POEMS OF DEPRAVITY : A TWELFTH CENTURY

DISPUTE ON THE MORAL CHARACTER

OF THE BOOK OF SONGS

BY

WONG SIU-KIT AND LEE KAR-SHUI

University of Hong Kong

"To sum up the character of the three hundred poems in the

Shijing [I should say that in them] there is no improper think-
ing." This, according to the Analects was one of Confucius'
key pronouncements on the Poetiy Classic. The expression si wu xie
("there is no improper thinking") came from a Shijing poem
jiong *1 (Mao no. 297; Waley no. 252)2 about horse breeding and
originally had nothing to do with poetry at all. Confucius was, in
the manner of his times, quoting out of context and giving an en-
tirely new meaning to an old expression. But the expression was
an elegant summary and promised to become a judgement to which
one could say yea or nay.
And what does si wu xie mean? One commentator Bao Xian
suggests that it means gui yu zheng i.e., going back to the
proper (or correct).3 This may well sound tautologous, but in this
explanation there is a clear recognition of the essential dualism of
Confucius' and later Confucian thinking. And in the twelfth century
dispute with which we are concerned, there too, there is a great
deal of dualistic thinking.
Before we plunge into that dispute, let us go over the theories
that have been put forward in regard to the role Confucius played
in the transmission of the Shijing text, rehearse the more important
ones among the other remarks he made about the text, and hope
to locate the ambiguities and the potential sources of controversy.
One theory has it that there were three thousand odd poems
available to Confucius, out of which he selected three hundred and
210

eleven to make up the Shijing.4 Another theory says Confucius did

not compile the text, but merely "rectified" its "music".5 While
there isn't sufficient evidence for us to accept these theories, we do
know from the Analects that Confucius admired the Shijing poems.
A later tradition represented by the Liji inf orms us, in a similar
vein, that the Master was of the opinion that in states in which the
Shijing was used as a principal text in education the people tended
to be "honest and gentle" Thus he appropriated the
Shijing as one of "the six arts" a term which initially
referred to "the six subjects" but in the latter half of the Warring
States period came to mean "the six classics".7
But Confucius' affection for the Poetry Classic may not have been
so purely unalloyed. The Analects records him as saying, "Away
with the music of Zheng 11); let's have nothing to do with wicked
men. The music of Zheng is excessive/lewd (Zheng sheng yin
wicked men are dangerous."8 Elsewhere in the Analects he explains :
"One loathes the music of Zheng because it threatens the orderliness
of classical music."9 9
Among the Guo feng R)R poems of the Shijing one of the fifteen
sections gives the poems from the state of Zheng. This Zheng feng
section is sometimes regarded as "depraved" because it con-
tains a significant number of poems that we would refer to simply
as "love poems". When Confucius talked about the music (sheng %)
of Zheng, did he have £heng feng in mind? Or was Zheng sheng
quite different from zheng feng?
If Zheng sheng and Zheng feng were interchangeable, then, given
that £heng feng was a portion of the Shijing, Confucius would have
been contradicting himself to proclaim both si wu xie about the
Shijing and Zheng shengyin about a part of the anthology.
The possible contradiction between the two Confucian pronounce-
ments was the root of the twelfth century controversy over the moral
 211

character of the Shijing text. The protagonists in the controversy

entertained fairly simple-indeed simplistic and crude-notions of
the proper and the improper, the allowed and the lewd, and spoke
of "poems of depravity" (yin shi to which view we may or
may not subscribe. What is of interest is the way in which they
influenced subsequent generations of students of the Shijing. What
also is of interest is the insight they provided of the nature of texts
and the nature of reading.

