Writing文章

Writing came in the beginning out of the Five Classics. Edicts (詔), commands (命), proclamations (策) and manifestos (檄) were born from the Book of Documents. Prefaces (序), narrations (述), discourses (論) and deliberations (議) were born from the Book of Changes. Songs (歌), chants (詠), rhapsodies (賦) and hymns (頌) were born from the Book of Songs. Sacrifices (祭), offerings (祀), laments (哀) and dirges (誄) were born from the Book of Rites. Letters (書), memorials (奏), admonitions (箴) and inscriptions (銘) were born from the Spring and Autumn Annals. The statutes of the court and the oaths and proclamations of the army spread and display benevolence and right, make merit and virtue plain, shepherd the people and found states, and their uses run many ways. And when it comes to shaping the spirit and remonstrating quietly, to enter into that flavor is a pleasure as well. If there is strength left over after conduct, then writing may be practiced. Yet from of old men of letters have often fallen into frivolity. Qu Yuan displayed his talent and vaunted himself, and laid bare his lord's faults. Song Yu was fair of face and was treated as an entertainer. Dongfang Shuo (Manqian) was droll and not refined. Sima Xiangru (Changqing) stole wealth and had no principle. Wang Bao went too far with the Tong yue. Yang Xiong ruined his virtue with the Mei xin. Li Ling surrendered to the barbarians and was disgraced. Liu Xin turned this way and that under Wang Mang. Fu Yi attached himself to the houses of power. Ban Gu stole his father's history. Zhao Yi (Yuanshu) was stiff-necked beyond measure. Feng Yan (Jingtong) was showy and was cast out. Ma Rong (Jichang) was blamed for his flattery. Cai Yong (Bojie) kept company with an evil man and was put to death. Wu Zhi slandered his home district. Cao Zhi was arrogant and broke the law. Du Du begged favors without end. Lu Cui was narrow in the extreme. Chen Lin was indeed called coarse. Fan Qin had no restraint in his nature. Liu Zhen would not bend and was sent to hard labor. Wang Can was rash and hasty and was disliked. Kong Rong and Mi Heng were haughty, and it cost them their lives. Yang Xiu and Ding Yi stirred men up and were killed. Ruan Ji had no propriety and broke down custom. Ji Kang looked down on others and came to a bad end. Fu Xuan quarreled in anger and lost his office. Sun Chu boasted and slighted those above him. Lu Ji went against the natural course and trod on danger. Pan Yue chased luck and got peril. Yan Yannian gave way to bravado and was broken and driven out. Xie Lingyun was careless and threw the rules into disorder. Wang Rong (Yuanzhang) brought his own violent end upon himself. Xie Tiao (Xuanhui) was slighting and haughty and met with harm. All these men were the finest among them. They cannot all be set down, but such is the shape of it. Even among emperors and kings there are some who did not escape it. From of old the sons of heaven who had talent and writing were only Emperor Wu of Han, the Grand Ancestor of Wei, Emperor Wen, Emperor Ming and Emperor Xiaowu of Song, and all of them bore the censure of the age, so they were not rulers of fine virtue. Men such as Ziyou, Zixia, Xun Kuang, Meng Ke, Mei Cheng, Jia Yi, Su Wu, Zhang Heng and Zuo Si held great names and yet escaped fault and trouble. Such men are heard of now and then, but those who were harmed and ruined are the more. I have thought about this often, and when I trace what it comes from, it is this. The very body of writing holds up excitement and draws out the spirit and makes a man vaunt himself, so that he grows careless of keeping his principles and bold in pushing himself forward. In the men of letters of this age the sickness is sharper still. Let one matter fall out right, let one line come clear and deft, and the spirit climbs the ninth heaven and the will strides over a thousand years, and he chants and admires himself and does not notice that anyone else is there. Add to this that the hurt of sand and gravel is crueler than spears and halberds, and that the disaster of satire is swifter than wind and dust. It should be deeply guarded against and weighed, so as to keep the great good fortune.

