There is a prevailing tendency to conceive of Confucius (551–479 bce) as a stern moralist; as a teacher setting his disciples on the path to rectitude; as a political thinker who advocated virtue in governance and humane attitudes toward the governed; and as an unflinching judge of historical events and personages. Typically, one imagines Confucius as delivering tersely phrased wisdom to a coterie of awe-struck followers or, perhaps less often, as laying out the principles of government for the benefit of a, usually inept and uncomprehending, ruler.Footnote 1
“As long as [your parents] are alive, serve them according to ritual propriety”; “Do not worry about having no position. Worry rather about the means it takes to establish yourself”; “The noble man is broadly learned in matters of culture but sets his limits according to ritual propriety”.Footnote 2 Such is the advice one expects Confucius the strait-laced purveyor of wisdom to impart, an anticipation simultaneously shaped and vindicated by the apothegmatic nature of much of the material assembled in the Lunyu 論語, the essential source about the Master. The Confucius figure with the firmest hold on the imagination is that of a moral arbiter and philosophical authority whose maxims resonate down the ages as the basso continuo of Chinese culture and civilization.
Images which do not conform to such expectations remain comparatively neglected, though a rare exception is Christoph Harbsmeier's classic article which sheds some revealing light on a less common facet, the humorous sage.Footnote 3 Just like a modern audience, many ancient Chinese readers ferreting out useable quotations would have felt limited interest in a Master whom they encountered solely as a disembodied voice of wisdom. It would have been much easier to relate to a more fully developed impression of the man behind the moralizing mouthpiece.
The late emergence of a comprehensive biography in Sima Qian's 司馬遷 (145?–86? bce) Shiji 史記 which, on closer inspection, reveals itself to be a mosaic of fragments rather than a coherent narration, very likely posed no obstacle to attempts at imagining Confucius as a multi-faceted, fully-fledged personality.Footnote 4 Literary forms other than extended narratives – the illuminating anecdote, the pointed exchange – may have served the purpose equally well. Like the majority of contemporaneous sources informing us about the words and deeds of ancient Chinese personalities, the body of traditions about Confucius and his followers largely consists of scenes and dialogues which capture a single situation, usually to convey insights into the character of certain personalities or into issues of political and ethical significance. In a surprising number of cases, and to an extent which has up to now not been adequately appreciated, such scenes record the recitation of rhymed verse and songs.
In a pioneering study, David Schaberg analysed the role of song in historical anecdotes from the Eastern Zhou and Han as a “mode of coded communication” rising to particular prominence in early imperial times, which often responded to “Han expectations of the suffering hero”.Footnote 5 Relationships between songs and anecdotes were shifting and multifarious. Han writers were apt to invent narrative frames to contextualize existing songs; in other cases, songs were “generated to fit existing anecdotes”.Footnote 6 In anecdotes of this type, Confucius figures as a “uniquely talented interpreter of anonymous songs” as well as creator of songs. He is in fact a “composer and interpreter par excellence”.Footnote 7 Yet, the image of Confucius as a poet seems to have been more influential in translations and foreign-language recreations of Chinese poetry than in scholarship.Footnote 8 Investigating anecdotally embedded songs in Han historiography, Martin Kern explains that in narratives a “song epitomizes the dramatic nature of a moment of crisis”.Footnote 9 It constitutes, furthermore, not “an arbitrary artistic exercise”; instead, the spontaneous expressivity of a song marks it out as a “cosmological truth claim”.Footnote 10
Anecdotally embedded songs attributed to Confucius are one of several phenomena discussed in this article. Its wider aim is to explore the variety of uses, beyond emotive songs proper, to which consciously patterned language is put in different contexts. This ties in with a growing interest in the cognitive, argumentative and aesthetic functions of stylistic organization, including aural patterning, in artistically crafted prose writing (Kunstprosa) which frequently intersperses prose with verse (prosimetrum).Footnote 11 Consequently, the following addresses uses of rhymed verse, among other things, as means of aesthetic expression and debate.
Furthermore, the present article is informed by research on texts of practical utility (Gebrauchstexte), foremost among them Matthias Richter's in-depth analysis of characterological traditions, fragments of which are widely attested across numerous ancient works. Texts of this kind, comprising for instance political and military guidelines, typically exhibit such features as frequent use of rhyme, syntactic parallelism, standardized terminology, and metrical organization, in characterological writings often in the form of otherwise rarely attested trisyllabic verse. These are stylistic means which enhance memorability.Footnote 12
Finally, rhymed verse also features in scenes which, in marked distinction to the scripted back and forth of the didactic dialogue, convey a sense of theatricality by foregrounding action and interaction, gestures, emotions, conflict, personal motivations, and even rudimentary elements of intrigue. The final part of the article will discuss two such staged encounters of a palpably operatic quality.
The purpose of this article is thus twofold: to contribute to the study of the various manifestations and appropriations of the Confucius figure in early anecdotal and dialogic sources; and to map out some of the uses of rhyme and verse in texts which are not usually recognized for their poetic quality but, rather, have been registered as specific expressions of the historical imagination, or which have never featured in discussions of versified speech.
