Chinese creative writings that describe fictional activities untrammeled by time and space may be traced back to these two literary figures. Their fond hope for being natural becomes an inspiration for a new genre of literature in a later period: “When Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu retired, nature literature began to burgeon.”²⁰ A manifesto of this trend is T'ao Yuan-ming's (a.d. 373-427) poem “Kuei-ch'u lai-hsi tz'u” (Returning to the Native)²¹ composed in a.d. 405 and an essay on the utopia theme “T'ao-hua-yuan chi” (The Peach Blossoms Fairyland)²² in a.d. 417. In fact, Chuang-tzu's influence on later writers is quite significant,²³ and even more so on painters.²⁴ The two masters may claim to be the trail-blazers of later Chinese romantic literature, that is, literature that celebrates physical and spiritual emancipation from a preconceived scheme of reality. Subsequently, this conception of literature was upheld by Han Yu (768-824), the dean of the T'ang Confucians.²⁵ However, the trend lasted only through the Northern Sung period. Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101) was one of the last artist-scholars to witness the vogue. Specifically, on the making of literature, Su Tung-p'o slights any social or historical conditions that will bind it to the outer world. Nor does he see content more important than the form or the spirit of the works:

My writings are like barrels of fountain water.
They burst out regardless of the locales.
In level ground, they overflow and roll,
Traversing a thousand miles a day with ease.
When meandering along mountain rocks,
They assume the shapes of the objects encountered
Without being aware of the situation.
What can be known is that they advance at where they should
And cease at where they should not but cease.
The case is as simple as that.
As to other factors, verily, they are beyond my knowing.(26)

Obviously, the creative literary mind overpowers the concern of objective reality that may be reflected in the works. Beauty in the works owes its form to the Tao rather than to the reality it contains on the surface. There is also not the faintest tinge of didacticism or for that matter pragmatic concern in this school of writing.

Unfortunately, the watershed was reached when a contemporary philosopher came forth. Chou Tun-i (1017-1072), a Northern Sung Confucian, asserts that literature is to carry the message of Tao (Wen-i-tsai-tao).²⁷ Soon afterward, when a fellow Confucian Chu Hsi (1130-1200) further supported the slogan,²⁸ the Confucian didactic thinking then amassed force and became the dominant stream of Chinese literary thought. Subsequently, the Taoist transcendent thinking was relegated as one of its many tributaries. Only when Taoism gained popularity in tumultuous times did the aesthetic Taoist school dominate the literary scene.

However, the Confucian appellation of Tao is quite similar to the Taoist Tao; their major difference is the dialectics with which they use to approach the term.²⁹ Han Fei (?—243 b.c.), a legalist of the Warring States period, himself believing in the Taoist doctrine, has perhaps the most appropriate and lucid explication of the concept Tao:

Tao is that which makes things certain, that which probes into all principles. Principles are the patterns of the formation of things. And Tao is that quality with which things are formed. Therefore, Tao is also called the Prime Mover. … The Sages perceive it, thereby they produce writings. Tao is as wise as the ancient sages Yao and Shun, as eccentric as the lunatic Chieh-yu, as destructible as king Chieh of the Hsia dynasty and King Chou of the Shang dynasty, and as glorious as King T'ang of the Shang dynasty and King Wu of the Chou dynasty. If one thinks it stays nearby, in fact, it roams over the four corners of the world. If one thinks it lies afar, in fact, it is constantly standing by our side. If one thinks it dim and dark, it shines dazzlingly bright. If one thinks it luminous, in substance, it is gloomy and mirky. … As to Tao's expression of sentiments, it has no uniformity or shape. It can be weak and tender in accordance with the occasions and matches with the principles. With Tao, all things may meet their doom; with Tao, all things may obtain their vigor, their failure and their prevalence.³⁰