II

The two men who joined battle over the Shijing in twelfth century
China were the Confucian theoreticians Zhu Xi (1130-1200)
and Lii Zuqian 8§ Q§§ (1137-1181). Despite the fact that Zhu and
Li were friends of long standing, the dispute between them were
conducted with remarkable rigour.10
Perhaps we might begin with a passage in the "Preface" Zhu
Xi contributed to Lii Zuqian's Lii shi jia shu du shi ji

...... The Mr Zhu referred to in this book is really Zhu Xi in his salad days,
so green in judgement that I am surprised Mr Lti could take him seriously. With
the passage of time I came to recognize the unsatisfactoriness of my earlier views.
I came to realize, for instance, that what I had said about the Ya poems/music
and the £heng poems/music, about the proper and the improper [in poetry] (Ya
£heng xie zheng was unsound; there was no choice for me but to change
and re-define my position on the subject ..... ,11

This passage may be read in the light of the following extract

from a letter Zhu Xi wrote to Lu Zuqian before Lu's death, setting
out his views on "Y'a, £heng, xie, zheng", and on the so-called "lewd
poems" in the Shijing :

Question :"To what do the words ra, Zheng, xie, zheng' refer in the Du shi ji
§ji§fijd?" Repb : "They refer to the poems/music of the states of Zheng and Wei
1iti.Because many of the poems in the Bei Yong 0 and Wei sections [of the
Shijing] deal with lascivious matters we must conclude that "the music of Zheng
[sic] is lewd". Confucius preserved these poems in order to keep a record of the
mores of these states; he did so also for cautionary purposes. He did not find these
poems morally sound, but he knew that the poems [in the Shijing] could help us
212

to observe. Mr Lfi Zuqian said that the Shijing poems had all been made by vir-
tuous persons, giving straightforward accounts of whatever had taken place in
order to warn. I therefore had to ask him on one occasion, whether someone as
virtuous as he would permit himself to write poems of this nature ..... Mr LU
believed that all the poems in the Shijing were worthy of being set to music and
could be fittingly used on religious and ceremonial occasions; but would it not
be a profanity to perform the poems of Zheng and Wei at worship:...."12

Thus in Zhu Xi's view in the Shijing there were "improper" (xie)
poems as there were "proper" poems. Many of the poems in the
Wei and Zheng sections of the Shijing were regarded as unsuitable
for ceremonial and religious occasions for two reasons: the first
reason was in that their subject matter was "lewd"; the second, in
that they had been set to "popular" (as opposed to "serious" or
"orthodox", i.e. ya S) music. Elsewhere in the same letter from
which the last extract comes, Zhu Xi says:

The words Ya and Zheng, I suspect, refer to the Da ra and Xiao ra

and to the Zheng feng [sections of the Shijing]. I do not think it is right to think
that "Zheng sheng" refers to something other than "zheng feng" and then describe
the rest of the "Feng" )R section as '5a" [i.e., "proper", "orthodox"]. When
Confucius edited the Shijing he included poems which were morally offensive in
order to warn us, there being no reason why they ought to be suppressed when
they could instruct.13

As we shall see, the identification of "Zheng sheng" with

which is problematic, was of serious consequence.
As we have already been led to expect, Li Zuqian's understanding
of the moral character of the Shijing was quite different from Zhu
Xi's. Confucius is on record as having said that he "rectified" the
"music" of the Shijingl4 and Sima Qian (approx. 145 B.C.-?)
who was responsible for that piece of information believed that
Confucius selected three hundred and five poems out of more than
three thousand to make up the Shijing.15 Lii Zuqian appropriated
Sima Qian's theory, linked it up with the "si wu xie" pronounce-
ment, and became convinced that all poems in the Shijing were
innocent (i.e., zheng IE). To Lii, the poems in the Wei and Zheng
sections of the Shijing were as pure and instructive as the best in the
and sections because Confucius was the editor.ls 6
 213

A point of interest is that both Zhu Xi and Lu Zuqian examined

the Shijing poems in two similar sets of terms of reference : both
thought in terms of theme and music. While Zhu was of the opinion
that theme and music were equatable, Lii argued that they were
quite disparate. That being the case, "Zheng sheng yin", according
to Lu, must be understood as an assessment of the music in ques-
tion and should have nothing to do with the "£heng feng" section
of the Shijing.
Lu's argument, it may be suggested, amounts to a theory of
"distancing experience". If a number of poems in the Wei and
Zheng sections may well be construed as "lewd" in subject matter,
they must be seen, not as reports from the participants, but as ac-
counts from virtuous observers. It is in this sense that the Shijing
poems are entirely innocent. We have this from Lu :