In learning there is the sharp and the dull; in writing there is the deft and the clumsy. Dull learning, if effort is piled upon effort, may still come to be fine and practiced; but clumsy writing, however the thought is polished, returns in the end to what is stupid and mean. Only become a man of learning, and that is enough to be a man. If a man truly lacks inborn talent, let him not force the brush. I have seen men of the world who have no talent or thought at all, and yet call themselves pure and splendid and spread abroad what is ugly and clumsy. There are many such, and in Jiangnan they are called a charm for selling foolishness (詅痴符). Lately in Bingzhou there was a man of a gentry house who loved to make laughable poems and rhapsodies and to mock the lords Xing and Wei. The crowd joined in making sport of him and praised him falsely, and at once he would kill an ox and strain wine to draw in more fame. His wife, a woman of clear judgment, wept and remonstrated with him. The man sighed and said, "My talent is not allowed even by my wife. How much less by a man passing on the road." To his death he never understood. To see oneself is called clear sight, and this is truly hard.

When you learn to write, first take counsel with close friends, get their judgment and their trimming, and know that it may go out. Only then let it out of your hand. Take care not to make your own mind your teacher and please yourself, and so become a laughingstock to those beside you. From of old, how could one count the men who took up the brush and wrote? Yet of what is grand and beautiful, fine and shining, there are no more than a few dozen pieces. If only the form is not lost and the words and the sense are worth looking at, a man is at once called a talent. To move the common world and cover the age, one must wait for the Yellow River to run clear.

Not to bend to two houses was the constancy of Bo Yi and Shu Qi. Whom could a man serve who is not a lord? That was the right of Yi Yin and Jizi. Since the Spring and Autumn age, houses have fled and states have been swallowed, and between lord and subject there is no longer any fixed lot. Yet when the friendship of gentlemen is broken off there are no evil words. If a man bends the knee one morning and serves another, how should he change his thoughts according to who survives and who falls? Chen Lin (Kongzhang), while he was with Yuan Shao and drew up documents, called Cao Cao a jackal; and when he was in Wei and made manifestos, he named Yuan Shao a viper. The lord of the time ordered it, and he could not do as he pleased. Still it is a great affliction of men of letters, and one should work to weigh it quietly and manage it.

Someone asked Yang Xiong, "Did you love the fu (賦) when you were young?" Yang Xiong said, "I did. It is a boy's carving of insects, and a grown man does not do it." I privately hold this to be wrong, and say: Yu Shun sang the poem of the South Wind, the Duke of Zhou made the song of the Owl, and Jifu and Shi Ke made the fine pieces among the Elegant Odes (雅) and the Hymns (頌). It has never been heard that all of these harmed their virtue in their young years. Confucius said, "Without learning the Songs there is nothing to speak with." And he said, "When I came back from Wei to Lu the music was set right, and the Elegant Odes and the Hymns each found their place." In making the way of filial duty greatly plain he drew on the Songs to prove it. How does Yang Xiong dare to make light of it? If one argues that the rhapsody of the poet is beautiful and keeps to rule while the rhapsody of the word-man is beautiful and wanton, then he knew only how to turn it about. And I do not know how Yang Xiong himself fared as a grown man. He wrote the Ju Qin mei Xin, threw himself recklessly from the tower, and ran about in fright, not reaching through to the mandate of heaven. This was a boy's doing and nothing more. Huan Tan held him above Laozi and Ge Hong matched him with Confucius, which makes a man sigh. This man was only clear in arithmetic and understood yin and yang, and so wrote the Taixuan jing, and a few men were beguiled by it. In the words and the deeds he left behind he does not come up to Xun Qing or Qu Yuan. How should he dare to look toward the clear traces of the great sage? And in the end, what use is the Taixuan now? It is good for nothing but to cover a pickle jar.

In the age of Qi there was one Xi Pi, a pure and able man, who rose in office to be a minister of the traveling secretariat. He laughed at letters and held them cheap, and mocked Liu Ti, saying, "The word-craft of you gentlemen is like a flower, a plaything of a moment and not great timber. How can it be set beside the thousand-foot pines of our sort, which meet wind and frost always and never wither?" Liu Ti answered him, "And what if a tree stood through the winter and also put out spring flowers?" Xi Pi laughed and said, "That would do."