1. Horses, bows, and bamboo: a poeticized debate
Some Confucius dialogues featuring rhymes contain generic material, couplets or short stanzas which, due to their proverbial tone, could be integrated into a variety of contexts. Such verse may be used ornamentally or in order to convey a straightforward lesson. Occasionally, however, it is employed in more complex ways and turned into an integral means of communication. The following discussion is largely carried out through the medium of verse, with linguistically patterned maxims functioning as part of arguments which rely on metaphor and analogy for their rhetorical impact.
The dialogue, recorded in Shuoyuan 說苑, begins with a disagreement on the merits of studying between Confucius and his impetuous follower Zilu.Footnote 13
孔子謂子路曰：汝何好？子路曰：好長劍。孔子曰：非此之問也。謂以汝之所能，加之以學，豈可及哉。子路曰：學亦有益乎？
Master Kong said to Zilu: “What do you love?” Zilu answered: “The longsword”. Master Kong said: “This is not what I was asking. What I mean is: How could [anyone] be your equal if you used your abilities and added to them by studying?” Zilu asked: “Learning really has benefits, then?”
The speakers gesture at two competing ideals of accomplishment. In keeping with Zilu's stereotypical role as belligerent rustic, his aim in life consists in martial pursuits. Confucius suggests studying as a viable activity, though not as an absolute alternative. Learning would add to Zilu's abilities, including his fighting skills. The disciple, in his turn, remains doubtful that learning is advantageous at all.
The introductory exchange delineates the two issues at the heart of the debate. What is studying good for? How do its effects relate to those abilities one already has? The dispute switches to verse, adopting a formal and impersonal tone. Confucius explains:
Whilst Confucius initially addresses Zilu directly – “What do you love?” – and names the issue at stake – learning – his response to the disciple's challenge takes a more circuitous route. It comes in the form of four maxims, three of them couplets. They each adhere to a distinct pattern of syntactic parallelism. It is easy to imagine these as independent proverbs, each with its own specific lesson to impart, the couplet about horses and bows being the only more polysemous one. Yet, whereas the changing patterns in the use of parallelisms invite a reading that separates off every couplet as a distinct unit of meaning, the rhymes and the recurring use of “admonishing” (jian 諫) pull the couplets tightly together both aurally and lexically. These stylistic features keep the fabric of Confucius's lines taut and prevent them from disintegrating into a muddle of clichés. Rhyme and parallelism add persuasive force to his words, and whilst it is unclear whether he is quoting well-known apothegms, the formal patterning certainly makes him sound as though he does.Footnote 15 Rather than stating a personal view, he appears to be channelling accepted wisdom with its inherent authority and claim to objective truth.
Confucius presents three images and metaphors: the unruly horse calling for the whip; the handling of a bow; and wood being straightened with the help of a measuring device. The underlying concepts are related to notions of control, rectification, and adherence to standards. The tone is set by the initial stress on admonishing and “instructing” (jiao 教) as corrective measures. How can one counter such claims, which do not amount to clear-cut arguments and are thus hard to refute head-on? Zilu, still unpersuaded, does so by picking out one of the analogies to put a different spin on it.
Rather than waiting for the tools and devices of a craftsman to be moulded into a useable shape, Zilu's bamboo from the fabled south grows straight all by itself. Some intrinsic qualities, the disciple hints, are in no need of further improvement. As one would expect given Zilu's love of the longsword, usefulness is for him measured in terms of military applications. But Confucius remains unfazed and embraces the martial imagery – even the naturally straight bamboo can be further enhanced.
To this observation, which lexically echoes Zilu's initial question (學亦有益乎?), the disciple finally submits. He concedes the superiority of the Master's viewpoint with a formulaic expression of consent: “I respectfully accept your instruction!” (敬受教哉).
The text stages a dispute and officially declares Confucius the winner. Yet, this exchange does not adhere to any idealized notion of rational debate. Neither participant advances clear factual or logical statements about the uses of learning; instead, we are witnessing a cut and thrust of metaphorically disguised claims with an indeterminate logical status. So what has happened?
The debate is being poeticized by the foregrounding of such linguistic features as imagery, parallelism and rhyme. Arguments proceed by means of indirect association, they do not unfold through a dialectics of expressly stated suppositions and conclusions. This principle is at work on two separate levels. The imagery conjures up concepts by means of association just as the give-and-take of the dialogue as a whole moves along a chain of associations. Just as Zilu selects one of Confucius's images to turn it against him, Confucius responds with a modification of the disciple's analogy and invalidates it in the process, by Zilu's own admission. The bundle of illustrative imagery which Confucius initially presents is thus whittled down to a single strand – straightness – and receives a decidedly martial twist accepted by both sides.
In the course of the dialogue, the speakers compact a multiplicity of potential meanings and arguments into a narrower range of metaphors and analogies, which gradually shrinks even further. Confucius's final statement condenses the moral of the dialogue into two lines, which adopt Zilu's arrow metaphor but transform it into an analogy of self-improvement by studying. But whilst it builds on the previous metaphor, it can nevertheless be understood as a separate and independent maxim. From this perspective, it is fitting that the semantic continuity is countervailed by the assonance in *-a-. This aurally distinguishes the couplet from Zilu's previous lines, which share the final consonant *-k.