The sages quoted above by Han Fei are in fact the sages equally recognized by the Taoists and Confucians. These sages' deeds conventionally typify the Tao of man. As to the specific application of Tao, Confucius takes it as the Grand Harmony through the intercession of such sage kings as Yao and Shun. Viewed in this light, literature conjoins with the sagely ideal, but itself is by no means an imitation of the sages. For Lao-tzu, literature helps man partake in the contemplative domain of simplicity and naivete like that of Yao and Shun which signifies the domain of mystery. For Chuang-tzu, his vision of Tao is a combination of Confucius and Lao-tzu's findings. Chuang-tzu therefore truly interprets Lao-tzu's notion of “returning”—unifying all the diverse, polarized, and conflicting ends of existence.³¹ Because the Confucian school stresses practical ways to approach Tao, it is natural for Chou Tun-i to proclaim literature as the vehicle of Tao. While the essence of Tao does not not change for a Confucian and a Taoist, its function does look different to followers of diverse schools. Thus in the Confucian context, Tao concerns itself more with ethics, and in the Taoist's, aesthetics. Yet both schools coincide in their idealization that ethics and aesthetics help promote human harmony. In particular, the Taoist view is more suitable to represent the Chinese romantic consciousness since its concern for beauty is with disinterested artistic beauty, that is to say, one that pursues internal harmony in daily life, in Nature, in times past, present, time to come and in the world beyond. There is no limit and no requisite to this harmony.

With the establishment of the Taoist consciousness, it does not mean that we will not find realistic elements (real life elements) in the writings of the school. As has been shown, the Taoist ideal is an organic form incorporating various and conflicting elements to solidify its system. What should be distinguished is the finding of realistic elements in a work and finding realism (representation of reality) in it. Western realism is concerned with comprehensive details, situations of everyday life, explicable relations to nature, relations among people, their social class, historical consciousness and its development. This is clearly a far cry from the Taoist understanding of art. The Taoists pay no regard to causality, probability, historical accuracy, spatial and temporal dimensions and the relationship between symbols and resemblances. Typical Taoist writings go beyond the physical world rather than imitate true-to-life experience. Even the Confucian writings do not consciously aim to represent mundane details in the making. The issue now is that the Taoist, or the Chinese, romantic thought suggests that physical reality hinders and distracts man from his vision of Tao. Reason blurs him from seeing the ultimate. Precision only restricts infinity and history impedes his transcendence. Therefore, the Taoist aesthete would rather describe literary activities in broad and suggestive terms so that the Tao of the work would no longer be obfuscated by finite human language.

In purporting to find the highest order and unity in the world, the Taoist account of literature is supra-representational, that is, transcending reality. Literature is to locate Tao with an uplifting spirit. During the process, language, a vicar of reality, is deemed deficient to give a full picture of the Ideal. Instead, imaginative literature, itself infinite in suggestiveness, becomes a medium to help man transcend and hurdle the stumbling block of the physical boundary. Once transcendence is achieved, all matters of worldly reality may be discarded whether they are called language, virtues, or propriety. Therefore, the Chinese understanding of the nature of literature focuses on the projection of an author's inner perception (ethics or aesthetics) of Tao. Literature opens up the realm of harmony that is hidden behind language which furnishes the physical building blocks of the former. Literature is self-revelation (or creative participation) of Tao but not an external reproduction (or imitation) of it. The relationship between literature and Tao is closer than it appears.

Such a non-mimetic³² view, until very recently, has conditioned Chinese literature to be interpreted either ethically (didactically) or aesthetically (supra-representationally). In either case, the interpretations have nothing to do with imitation of the flux of the external world and for that matter symbolic interpretation of the truth behind the words becomes irrelevant. A classic example is Wang Kuo-wei's study of the tz'u (lyric) genre in his Jen-chien tz'u hua (1910), in which he tries to recapture the inward creative world of the tz'u lyricists. To put it another way, his interpretations are honestly those that reveal the impalpable and intangible harmony of writings of the Chinese lyrical tradition. Previous examples of such interpretations abound.³³ In fact, they have formed the mainstream of the conventional studies of Chinese literature. This ancient Chinese recognition of literature is quite a departure from the Western concept that literature depends on and is a representation of reality. In this sense, Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, besides offering an aesthetic measurement of Chinese literature, have also suggested an alternative to Plato's evaluation of literature.

