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TOWARDS DEFINING A CHINESE HEROISM C. H. WANG UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE When scholars and critics say that there is no epic in the long and rich literary tradition of China, they obviously refer to the fact that martial heroism is never quite specifically celebrated in Chinese poetry. This paper attempts to define a cultural heroism as established in the early Chou era and developed in some subsequent periods. The sublime quality of the king's acts in accordance with this heroism is "epical" which, in the jus- tification of the overthrowing of the Shang dynasty, becomes the sustaining force of the so-called Weniad. The epic perception of the Weniad repudiates martial spirit in the ideal government. More, it directs the Chinese poet of all ages to the conscious ellipsis of battle in poetry. The ellipsis of battle is an unmistakable characteristic of the narrative structure of all Chinese poetry about war. 1. THE EPIC QUESTION ONE OF THE QUESTIONS about Chinese literature raised repeatedly since the turn of the century, but obviously not before, is the "epic question." Informed scholars find it vexing that the Chinese do not seem to have expanded an epic at the time when poetry began. Wang kuo-weia, convinced that the epic is the highest of all genres, deter- mines that the Chinese can have little pride in their literature now that the deficiency is evident.1 Ch' ien Chung-shub notes in his discourse on poetry and history, the two most celebrated areas in the Chinese humanities, that only the epic combines the two, and he implies that China does not have it.2 Western scholars of Chinese literature agree. "Chinese literature offers examples of all the major literary genres found in European literature," James Robert Hightower says, "except the epic."3 Jaroslav Prusek goes further: Epics and the epic perception of reality, which was so important in Greek literature and historiography and strongly influenced the entire later development of Latin, and European historiography as well, were on the whole of very minor importance in the correspond- ing branches of Chinese writing.4 1 Vang Kuan-t'ang hsien-sheng ch' iian-chi, 16 volumes (Taipei, 1968), V. 1846. 2 T'an i lu (Shanghai, 1948), p. 46. 3 "Chinese Literature in the Context of World Litera- ture," Comparative Literature (Oregon), V. 2 (1953), 120. 4 "History and Epics in China and the West," Chinese History and Literature, Collection of Studies (Prague, 1970), p. 31. 25 Questionable notwithstanding, these statements of the learned Sinologists confirm some random remarks of Sir Maurice Bowra, an absolutely erudite scholar of the epic in the major European traditions but limitedly informed about the es- sence and developments of Chinese literature. Equating the epic with the heroic poem in his definition, Bowra comments on some examples from ancient Chinese verse and pronounces them neither to be "pre-heroic" poems or laments. A song from the stone drum inscriptions, though in its quiet way recalling heroic narrative, reflecting the pride of men who set themselves a difficult task and carry it out, is pre-heroic because it is "not an objective narrative but a personal record."5 Or, in the case of "Those Who Died for the State" ("Kuo-shang")c, it is a lament because it is "a personal tribute to the dead and not an objective narrative of their doings."6 In contrast with this line of opinion which strictly postulates both the metrical and cultural features of the epic as conceived in the West to check against the Chinese poem of action, there is also a scholarly movement to allow a critic to seek in various types of the Chinese writing some equivalents of the epic. Hu Shihd conveniently calls a number of narrative poems dated in the second and third centuries "epics," including the "Peacocks Southeast Fly" ("K'ung-ch'iieh tung- nan fei")e.7 He obviously overlooks the fact that 5 Heroic Poetry (London, 1952; rpt. 1966), p. 13. 6 Ibid., p. 14. 7 Pai-hua wen-hsiieh shih (Shanghai, 1928; rpt. Taipei, 1969), pp. 60-87.