The Sang zhong (Mao no. 48; Waley no. 23), the Zhen wei (Mao no.
95; Waley no. 14) and the poems that go with them are probably intended to
warn. Why did Confucius decide on their inclusion? The answer to that question
is that the Shijing is written in many different styles. Some poems satirize directly
- Xin tai (Mao no. 43; Waley no. 77) is among them. Some satirize mildly-
they include Jun zi xie lao (Mao no. 47; Waley no. 83). And some present
what happened in detail as self-evident without a single comment, and Sang zhong
and Zhun wei are examples of this type ..... Confucius said, "si wu xie" (there
is no improper thinking)." The poet made up these innocent poems. The reader
should also view these poems innocently. The sense of pity is palpable.17

Lu belonged to a time-honoured tradition. From the author(s)

of the "Little Prefaces" on through the to the classical
scholars of the Han A and the Song the Shijing poems were
never taken for what they "were" (we must confess that we just
214

do know what they "were"/"are", texts being so elusive) but were

construed in terms comprehensible to the given period. Texts are
perhaps no more than what we make of them.
In pursuing the si zem xie theme, Lii Zuqian regarded the Shijing
as a homogeneous whole. To Zhu Xi, however, the anthology com-
prised poems of different levels of morality. For that reason-and
because he did not wish to gainsay Confucius-he had to re-inter-
pret the si wu xie formula. Thus he said,

Confucius spoke well when he said, "si wu xie", but you cannot expect the
wholeof the Shijing to be innocent.19
[Emphasis added]

This re-interpretation required Zhu Xi to divide the Shijing poems

into two broad categories: those that were erotic and those that
were not:

The music of both Zheng and Wei was erotic. But if we go by the poems that
survive, there are thirty-nine poems in the Wei feng and only a quarter of
them are erotic. In the £heng feng there are twenty-one poems, and five out of
every seven of them are erotic. The Wei poems speak of men seducing women,
but the Zheng poems all deal with women enticing men. Further, in the Wei
poems it is still possible to detect a suggestion of criticism and reproof; but in the
Zheng poems there is no sense of shame or repentance. We may therefore conclude
that the Zheng poems (£heng sheng) are more lascivious than the poems of Wei.20

The word "erotic" used earlier on and the word "lascivious" that
occurs in the last quotation are both translations of the same word.
Whether they and other similar words are accurate translations of
Zhu Xi's yin is not easy to decide, but two points might be made
at this juncture. The first is that, in identifying the "amatory" ele-
ments in some poems, Zhu Xi did not choose to refer to them in a
neutral tone: from the very beginning he preferred to speak con-
demningly of human love. The second point is that the word yin
had different meanings in different linguistic situations, and in
different historical periods. That semantic problem will be discussed
in section III of this paper.
But to go back to Zhu Xi's re-interpretation of "si zem xie". The
new interpretation not only encouraged its propagator to point
his accusing finger at the "lewd poems", it also enabled him to
re-locate moral responsibility in poetry and in reading. Thus:
 215

When Confucius said, "si wu xie"...... he did not mean to say that the poets
were all innocent ..... Surely it would be better to say that even if he, the poet,
had made his poem entertaining wicked (xie the opposite of wu xie or
of zheng) thinking, I, the reader, can still read his poem in innocence. He would
then be exposing his own moral turpitude, and that turpitude could be turned
into capital to warn one against doing evi1.21
[Emphasis added]

This argument must have seemed important to Zhu Xi, for we find
it being aired several times, sometimes very forcefully, as in:

The point about reading poetry is that you want to succeed in becoming in-
nocent. Whatever is morally good in the Shijing should be regarded as our model;
whatever is morally repugnant, should be interpreted as warnings for us. Let
us not imagine that the poets were always innocent.22

