[In the following essay, Holzman presents an analysis of Confucius as a literary critic.]

I

Surely there is no more bookish civilization than China's, no civilization more prone to revere its ancient writings and to seek for guidance in its daily affairs within the pages of its traditional and even modern literature. And yet when we look into ancient Chinese writings to seek for general remarks about the nature of this literature—perhaps the broadest way of defining “literary criticism”—we come very near to being completely frustrated. Whole volumes have been consecrated to the study of what the ancient Greeks, and in particular Aristotle, wrote about literature, and their influence still persists. The historians of Chinese literary criticism, on the other hand, hardly devote a chapter to the entire ancient period (origins to the end of the Han) and, although it would be very wrong to say that the period has exerted no influence in later times, that influence has come more from general philosophical attitudes and an extremely small sampling of short statements, usually reinterpreted or simply misinterpreted, than from anything resembling literary theory as such. It is my intention, in this paper, to show how literary theory developed (or, more exactly, failed to develop) in ancient China, why it took the forms it did, and why we have to wait until the very end of “antiquity,” the end of the Han, to find something resembling literary theory as we know it in the West. I will concentrate on Confucius in my discussion, for I think he is at once the most influential thinker in the ancient period and the one who has raised the greatest number of problems. But first I would like to indulge in some general theories on the reasons why literary criticism did not develop in ancient China.

II

I know my uncomplimentary attitude towards ancient Chinese literary theory is polemical and I give it rashly, “a well-bound frog's frog's-eye view,” as Chuang Tzu might say, and very schematically. Stated briefly, literary theory (or literary criticism) failed to develop in ancient China because the ancient Chinese thinkers who talked about literature at all, the Confucianists, refused to look upon it as a separate entity, as something that could be considered in itself, divorced from morality, ritual, and politics, the subjects that seemed to absorb their entire interest. Their view of the world, moreover, of man and his works, was extremely synthetic, not to say monolithic. Things were seen as a whole, in their relations to one another, rather than analyzed into their component parts. This way of looking at things is, of course, admirable, and it enabled the philosophers of the Golden Age to say things about man and the world that are still very relevant to us today—perhaps more than ever, as the highly technical and complex patterns of modern life tend to make us unable to see the woods for the trees. One could even imagine that this synthetic view could engender extremely pertinent remarks about the place of literature in society, its importance in a man's moral life, for example; but the ancient Chinese thinkers were too completely oriented towards the exterior, towards the objective world and towards the state, towards man as a political animal, to be able to see literature as anything more than an element in the running of the state.

The earliest remarks on literature are probably the well-known conversation in the Shang shu between the legendary emperor Shun and his Director of Music, K'uei. The political prejudice I am speaking about appears full blown in this very ancient text. Shun, after explaining the civilizing influence that he believes music will confer upon his progeny, makes the following remarkable statement that can truly be called literary theory or literary criticism: “Poetry puts into words what we have in our hearts; song prolongs those words into chants; and the notes that follow the chant are put into harmony with the scales. When the eight instruments are in accord [as they play these chants] and do not encroach upon one another, then the spirits and man will be brought into harmony.”¹ We have to wait close to a millenium before we again hear a statement as general, as suggestive, and as pregnant as “Poetry puts into words what we have in our hearts.” But in the Shang shu, as in later tradition, this intriguing phrase remains stillborn; it seems to have been uttered only to describe the duties of the Director of Music and, although the eventual effects of this heart-begotten poetry reach to the very gods, there is no need to pursue the matter further: once the Director of Music has got the knack of the thing, the ritual chants will be sung and the work of the state will run smoothly.

III

Almost all ancient remarks on literature share this state-oriented prejudice, and few of them are as interesting and as profound. This applies as much to Confucius, the true glory of ancient Chinese civilization, as to his successors. One modern scholar² has attempted to prove, on the contrary, that “the ability of Confucius as a literary critic” cannot be questioned.³ The Chinese historians of literary criticism, or at least the two most famous among them, are divided on just how much “literary critical ability” he had.⁴ But let us look into what Confucius himself had to say about literature. The Lun-yü is short; the part of it devoted to literature is much shorter still.