The dialogue stages a difference of opinion on a matter of central importance to adherents of Confucius. The strong linguistic patterning heightens the significance of the issue under debate and increases the dignity, authoritativeness, and aesthetic appeal of the exchange. Extensive use of metaphors and analogies makes the divergent viewpoints easier to grasp and renders them more memorable. But crucially, the imagery that pervades the verses is no mere ornamentation; it is an instrument of debate. In conjunction with the pervasive syntactic and phonetic patterning, it forms the very substance of the arguments which the discussants exchange.
2. Reiterated rhymes: politics and didacticism
The following group of texts represents a particular type of dialogue in which an authoritative adviser offers counsel in the form of rhymed verse. Similar examples can, for instance, be found in Guanzi 管子 chapters as well as elsewhere.Footnote 16 Usually, such rhymed passages run to a few lines and then revert to a prose format. More rarely, they continue with another distinctly patterned set of verses as the speakers take turns.Footnote 17 The examples discussed below follow a more intricate arrangement involving the reiteration and explanatory expansion of rhymes. Such compositional features are, moreover, not unique to texts featuring the Confucius figure; they are part of a more capacious genre of stylized didactic dialogue.
To establish the characteristics of this kind of text, let us first turn to a Shuoyuan dialogue between King Wu of Zhou and his legendary adviser, who pronounces a series of tersely phrased political and moral injunctions.
The Grand Duke's protreptic could very well end here, with a list of antithetically phrased injunctions in tetrasyllabic metre, followed by an exhortation that points all the way back to the beginning, yielding an almost perfect ring composition. Intriguingly, however, there is more to come, a detailed exposition of what the various precepts involve, which reprises the rhymes and is capped off by a couplet stressing the importance of empathy.
This part of the text hitches the rhymes to different lines, which expound the advice proffered earlier. The Duke's initial warnings are memorable due to their stylistic economy, but vague in their implications for the same reason. The subsequent part remedies this pedagogical shortcoming by adding detailed explanations, setting out acts of state exploitation, oppression and violence the ruler must avoid.
This section of the text reads like a continuation of the Duke's speech. Yet, the shift to a metrically looser and more explanatory mode is neither pragmatically motivated nor flagged by any rhetorical markers. One may wonder whether this part, still rhyming but stylistically less tidy, is not a covert commentary, appended retrospectively to inject a dose of specificity lacking in the original text.
The recurrence of the verses in similarly structured dialogues between King Wen 文 and the Grand Duke in Liu tao 六韜 as well as King Goujian 句踐 of Yue 越 (c. 520–465 bce) and Grandee Zhong (dafu Zhong 大夫種) in Wu Yue chunqiu 吳越春秋 respectively argues against such an interpretation.Footnote 21 It is not only the initial, versified injunctions which are repeated in different contextual constellations, but the entire compositional structure of reiterated and commentarially enhanced rhymes. The repetition-cum-explanation serves the didactic purpose of mnemonic reinforcement and deepened comprehension. This is also suggested by the peculiar treatment the verses receive in Liu tao and Wu Yue chunqiu.
As in Shuoyuan, the initial advice is stated antithetically in Liu tao and Wu Yue chunqiu: “Do A1, don't do B1; do A2, don't do B2 …”, with verbs in the B slot carrying the rhyme. In Shuoyuan, the B verbs are repeated, still in sentence-final position, but not the verbs in position A. Liu tao and Wu Yue chunqiu, however, run through two series of repetitions: one that recapitulates the A verbs, but does not rhyme (“If you …, you are doing A1; if you …, you are doing A2”); and another one which, like the other versions including Shuoyuan, reiterates the rhyming B verbs.
Stylistically, this may not seem like a happy choice. A single repetition that preserves the rhymes, as in Shuoyuan, would make for a neater composition with more regular aural patterning. But the didactic purpose overrides aesthetic considerations. The contents are presented, first, in concise, memorable phrasing, and then repeated twice, with two different sets of explanatory additions and from two opposing perspectives, stating in turn what the ruler should do and what he should avoid. Both phonetic patterning and overall compositional structure are subordinate to the practical purpose of didactic clarification and mnemonic repetition, a strategy of textual composition noticeably different to poeticized speech in which Confucius was trading metaphors with Zilu.
A similar compositional arrangement of reiterated and expanded rhymes can be identified in a conversation between Confucius and a disciple. About to take up office in Xinyang 信陽, a place in Chu 楚, Zigong is just preparing to set out on his journey when Confucius offers him the following, minimalistically phrased warnings.
Zigong is piqued by the admonition against robbery, protesting that he is serving a “noble man” (junzi 君子) who, surely, would not commit such reprehensible acts. The Master takes this as a cue to expand on his advice, stating:
As before, the rhyme words of the initial injunctions are reiterated but attached to a different set of sentences which specify the meaning of the more tersely phrased and, hence, more memorable initial verses. In addition to greater specificity, the explanatory reiteration also offers, in one case at least, an unexpected interpretation. The first two lines define what is and is not a legimitate attack, a morally justified form of military “chastisement” (fa 伐) of the guilty. This symmetrical treatment of the issue elides the warning in the second of the initial verses not to conduct any attack, an inconsistency that makes the entire commentary look like an interpretation devised with specific motives in mind. Far from being restricted to spelling out an innocuous guideline for local administration, the text's auto-commentary adds a novel interpretive layer which accommodates more ideologically laden concepts and prescriptions.