Writing is like a man riding a fine horse. Though there be a soaring spirit in it, it should be governed with bit and bridle, so that it does not run wild out of its track, or race where it pleases and pitch into a hollow or against a bank.

Writing should take reason and sense for its heart, breath and cadence for its sinew and bone, matter and meaning for its skin, and splendor for its cap. In the present age men take from one another, leave the root and chase the branch, and mostly run to what is floating and pretty. When words contend with reason, the words win and reason is pressed down. When matter contends with talent, the matter grows heavy and the talent is harmed. The unbridled drift on and forget to come back, and those who dig for things patch and piece and still fall short. The custom of the age is like this, so how should one go against it alone? One can only work to cut away what is excessive and extreme. If there should come a man of great talent and heavy renown who reforms the form itself, that is truly what I hope for.

The writing of the ancients had great timber and soaring breath, and its bearing and character are truly far from ours today. Only its joining was loose and plain, and not closely woven. In this age the tones are even and smooth, the lines and phrases are matched in pairs, and the avoiding of forbidden words is fine and exact, so that in many points it is better than in the past. One should take the cut of the ancients for the root and the cadence of today for the branch. Both must be kept, and neither may be thrown away.

The writing of my house has been for generations most classical and correct, and has not followed the fashion of the age. When Emperor Xiaoyuan of Liang was still in his princely residence he compiled the Xifu xinwen, and in the end not one piece of ours was taken into it. This too was because it did not match the age and had none of the music of Zheng and Wei. There were twenty volumes of poems, rhapsodies, inscriptions, dirges, letters, memorials, petitions and reports. My brothers and I were then just in mourning and had not yet put them in order when fire came and burned them all away, so that in the end they were not handed on to the world. I hold the cruelty of it and swallow the bitterness, and it goes into my very marrow. Their conduct is seen in the Liang shi, in the accounts of men of letters, and in Emperor Xiaoyuan's Huai jiu zhi.

Marquis Yin, that is Shen Yue, said, "Writing should follow three easinesses. That the matter be easy to see is the first. That the graphs be easy to know is the second. That it be easy to read aloud is the third." Xing Zicai used always to say, "Marquis Shen's writing uses old matter without letting a man notice it, as if the words came out of his own breast," and he admired him deeply for it. Zu Xiaozheng too once said to me, "Shen Yue's poem says, 'The cliff leans and shelters the stone marrow.' How is this like using old matter?"

Xing Zicai and Wei Shou both had heavy names and were the standard of the age, and men took them for masters. Xing prized Shen Yue and made light of Ren Fang, while Wei loved Ren Fang and disparaged Shen Yue, and at every discussion and banquet it showed in their words and in their faces. Ye was in an uproar over it, and each of them had his faction. Zu Xiaozheng once said to me, "The right and wrong of Ren Fang and Shen Yue is just the ranking of Xing Shao and Wei Shou."

Wu Jun's collection has a rhapsody on the broken mirror. In old times, because a town was named Zhaoge (朝歌), Yan Yuan would not lodge there; because a village was named Shengmu (勝母), Zengzi drew his robe together. They feared that a bad name would harm the reality. The broken mirror (破鏡) is a fierce and unnatural beast, and the matter is seen in the Book of Han, so it is well to avoid this name in writing. In recent times one often sees men who answer another's poem and write in the title jingtong (敬同). But the Classic of Filial Piety says, "With what one uses in serving one's father one serves one's lord, and the reverence is the same (敬同)." It is not to be said lightly. In the Liang age Fei Xu's poem said, "I do not know whether it is so or not (是耶非)." Yin Yun's poem said, "It lifts and flies the mica boat (颻揚)." Emperor Jianwen said, "Fei Xu does not know his own father (耶), and Yin Yun flies his own mother (母) aloft." These are all matters of the ancients, and yet they may not be used. There are men of the world who have drawn into their writing the line of the Songs, "The drums are beaten, yuan yuan (淵淵)"; but the Song shu already has its reproach about roaming again and again, so such things are to be avoided. To face north and serve one's parents and yet, on parting from an uncle, pour out the song of the Weiyang; to keep one's elders in the hall and yet, on seeing off a brother, chant the grief of Huanshan: these are great mistakes. I have raised this one corner. Be careful wherever you touch.