Let us first look into what we can learn of Confucius' attitude towards art in general, to see whether or not he was receptive to manifestations of artistic excellence, the sine qua non of any critical activity worthy of the name. The most striking proof of Confucius' artistic sensitivity, the one that springs to mind immediately, is Lun-yü, 7:13: “When the Master was in Ch'i he heard the Shao⁵ and for three months he did not recognize the taste of meat. He said, ‘I did not realize that music could reach this point [of perfection].’” Like almost the entire Lun-yü, this passage is full of difficulties. My translation is only one of three or four possible, and not necessarily the best. Perhaps Confucius did not lose the taste of meat “for three months”; perhaps he was not amazed at the perfection of the music, but at the fact that it had been played in Ch'i. Whatever translation one opts for, the fact remains that Confucius was severely jolted by the music he heard. Was his appreciation aesthetic, ritualistic, and archaeological, or a bit snobbish? There is no way of knowing, but I think we should take the irreductible meaning (after allowing for variant translations) as signifying that Confucius was a highly sensitive man, very much capable of reacting, and reacting strongly, to artistic stimulus. Further proof of this, all concerning music, can be found in his passionate playing of the musical stones (Lun-yü, 14:42), his appreciation of the musical accompaniment to the first poem in the Shih ching (Lun-yü, 8:15), and his fondness for singing (7:31 and, perhaps, 11:25). In general, all the most trustworthy conversations and remarks in the Lun-yü describe a man of superior sensitivity and refinement: a perfect type for a budding literary critic. But did Confucius' literary critical talent ever flower?

A second requirement for a literary critic, albeit slightly less imperative than sensitivity, is a love of learning, a desire to read and assimilate the works of the past and to use them as a guide and a standard in his appreciation of the works of his own time. Confucius seems, from the very beginning, throughout, and to the very end of the Lun-yü, to be the very image of a lover of the past and to fit our second requirement almost too well. The very first line of the Lun-yü, as I like to interpret it, in any case, seems to describe the perfect amateur antiquarian re-reading his old tomes: “To study and, from time to time, to repeat what we have learned, is that not, too,⁶ a pleasure?” (1:1.) Time and again he, usually so modest, prides himself on his love of learning: “The Master said: ‘In a hamlet of ten households there will surely be men as loyal and truthful as I am; but there will be no one to equal my desire to learn’” (5:27). Sometimes he gives the impression that the love of the past is his only virtue: “The Master said: “I am not one with innate knowledge. I am one who loves antiquity and is diligent in seeking it out” (7:19). In Confucius' conception “learning” was by no means limited to the reading of old books; he included in it a general amelioration of a man's moral character (Lun-yü, 1:14), and if he gave it second place in one of his sayings (Lun-yü, 1:6), it is a second place to certain moral duties that only the most hardened esthete would refuse to allow his ideal literary critic. Confucius' position can be seen as being even more liberal when it is compared with that of his most literary disciple, Tzu-hsia. The latter (Lun-yü, 19:13) seems to insist that learning should be a leisure activity, secondary to the duties a man owes to the state. Thus, as far as sensitivity and a love of learning and of the past are concerned, Confucius passes the test of a budding literary critic with flying colors. But we have not finished yet.

Let us look a bit more closely into Confucius' ideas on the raw materials of literary criticism and of literature itself: words, human expression. One would expect, especially today when “structuralism,” “formalism,” and “stylistics” are the most revered catch-words of literary theory, that the literary critic would be passionately fond of words, of eloquence, of rhetoric. Well, Confucius is not—not at all. At least there is no indication of it in the Lun-yü and those remarks which do concern language are all suspicious of it or are downright negative: “The Master said: ‘The Good seldom use clever words or put-on expressions’” (1:3 and 17:17).⁷ The ability to be a good talker has no relation to Confucius' idea of Goodness: “Someone said that [Jan] Yung was Good, but that he was not a clever speaker. The Master said: ‘What use has he for clever speaking? Those who bat down others with their glibness are often hated by them for it. I do not know whether he is Good or not, but what use has he for clever speaking?’” (5:4.) In a number of other conversations Confucius speaks slightingly of eloquence (Lun-yü, 6:14; 11:20; 14:29; 15:40)⁸ and seems actually to be suspicious of words of any kind. In 12:3, perhaps using a pun, he says: “The Good man uses words sparingly and with difficulty.” And in the late Book 17 he becomes almost solipsistic: “The Master said: ‘I would like to be without words.’ Tzu-kung said: ‘If our Master did not speak, what would we, his disciples, have to tell [later generations] about him?’ The Master said: ‘What does Heaven say? And yet the four seasons run their courses, the various beings are born and grow: what does Heaven say?’” (17:19.) Confucius does not seem, on the evidence of these sayings, much interested in words as such, in rhetoric or eloquence. If he is going to be a literary critic, he will have to be a very old-fashioned one, interested in other aspects of literature than the language itself.