Zhu Xi began by challenging Lii Zuqian, the-for Zhu-latest

advocate of the didactic, moralistic Shijing tradition. He ended up
being every inch as didactic and moralistic, though in a different
way. The Shijing text ensnared Zhu Xi as it had ensnared earlier
readers, and as it was to ensnare future readers. The dangers of
the text were fully demonstrated; but Zhu Xi at least managed to
see that there were other identities than the text: like so many
Chinese theorists, he knew that the author was an important agent
(or medium), but unlike most Chinese theorists, he understood that
the reader was arguably an even more important agent (or me-
dium). It is this insight on the part of Zhu Xi-amongst other
reasons-that continues to make his dispute with Lu Zuqian in-
teresting after all these centuries.23

III

Having taken cognizance of Zhu Xi's re-interpretation of Con-

fucius-and of his (Zhu Xi's) original insight, we must move on to
ask if we agree with him. To do that we have to go back to the
Confucian pronouncements already quoted above. Confucius said:
216

Away with the music of Zheng; let's have nothing to do with wicked men. The
music of Zheng is excessive/lewd; wicked men are dangerous.24

Confucius also said:

One loathes the music of Zheng because it threatens the orderliness of classical
music.25

What we should note at this point is that these comments were made
on the music of Zheng. Confucius' interest in music was consistent.26
It is true that Confucius was also deeply interested in shi word
which could refer to either "poetry" in general or the Shijing, but
the distinction between shi and music was perfectly clear in his
mind. The Analects gives us the following injunction from the sage :

Begin at shi ("poetry" or the Shijing) ;grow up with li (the rites) ; be mature
with jue % (music).27

This parallel enumeration of the three "arts" indicates that Confu-

cius gave poetry and music quite separate identities.28
What could cause confusion in the mind of the reader of the
Analects is the fact that the Shijing poems were originally songs. The
Zuo zhuan for instance, records how a Prince of Wu -,q came
to visit in the state of Lu and "inspected" the ".music of Zhou
the "music" that he was treated to consisted of the ,Shijing poems
sung as songs. The £heng feng and Wei feng are referred to by the
Zuo zhuan as among the songs the Prince hear d.?9 The Mozi
too, informs us how the Shijing poems could be put to different uses :
 217

they could be recited/chanted, they could be sung, they could be

set to music, they could even be choreographcd.30 In dealing with
the earlier references to the Shijing, we must be alert to its multi-
plicity of statuses. Confucius himself, however, tended to see the
Shijing as a text for reading, a text related to speech. That is why,
in teaching his son the Shijing, he would say, "If you do not study
the Shi, you will never know how to speak."31
In short then, when Confucius spoke disparagingly about "Zheng
feng" he had in mind the music of the state of Zheng.
And what do we know about the music of Zheng? We have al-
ready seen how Confucius argued that it was something that could
corrodc _ya _yue §$j§@ (the classical music) .32 As the "classical music"
was gu yue (the old music), so the "music of Zheng" (Zheng
sheng) was xin sheng §#i@ (the new music).
The Hanshu Mift tells us that it was from Sangjian and Pu-
shang that the music (sheng) of Zheng, Wei, Song % and Zhao
1E!îemanated.33 The word "sheng" here must be understood in the
sense of "music", if only because in the Shijing and other early sources
there is no evidence of poems from the states of Song and Zhao.
Ying Shao g%E§ in his annotation of this passage in the Hanshu points
out that Sangjian was in the state of Wei, though he is less informa-
tive about Pushang. He also tells us that in both of these two places
the new music was popular.34 Yan Shigu ?1W"ð (581-645) in turn
glosses "xin sheng" as sheng" or, as we shall see, the exces-
sive music) .355
The difference in effect on their listeners between the old music
and the new is recorded in a conversation between Marquis Wen
of Wei not and Zi Xia (507 B.C.-?), one of
Confucius' disciples, in the Liji. Marquis Wen, we are told, won-
dered why he had to try and keep himself awake when listening to
the old music, whereas with the new music from Zheng and Wei
he could never become tired. Zi Xia's reply is couched in technical
terms, some of which now seem virtually incomprehensible, but
he did say that in the new music, "there is such an excess of false
notes that it (the music) does not cease even when you are in danger
of being drowned by it." The word "excess" in that description is
 218

