| Chapter 1: | Poetry and Political Thought |
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The Way of Learning has been in obscurity for five hundred years. The Jin and Song transmitted nothing of the wind and bone style of the Han and Wei.18 This is so, and yet, there is something that may be gleaned from their ancient books. At certain free times I peruse the poetry of the Qi and Liang dynasties. While variegated and lovely, forceful and complex, in all of it the embodiment of inspiration is cut short. I always on this account give a long sigh, and quietly long for the men of antiquity. I fear that they will be forsaken by and by and that the “Airs of the States” and the “Minor and Major Odes” will not be written; and I thereby feel sad and uneasy.19
文章道弊五百年矣. 漢魏風骨, 晉宋莫傳, 然而文獻有可徵者. 僕嘗暇時觀齊梁間詩, 采麗競繁, 而興寄都絕, 每以永歎, 竊思古人, 常恐逶迤頹廢, 風雅不作, 以耿耿也.
Du’s contemporary and friend Li Bai 李白 (701–762) signaled his place in the Tang literary reform in the first of his series of fifty-nine “Ancient Airs” 古風. Like Li E and Chen Zi’ang, Li Bai laments the decline of literature since the Jian’an 建安 period and claims for himself the historical task of reviving the culture of the Warring States 戰國 (479–221 BC), the Han, and the Wei 魏 (220–265).20 Assuming the persona of a latter-day Confucius, whose ambition is to transmit tradition into the future, Li elevates also Qu Yuan 屈原, Song Yu 宋玉, Yang Xiong 楊雄 (53–18 BC), and Sima Xiangru 司馬相如 (179–117 BC) as models who had in the past attempted to revive the principles of the ancients. The poem, as in the case of Li E’s letter, contains a political element inextricably tied to the question of culture as a whole. The literary and cultural revival that Li hopes to effect is initiated by the political authority of the emperor, who rules with his “robe hanging,” a sign of the true kingship that rules by the sheer force of moral character as opposed to the application of force for self-interest.21 Naturally, men of literary cultivation will flock to an emperor who fosters a literary culture whose purpose is to move the entire population to goodness. Li seemed to advocate a return to the vigorous form and content of the Jian’an period, which would in turn