A further example of reiterated rhymes can be found in a Confucius dialogue which betrays its fictional nature not only by its conspicuously literary composition, but also through a glaring anachronism, the appearance of a prince of Liang, a metonymic reference to the state of Wei 魏, which did not exist as an independent polity in Confucius's lifetime.
The dialogue shares the most salient features of the encounters discussed earlier in this section. It barely provides any information on the setting of the conversation, and the identity of the interlocutors does not appear to be of great interest. Confucius is an apt choice of speaker for a discussion about learning such as the poeticized debate with Zilu. He is a less obvious candidate for presenting purely pragmatic political advice to the ruler of Liang. The main function of the speakers is to confer additional authority on the didactic contents their speeches convey. This becomes particularly obvious in the parallels recorded in Shuoyuan, Liu tao, and Wu Yue chunqiu, where speakers with strongly differing backgrounds pronounce the same content to different listeners. Variation in the choice of speaker would not appear to impart any different ideological inflections on the advice they are offering. The what is important, not the who.
It is, furthermore, noticeable that the advice proposed in each of the dialogues discussed so far consists of abstract guidelines unaccompanied by the kind of (pseudo-)historical precedents which are frequently used elsewhere to illustrate political lessons. Linguistic patterning is conspicuously present and crucially important, but in contradistinction to Confucius and Zilu's debate on learning, the didactic contents of the dialogues are expressly stated. They are not conveyed indirectly through metaphors, images, and analogies. Not serving a purely aesthetic purpose, the rhymes act as mnemonic devices in combination with auto-commentarial features which, like all commentary, open up additional space for specification, clarification and reinterpretation. The dialogues follow a didactically motivated trajectory, in turn expanding and contracting individual textual units, at times elaborating on, at others condensing, the contents which their users are supposed to compass and commit to memory. The didactic function is, to a significant extent, fulfilled by prefacing the mnemonically salient rhyme words of the first set of verses with novel explanatory lines.
3. Emotive verse and thwarted ambition: shrews, unicorns and collapsing mountains
None of the above dialogues strive to portray Confucius as a fully fledged personality with palpable signs of interiority. The Confucius figure of these texts engages in metaphorical exchanges about ideological issues or relays didactic messages in easily assimilable forms. His character and personal sentiments are immaterial to these objectives and go unheeded. Other texts, by contrast, highlight precisely such facets of the Confucius figure. They often do so by presenting the master as he sings or recites verse, usually in order to vent his frustration about life-changing mishaps, impending doom, and the sorry state of the world. This is in line with the use of songs as an expression of “political frustration” and with their broader generic characteristics as a “medium of spontaneous emotional declaration”.Footnote 24
Thwarted ambition resurfaces as a leitmotif across sources about Confucius, most likely a result of efforts by later generations of adherents to reconcile their faith in the Master's unique mission with his indisputable failure to win political influence. The strange ambiguity of his fate has left its mark on the paradoxical way in which the Lunyu emphasizes the role of Heaven as the inscrutable power which designated Confucius to achieve great things, yet inexplicably deserted him. He claims to have grasped Heaven's will at fifty, asserting profound personal insight into the workings of human destiny.Footnote 25 In the face of adversity, he proclaims his unwavering faith in his civilizing mission as ordained by Heaven, and in the special recognition Heaven extends to him.Footnote 26 Yet he also bewails his unhappy lot, exclaiming: “Heaven has discarded me!”Footnote 27 The Confucius of the Lunyu is both Heaven's Chosen One and Heaven's reject. In the songs and verses which different writings attribute to him, a similar tension between these contradictory roles can be felt, no doubt the outcome of an attempt to grapple with the mismatch between the master's supposedly grand destiny and his modest worldly achievements.
In Sima Qian's reconstruction of Confucius's life, the almost one-and-a-half decades of exile during which the Master roamed through the early Chinese cultural sphere on a quest for office and patronage marks a watershed in his biography. Fittingly, it is in episodes related to these travels that we find some of the scenes in which Confucius recites verse to voice his feelings.
Sima's account narrates the circumstances which motivated Confucius's departure from his home state. As part of a scheme to undermine the political and moral resilience of Lu, the ruler of rivalling Qi presented female dancers to the duke of Lu. The latter, in his unbridled desire for entertainment, ceased to hold audiences, and the government fell into disarray. Disgusted by such decadence, Confucius intones the following misogynistic ditty.
These farcical events, which conform to a multiply-attested trope of early historical narratives, allegedly ushered in Confucius's years as émigré and aspiring peripatetic adviser.Footnote 30 He repeatedly, yet unsuccessfully, sought office at the courts of foreign princes. Some songs attributed to him comment on this experience. They resonate with a sense of desperation. But they also emphasize his insistence on lofty principles, as opposed to any weakness which could undermine his resistance to the dire reality of rejection and compromise his ideals. Sometimes, the verses partially restore agency to the Master by making him the party who declines an offer of employment.
According to an episode in the Kong congzi 孔叢子 chapter “Recorded questions” (“Ji wen” 記問), which contains several songs attributed to Confucius, the king of the powerful southern state of Chu invited the master to his court. The disciples expectantly opine that this should be the moment to implement Confucius's teachings. But the Master woefully replies that there is no worthy king alive, “and thereupon he sang” (nai ge yue 乃歌曰) the following.