an important key to the new music.36 Later on in the same passage,

when Zi Xia seeks to explain why certain varieties of music are
bad, he uses the notion of "excess" again. According to the Liji,
Zi Xia found the music of Zheng, Song, Wei and (a slightly
different list of states from the Hanshu) morally undesirable because
all these new varieties of music were "excessive" and "detrimental
to one's virtues" and so unsuitable for religious ceremonies.37
The decline of the old music took place in the latter end of the
Spring and Autumn period (the dates given for the period being
770- 477 B.C.). The upsurge of the new music was probably inevit-
able. Confucius was lamenting the passing of what had to pass.
When quoting from the Liji and the Hanshu it was taken for
granted that yin meant "excess" or "excessive". Perhaps this as-
sumption requires some more documentation. Yang Shen
( 1488-1559) of the Ming period says:

When the Analects speaks of "£heng shengyin", the word 'jin" means being
excessive musically. Water which is above the ground level is '5in shui
Rain which is extremely abundant is '5inyu Similarly, music that "floods"
is ''yin sheng". To say that "£heng sheng" is '5in" amounts to saying that the music
of Zheng is excessive. This has nothing to do with the theory that the poems in
the zheng fengare lascivious.38

Chen Qiyuan of the Qing period had something similar

to say:

Yin meant excessive; it did not have the narrower meaning of desire between
men and women. In ancient times the word jin could be used to qualify quite a
number of nouns, such as "stars", "rain", "water", "punishments", "hunting".
In all these cases, yin meant "excessive"-more than was the norm ..... Zheng
sheng was described as yin because the music made one more sorrowful than was
necessary. Zhu Xi, however, chose to read yin in the sense of "lewdness" and
came to the conclusion that there were twenty-one "lewd" poems in the "Zheng
feng", sparing only five poems. Even the poem Feng yu (Mao no. 90; Waley
no. 91) about longing for the Superior Man and the poem zi jin Tn (Mao no.
91; Waley no. 46) satirizing the collapse of the school system were castigated by
Zhu Xi as "lewd".39

These analyses of the meaning of Confucius' remarks about the

 219

Shijing are convincing. Zhu Xi in his interpretation of the same

remarks was being anachronistic. It might be recalled that, after
all, Confucius had this injunction to offer :

Do not look at what goes against the rites; do not listen to what goes against
the rites; do not speak against the rites; and do not act against the rites.4a

The rites were conceived as a restraint. Whatever exceeded the

rites was excessive. Hence the taboo against excess.
What if we considered the zheng feng and the Wei feng according
to Zhu Xi's own standards? Would we concede that they were
"lewd" poems? In the passage from the Zuo zhuan quoted above,
we may further observe that the Prince's response to both the Wei
poems and the Zheng poems was favourable.41
In the Zuo zhuan there are three instances of quotation from the
Shijing. The citations from the lheng feng are much of a muchness
with the citations from the "orthodox" Feng, the "orthodox" Yan
and the Song sections of the Shijing. If the Zheng poems were indeed
"lewd", there would have been no reason why the six ministers of
Zheng should have quoted them for Han when the
latter visited Zheng in 526 B.C.42
Again against the year 546 B.C., the Zuo zhuan records how when
Bo You quoted from the poem chun zhi bi bi (Mao
no. 49; Waley no. 269) Zhao Meng seemed shocked. The
poem in question is no more than a satire on lasciviousness. If even
a satire on lasciviousness could shock we can assume that the cita-
tions in the Zuo zhuan were all innocuous.43
The third instance of quotation from the Shijing that is recorded
in the zuo zhuan occurs in the year 547 B.C. The Marquis of Wei
MR was incarcerated in the state of Jin '. The Marquis of Qi
and the Earl of Zheng intervened by paying a visit to
Jin, accompanied by Guo Jingzi and Zi Zhan their
respective ministers. At the Jin court, Guo Jingzi and Zi Zhan
presented the arguments for setting the Marquis of Wei free-by
quoting three poems from the lheng feng together with a poem now
no longer extant. The Marquis of Jin ##Q was soon convinced and
the Marquis of Wei was allowed to go home. The incident demon-
strates how the Zheng poems could be cited for diplomatic purposes
220

and must have been, as has been suggested, entirely respectable.44

Zhu Xi was original in his insights into the moral nature of the
Shijing poems, but his interpretation of what Confucius had to say
on the anthology sounds dubious. The problem is in his reaction to
two words in "Zheng shengyin". "Sheng" meant "music", not "poems"
as Zhu Xi supposed. "Yan" meant "excessive", not "lascivious" as
Zhu Xi thought.