The way of writing in Jiangnan is to want others to shoot at one's faults, so that when a flaw is known it is mended at once. The Prince of Chensi had this from Ding Yi. The custom of Shandong does not allow attack and rebuttal to pass between men. When I first came into Ye I went against men's feelings in this very matter, and I regret it to this day. You must never criticize lightly.

When you write in another man's place you make his words throughout, and by reason it should be so. But words of grief and mourning and calamity may not be lightly written in another's place. Cai Yong, writing for Hu Jinying, made a hymn for the tablet of her mother's spirit: "I grieve that my mother did not live long, but left me and died early." And writing for Hu Hao he made his father's inscription: "We bury my late father, the court gentleman for consultation." And in the hymn for the Three Excellencies of the Yuan house: "How fair is my ancestor, who came out of Yougui (有媯)." Wang Can, writing for Pan Wenze, made a poem of longing for his parents: "She bore this toil and wasting herself and reared me, a small man. I would that my bright mother might keep her years long." Yet these were set down together in the collections of Cai Yong and Wang Can, and examples of this kind are very many. What the ancients did, the present age shuns. The Prince of Chensi's dirge for Emperor Wu goes deep into the thought of the insect that hides away for long, and Pan Yue's rhapsody on the death of his wife grieves over what her hands had touched and left behind. This is to liken a father to an insect and to match a wife with a father. Cai Yong's stele for Yang Bing says, "He held the weight of the great foothills." Pan Ni's poem given to Lu Jingxuan says, "At the nine and five (九五) he thinks of the dragon's flight." Sun Chu's dirge for the general of agile cavalry Wang says, "Of a sudden he has ascended afar (登遐)." Lu Ji's dirge for his father says, "The myriad and the million set their hearts on him, and he ordered the hundred offices generously." And his dirge for his elder sister says, "A harmony that is the peer of heaven." If a man said such things now he would be a criminal before the court. Wang Can's poem given to Yang Dezu says, "Our lord sends him off with a feast, and the joy of it overflows." This may not be used carelessly of another man's son, how much less of the heir apparent.

As for the words of funeral songs, some say they are the old songs of Yubin and some say they came from the retainers of Tian Heng. Either way the sense is that the living mourn the departed and tell their grief. Lu of Pingyuan, that is Lu Ji, often made words in which the dead man sighs for himself. The form of poetry has never had such an example, and it goes against the first intent of the making.

In what the poets make, censure and admonition, praise and hymn have each their source and their stream, and good and evil have never been mixed in one piece. Lu Ji's Qi ou pian sets out in its opening the fullness of the hills and streams, the products and the teaching of the place, and then in the later stanza suddenly calls the feeling of those hills and streams mean, so that it has greatly lost its form. In his Wu qu xing, why did he not set out Ziguang and Fuchai? In his Jing Luo xing, why did he not tell of King Nan and Emperor Ling?