Notes

1. Raymond Larson trans. and ed., The Republic (Arlington Heights, Illinois: AHM, 1979) 252-55. This citation is traditionally assigned as Bk. X. 596-698b. Subsequent citations are to this text.

2. Gregory Vlastos explains the derivation of Plato's epistemology and argues that the Ideal Form may as well be logically real while the worldly thing may be sensibly “real” in his article “Degree of Reality in Plato,” New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, ed. Renford Bambrough (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967) 1-19.

3. For an outline of its history in Western thought, see M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Oxford UP, 1953) 8-14; 30-46. A comprehensive history and adaptive mechanisms of the concept by Western philosophers and scholars is treated by Karl F. Morrison, The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982). Stefan Morawski “Mimesis,” Semiotica, II, 1 (1970), 35-58. Luiz Costa Lima reinterprets the concept in light of modern critical thinking, “Social Representation and Mimesis,” New Literary History XVI: 3 (1985) 447-66.

4. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957); George Bisztray, Marxist Models of Literary Realism (New York: Columbia UP, 1978).

5. Ch'uan-t'u hu chu Lao-tzu Tao-teh ching 25 (Taipei: Chung-kuo tzu-hsueh ming-chu chi-ch'eng, 1977) 37-39. Hereafter citations of Lao-tzu are to this text. Naturalness here is taken as a state of being rather than a level higher than Tao as argued by Yen K'un-yang, “Chuang-tzu tzu-jan chu-i yen-chiu”, Kuo-li Tai-wan Shih-fan ta-hsueh kuo-wen yen-chiu-so chi-k'an 20 (1976): 459-60.

6. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977) 60-61.

7. “Chi Jang Ko”, I-wen lei-chu, 2 vols. (Hong Kong: Chung-hua, 1973) xi, 214.

8. Northrop Frye, “The Drunken Boat: The Revolutionary Element in Romanticism,” in Romanticism Reconsidered, ed. Northrop Frye (New York: Columbia Up, 1963) 11.

9. Nai-tung Ting, “Lao tzu: Semanticist and Poet,” Literature East & West 14 (1970) 212-44.

10. Kuo Shao-yü, Chung-kuo Ku-tien wen-hsueh li-lun p'i-p'ing-shih (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsueh, 1959) 22.

11. Morton W. Bloomfield, “What is Literary Theory,” Poetica 8 (Autumn 1977) 2.

12. This is the date given by Wu K'un-ju, Chuang-tzu yu Ku Hsi-la che-hsueh chung ti tao (Taipei: Taiwan Chung-hua, 1972) 66. However, there is no scholarly consensus on these dates.

13. Ts'ai Ming-t'ien, Chuang-tzu ti cheng-chi ssu-hsiang (Taipei: Chung-kuo Hsuch-shu-chu-tso chiang-chu wei-yuan-hui, 1970) 34.

14. Nan-hua ching, annotated by Kuo Hsiang (Taipei: Chung-kuo tzu-hsuch ming-chu chi-ch'eng, 1977) 69. Hereafter citations of Chuang-tzu are to this text.

15. Russel D. Legge, “Chuang Tzu and the Free Man,” Philosophy East and West 29 (Jan. 1979) 11-20.

16. Huang Chin-hung, Chuang-tzu chi ch'i wen-hsueh (Taipei: Tung Ta, 1977) 196, 207.

17. Toshihiko Izutsu, “The Archetypal Image of Chaos in Chuang Tzu: The Problem of the Mythopoeic Level of Discourse,” Yearbook of Comparative Criticism 4 (1971) 269-87. However, I have some reservations regarding Mr. Izutsu's taking Chuang-tzu as a shamanistic mystic.