26 Journal of the American Oriental Society 95.1 (1975) a high style is more essential than its narrative structure for a poem to qualify as epic. For, as an English medievalist also argues, the epic has a style that is "ambitious and self-conscious ... aristocratic and accomplished," which is not characteristic of the ballad.8 The ballad may have many things in common with the epic, W. P. Ker observes, but it has lost "the grand style, and the pride and solemnity of language" attributed to the epic.9 The earnestness of Hu is similar to that of Joseph Addison. Addison ventures in The Spec- tator 70 (Monday, May 21, 1711) to elevate the English ballad "Chevy Chase" to the status of the Aeneid, by an intelligent comparison of the style;10 but Hu fails even to provide such a comparison. More recently, Ch'en Shih-hsiangf finds the grief of Chu-ko Liang, as magnified in a small poem "The Design of Eightfold Array" ("Pa-chen t'u")g by Tu Fu, to have a "heroic dimension," sublime and tragic.ll Although Ch'en refrains from using the word "epic" to describe this quat- rain, his analysis signifies an important awareness of the epic style in what Ker emphasizes as "weight and solidity."12 No sooner is the notion of weight and solidity singled out to define its primary styl- istic distinction, hence the thematic significance, than the epic exists in all genres of literature. In other words, the epic is a unique type of grand writing which, having the value in the vision it upholds rather than in the scope or size it reaches, and less still in such mechanisms as beginning the narrative in medias res, traverses all literary genres. An English example is anticipated by E. M. W. Tillyard in his reading of Shakespeare's history plays as an epic of England, within the great uni- fying motives of the Tudor myth and the morality idea of Respublica.13 When the flexibility is ap- 8 W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance, Essays on Medieval Literature (New York, 1957), p. 124. 9 Ibid., p. 125. 10 Addison and Steele: Selections from the Tatler and the Spectator, ed. Robert T. Allen (New York, 1964), pp. 121-27. 1 "To Circumvent 'The Design of Eightfold Array'," The Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, n.s. VII.1 (1968), 26-53. 12 Epic and Romance, p. 4. 13 Shakespeare's History Plays (New York, 1962), p. 276 et passim. Tillyard's concept of the flexibility of the epic is also expressed in The English Epic and Its Background (1954; rpt. New York, 1966). preciated, the search for a Chinese epic becomes a highly imaginative exercise with the scholars of Chinese literature who have an eye for comparative literature. Anthony C. Yu has recently found some dimensions of the epic in a number of verses interlaced in a Chinese popular novel, Hsi-yu chi,h which are by no means of more "weight and solidity" than the "Peacock Southeast Fly" or "Chevy Chase."14 It is true that recent writings have actually affirmed some epical elements in traditional Chi- nese literature, manifesting certain dimensions of the epic in vision and structure. The question, nevertheless, remains: why were not the "elements" in all dimensions integrated into a structure of the long narrative in verse to assert that grand vision? I seek in this essay to investigate an inherent rhetorical pattern in the Chinese verse account of the battle. I attempt to describe some quality of a heroism most highly regarded in the Chinese tradition, the meaning of wen in contrast with wu, which in turn sets up the rhetorical pattern, some images, motifs, and tropes. The pattern is established, as a result of the poet's cultural tendency which does not permit him to dwell on the details of the clash of arms; the heroic "action" is consequently redirected into another area. In this connection, Bowra's observation may prove to be quite true: The great intellectual forces which set so lasting an impress on Chinese civilization were hostile to the heroic spirit with its unfettered individualism and self-assertion.15 2. CONCEALING THE WEAPON Li Po finishes one of his most original "imi- tations" of the Han yiieh-fu, "Fighting South of the Walls" ("Chan ch'eng-nan"),l with a para- phrase from Laotzu (Tao Te Ching XXXI). The approximate quotation in effect summarizes the general Chinese attitude toward the weapon by the eighth century: 14 See "Heroic Verse and Heroic Mission: Dimensions of the Epic in the Hsi-yu chi," JAS, XXXI. 4 (1972), 879-97. 15 Heroic Poetry, p. 14. Cf. also, James J. Y. Liu, The Art of Chinese Poetry (Chicago, 1962), p. 154; and Achilles Fang, "Out of China," Poetry, CVII. 3 (1965), 196-99.
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