There is one passage, however, that might refute what I have just said. It is the famous passage that describes the “rectification of names” (cheng-ming) (Lun-yü, 13:3). This passage not only refers to language as a thing of interest in itself, but the way it does so could, like the other passages I would like to mention, actually suggest a system of aesthetics. This, I would suggest, is a third quality we might expect of a literary critic. A system of aesthetics is certainly not a sine qua non, nor is it necessarily even desirable in every case: depending upon the character of the literary critic, it can do more harm than good. But Confucius was, after all, a philosopher, and, as a matter of fact, it is often his general ideas that are referred to as having aesthetic or literary relevance rather than his actual statements on literature or language.

The paragraph on the “rectification of names” is one of the least characteristic in the Lun-yü. In spite of the tremendous influence it has had in the history of Chinese thought, few scholars today consider it as being among the strata of the Lun-yü most likely to date from the time of Confucius or of his immediate disciples. The passage is well known. Confucius has been asked, by Tzu-lu, what would be the first measure he would take should the administration of the state of Wei be entrusted to him. Confucius replies: “One must rectify names.” After an understandably skeptical remark by Tzu-lu, Confucius explains what he means by a long sorites, or pre-syllogistic, proto-logical development, beginning: “If names are not rectified, then what is said will not be in accord [with what was meant], then affairs cannot be carried out to their completion. …” The aim of the passage is, of course, not literary at all, but political: the rectification of names leads to the ordering of the state. But the passage ends with a brief, general statement of how the superior man should behave, linguistically: “When a superior man names a thing, it must be in accord with the spoken [language?]; and when he says something, that something must be something that can be carried out. The superior man, in his speech, engages in nothing that is merely frivolous.” All of this is rather hazy, but one thing that should be clear is that none of it has any direct bearing on literature. Perhaps the “rectification of names,” or the “correction of language,” as Waley translates,⁹ can be applied to the study of literature with profit; the important thing to note here is that it is not. Confucius, or his epigone, is interested here in language as a vehicle of government, and that is all.

There is another passage of the Lun-yü that has often been quoted as an important contribution of Confucius to a theory of literature. It is hard to see why; but it should be discussed. “The Master said: ‘When a man's natural gifts are greater than his culture, he will be boorish; when his culture is greater than his natural gifts, he will be pedantic. But when his culture and his natural gifts are equally proportioned, then he will be a superior man’” (6:16).¹⁰ The exact meaning of this passage depends, of course, on our understanding of the words “natural gifts” and “culture.” Whatever they mean, I would suggest they have nothing to do with literature, except for the fortuitous coincidence that “culture” has also come to mean “writings.” The union of two opposing qualities incomplete in themselves into some perfect whole is appealing and certainly may have relevance to literary criticism, but it has nothing whatever to do with it here. Confucius is describing a man, not a work of art, a “superior man” worthy of assuming an important role in government.¹¹

IV

Our study of Confucius as a literary critic has been inconclusive up until now; sensitivity, love of learning, aesthetic theory are all only qualities of a would-be critic. It is only in actual literary criticism that we will be able to define Confucius' attitudes towards literature itself and the quality or tendencies of his criticism. Fortunately we have a fairly large choice of quotations in which he speaks of literature, that is, of the Book of Poetry, the Shih ching. Most of these quotations are actual discussions of the poems themselves, true literary criticism at its beginnings in China, I suppose we must call them; some of them are general statements about the value of the Shih ching in education; and one attempts to sum up the whole work in a short phrase. Let us look at the discussions of the poems themselves first. They will show us immediately the way the land lies.

The first example does not show Confucius commenting on the Shih ching, but his disciple, Tzu-kung. Confucius' comment, however, is very interesting, if difficult to interpret:

“Tzu-kung said: ‘“Poor but does not flatter; rich but does not swagger.” What do you think of that [motto]?’ The Master answered: ‘It's all right, but “Poor, but delighting in the Way; rich, but loving the rites” is better.’ Tzu-kung: ‘Is that what is meant by the poem which goes

As if cut, as if filed,

As if chiselled, as if polished?¹²

“The Master: ‘At last I can talk to Ssu [i.e., Tzu-kung] about the Shih; when you tell him one thing, he knows what is coming’”

(1:15).

Confucius is said to have improved upon Tzu-kung's little motto because he felt that Tzu-kung, a rich man, was trying to make things a bit too easy for himself. But what is most interesting for us in this passage is Tzu-kung's quotation from the Shih ching and Confucius' approbation of the quotation. The poem from which the quotation is taken ostensibly describes a man's (perhaps a lover's) elegance. The second stanza of the song describes his rich attire, and the third compares him to precious metals and stones. The apropos of Tzu-kung's quotation is not immediately apparent. It helps somewhat, perhaps, to know that the lover is traditionally identified as Duke Wu of Wei (r. 811-757 b.c.). But still it must be considered far-fetched to take this description of masculine elegance as an incitation to moral improvement. And this is exactly what Confucius praises, what he finds to be the essential of Shih ching criticism. The important thing here is not that Contucius emphasizes the moral superiority of the Shih ching poem—that kind of literary criticism is certainly valid and orthodox in the West as in China—but that he is condoning the deliberate misinterpretation of the poem so that it can be used as a moral tag.