18. Nan-hua ching, XV. 1a-2b.

19. For Lao-tzu's idea of nature, see Wei Jih-ch'un, “Lao-tzu ti ssu-hsiang”, Chuang-hua hsüeh-yuan 15 (March 1975) 115-66; Kanaya Osamu, “Röshi to Söshi no shizenkan”, in Yoshioka hakushi kanreki kinen dökyo kenkyü ronshü (Tökyö: Tosho Kankökai, 1977) 1-17. Also see Wu K'un-ju, 57-62, 65, 67. The concept of Nature in Western Romanticism is a relatively involved one. Arthur O. Lovejoy has a lucid article, “‘Nature’ as Aesthetic Norm,” Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1948) 69-77. Particularly helpful in pointing out the variance in signification in Western literatures is Raymond Immerwahr, “‘Romantic’ and Its Cognates in England, Germany, and France before 1790,” in ‘Romantic’ and Its Cognates: The European History of a Word, ed. Hans Eichner (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1972) 17-97. Several features of nature in the English Romantic movement bear an appearance similar to Lao-tzu's and Chuang-tzu's consciousness; see Northrop Frye, 1-25. A comparative view of the West and the East is provided by James W. Miller, “English Romanticism and Chinese Nature Poetry,” Comparative Literature 24 (1972) 216-36.

20. Wen-hsin tiao-lung, “ming shih” (Taipei: K'a-i-ming, 1969) II. 2a.

21. Ch'uan shang-ku San-tai Ch'in-Han San-kuo Liu-ch'ao wen (CSSCSLW), 5 vols. (Peking: Chung-hua, 1965) II. iii. 6b-7a.

22. CSSCSLW 9b-10a.

23. Huang, 53-57, 157-90.

24. Hsu Fu-Kuan, Chung-kuo i-shu ching-sheng, rev. ed. (Taipei: Hsueh-sheng, 1976) 134.

25. Kuo Shao-yu, “Chung-Kuo wen-hsueh p'i-p'ing-shih shang wen yu tao ti wen-ti”, Kuo-li Wu-han ta-haueh wen che chi-k'an, I, 1 (1930) 65.

26. Su Shih, Ching-chin Tung-p'o wen-chi shih lueh, SPTK cheng-pien ed. (Taipei: Taiwan Commercial, 1979) XLVII. 57. 16a.

27. Kuo Shao-yu, Chung-Kuo wen-hsueh p'i-p'ing-shih (Hong Kong; Hung Chih rpt., n.d.) 156.

28. Kuo Shao-yu, “Chung-kuo wen-hsueh p'i-p'ing-shih shang wen yu tao ti wen-ti,” 85.

29. Yen Ling-feng, Lao Chuang yen-chiu (Taipei: Taiwan Chung-hua, 1966) 116-22; James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature (Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1975) 16.

30. Han Fei tzu, “Chieh Lao”, SPTK cheng-pien ed., XVIII. 6.7a-7b.

31. Wu K'un-ju, 70-71.

32. It is certainly true that many modern Chinese authors feel the urge to render their works to reflect realism. However, this did not become a trend until after Western literary techniques were imported to China, notably through the transmission of such periodicals as Hsin Hsiao-shuo (New Fiction, 1902-1906), Hsiao-shuo yue-h-pao (Fiction Monthly, 1910-1931), and Hsiao-shuo shih-chieh (The Fiction World, 1923-1929).

33. There is a voluminous corpus of shih-hua and tz'u-hua which purport to comment and interpret traditional literary writings. They are nevertheless not literary criticism as we understand the term today. In general, these commentaries often focus on the literary mind in the making and how those writings at issue reveal the Tao. Some examples are Wang Shih-chen (1634-1711), Wu-tai shih-hua (Taipei: Ting-wen, 1971); Tai-ching-t'ang shih-hua, 2 vols., Sau-yeh shan- fang ed. (Taipei: Ch'ing-liu, 1976); Ho Wen-huan ed., So-yin-pen Ho-shih li-tai shih-hua, comp. Martin Helmut, 2 vols. (1770; Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1973), with 28 kinds of punctuated texts of shih-hua incorporated; T'ai Ching-nung ed., Pai-chung shih-hua lei-pien, 3 vols. (Taipei: I-wen, 1974).