The whimsical title of this paper is intended as a response to the ...

Early Medieval China 10-11.1 (2004) 203
THE LIBRARIAN IN EXILE: XIE LINGYUN’S
BOOKISH LANDSCAPES
Stephen Owen
Harvard University
The whimsical title of this paper is intended as a response to
the habitual repetition of Xie Lingyun 謝 靈 運 (385-433), “the
nature poet” or “the landscape poet.” ∗ A poet of landscapes he
indeed was, but what is sometimes overlooked in the study of Xie
Lingyun is that he was twice a librarian. In 426, for a very brief
interval, he was Director of the Imperial Library; but also in 413
(and perhaps on well into 414), at the age of twenty-nine to thirty,
he was an Aide, cheng 丞 , in the library. This was well before his
posting to Yongjia and the beginning of his career as a “landscape
poet.” The post of Aide was a particularly vague one, and we have
no idea exactly what an Aide in the Imperial Library did. One thing,
however, is certain: in this post Xie had access to what was
probably the best library in the South at the time. Xie Lingyun was
a reader (and perhaps already an anthologist of poetry) before he
was mountain-climber. 1
The image of Xie Lingyun as librarian is a way of returning to
the question of allusion. In dealing with allusion, scholars have by
and large been content to show their learning in the act of
recognition itself. Beyond simple recognition and identification of
an allusion, they may paraphrase the import of the allusion in the
argument of the text as a whole. One question not commonly asked,
* This essay is offered “on behalf of” (dai 代 ) the late Francis Westbrook,
one of David Knechtges’s first graduate students at Yale and later an Assistant
Professor at the University of Wisconsin. Frank was a devoted lover of the
poetry of Xie Lingyun.
1 We do not know when Xie Lingyun compiled his influential poetic
anthology, notices of which survive in various expansions and variations in the
“Jingji zhi” of the Sui shu; one of his periods as a librarian would, however,
given him the wide access to make such a large anthology.

204
Owen: Xie Lingyun, Librarian in Exile
however, is the function of allusion in the text. Perhaps one reason
the functional role of an allusion is not often considered is that the
answer to the question is so often uninteresting: many allusions
simply display erudition or fulfill an expectation for allusion at a
certain point in the discourse. Allusions are often like those
antiquities that were once gleaming ritual vessels, or the tools of
war, or the king’s gift, bestowing favor and status, but now reduced
to “precious things” displayed in uniform museum cases, identified
by commentators’ tags. This tells us more about the museum’s
pride of possession and talent for assemblage than of the power
that inheres in the thing. But this is not always the case, and it is
definitely not the case in poets like Tao Qian 陶 潛 or Xie Lingyun.
The essence of allusion is the past returning in the present (or
in a significant negative variation, the past failing to return in the
present); it is a figure of repetition. If we think of allusions in this
way, their functional role can sometimes be clearer and can change
the way we understand a text. I will argue that this is often the case
in the poetry of Xie Lingyun, where allusion is a means of
cognition as well as representation. Xie Lingyun often measures a
prior experience of a text against his experience in the physical
world; and, either purposely or involuntarily, Xie Lingyun often
finds that his experience doesn’t match those texts.
Before continuing, however, I would like to add one important
kind of “allusion” to our repertoire, one that is almost always
overlooked in commentary because of the protocols of commentarial
form. This is rewriting a prior text in different words, ni 擬
(“imitation”) in its restrictive original sense, from the late third
through the fifth century. This is ni as practiced by Fu Xuan 傅 玄
(217-278) and Lu Ji 陸 機 (261-303). During the course of the fifth
century, this original sense of ni broke down and changed; it
ceased to be redoing the entire text line by line, but rather lines and
passages. When Bao Zhao 鮑 照 (ca. 414-466) imitated the first of
Ruan Ji’s 阮 籍 (210-263) “Singing of My Cares,” Yonghuai 詠 懷 ,
in the mid-fifth century, he was still partially following the older
practice of rewriting the precedent text line by line in a more
elevated register. 2 Ruan Ji’s “In the night I could not sleep” ( 夜 中
2 Lu Qinli 逯 欽 立 , Quan Xian-Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi 全 先 秦 漢
魏 晉 南 北 朝 詩 , 3 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 2: 1299. This use of ni