A very similar exchange of ideas takes place in a conversation between Tzu-hsia and Confucius in Lun-yü, 3:8:

“Tzu-hsia asked: ‘What is the meaning of the lines

Her lovely mouth so artfully smiling!
The clarity of her beautiful eyes.(13)
Plain silk that you would take for colored
          stuff [?].(14)

“The Master said: ‘One puts the white on after painting.’

“[Tzu-hsia]: ‘[Does that mean] ritual comes afterwards?’

“The Master: ‘Shang [i.e., Tzu-hsia] it is who bears me out. At last I can talk with him about the Shih.’”

My translation is an odd pastiche of the traditional interpretation and of Waley's. I feel that the last line of the poetry quoted is impossible to interpret with any assurance and that much hinges on its meaning. Confucius' answer, too (“one puts the white on after painting”) is obscure and has been interpreted by Chu Hsi to mean the exact opposite: “One puts the painting on after the white.” This interpretation has the merit of making Tzu-hsia's answer more easily understandable, but does violence to the Chinese word order. But this ambiguity in no way influences our main interest in this passage. The important thing for us is to see how Confucius is interpreting the passage from the Shih ching, to see whether or not he is really bringing out its meaning. It is only if the Shih ching text differed radically from the one we have today that we would no longer be able to judge Confucius' interpretation of it. If it was more or less as it is today, it was a description of a stately and beautiful woman, the wife of the Marquis of Wei, and in no conceivable way can it be considered to have preached the lesson Confucius reads into it. He has taken a beautiful description of a fine lady and turned it into a moral lesson, incidentally finding scriptural evidence for his “moral revolution” that puts ritual into second place after moral cultivation. Again, the important point is not that Confucius emphasizes the morality of the poem; it is that he deforms the poem so that it can be used.

Confucius quotes poems from the Shih ching or comments on them in three other places. He says, about the very first poem in the Book: “The Master said: ‘The “Kuan-chü” poem is [expressive of] happiness that is not licentious, grief that does not become harmful’” (3:20).¹⁵ The “Kuan-chü” poem is clearly a love poem showing the frustration of a yearning lover. Confucius' comment on it is not really too far-fetched this time, but it does seem singularly beside the point.¹⁶ The two other quotations from the Shih ching are so complicated (or far-fetched) that they would require a very long discussion to understand: the first (Lun-yü, 9:26) contains a complete misunderstanding, if we follow Karlgren;¹⁷ the second (Lun-yü, 12:10 [sometimes numbered 11]) seemed so far-fetched to the Ch'eng brothers and Legge that they believed it actually belonged to another passage in the Lun-yü (16:12).¹⁸ There are two other passages where Confucius quotes poems; in one (Lun-yü, 9:30) the poem is unidentified and thus difficult to check with his judgment of it;¹⁹ In the other (Lun-yü, 10:18) it is not even sure that it is actually a poem that is quoted.²⁰ In actual literary critical activity, therefore, I think it can be said without too great exaggeration that Confucius has paid little or no attention to the true meaning of the poetry he is “analyzing” and has ruthlessly extracted a moral lesson at any price.

We need not, however, base ourselves exclusively on impressions we receive from Confucius' own “practical criticism”; he has himself given a certain number of general opinions on the Shih ching that tell us pretty well where his interests lay. The most famous, of course, is the short, three-character summing up of the whole work: “The Master said: ‘If I were to use one [of its] sentences to cover all of the three hundred poems in the Shih ching, I would say “Have no evil in your thoughts”’” (2:2).²¹ The line chosen comes from the fourth stanza of Shih ching, No. 297, and is actually a description of running horses: “no evil” means “without swerving,” and the word for “thoughts” is a particle common in the Shih ching and other ancient texts. Confucius has thus characterized the Shih ching as a moral tract and at the same time again applied his method of ruthless misinterpretation.²²

By characterizing the Shih ching as a “moral tract” I should not like to minimize its importance for Confucius. There can be no doubt that it was one of the principal texts in his educational curriculum. There are a number of passages in the Lun-yü that tell us so and that will help us to understand a little better just what the Shih ching meant for him. The first I will quote shows the great man instructing his own son:

“Ch'en K'ang asked Po-yü [Confucius' son]: ‘Have you heard something different from [your father] than the rest of us?’ Po-yü replied: ‘No. Once when he was standing alone and I was politely scurrying by the courtyard he said to me: “Have you studied the Shih?” I answered: “Not yet.” “If you don't study the Shih,” he answered, “you will have nothing to help in your conversation.” I retired and studied the Shih’” (16:13).

