Review: Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent
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Review: Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent by Alfreda Murck. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000. Pp. xxiii + 406. $60.00.
The art of painting in Song dynasty is a critical moment in the transformation from painter painting to literati painting. Although literati painting were not the main stream of painting art in Song dynasty, the germination of it was as early as in Northern Song and was closely related to the germination of literati culture in Song. Literati culture was stimulated by many factors, one of which was political environment. In the case of Northern Song, the Crow Terrace Poetry Trial is a significant event with both positive and negative effects in this transformation. It intimidated those literati who want to speak for the people yet made them crave for expressing their dissent and complaint. Alfreda Murck’s Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent was an innovative interpretation of how literati show their complaint in the art of paintings in an allusive way.
After delineating the theme of Xiao Xiang laments from Sage-King Shun and and his wives to Liu Zongyuan, Murck draws a historical background of her argument about the Northern Song political culture. The stories of “Early Spring” by Guo Xi and Zheng Xia’s admonishing painting to the emperor are used to introduce the political effect of painting. The party struggles in Yuanyou Era caused the phenomenon said by Wang Fuzhi as “the Song poets ride the horse with two heads; trying to get fame of integrity when at the same time being afraid of getting punished, they write poems in allusion and implicitly” . Murck’s view is that Song literati use this kind of strategy in paintings. Through the examination of the symbolic meanings of certain literature traditions, the title of the analyzed paintings, the poems on or for the paintings and background historical events, she points out that certain paintings express strong political meanings, though was delicately disguised because of the harsh political environment. She firstly points out the importance of Du Fu in the infusing of painting and poetry and introduces Song Di’s creation of Eight Views of Xiao Xiang, and then describes the literary characteristics of the titles of the Eight View. After that, she uses Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 to analyze the main images of the titles and how they imply the meaning of Du Fu’s Autumn Day in Kui Perfecture within the historical context. Chapter 6 analyzed the responding poems of Su Shi and Wang Shen. The latter was a famous literati painter in Northern Song dynasty and the author of the painting Misty River, Layered Peaks. Murck finds that the responding poems between Su and Wang used the same rhymes in Du Fu’s Autumn days in Kui Perfecture, and she reveals the implicit complaints in the paintings by attaching them to Autumn days in Kui Perfecture. In Chapter 7, Huang Tingjian’s poem Wind in the Pine was said to be the poem to lament Su Shi and show respect to Yuanyou party members, which also used the rhymes in Autumn days in Kui Perfecture. The paintings proclaiming harmony in Huizong Era was interpreted as the contradiction to the allusive literati paintings in Chapter 8. Then the earlist existing painting of Eight Views of Xiao Xiang by Wang Hong in Southern Song was identified as the successor of Song Di based on the connection to Hui Hong’s poems for the paintings of Eight Views of Xiao Xiang by Song Di. Chapter 10 continues to discuss the Xiao Xiang theme in Southern Song.
Murck’s resources for her discourse are in a wide range and her topic incorporates history, literature and painting art. By researching into the large historical background, she gives Song Painting the validity to express literati’s heart and mind in regard of politics and its impact on their personal life. Her incorporation of poetry to the analysis of paintings is most credible because it provides us a new perspective to look into the critical historical moment when literati painting geminated. In the study of Chinese painting in America, connecting to politic, society and literature is a trend in the past 20 years, which is rather different from the earlier researchers’ form-centered method. However, this kind of study of Song painting is actually difficult because of the uncertainty of the owners, titles and clients of the paintings and the indeterminacy and unsteadiness of the implications of the literary and iconographical images. Murck’s references of paintings are in some cases only relevant to the paintings of the main themes she discusses. Under this condition, over-interpretation is very much likely to happen in the discourse. However, Murck’s analysis is mainly based on the paintings of Eight Views in Xiao Xiang and Misty River, Layered Peaks, and several others that have relatively substantial literary records. Her methodology is mainly literary rather than iconographical, with part of Chapter 9 as an exception, which I find most unconvincing.