The moment to respond to a royal summons has passed. The grand moral principles that should guide politics have been eclipsed by sheer expediency, ritual is reduced to a submerged bedrock, present yet hidden, just as the worthy men have concealed themselves for their own protection. There is no meaningful destination left for a man like Confucius, there are no more tasks to achieve, no missions to accomplish.
On a different occasion, the Duke of Lu invites Confucius to return, yet shows himself unwilling to offer an appointment. In response, Confucius reportedly composed the “Song of the hill and mound” (Qiu ling zhi ge 丘陵之歌), in which he expresses frustration about his foiled career and about the disorder into which the world has descended.
The poem is framed as a snapshot of Confucius's return to his home state. Having already crossed into Lu territory, looking back he can still take in the view of Mounts Tai and Liangfu in Qi. This detail situates the song in a specific location and, by virtue of its reference to the framing narrative, at a particular point in time. This is the only part of the poem susceptible to such an unmediated biographical contextualization on the basis of spatio-temporal clues. By contrast, the remainder exudes a heavy, though fundamentally generic, desperation about the state of the realm and the honest man's banishment from the centre of power, a sentiment expressed in well-established tropes and language, “with traces both of Shijing themes and of Chuci diction”.Footnote 34
Judging by the songs which Lu Qinli includes in the pre-Qin section of this large collection of ancient and early medieval poetry, Confucius's song looks quite unlike anything narrative texts would have attributed to personalities from pre-imperial times.Footnote 35 The length, the unfailingly tetrasyllabic metre, the recherché diction and dense allusiveness as well as the emotive mode of expression appear atypical when compared to the songs which legendary as well as historical pre-Qin personalities are said to have intoned. These tend to be shorter and metrically less regular; they use less recondite and allusive language, and frequently they relate more tangibly to the narrative situation in which they are embedded.
The poem's language and imagery suggest a Han date. In the surviving pre-Qin and Han literature, the expression liyi 峛崺, which describes the rising and falling of mountain slopes, seems to be only attested in Yang Xiong's 揚雄 (53 bce–18 ce) “Ganquan fu” 甘泉賦.Footnote 36 Zhun 屯 and jian 蹇 are Yijing hexagrams (nos 3 and 39) symbolizing peril. This may suggest a further assocation between the expression “hills and mounds” and the judgement (tuan 彖) attached to another hexagram, xi kan 習坎 (no. 29), “successive pitfalls”, which likewise conjures up associations with danger.
天險不可升也，地險山川丘陵也。
The precipices of heaven cannot be scaled; the precipices of the earth are the mountain ranges and streams, the hills and mounds.Footnote 37
To Song Xian 宋咸 (fl. 1058), the editor of the earliest extant edition of the Kong congzi, “hills and mounds” stand metaphorically for the dangers and hardships engendered by the rule of a benighted prince.Footnote 38 On this interpretation, Confucius is voicing his apprehensions about the adversity awaiting him in Lu.
Similarly, the image of “brambles” (zhiji 枳棘) probably carried political connotations in the late Warring States period;Footnote 39 it definitely did so in the late Han. Liu Xiang's 劉向 (c. 79 bce–c. 6 ce) “Min ming” 愍命 contains the lines:
折芳枝與瓊華兮, 樹枳棘與薪柴。
The fragrant bough and the jewelled spray are broken;/ Thorn bushes and kindling wood are planted in their stead.Footnote 40
In explanation, Wang Yi's 王逸 (d. 158 ce) commentary remarks: 以言賤棄君子而育養小人 “Thereby he states that noble men are denigrated and cast off, while petty men are reared and fostered”.Footnote 41 As a roughly contemporaneous work, Kong congzi probably employed “brambles” to elicit similar associations. “Stream” (chanyuan 潺湲) occurs in several of the Chuci but, aside from these uses, only appears in writings which unambiguously date to the Han. The poem “Xiang jun” 湘君 and the second of the “Nine Arguments” (“Jiu bian” 九辯), traditionally attributed to Song Yu 宋玉, a third-century bce official from Chu, both mention streams of “tears” (ti 涕), as does Confucius's song, suggesting that the concept, in this particular wording, had turned into a poetic trope.Footnote 42
In addition to Yijing allusions, there are also echoes of the Odes. The line “I would cut them but have no axe” resonates faintly with the Ode “Fa ke” 伐柯.Footnote 43 Di 題 in the sense of “looking at” is rarely attested but appears in the Odes.
Lastly, the two neighbouring mountains Tai and Liangfu in Shandong are both powerful religious and political symbols, having served as the sites of the imperial feng 封 and shan 禪 sacrifices respectively, which were carried out by the First Emperor of Qin (r. 221–210 bce) and by Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141–87 bce). As the venue of sacrifices to the God of the Earth in the Warring States polity of Qi, Liangfu was later considered the location of the capital in which the God of the Dead resided.Footnote 44
With the image of the holy Mount Tai looming lofty and unattainable in the distance, the paths to the summit – the site of the imperial sacrifices – overgrown with weeds, the song attributed to Confucius hints at pathologies at the very heart of the realm, the imperial court, in the same way as Liu Xiang did when he complained that “fragrant boughs” were being replaced by “thorn bushes”.