In the latter part of this passage Confucius asks his son the same question about ritual. These two questions can, I think, be taken as showing two of Confucius' main preoccupations: the Shih ching surely represented a very important aspect of his teaching. The reason he gives for studying the Shih ching is a bit surprising: “nothing to help in your conversation” sounds as if he were suggesting that one should use it to pepper one's small talk with tags from the ancient poems. This is probably not the case. The Shih ching was used, in ancient diplomatic meetings, as an important instrument of exchange: by quoting appropriate verses, out of context and with tendentious interpretations (much as we have seen Confucius and his disciples do), the diplomats could, guardedly and politely, put forth their respective positions.²³ Failure to quote the appropriate tag could lead to inter-state catastrophe.²⁴ Confucius shows us how highly he esteemed the Shih ching here, but he also shows that his esteem, in this case again, is purely practical and extra-literary.

In another passage he once more singles out the Shih ching and ritual as essential elements, and adds music to them, but he uses a term in reference to the Shih ching that may have literary overtones: “The Master said: ‘Begin with the Shih; establish yourself with the Ritual; and achieve final perfection with Music’” (8:8).²⁵ I have deliberately preferred the old commentators Pao Hsien (6 b.c. to a.d. 65) and Huang K'an (488-545) to the later ones and to all translators in my rendering of the first word in Confucius' remarks, hsing. This word has, as so many Chinese words do, a broad scale of meanings, from “to begin,” to “to arouse,” and “to incite.” It is impossible, I believe, to decide absolutely which of these meanings is correct, or, more exactly, to which end of the scale of meanings Confucius refers, but the form of the remark seems to me to suggest a simple “beginning,” the first of a three-part curriculum towards moral perfection. If Confucius meant, as all his translators believe, “incited, stimulated by the Shih ching,” then this passage may be considered a modest appreciation of what we would call the “literary” merits of the Shih ching.

The interpretation of this passage is slightly complicated by the presence of the word hsing in another context, also in reference to the Shih ching. In this passage of the Lun-yü, as a matter of fact, Confucius gives us his most extended discussion of what he thinks the Shih ching is:²⁶ “The Master said: ‘My disciples, why do you not study the Shih [ching]? The Shih will enable you to make metaphorical allusions (hsing), to observe [local mores?] (kuan), to behave in society (ch'ün), and to express grievances (yüan). It helps in serving your father at home and your sovereign abroad. It will add to your knowledge of the names of birds, beasts, plants and trees’” (17:9). It seems clear that the terms hsing, kuan, ch'ün, and yüan are technical terms. To discover exactly what they meant to Confucius (or to the author of this saying) presents almost insuperable difficulties. I have followed the pseudo-K'ung An-kuo interpretation of hsing, however, for one important reason: the “metaphorical allusions” to which I believe he alludes are the kind of far-fetched analogies we have seen Confucius himself in the act of applying to many passages in the Shih ching. In saying, for example, “One puts the white on after painting,” he is in fact taking the poem as a hsing, as a “metaphorical allusion” to something quite different from what it actually says. The kind of allusion that was de rigueur in diplomatic meetings and the kind of interpretation we find again and again in ancient texts were in fact hsing. Would Confucius have simply ignored this “use” of the Shih ching in his enumeration? The term hsing, moreover, is very ancient in reference to poetry and with a related meaning of “analogy” or “allusion.”²⁷ It seems dangerous to me to ignore this technical meaning of the term here and to translate as “incite people's emotions” (Waley) or “stimulate the mind” (Legge). Even if this translation could give the same meaning to the word as given to it by the translators of Lun-yü, 8:8 (also false, according to me), it is out of keeping with what we have seen of Confucius' attitude towards the Shih ching.

I think we must accept purely technical meanings for all the terms in this enumeration: hsing does not mean “stimulate”; kuan does not mean “self-contemplation” (Legge, following Chu Hsi presumably), and if it means “observe people's feelings” (Waley), it means so in the highly technical sense of “reading poetry to observe the state of popular morals in a region,”²⁸ not in the sense of vibrating in response to Keats' passion or T. S. Eliot's world-weariness. The last two terms, ch'ün and yüan, are clearly enough terms relating to external, social life and not to what we have come to believe are more truly literary values.²⁹