Early Medieval China 10-11.1 (2004) 205
不 能 寐 ) becomes “The water-clock reached midpoint, I could not
rest” ( 漏 分 不 能 臥 ). Chinese commentary cites sources of words
and phrases; ni requires changing all or most of the words—verbal
repetition of the main words is precisely what is avoided. To
“recognize” ni “imitation” our concordances and databases are no
help. Yet this is no less a past text recurring in the present.
As his first term in the library preceded his famous provincial
postings, Xie Lingyun the reader preceded Xie the traveler and
explorer. Xie Lingyun is supposed to be a “landscape poet”; yet
anyone who engages his poetry seriously realizes that he is a
peculiarly bookish landscape poet. The argument I would propose
here is that Xie Lingyun becomes an important poet not because he
describes landscapes and “Nature,” but through the problematic
relation between book-knowledge and experience outside of books. In
other words, a kind of representation classified as “allusion” simply
because Li Shan and his descendents cite source-passages may, in fact,
be a relationship between prior text and experience of a peculiar form.
J. D. Frodsham sought for the origins of landscape poetry in
poets like Yu Chan 庾 闡 (fl. 339) and the mere description of
landscape. 3 There may have been a reason Yu Chan was largely
forgotten and had to be resurrected out of leishu: perhaps he didn’t
matter. By the time of the compilation of the Wen xuan 文 選 (ca.
520-526), the commonplaces of a history of poetry were well
established: Xiao Tong 蕭 統 (501-531) knew that the Liu-Song
was to be represented by landscape poetry. But when he chose an
earlier, fourth-century “landscape” text, Xiao Tong chose one by
someone who clearly stated that he had not yet been to the
landscape he described. This, of course, was Sun Chuo’s 孫 綽
(314-371) “You Tiantai shan fu” 遊 天 台 山 賦 , a landscape inspired
by reading texts and visited only in the imagination, with the actual
physical visit displaced into the prospective future. Were Sun Chuo
to have visited the real mountain, he would have done so with its
texts already “in his belly.” The problem is, of course, when one
as the close imitation of a particular poem may be contrasted with the term for a
general imitation of a style, xue … ti 學 體 , as in Bao Zhao’s imitations of the
styles of Liu Zhen and Bao Zhao, Lu Qinli, 2: 1299-1300.
3 J. D. Frodsham, “The Origins of Chinese Nature Poetry,” Asia Major 8.1
(1962): 68-104.

206
Owen: Xie Lingyun, Librarian in Exile
undertakes such a journey one may not find the text he is looking
for there.
Xie Lingyun was Sun Chuo’s immediate descendent; Xie does
indeed go to the mountains, and his experience is often shadowed
by earlier texts. “Allusion” here becomes observing the landscape
in terms of past texts and stories, indeed looking for confirmation
of those texts in the landscape. In Xie Lingyun's landscape poetry,
we are often much closer to Sun Chuo than to a more “literary” use
of allusion. In 432 when in Nancheng, Xie visited Huazi Hill 華 子
崗 , which he tells us in the You mingshan zhi 遊 名 山 志 was so
named because the immortal Huazi Qi 華 子 期 roamed there. 4
“Entering Huazi Hill, the third valley of Hemp Stream,” 入 華 子 崗
是 麻 源 第 三 谷 , begins with an “allusion”:
南 州 實 炎 德 , 桂 樹 陵 寒 山 . 5
The Southland is truly of the Fiery Humour,
with cassia trees rising over wintry mountains.
This is hardly a subtle use of an earlier text, rewriting lines
from the “Yuanyou” 遠 遊 , just as the speaker there goes off on his
“far roaming.”
嘉 南 州 之 炎 , 德 兮 , 麗 桂 樹 之 冬 榮 . 6
I admire the Fiery Humour of the Southland,
found the wintry flourishing of the cassia trees fair.
The shi 實 , “truly,” marks the functional role of the allusion:
Xie Lingyun is confirming the claims of an old text in his own
experience. The opposite of shi in this usage is of course xu 虛 ,
which we might translate as “based on nothing,” even “fictitious.”
This is indeed precisely the term employed by Sun Chuo in his
preface to the “You Tiantai shan fu,” addressing the same issue.
Speaking of the wondrous mountains, Sun writes:
4 Yan Kejun 嚴 可 均 , Quan shanggu sandai Qin Han Sanguo Liuchao wen
全 上 古 三 代 秦 漢 三 國 六 朝 文 , 4 vols. (rpt. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965), 3:
2616.
5 See note 8.
6 Chuci jiaoshi 楚 辭 校 釋 , ed. Wang Siyuan 王 泗 原 (Beijing jiaoyu
chubanshe, 1990), 305.