Confucius's song testifies to an imperial vision held by men of the Han. It reverberates with intertextual resonances which were devised by and which would, with great immediacy, have spoken to Han literati steeped in the scriptural learning and poetic language of the time. Whichever Han writer composed this song attempted to recast Confucius in his own image and that of his peers.
The final, unabashedly emotional, outburst – “Tears cascading down in streams” – helps the Master vent his desperation about his own powerlessness in the face of the declining fortunes of the realm. Similar sentiments are echoed in a song responding to an omen which, by its untimely appearance, forebodes Confucius's own end. Some strands in the historiographic and apocryphal traditions represented Confucius as a messianic figure. His death was presaged by the capture of a mythical beast, the “unicorn” (lin 麟 or qilin 麒麟), whose appearance should, under normal circumstances, have inaugurated a period of perfect government.Footnote 45 As the Kong congzi makes clear, when the Master learns that the unicorn has been caught in the outskirts of the Lu capital Qufu, he immediately understands that all hope for salvation is lost. He will never recreate the blissful rule of the ancient sage emperors Yao (=Tang) and Shun (=Yu).
These verses evoke the Heavenly mission some Han thinkers attributed to Confucius, in keeping with the privileged, though ambivalent relationship Confucius entertained with Heaven according to the Lunyu. He was the saviour designated to end the political fragmentation and pervasive military destruction of the pre-imperial age. The appearance of the phoenix and the unicorn should have portended his ascendancy. But on the contrary, the unicorn's demise forebodes his own.Footnote 47
Another story also plays on the fateful connection between the sage and the portentous animals. A recluse encountered by Confucius, whose attitude oscillates between irony and empathy, compares the Master to a phoenix making an untimely appearance in a world not yet ready for it.Footnote 48 More than Confucius's personal failure, the capture of the unicorn symbolizes his thwarted destiny as an agent of transcendent salvation.
Another portrayal of the Master addressing his own mortality in a prophecy of his impending demise purports to offer a more intimate glimpse at Confucius's personality. Having risen early, Confucius traipses to and fro in front of his gate, hands folded behind his back, with his walking stick dragging over the ground. He is awaiting his close follower Zigong 子貢, to whom he will reveal that he is about to die. When the disciple arrives, the Master sings (ge):
Zigong understands. He repeats Confucius's rhymes but adds to them expressions of his own apprehensions in a manner which resembles the composition of reiterated and expanded rhymes discussed before. In doing so, he voices both his admiration for the Master and his desperation about the imminent loss of his moral guide and teacher.
Shortly after, Confucius is dead. The scene conjures up a peculiarly asymmetric dynamic between Master and adherent. Confucius, not shy to impress his epochal stature on the disciple, invokes yet again weighty politico-religious symbols of imperial power. Zigong's response addresses narrower concerns: the consequences of the Master's death for his immediate following fated to lose their moral lodestar. The narrative focus adds to the tension between different frames of reference – the empire-wide, if not cosmic, as compared to the individual.
There are vivid descriptive touches rarely found in early anecdotes: Confucius's stick and folded hands, the restlessness which makes him rise early and nervously potter about. These details further add to the sense of intimacy. On the other hand, in his song Confucius embraces his weighty role in the world at large. His awe-inspiring potency as the “wise man” equals that of a sacred mountain, a comparison likewise drawn in the “Song of the Hill and Mound”.
4. Being dramatic: yokels and washerwomen
The texts discussed so far are contrived to convey didactically points of political utility, or they pretend to offer glimpses at Confucius's emotional state as he responds to the extremities to which a deceptive fate has pushed him. In these cases, rhyme and metrical organization serve mnemonic functions or increase the dignity of Confucius's speech.
The present section investigates exchanges which, more emphatically than the debate by analogy in part 1 and the reiterated rhymes of part 2, capture a communicative dynamic driven by a slightly confrontational give-and-take. Rhymes form an intrinsic part of these texts’ literary shape, which dramatically stage encounters in a manner reminiscent of the first narrative in the Zuozhuan, whose stylistic and compositional features have been lucidly discussed by William Nienhauser.Footnote 51 The following examples exude a a similar sense of being staged. They exemplify a sort of drama avant la lettre – or a kind of skit, as the case may be.
The first example, from Hanshi waizhuan 韓詩外傳, allows the reader to eavesdrop on a fracas at Confucius's door between an ill-mannered visitor and an irritable disciple.