This does not mean that Confucius did not think highly of the Shih ching. Quite the contrary, there are passages showing he held the work in the highest esteem, that he felt it to be an essential work that any educated man must learn. In the passage following the one just quoted, that the older editions incorporated with it, we read: “The Master said to Po-yü: ‘Have you construed³⁰ the “Chou-nan” and the “Shao-nan” [the first two parts of the Shih ching] yet? Is not a man who has not studied the “Chou-nan” or the “Shao-nan” like one standing with his face to a wall?’” (17:10.) And, in 11:5, we learn that Confucius gave his niece in marriage to a man who frequently (or thrice?) repeated one of the poems of the Shih ching. There can be no doubt as to the importance Confucius accorded to the Shih ching; but there can be no doubt either as to the extra-literary importance he accorded it: the Shih ching was important not as a work of literature, but as a tool of diplomacy, an extra-literary guide to morality and an aid to social living: “The Master said: ‘What use is it for a man to be able to recite the three hundred poems [of the Shih ching] by heart if, although he has learned so many [poems], when he is entrusted with work in the government he does not know how to carry it out, or when he is sent abroad on a mission he is unable to answer questions on his own account?’” (13:5.) Like most of the passages in the Lun-yü this passage is subject to diverse interpretations. One could, I suppose, say that Confucius was saying, in a very general way, something it would be hard to argue with, that the study of literature pursued for itself and not for any moral improvement, nor for any amelioration of one's personality, is useless. If this is what Confucius is saying, then it would be unexceptionable, a statement of literary theory that would put him in the school of Matthew Arnold, who saw literature as a purveyor of “sweetness and light.”³¹ But I do not believe this is the proper interpretation of the passage. Confucius is much more specific in his requirements; he has not spoken of moral improvement, nor of the amelioration of the personality: he asks the student of the Shih ching to be a capable civil servant and in particular to be able to “answer on his own account” when sent out on a diplomatic mission. What he means, I believe, is that he be able to use the lines from the Shih ching he has so carefully memorized in the quasi-ritualistic exchange of quotations that are characteristic of the formal meetings that took place between an ambassador and a head of state. If this is the proper interpretation of the passage, it can be seen immediately that it robs it of any general allusion to literary theory and again puts the emphasis on literature as a useful tool in the hands of a man engaged in the work of the state.

V

As far as I can see, Confucius' view of literature goes no further. It seems strange to think that a man as sensitive, cultivated, and above all one who esteemed literature so highly as to make the Shih ching one of the cornerstones of his teaching should, in the final analysis, limit his discussion to a completely utilitarian view. But Confucius was, after all, a man of his times and his interests were inevitably moulded by the extraordinarily urgent moral, social, and political crises that beset his contemporary China. Is it not strange, too, that the entire period between the last poems of the Shih ching and the first of the Ch'u tz'u should be almost completely without any literature of the belle-lettristic type? It cannot be that there was no poetry, albeit folk poetry (like much of the Shih ching), written during these long centuries; it must be that contemporary lack of interest in poetry as such has caused what poetry was written (or recited) to have been neglected by the scholars and thus lost. That is to say, Confucius, like all his intellectual contemporaries, was interested in philosophy, and mainly political philosophy to the exception of everything else. And his synthetic and anti-analytic methods made it difficult if not impossible for him to view literature as a thing in itself, divorced from the moral and political problems that so preoccupied him. Literature, if it was to exist at all, must fit itself into the synthetic whole of his view of man's life.

As long as man's life was regarded as something exclusively state-centered, as long as man remained almost exclusively a political animal in China, literary criticism stayed pretty much as Confucius left it. This is not to say that it is impossible to find remarks in the works of the ancient philosophers that have bearing on literature, even less that much later criticism has not been inspired by the philosophical attitudes of the ancient philosophers (especially the Taoists). But there is not really any interest in literature as such, not really anything even remotely comparable to ancient Western literary criticism. Hsün Tzu is probably the most important of the ancient theorists, and he remains very much in the Confucian tradition. According to him, all written and spoken words should be judged by their conformity to orthodoxy, that is, to the Way (Tao) as it was embodied in the teachings of the Sages, the “channel” (kuan) of the Way.³² This attitude is, of course, a “development” in literary theory, but it really gets us no closer to literature itself than we were in the Lun-yü. The appearance of new forms of literature, the fu in particular, in Han times, seems to have modified only slightly the literary theories of contemporary Chinese thinkers. Literature still remained, for them, something that must work for the state and that must be judged according to its usefulness in elucidating the orthodox Way.

It is only when Confucian orthodoxy itself begins to lose its hold on men's minds that literature is able to detach itself partially from the role it has played as handmaiden to the state and become a more personal vehicle. Wang Ch'ung (a.d. 27-91) is an important link in this evolution and, without in the least leaving the Confucian fold, he nevertheless strongly emphasizes the superiority of the author of personal, original philosophical works over the philologist of the state school who spends all his time in canonical commentaries.