Early Medieval China 10-11.1 (2004) 207
故 事 絕 於 常 篇 , 名 標 於 奇 紀 . 然 圖 像 之 興 , 豈 虛 也 哉 . 7
Thus notice of them is absent in common texts; their name is
given only in accounts of things rare. Should we think the rise of
pictures and illustrations is based on nothing?
The text or illustration is presumed to follow from experience, an
experience to be reconfirmed by one who knows the text when he
visits the places described in texts. The text, however, can sometimes
fail experience.
“Entering Huazi Hill, the third valley of Hemp Stream”
8
入 華 子 崗 是 麻 源 第 三 谷
by Xie Lingyun
The Southland is truly of the Fiery Humour,
南 州 實 炎 德
with cassia trees rising over wintry mountains.
桂 樹 陵 寒 山
Bronze Mound shines by an emerald torrent,
銅 陵 映 碧 澗
stone stairs spill over with a reddish spring.
石 磴 瀉 紅 泉
It once diverted the course of a recluse,
既 枉 隱 淪 客
gave roost to a worthy man fled into hiding. 9
亦 棲 肥 遁 賢
Perilous paths not to be fathomed and gauged,
險 徑 無 測 度
Heaven’s roads are no ordinary streets.
天 路 非 術 阡
Then I mounted to the highest of many peaks,
遂 登 群 峰 首
so far I seemed mounting the clouds and mists.
邈 若 升 雲 煙
Of the feathered folk, not the least semblance,
羽 人 絕 彷 彿
Cinnabar Hill is only the empty fish-trap.
丹 邱 徒 空 筌
Maps and documents have furthermore disappeared, 圖 牒 復 澠 滅
who has heard of stone or wooden inscriptions transmitted? 碑 版 誰 聞 傳
None can make out [the traces] after a hundred generations, 莫 辨 百 代 後
who can know of what was here a thousand years before? 安 知 千 載 前
For a while I indulge my intention to go off alone, 且 申 獨 往 意
in moonlight I amuse myself by the bubbling waters. 乘 月 弄 潺 湲
7 Yan Kejun, 2: 1806.
8 Lu Qinli, 2: 1178.
9 This may refer specifically to Huazi Qi. Feidun 肥 遁 is a commonly used
phrase from the “Dun” 遁 hexagram in the Yijing: feidun wu bu li 肥 遁 無 不 利 .
Although commentators tried to explain the “plumpness” (which may only stand
for fei 飛 , “fled” or “took flight”), the compound was simply a term for
reclusion.

208
Owen: Xie Lingyun, Librarian in Exile
Constantly it serves to fulfill use for the moment,
but how could it be so in past and present?
恆 充 俄 頃 用
豈 為 古 今 然
The hill at first satisfies expectations with its bright colors, the
green of a mountain torrent and a “reddish spring,” promising the
presence of cinnabar. But Xie reads it less as a colorful scene
before him or even as an immortal world in the present than as a
“site,” a place whose qualities are understood in terms of a past.
Such beauties “diverted the course” and “gave roost” to someone
in the past: Huazi Qi. The poet with his learning has come seeking
the traces of the past, but these can be only the traces of someone
who wanted to hide his traces. This is not Nature as such, but
Nature as possibly concealing traces of a past presence. The poet
ventures onto the hill, whose ever rising and twisting course is
treated as “Heaven’s roads,” or the “road to Heaven.” Finally, he
reaches the summit, laboriously climbing into mists and clouds as
the immortal does “rising lightly”—and he finds nothing. We
might here recall the passage of the “Yuanyou” that follows the
one quoted above:
山 蕭 條 而 無 獸 兮 , 野 寂 寞 其 無 人 . 載 營 魄 而 登 霞 兮 , 掩 浮 雲 而 上 征 .
命 天 閽 其 開 關 兮 , 排 閶 闔 而 望 予 .
Hills bleak and barren with no beasts there;
moors silent and gloomy, without men.
I bore up my souls, I climbed to auroras,
by floating clouds hidden, I fared on above.
I charged Heaven's gatekeeper to open the bar;
he pushed back the gates and stared at me.
The traveler of the “Yuanyou” is reenacting the heavenly journey
of the “Li sao” 離 騷 . Xie Lingyun reenacts that same ascent, only
to find nothing—not the cosmic Nothing that the “Yuanyou”
traveler ultimately finds but the absence of “traces” or “tracks” that
permit following and repetition.
“Allusion” in the conventional sense is an appeal to a past text
in present circumstances; here we see a singular variation on that
principle, an attempt to retrace a past text on a mountain path
upward into the clouds, treated as “Heaven’s roads” into the clouds.
Xie Lingyun is not simply “alluding” to the “Yuanyou” in the