Though the main thesis of this book is soundly presented and supported by Murck’s close reading of the meaning of the related poems and the illustration of the historical context, the most controversial problems in the discourse remain salient and ask for further interpretation. The relationship between the poems written by Su Shi and Wang Shen for Wang’s painting of the Eight Views and Du Fu’s poem Autumn Days in Kui Prefecture is indeterminate based on the using of the same rhymes as the most important evidence, which is not so convincing because Du Fu’s poem has 200 couplets and almost contained all the rhymes of “ian”. Other than that, Murck’s discourse shows uncertainty in a number of places where she merely uses “very likely to be” to construct her thesis. For example, after introducing Wang Shen’s discussion of the art of painting in his answering poems to Su Shi’s as the juxtaposition of ugly and beautiful, Murck acclaims that “for Wang Shen, an example of it was immediately at hand: in Autumn Day in kui Prefecture, Du Fu combined lofty sentiments and stunning landscape lines with the disturbing themes of warfare, death, poverty, and the misguided actions of the emperor”(139). Another example of the controversy in her analysis is demonstrated in the chapter about Wang Hong’s Eight Views of Xiao Xiang. While her argument that Wang Hong’s painting got ideas from Huihong’s poems for Song Di’s painting of the same theme is well founded and the analysis of Huihong’s signaling a connection to Wang Anshi’s quatrain with the distinctive images and location names when he “redirected the title(attributed to Xiaoxiang) to a locale and to a text associated with Wang Anshi” is meticulous and convincing, her argument that the “vast” in Huihong’s poem possibly comes from Du Fu’s poem is no evidence to ensure the allusion. Using words or images from earlier famous poet’s works is the most prevailing phenomenon in ancient poetry writing. This kind of assumption of connection appears many times in Murck’s discourse, though not in critical parts of the discourse. Therefore, to what extent the Yuanyou relegated literati refer to Du Fu’s poem is not substantially supported by evidences other than the possible connection of the meanings and forms of the text.
My suggestion for Murck would be that she could use more evidences from the literary history. For example, in “Su Shi Writes After Drinking” in Chapter 7, the analysis of Su Shi’s continuing of the exchange of poems, Murck contends that “Su Shi’s opening couplets contrasting life in exile and at court and on the fate of horses are potentially the most incriminating lines of the four poems”(145). This could be connected to Du Fu’s poems for painting as Du Fu had written many of them with the theme of horse. These poems of Du is a strong evidence of the relation between poems for painting and politic implications. Also, the phenomenon of responding in the same rhymes geminated in Mid Tang, however during the time of the Five dynasties and the first century of Northern Song it was almost neglected without a reason until Emperor Ren’s ruling era. If Murck researches into this issue, she would probably finds out the relationship between the phenomenon and politic environment, which will certainly strengthen her main thesis on the subtle dissent expressed in painting.
Though Murck’s main argument is convincing, her analogy of Eight Views of Xiao Xiang to the regulated verse is totally invalid according to my knowledge. Painting and poetry writing are two distinct genres. Being related to poems doesn’t necessarily mean the painting has to have the form of a poem. No need to talk about the distinctness of the two arts here as many theorists, from Lessing to Qian Zhongshu, have published great insights of this issue. Murck initiates this issue in Chapter 3 when she says “Su Shi and his friends asserted with pride that their paintings contained poetry”(61), distorting the actual meaning of it in history by assuming that poetry means politic. In Chapter 6 about Wang Shen, she explains Gu Kaizhi’s comment on a couplet by Xi Kang as the intention to meet the expressing of emotion(140). So Murck’s understanding of this issue is quite confusing. Furthermore, she tries to do an iconographical interpretation of the paintings of the Eight Views by Wang Hong and the iconographical forms revealed by Murck’s interpretation of the paintings do not correspond to the forms of poetry at all because their symbolic carriers are distinct and are not comparable. The form of regulated verse is much more complicated than Murck could find correspondence in the paintings with best effort. Michael A. Fuller holds the same opinion(445-446). However, I don’t think this fallacy is so severe as will deconstruct the main thesis that literati show their complaint through paintings.
In all, this is a book providing an in depth investigation into how painting can incorporate and express dissent, and how its viewers might decode the subtle complaint. Her translations and interpretations of the poetic exchanges and the poetic allusions are meticulous and thought-provoking. Though many aspects left unproved or needs to be further studied, her discourse at least highlighted the urgency of exploring more about the relation between poetry and painting.
References:
Pauline Lin. Review of “Poetry and Painting in Song China”: The Subtle Art of Dissent by Alfreda Murck. Review of Politics, Winter2002, Vol. 64 Issue 1, p197, 3p
Michael A. Fuller. Review of “Poetry and Painting in Song China”: The Subtle Art of Dissent by Alfreda Murck. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Dec., 2001), pp. 442-453
Peter C. Sturman. Review of “Poetry and Painting in Song China”: The Subtle Art of Dissent by Alfreda Murck. China Review International, Volume 9, Number 2, Fall 2002, pp.501-506
The art of painting in Song dynasty is a critical moment in the transformation from painter painting to literati painting. Although literati painting were not the main stream of painting art in Song dynasty, the germination of it was as early as in Northern Song and was closely related to the germination of literati culture in Song. Literati culture was stimulated by many factors, one of which was political environment. In the case of Northern Song, the Crow Terrace Poetry Trial is a significant event with both positive and negative effects in this transformation. It intimidated those literati who want to speak for the people yet made them crave for expressing their dissent and complaint. Alfreda Murck’s Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent was an innovative interpretation of how literati show their complaint in the art of paintings in an allusive way.