But we have to wait until the very last years of the Han dynasty before we find the truly pivotal work that is, in a curiously ambiguous way, a declaration of independence for literature. Ts'ao P'i (187-226), in an “Essay on literature” (“Lun wen”), part of his work called Tien lun strongly insists upon the importance of personal literary works, as Wang Ch'ung did, but he goes even further, suggesting extra-canonical criteria for judging the works and including poetry and philosophy under the same general rubric of “literature” (wen). He has opened the way to a study of literature in and for itself, not necessarily divorced from moral considerations, but at least not uniquley concerned with practical, narrowly didactic, uses. Still, at the very end of his essay, Ts'ao P'i reminds us that he remains very close to antiquity when he gives his highest critical praise to Confucianistic prose of the kind Hsün Tzu himself would probably honor and maintains that only this kind of philosophical prose, among all the literary works of his contemporaries, would become “immortal.”

Ts'ao P'i's ambiguity reminds us of the tremendous attraction antiquity has always held for traditional China. If his “Lun wen” foreshadows the flowering of literary critical works that were to appear in the next few centuries, it also helps us to keep in mind the monolithic view of literature and society that characterizes the entire ancient period and that Confucius himself was instrumental in elaborating. If Ts'ao P'i's essay marks the beginning of a new period in Chinese literary criticism, it by no means annuls all that went before. Literature gained new freedom, new complexity, but it still remained strongly oriented towards society, towards politics—as Confucius wanted it to be. This dual nature of the place of literature in society can be seen in varying ways in the essays that follow in this volume.

Notes

1. Shang shu, ii, 1/5, “Shun tien”; cf. Bernhard Karlgren, tr., Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (Stockholm), 22 (1950), 7. The date of the “Yao (and Shun) tien” chapter has been highly debated (cf. the discussion in Chang Hsi-t'ang, Shang shu yin-lun [Sian, 1958], pp. 173-177), but, as Lo Ken-tse has pointed out in LCWPS, i, 36), the phrase “poetry puts into words what we have in our hearts” is found in several pre-Han texts. But, aside from its date, this text is so concise that it is highly ambiguous. Does it refer to the expression of sentiments by a poet, or by someone reciting a poem from the Shih ching to “express his thoughts” diplomatically (fu shih)? There are some interesting comments on this passage and on its subsequent history in Chu Tzu-ch'ing, Shih yen chih pien (Shanghai: K'ai-ming shu-tien, 1947); see also Chow Tse-tsung, “The Early History of the Chinese Word Shih (Poetry),” in Chow, ed., Wen-lin (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1968), pp. 151-166.

2. Ma Yau-woon, “Confucius as a Literary Critic: A Comparison with the Early Greeks,” in Essays in Chinese Studies Dedicated to Professor Jao Tsung-i (Hong Kong, 1970), pp. 13-45.

3. Ibid., p. 44.

4. LCWPS i, 38-40 and 47-49, is very critical; Kuo Shao-yü, Chung-kuo wen-hsüeh li-lun p'i-p'ing shih (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsüeh ch'u-pan she, 1959), pp. 15-19, is much more favorable. See also the bibliographical material quoted in the article by Ma mentioned above, on p. 16, n. 5, and in the Addenda, pp. 44-45.

5. Music for a ritual ballet said, in early commentaries, to have been composed by the mythical emperor Shun. It is also mentioned in Lun-yü, 3:25 and 15:10.

6. The nuance in the word “too” (yi) being, “even if one is unknown and out of office.”

7. The words “clever words and put-on expressions” are from the Shang shu, ii, 3/2, “Kao Yao mo,” Karlgren, p. 8.

8. A possible exception is 14:5.

9. Arthur Waley, The Analects of Confucius (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1932), p. 171.

10. Cf. 12:8, where Tzu-kung repeats, more or less, the same idea.

11. Ma Yau-woon, by interpreting this passage as referring to literature, spoils in part his otherwise interesting article. Confucius indulges in some very un-Platonic criticism of ballet (and music, presumably), in Lun-yü, 3:25, separating “Goodness” and beauty in a way reminiscent of Lun-yü, 6:16's separation of acquired and innate qualities.

12. Shih ching, No. 55; Karlgren, Book of Odes (Stockholm, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950), p. 37.