IV

In the last section of this paper, let us turn to consider the his-
torical implications of the dispute between Zhu Xi and Li Zuqian.
On the surface the dispute seems to be concerned with the question
whether some of the Shijing are "lewd" and "depraving". Somewhat
deeper down the combatants were at loggerheads over the Shijing
"Prefaces" one side believed the "Prefaces" should be adhered
to faithfully, the other thought they should be abolished. Behind
the dispute on the "Prefaces" lay a larger issue, whether the reading
of the Shijing should continue in the manner and spirit of the Han
period, or whether it should be conducted in a new manner, ac-
cording to the needs and wishes of the Song period. As we see it
today the dispute was highly political and the side that won took
occupation of a centrally important text and came to control the
thinking of many subsequent generations.
With the propagation of the Wu jing zheng yi in the
Tang period,45 the authority of Mao zhuan and the £heng jian
of the Shijing became firmly established ;46 the "Prefaces", too,
 221

were regarded as part of the Mao tradition and sacrosanct.47 From

the beginning of the Song period there were signs of rebellion against
these early authorities.48 In the Northern Song there were two mildly
protesting voices, in Ouyang (1007-1072), author of
Shi ben yi and Su Zhe M ( 1039-l l 12), author of Shi ji
zhuan The open revolt against the early authorities did
not begin until the Southern Song period. It was then that Zheng
Qiao (1036-l 162), Wang Zhi (1127-1189) and Zhu Xi
launched their campaign. The severest attack on the "Prefaces"
was in Zheng Qiao's Shi zhuan bian wang this
work is no longer extant, some of its views can still be traced in Zhu
Xi's Shi ji zhuan. Wang Zhi in his Shi zong wen 41grgl attempted to
be independent in his reading of the Shijing, and was less harsh on
the "Prefaces".52 In long terms the most influential work was of
course Zhu Xi's Shi ji zhuan The Shi J'i zhuan we have today
was compiled late in Zhu Xi's career and it was compiled with
Zheng Qiao as its guiding spirit; the earlier version of the Shi ji
zhuan, which we no longer have, was, we are told, a faithful echo
of the "Little Prefaces".53 Zhu Xi also wrote the Shi xu bian shuo
 222

critical, often dismissive, analysis of the "Little Pre-

faces" ; this, he appended to the Shi ji zhuan.54
Of these works, Wang Zhi's Shi zong wen generated the least pub-
lic interest. Zheng Qiao's Shi zhuan bian wang met with opposition
as soon as it was published, for it prompted Zhou Fu (?-1174)
to write Fei lheng Qiao shi bian wang in which Zhou
listed forty-two instances of questionable interpretation.55 It was,
however, Zhu Xi's publications that, predictably, became the oc-
casion of the longest lasting and most vigorous controversy. Lu
Zuqian, Chen Fuliang (1137-1203) and Ye Shi XA (1150-
1223) became an anti-Zhu allied force that saw itself as a defender
of traditional values.56 It was against this background that the
dispute about "poems of depravity" took place.
It has often been thought that the disagreement between Zhu
Xi and Lu Zuqian was over the question whether the "Little Pre-
faces" should be abolished or preserved. Certainly in Lii's Du shi
ji there is a rich collection of pro-"Preface" remarks toothcombed
from earlier works on the Shijing. But if we read Zhu Xi's Shi ji zhuan
closely enough, we discover that Zhu's adherence to Zheng Qiao
is not complete-nor does he go all the way in rejecting the "Pre-
It would be much more accurate to say that the dispute
between Zhu and Lii centred on the question of "poems of deprav-
ity".
Perhaps we should cast our mind back to pre-Song times. In Sui
and Tang Times, while sound commentaries on the Shijing con-
tinued to be compiled and published, it would be true to say that
 223