After delineating the theme of Xiao Xiang laments from Sage-King Shun and and his wives to Liu Zongyuan, Murck draws a historical background of her argument about the Northern Song political culture. The stories of “Early Spring” by Guo Xi and Zheng Xia’s admonishing painting to the emperor are used to introduce the political effect of painting. The party struggles in Yuanyou Era caused the phenomenon said by Wang Fuzhi as “the Song poets ride the horse with two heads; trying to get fame of integrity when at the same time being afraid of getting punished, they write poems in allusion and implicitly” . Murck’s view is that Song literati use this kind of strategy in paintings. Through the examination of the symbolic meanings of certain literature traditions, the title of the analyzed paintings, the poems on or for the paintings and background historical events, she points out that certain paintings express strong political meanings, though was delicately disguised because of the harsh political environment. She firstly points out the importance of Du Fu in the infusing of painting and poetry and introduces Song Di’s creation of Eight Views of Xiao Xiang, and then describes the literary characteristics of the titles of the Eight View. After that, she uses Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 to analyze the main images of the titles and how they imply the meaning of Du Fu’s Autumn Day in Kui Perfecture within the historical context. Chapter 6 analyzed the responding poems of Su Shi and Wang Shen. The latter was a famous literati painter in Northern Song dynasty and the author of the painting Misty River, Layered Peaks. Murck finds that the responding poems between Su and Wang used the same rhymes in Du Fu’s Autumn days in Kui Perfecture, and she reveals the implicit complaints in the paintings by attaching them to Autumn days in Kui Perfecture. In Chapter 7, Huang Tingjian’s poem Wind in the Pine was said to be the poem to lament Su Shi and show respect to Yuanyou party members, which also used the rhymes in Autumn days in Kui Perfecture. The paintings proclaiming harmony in Huizong Era was interpreted as the contradiction to the allusive literati paintings in Chapter 8. Then the earlist existing painting of Eight Views of Xiao Xiang by Wang Hong in Southern Song was identified as the successor of Song Di based on the connection to Hui Hong’s poems for the paintings of Eight Views of Xiao Xiang by Song Di. Chapter 10 continues to discuss the Xiao Xiang theme in Southern Song.
Murck’s resources for her discourse are in a wide range and her topic incorporates history, literature and painting art. By researching into the large historical background, she gives Song Painting the validity to express literati’s heart and mind in regard of politics and its impact on their personal life. Her incorporation of poetry to the analysis of paintings is most credible because it provides us a new perspective to look into the critical historical moment when literati painting geminated. In the study of Chinese painting in America, connecting to politic, society and literature is a trend in the past 20 years, which is rather different from the earlier researchers’ form-centered method. However, this kind of study of Song painting is actually difficult because of the uncertainty of the owners, titles and clients of the paintings and the indeterminacy and unsteadiness of the implications of the literary and iconographical images. Murck’s references of paintings are in some cases only relevant to the paintings of the main themes she discusses. Under this condition, over-interpretation is very much likely to happen in the discourse. However, Murck’s analysis is mainly based on the paintings of Eight Views in Xiao Xiang and Misty River, Layered Peaks, and several others that have relatively substantial literary records. Her methodology is mainly literary rather than iconographical, with part of Chapter 9 as an exception, which I find most unconvincing.