From of old there have been men of great talent and broad learning who used old matter wrongly. The miscellaneous sayings of the hundred schools do not always agree, and books are buried and lost so that later men do not see them, and therefore I do not dare to judge lightly. Here I raise only one or two things that can be known for certain to be errors, as a warning. The Book of Songs says, "Yao yao cries the hen pheasant." And it says, "The pheasant cries, seeking her cock." The Mao commentary also says, "Yao is the cry of the hen pheasant," and again, "That the pheasant cries in the morning is his seeking the hen." Zheng Xuan's note on the Yueling also says, "Gou (雊) is the cry of the cock pheasant." Yet Pan Yue's rhapsody says, "The pheasant cries yao yao in the morning," and this mixes cock and hen. The Book of Songs says, "Konghuai (孔懷) brothers." Kong is very, and huai is to long for; it says that they are very much to be longed for. Lu Ji, in a letter to Mother Gu of Changsha, spoke of the death of Shihuang, the younger cousin of his own great-grandfather's line, and said, "My heart aches and my brain is torn out, as if konghuai." If the heart already aches, then it is longing very much. Why then does he say as if? Looking at his sense, he must have taken konghuai to mean one's own brothers. The Book of Songs says, "Father and mother are very near (孔邇)." Would it make sense to call one's two parents kong? The Yiwu zhi says, "The yongjian (擁劍) is shaped like a crab, but one claw alone is large." He Xun's poem says, "The leaping fish is like a yongjian," and this is to fail to tell fish from crab. The Book of Han says, "In the court of the censor cypress trees stood in rows, and there were always some thousands of wild birds roosting on them, going away at dawn and coming at dusk, so that they were called the morning and evening birds (朝夕鳥)." Yet men of letters often use them wrongly as crows and kites. The Baopuzi tells how Xiang Mandu falsely claimed to have become an immortal and said of himself, "An immortal gave me a cup of flowing sunset glow to drink, and after that I neither hungered nor thirsted." But Emperor Jianwen's poem says, "The glow flows in Baopu's bowl," and this is just like Guo Xiang taking the argument of Hui Shi for the words of Zhuang Zhou. The Book of Later Han says, "Cui Lie, the minister of education, was imprisoned and bound with langdang (鋃鐺)." Langdang is a great iron chain, and in the world men often write it wrongly with the graphs for gold and silver. The crown prince Wulie too was a scholar of some thousands of volumes, and yet he once made a poem saying, "A silver chain on the legs of the Three Excellencies, a blade striking the head of the vice director." He was led wrong by the common usage.

The geography in writing must fit exactly. Emperor Jianwen of Liang's Yanmen taishou xing says, "The goose army strikes Rizhu and the Yan cavalry sweeps Kangju. Dayuan sends its good horses, and the Lesser Yuezhi sends a letter of surrender." Xiao Zihui's Longtou shui says, "The sky is cold and the Long water runs fast. Scattered, it parts and pours away. Northward it flows to Huanglong, and eastward it runs to meet at Baima." These too are the flaw in a bright pearl and the blemish in fine jade. Be careful of it.

Wang Ji's poem on entering the Ruoye stream says, "The cicadas cry and the wood is the stiller, the birds sing and the hill is the more hidden." In Jiangnan this was held to be beyond anything in writing, and no one had another opinion of it. Emperor Jianwen chanted it and could not forget it, and Emperor Xiaoyuan savored it and said it could not be got again, and even set it down in the account of Wang Ji in the Huai jiu zhi. Lu Xunzu of Fanyang, a gifted man of Ye, said, "This does not even make sense. Where is the skill in it?" and Wei Shou too held his judgment right. The Book of Songs says, "The horses neigh xiao xiao, the banners wave you you." The Mao commentary says, "It means that there was no clamor." I have always admired the feeling in this reading, and Wang Ji's lines were born from it.

Xiao Que of Lanling, the son of the Marquis of Shanghuang of the house of Liang, was skilled in verse. He once had an autumn poem that said, "The lotus falls under the dew, the willow is thin in the moon." The men of that time did not prize it. I love the loose, quiet air of it, which stands plain before the eye. Xun Zhongju of Yingchuan and Zhuge Han of Langya thought so as well. But Lu Sidao and his sort never cared for it.

He Xun's poems are truly clear and deft, with many words that catch the shape of things. Those who discuss them in Yangdu regret that he always has the fault of pain and bitterness and an air of cold poverty to spare, and does not come up to the ease of Liu Xiaochuo. Even so, Liu envied him greatly. All his life he recited He Xun's poems, and would always say, "'The Qu carriage sounds at the north gate tower.' That is □〔心畫〕□〔心畫〕, and not a carriage at all." Again, in compiling the Shi yuan he took only two pieces of He Xun's, and men of the time blamed him for his narrowness. Liu Xiaochuo already had a heavy name at that time and yielded to no one. Only Xie Tiao he admired, and he always kept Xie's poems on his desk and savored them at every turn. So too Emperor Jianwen loved the writings of Tao Yuanming. There is a saying in Jiangnan, "Liang has three of the He, and Zilang has the most." The three of the He are He Xun, He Sicheng and He Zilang. Zilang truly had clear deftness to spare. Sicheng roamed on Mount Lu and often had fine pieces, and he too was first among them.