This “exchange of pleasantries”, as Hightower dubs it, is interesting for a number of reasons.Footnote 53 It revolves around puns on different meanings and words expressed by the character 絞 as well as by hong 鴻, “vast” or “swan-goose”, and yi 翼, “wing” or “respectful”. It also represents a deliberate collage of references to traditions about Confucius and to a riddle that circulated more widely, as its recurrence in an entirely different context suggests. Both of these dimensions are interrelated. The use of jiao 絞 as designation of an objectionable attitude – “sarcasm” or “contrariness” – is attested in the Lunyu, as is the specific form of the Golden Rule which Zigong quotes.Footnote 54 With slight variation, the couplet on carts and lutes appears as one in a series of riddle-like analogies pregnant with political overtones which Chunyu Kun 淳于髡 allegedly put to Zou Ji 鄒忌 after the latter had been named chancellor of Qi. Zou understands the remark – correctly, it turns out – as a veiled reminder to apply the law rigorously and to hold bad officials to account.Footnote 55
The encounter thus plays out on two levels. The references to less extravagant traditions about Confucius and the disciples as well as the Odes quotation at the end, a habitual feature of the Hanshi waizhuan, suggest a scene that fits into a framework of orthodox representations of the Master and his followers. Yet, the centrality of word-play as well as the encounter's raucous and confrontational tone make it, more than anything, look like ludic, and knowing, entertainment. The only conceivably didactic aspect might consist in an attempt to showcase Zigong's rhetorical versatility in combination with his superior sense of propriety. But the pervasive punning and the low moral stakes would make this a rather weak attempt at Confucian indoctrination bound to leave most audiences unimpressed. The main point, rather, seems to be the sheer playfulness of this clearly fictional scene.
A comparable playfulness, laced with innuendo, suffuses the following encounter between Confucius and Zigong with an anonymous washerwoman, transmitted in Hanshi waizhuan and Lienü zhuan 列女傳.Footnote 56 On his way to the southern state of Chu, considered the prototypical embodiment of cultural alterity in ancient China, Confucius and his disciple encounter a maiden (chuzi 處子) who is washing clothes in a stream at Egu 阿谷. The Master decides to send Zigong over to put her virtue to the test. Handing him a goblet, he instructs the disciple: “Fashion a skilful address to her and observe what she has to say!” (善為之辭，以觀其語。)
In her final remark, the girl cites a well-known rule of gender etiquette, according to which men and women should not exchange objects in a way that would put them at risk of touching one another.Footnote 58 Zigong reports back what happened, confirming Confucius's initial faith in the girl's chastity: “I knew it!” (丘知之矣。). This time he hands his disciple a lute, from which he removes the pegs, and sends him back with the same instructions as before.
Zigong reports back, Confucius sees himself again confirmed in his judgement, and then he gives the disciple some hemp as a prop to be used in the final trial of the girl's modesty.
Five lengths of silk cloth are codified in canons of ritual etiquette as the maximum amount for a betrothal gift.Footnote 62 Under the given circumstances, with a strange man approaching a single girl in a lonely place, the offer of such a gift amounts to a mockery of proper marriage negotiations with their complex choreography of go-betweens and minutely circumscribed exchanges between families, rather than individuals.
From a different perspective, the encounter may also be understood as a parody of a particular type of characterological examination studied by Richter. Such tests are mentioned in fragments and quotations across early Chinese literature. One of the ways to fathom the suitability of a candidate for office was to put him deliberately into certain difficult situations in order to assess his reactions. Typically, a sequence of such examinations is described in formulaically phrased catalogues of the form “Do X to him and observe whether he Y” (X 之以 / 而觀其 Y).Footnote 63 Confucius's instructions to Zigong resemble this template: “Fashion a skilful address to her and observe what she has to say!” (Shan wei zhi ci yi guan qi yu 善為之辭以觀其語).
Lastly, the setting has a defamiliarizing effect. To present the encounter as part of a travel episode, and one related to the exotic south at that, displaces Confucius from his customary surroundings in the midst of his following and thus adds to the sense of exceptionality that permeates the scene. It is further heightened by the operatic quality of the exchanges in rhymed and metrically patterned speech; the tripartite division characteristic of folk narratives and fairy tales;Footnote 64 and by the leitmotif of Zigong's self-identification, which seems to signal, like a fanfare, the appearance of a character on stage.
Set against the increasingly rigid ideals of female virtue that appear to have gained currency among Han elites, Confucius's behaviour in this scene is nothing short of outrageous.Footnote 65 He puts a lone girl's chastity to the test, orchestrates unseemly approaches by his disciple and, ultimately, tempts her to elope with a stranger. Not surprisingly, a few centuries after the scene entered the compilation Hanshi waizhuan, the author of the Kong congzi felt obliged to refute this onslaught on the Master's moral integrity by questioning its authenticity. Somewhat ironically, the medium he chose to achieve this likewise turns out to be a fictional dialogue. Asked by the Lord of Pingyuan 平原君 (?–253 bce) whether Confucius “exchanged speeches with a washerwoman” (jiao ci yu piaonü 交辭於漂女) – which could also be taken to mean that he talked to a “harlot” (piaonü 嫖女) – the Master's descendant Kong Chuan 孔穿 replies: “As for that talk about Egu, that only came up in the recent past, probably as something made up by men who fake such things to vent their feelings”. (若夫阿谷之言，起於近世，殆是假其類以行其心者之為也。)Footnote 66
Though one should not overestimate the evidentiary weight of this singular response, it might go some way to suggest that talk about the encounter with the chaste washerwoman, in this form or another incarnation, struck a nerve with Confucius's adherents. It is tempting to surmise that the libretto-like style of presentation in the extant versions – both Hanshi waizhuan and Lienü zhuan are virtually indistinguishable, except for the final encomium of the latter – had something to do with this. It made the parody of the Master more diverting, and hence much more subversive, than a flat-footed assault in the Mohist vein could have possibly been.