13. Shih ching, No. 57.

14. Not in the present Shih ching. I am not sure of the translation and follow Waley (p. 95) here.

15. Cf. 8:15.

16. Zau Sinmay, “Confucius on Poetry,” T'ien Hsia Monthly, 7, 2 (Sept. 1938), pp. 137-150, gives a very sophisticated interpretation of this saying of Confucius, maintaining that it is his way of affirming “Love is the most divine of all sentiments, and it is the most right.” Aoki Masaru, Shina bungaku shisō shi (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1948), p. 29, more subtly, says Confucius believes this passage, and the “Chounan” and “Shao-nan” sections in general, “were the most suitable for the education of the emotions.” All this is very suggestive, but it ignores the fact that Confucius is again misinterpreting here; he hardly seems interested in what the poems mean.

17. Shih ching, No. 33; Karlgren, p. 20.

18. James Legge, tr., Confucian Analects, in Chinese Classics (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1893), i, 256. Waley (p. 166) adroitly explains them both in situ.

19. Waley's interpretation (p. 145) seems best to me; see also Suzuki Torao, Shina shiron shi (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1961), pp. 18-19.

20. Another theory of Waley's (p. 152). In Lun-yü, 3:2, Confucius mentions Shih ching, No. 282, but only to remark (correctly) that it was an imperial ode, not to be used for non-imperial ritual. According to Waley's interpretation (p. 91), Lun-yü, 2:18, would also contain an extremely far-fetched gloss on Shih ching, No. 239.

21. The exact meaning of Confucius' quotation is ambiguous; it refers either to the reader of the Shih ching (as I have translated it), to the text of the Shih ching itself, or to its authors, who “had no evil in their thoughts” when they wrote it.

22. Only the last part of this statement is true if we accept Waley's interpretation (p. 88) of this passage of the Lun-yü. He says Confucius means the line to sum up his own philosophy. This seems far-fetched to me and, as far as I know, is followed only by Waley himself.

23. This is also Pan Ku's (32-92) interpretation of this passage; see Han shu (SPPY ed.), 30/29a.

24. The Tso chuan is full of examples of this diplomatic usage of the Shih ching. A random sampling: Hsiang-kung 26 (Legge, Chinese Classics, v, 525); Chao-kung 1 (ibid., p. 577); Chao-kung 17 (ibid., p. 667). Aoki Masaru, op. cit., pp. 36-37, discusses the “recitation of poetry” in this manner briefly, as does Lo Ken-tse, LCWPS, i, 37-38.

25. The words “Ritual” and “Music” probably also refer to books on these subjects.

26. It would also be a proof, if such were needed, that Confucius personally was moved by poetry. I think there can be no doubt of this, nor any doubt that the Chinese of antiquity appreciated poetry, and were moved by it. I find it hard to believe that a man of Confucius' obvious sensitivity and infinite humanity did not personally react to poetry with true understanding and appreciation, or that the ancient Chinese in general had lost all purely aesthetic interest in poetry as such. My interest in this essay is not in any hypothetical reaction by Confucius on a personal level; I am interested only in what he actually tells us, and, as far as I can see, it is only in this passage, and then only when we give the word hsing the meaning of “incite,” that he comes close to treating poetry as poetry.

27. Cf. Chou li (SPPY ed.), 23/7b-8a; used in the “Great Preface” to the Shih ching (Legge, Chinese Classics, iv, 34-35).

28. Or perhaps, as in the Tso chuan, Hsiang-kung 27 (Legge, pp. 533-534), and elsewhere, to observe a man's feelings by seeing what stanzas of the Shih ching he will recite at an official meeting.

29. Cf. Professor Wong's analysis of these terms as Wang Fu-chih understood them, pp. 141-144 below.

30. Reading wei as in Mencius, VIB, 3/2, a common meaning of the word in ancient texts; Huang K'an similarly glosses hsüeh, “study.”

31. This kind of theory is attributed to Confucius at the beginning of the chapter called “Ching chieh” of the Li chi (Couvreur, tr., Li ki [Ho kien fou: Mission catholique, 1913], ii, 353-354). I have ignored the quotations attributed to Confucius that are not found in the Lun-yü (including the most famous in the Tso chuan, Hsiang-kung 25 [Legge, p. 517]), and believe they are almost without exception spurious, at least in the case of those concerned with literary theory. Cf. Hu Shih's note to the Preface of KCWPS, i, 3-4.

32. Hsün-tzu (CTCC ed.), 8/84.

Abbreviations

KCWPS: Kuo Shao-yü Chung-kuo wen-hsüeh p'i-p'ing shih. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1934-48.

LCWPS: Lo Ken-tse. Chung-kuo wen-hsüeh p'i-p'ing shih. First publ. 1943. Shanghai: Ku-tien wen-hsüeh ch'u-pan she, 1957-61.

SPPY: Ssu-pu pei-yao. Shanghai: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1927-35.