the Han tradition of Shijing scholarship had become somewhat

ossined. For the Song scholars to feel the need for a change was
entirely natural, and Zhu Xi saw the chance for a change in em-
phasising the erotic nature of at least some of the poems, a dimen-
sion of the Shijing that had not been explored before.
By the end of the Southern Song Zhu Xi's "school" had won the
battle. The major studies of the Shijing produced in the Yuan
period were all inspired by the Shi ji zhuan.59 It was promulgated
in 1312 that for purposes of the civil service examinations Zhu's
interpretation of the Shijing should be regarded as authoritative, 60
and the Mao/Zheng tradition came to be ignored by teachers of
the classic. In the Ming period when Hu Guang (1370-1418)
and others compiled Shi jing da quan imperial edict, they
plagiarised on the Shi zhuan tong shi by Liu Jin a
Yuan scholar who followed Zhu Xi religiously; and Shi jing da quan
soon became the standard text for the Shijing at imperial command. 61
As a result of these developments, the authority Zhu Xi's Shi ji
zhuan became finally and exclusively established. The Han tradi-
tion was dead-at least until the early Qlng.
In challenging the absolute validity of certain elements in the
Han tradition of the Shijing, and in underlining the amatory nature
of some of the poems, Zhu Xi was innovational; but there is at
least one other significant way in which to describe Zhu's innova-
tion. There is a passage in the Shi gu wei by Wei Yuan y"
(1794-1857) which says:

In the Shijing we are confronted with the heart of the poet, the heart of the
collector of the poems, the heart of the editor, the heart of the commentator, the
heart of the citer, the heart of the reciter.62

- "heart" is probably not a very satisfactory equivalent for xin

but let us adjust the translation as we continue with the discussion.
Wei Yuan's acumen is remarkable; in the light of the intertextuality
224

notion, what Wei says sounds entirely true. The same poem, the
same collection of poems, can be quite different things to the differ-
ent parties concerned. The pre-Song Shijing tradition, with its in-
terest in separating the "praise" (mei #§) poems from the "satirise"
(ci poems, and in the didactic functions of poetry, gives us read-
ings of the poems conducted chiefly at the level of the collector, the
editor and the commentator, though sometimes reaching the levels
of the citer and reciter. In parting company with the Han tradition
Zhu Xi moves away from these levels of reading and opts for the
poet's level. We might say today that the level that Zhu Xi chose
was as illusory as any other, but historically Zhu's choice was im-
portant-and influential. The main difference between the Han
tradition and Zhu Xi was that the former overtly used poetry. Zhu's
resurrection of the poet seemed to mean taking poetry in its own
terms and was the inspiration of at least three valuable contributions
to the Shijing scholarship of the Qing period. They were Shi jing
tong lun by Yao Jiheng Du feng ou zhi
by Cui Shu %Q% (1740-1816) and Shi jing yuan shi I by Fang
Yurun Zhu Xi's influence did not stop there. Coming down
to the twentieth century, if we consider how the search for the poet
dominated the post-May-Fourth-Movement approach to the Shijing,
then we must concede that Zhu Xi's presence continued to be felt
beyond 1919.63
But was Zhu Xi really closer to the "real" Shijing than the Han
tradition had been? Probably not. We must not forget, for instance,
that the three hundred and five poems we have were chosen from
poems ten times that number. The Shijing poems are not "real"
poems that happen to be there. Whoever the editor(s) was/were
decided on what we should read and they could not have made that
decision without a particular bias. Then the standardization of the
language and rhetoric of the poems, which must have taken place,
could, again, not have been done without specific aims. Of course
the "Little Prefaces" are often unconvincing: poems don't teach
us this or that as they claim. But then Zhu Xi's interpretation was
really no more than another reading. If Wang Bo ( 1 1 97-1 274) ,
disciple of a disciple of Zhu Xi's, decided that thirty-two of the poems
 225

were immoral and should be expunged,64 why should we agree with

him? Was he not going by moral standards which we would regard
as puritanical'or even somewhat hypocritical? Compared with Zhu
Xi and Wang Bo, Confucius was so enlightened when he declared
that in the three hundred poems there was no improper thinking.