Though the main thesis of this book is soundly presented and supported by Murck’s close reading of the meaning of the related poems and the illustration of the historical context, the most controversial problems in the discourse remain salient and ask for further interpretation. The relationship between the poems written by Su Shi and Wang Shen for Wang’s painting of the Eight Views and Du Fu’s poem Autumn Days in Kui Prefecture is indeterminate based on the using of the same rhymes as the most important evidence, which is not so convincing because Du Fu’s poem has 200 couplets and almost contained all the rhymes of “ian”. Other than that, Murck’s discourse shows uncertainty in a number of places where she merely uses “very likely to be” to construct her thesis. For example, after introducing Wang Shen’s discussion of the art of painting in his answering poems to Su Shi’s as the juxtaposition of ugly and beautiful, Murck acclaims that “for Wang Shen, an example of it was immediately at hand: in Autumn Day in kui Prefecture, Du Fu combined lofty sentiments and stunning landscape lines with the disturbing themes of warfare, death, poverty, and the misguided actions of the emperor”(139). Another example of the controversy in her analysis is demonstrated in the chapter about Wang Hong’s Eight Views of Xiao Xiang. While her argument that Wang Hong’s painting got ideas from Huihong’s poems for Song Di’s painting of the same theme is well founded and the analysis of Huihong’s signaling a connection to Wang Anshi’s quatrain with the distinctive images and location names when he “redirected the title(attributed to Xiaoxiang) to a locale and to a text associated with Wang Anshi” is meticulous and convincing, her argument that the “vast” in Huihong’s poem possibly comes from Du Fu’s poem is no evidence to ensure the allusion. Using words or images from earlier famous poet’s works is the most prevailing phenomenon in ancient poetry writing. This kind of assumption of connection appears many times in Murck’s discourse, though not in critical parts of the discourse. Therefore, to what extent the Yuanyou relegated literati refer to Du Fu’s poem is not substantially supported by evidences other than the possible connection of the meanings and forms of the text.
My suggestion for Murck would be that she could use more evidences from the literary history. For example, in “Su Shi Writes After Drinking” in Chapter 7, the analysis of Su Shi’s continuing of the exchange of poems, Murck contends that “Su Shi’s opening couplets contrasting life in exile and at court and on the fate of horses are potentially the most incriminating lines of the four poems”(145). This could be connected to Du Fu’s poems for painting as Du Fu had written many of them with the theme of horse. These poems of Du is a strong evidence of the relation between poems for painting and politic implications. Also, the phenomenon of responding in the same rhymes geminated in Mid Tang, however during the time of the Five dynasties and the first century of Northern Song it was almost neglected without a reason until Emperor Ren’s ruling era. If Murck researches into this issue, she would probably finds out the relationship between the phenomenon and politic environment, which will certainly strengthen her main thesis on the subtle dissent expressed in painting.
Though Murck’s main argument is convincing, her analogy of Eight Views of Xiao Xiang to the regulated verse is totally invalid according to my knowledge. Painting and poetry writing are two distinct genres. Being related to poems doesn’t necessarily mean the painting has to have the form of a poem. No need to talk about the distinctness of the two arts here as many theorists, from Lessing to Qian Zhongshu, have published great insights of this issue. Murck initiates this issue in Chapter 3 when she says “Su Shi and his friends asserted with pride that their paintings contained poetry”(61), distorting the actual meaning of it in history by assuming that poetry means politic. In Chapter 6 about Wang Shen, she explains Gu Kaizhi’s comment on a couplet by Xi Kang as the intention to meet the expressing of emotion(140). So Murck’s understanding of this issue is quite confusing. Furthermore, she tries to do an iconographical interpretation of the paintings of the Eight Views by Wang Hong and the iconographical forms revealed by Murck’s interpretation of the paintings do not correspond to the forms of poetry at all because their symbolic carriers are distinct and are not comparable. The form of regulated verse is much more complicated than Murck could find correspondence in the paintings with best effort. Michael A. Fuller holds the same opinion(445-446). However, I don’t think this fallacy is so severe as will deconstruct the main thesis that literati show their complaint through paintings.
In all, this is a book providing an in depth investigation into how painting can incorporate and express dissent, and how its viewers might decode the subtle complaint. Her translations and interpretations of the poetic exchanges and the poetic allusions are meticulous and thought-provoking. Though many aspects left unproved or needs to be further studied, her discourse at least highlighted the urgency of exploring more about the relation between poetry and painting.
References:
Pauline Lin. Review of “Poetry and Painting in Song China”: The Subtle Art of Dissent by Alfreda Murck. Review of Politics, Winter2002, Vol. 64 Issue 1, p197, 3p
Michael A. Fuller. Review of “Poetry and Painting in Song China”: The Subtle Art of Dissent by Alfreda Murck. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Dec., 2001), pp. 442-453
Peter C. Sturman. Review of “Poetry and Painting in Song China”: The Subtle Art of Dissent by Alfreda Murck. China Review International, Volume 9, Number 2, Fall 2002, pp.501-506
- 作者: Alfreda Murck
- 出版: Harvard University Asia Center
- 定价: USD 35.00
- 装帧: Paperback
- 页数: 440
- 时间: 2002-4-1