In fact, as in Confucius's doom-laden songs, doctrinal questions are not much of an issue here. The sheer pleasure of this imaginative act of ridicule is the main motivating force behind this scene. It is staged adroitly and with great care to achieve maximum effect. The tripartite sequence of trials; the formulaic repetitions on the levels of structure and phrasing; and the expressive gestures accompanying the operatic exchanges: these judiciously chosen elements of composition and style strike a balance between recognizable and predictable sameness on the one hand and subtle variation, which holds the audience's attention, on the other.Footnote 67
Conclusion
The foregoing is a foray into two relatively underexplored areas in the margins of literary and intellectual history: fictitious appropriations and representations of the Confucius figure and the use of rhyme and verse, largely outside the bounds of what may be called lyrical poetry. Both shall be addressed in turn.
We have encountered rhyme and verse employed in distinctive ways in a number of scenes from Han compilations, some of which foreground issues of teaching and points of political utility, while others place stronger emphasis on characterization and plot, sometimes with confrontational overtones, but usually softened by a touch of humour and playfulness. These texts variously unfold along didactic, emotive and dramatic dimensions, which confer on each a specific literary complexion. Depending on the underlying mood and purpose, motivations for the use of verse run the whole gamut from the mnemonic over the performative to the emotive. Verse features in several texts not as mere ornamentation but as the very tool of debate, the means by which speakers shore up their own positions and attack those of their opponents. This is most evident in the poeticized dispute on learning introduced in the first part of this article. Similar tendencies rise to the surface in the skittish battle of puns between Zigong and the coarse caller at Confucius's gate. These scenes rely integrally on the exchange of verse to stage the conflicts, and impress on their audiences the lessons, which form their central concerns, nowhere more so than in the encounter between Confucius, Zigong and the chaste washerwoman, where the characters follow a script which could be performed on stage without substantial changes.
The scenes featuring reiterated rhymes adhere to a strikingly different logic. There is no element of the dramatic or farcical about those conversations in which Confucius recites commentarially enhanced rhymes back at a questioner. On the contrary, the speakers appear rather like disembodied voices in a purely formal literary exercise, an impression further strengthened by the variation in attribution across different versions, which is demonstrable in at least one case. It is arguably not so much for its aesthetic impact that rhyme is used here; it is for its mnemonic effect. Aural patterning, in conjunction with simple repetition which redirects conscious attention at the same content, is used to lodge valuable lessons firmly in the reader's memory. Rhyme and metrical organization are not used in such contexts to elevate the dignity or aesthetic appeal of speech above the level of quotidian utterance; they fulfil, instead, a much more pragmatic function.
The aesthetic function of aural patterning, by contrast, is central to emotive verse, which is often framed as verbal response to a biographic experience. More than any of the other kinds of scenes presented, texts in which such verse occurs bespeak an interest in the man, in Confucius as a personality with a palpable inner life. Yet while this interest could have encouraged a narrowing of focus, the representation of the man is inextricably bound up with the spiritually pregnant image of Confucius as thwarted saviour. The focus on his person opens up a transcendent historical perspective on the distant and, we are given to understand, inexplicably unattainable aim of salvation. One could hardly imagine a starker contrast between these portrayals and that of Confucius as frivolous traveller who delegates a disciple to lure an innocent girl into a sexual encounter under the pretext of putting her chastity to the test. Similarly, the conceptual distance between this Confucius figure and that of the disembodied source of didactic contents, or that of the voice of wisdom figuring so prominently in the Lunyu, is significant.
A lesson to take away from such comparisons between different representations of Confucius is that the boundaries between the orthodox and the apocryphal, the authentic and the spurious, are not impermeable. Although one can easily single out the more fanciful depictions of Confucius as inauthentic, conversely there are few reliable means of authentication.Footnote 68 Scholars will for good reasons continue to debate the finer points of Confucius's philosophy and biography. However, this should not detract entirely from non-canonical, unexpected, irreverent, and even blatantly inauthentic portrayals and narratives. Ancient texts reveal tantalizing hints that there was once an entire world of Confucius lore to which the gatekeepers of orthodoxy have denied us access. Very likely, the larger part of these non-orthodox traditions is now lost, but we may still be able to salvage some of the remains in order to understand the Confucius figure as a multifaceted phenomenon of the cultural imagination rather than, solely, as philosopher and patron-saint of an intellectual tradition and state ideology.
The strait-laced Confucius of the Lunyu, who enjoins his listeners to be filial, upstanding, comprehensively educated, and observant of ritual, approximates more closely the prevailing consensus on the historical Confucius than the tempter, the singing sage, the versifying Master, or the disgruntled émigré launching into a misogynistic ditty. But these figures, too, populated the cultural universe of premodern China, and to numerous ancient Chinese their voices may well have appeared as real and compelling as that of the moralizing teacher.
Another lesson of perhaps wider significance is that attention to stylistic patterns and compositional structures in ancient prose texts, even seemingly simple ones such as brief anecdotes and dialogues, can contribute greatly to more nuanced interpretation. To investigate micro-genres and patterns of language use alongside their presumed purposes can arguably help to pin down in more concrete terms the moods and modes in which texts were composed. To do so will, in the aggregate, facilitate the development of a more acute sense for different textual functions. It will also help to develop a fuller appreciation of the sensibilities which gave rise to ancient writings, be they sternly moralistic, flat-out didactic, or tongue-in-cheek.