Early Medieval China 10-11.1 (2004) 209
opening lines; rather the old text is a paradigm that informs his
own experience of the landscape. Before the passage echoed in Xie
Lingyun’s opening couplet, the speaker of the “Yuanyou” had gone
to seek out the immortal Qiao the Prince and ask him about Breath.
Qiao the Prince responded with a lesson in the language of the
Laozi, and the speaker took the lesson to heart: he set out and
found the “feathered folk on Cinnabar Hill.”
聞 至 貴 而 遂 徂 兮 , 忽 乎 吾 將 行 . 仍 羽 人 于 丹 丘 兮 , 留 不 死 之 舊 鄉 .
The lesson much treasured, I then set to go,
and all at once I was on my way.
Nigh to the feathered folk on Cinnabar Hill,
I lingered in that olden land of the Undying.
The echo of old pattern lingers on: the authoritative instruction
preceding the journey in the “Yuanyou” recalls the interviews with
figures of authority that precede journeying in the “Li sao”; in the
same way, Xie Lingyun comes to Huazi Hill with the paradigm of
the “Yuanyou.” Following the lesson he heard from Qiao the
Prince, the “Yuanyou” traveler does find “the feathered folk on
Cinnabar Hill.” Xie Lingyun repeats the process, but without
success.
Of the feathered folk, not the least semblance,
Cinnabar Hill is only the empty fish-trap.
The appearance of the “fish-trap” should reassure us that we are
not going too far in thinking of this passage as measuring received
language against some version of “reality.” To reflect on the
problem of prior text versus experience, Xie shifts from the
“Yuanyou” to the Zhuangzi, where the “fish-trap” is to the fish as
language is to the truth or meaning. Cinnabar Hill can be a “fishtrap”
only textually, in reference to the “Yuanyou” or the accounts
of the immortals such as Huazi Qi.
As a figure for language as the means to acquire meaning or
truth, the “fish-trap” can easily turn into one of the Zhuangzi’s
profound jokes on its readers. When one finds an “empty fishtrap,”
one can never tell whether it is a trap from which the fish
have already been taken or a trap that never caught any fish in the
first place. We know that in climbing Huazi Hill, seeking to repeat

210
Owen: Xie Lingyun, Librarian in Exile
the “Yuanyou” quest for the feathered folk on Cinnabar Hill, Xie
Lingyun finds nothing. Neither we nor Xie Lingyun knows,
however, whether the immortal found the “truth,” leaving behind
both text and hill emptied of his presence, or whether the text
deceived us in its promise to lead to the immortals; that is, a tale, in
Sun Chuo’s words, “based on nothing.” The deceptiveness of tales
of the immortals was a long established poetic trope of poetry in
the five syllable line. 10
In contrast to Sun Chuo, who retained faith in his accounts of
marvels by restricting his journey to the spirit, in Xie, the empirical
visitor, we at last come to something of a crisis of documentation:
Maps and documents have furthermore disappeared,
who has heard of stone or wooden inscriptions transmitted?
None can make out [the traces] after a hundred generations,
who can know of what was here a thousand years before?
In some ways Xie Lingyun remains even here the committed
textualist, attributing his inability to find the feathered folk to the
loss of better texts and illustrations. This is not so much Xie
Lingyun the “landscape poet” as Xie Lingyun the librarian,
accustomed to working with the ruins of the textual tradition.
When his texts fail, however, Xie wisely changes his goals:
For a while I indulge my intention to go off alone,
in moonlight I amuse myself by the bubbling waters.
Constantly it serves to fulfill use for the moment,
but how could it be so in past and present?
At last we have Xie Lingyun left alone in the “landscape” itself,
a landscape that is not innocently itself, but one that has been
evacuated. In place of immortals and long spans of time, we have
terms of the temporary: qie 且 , “for a while”; eqing 俄 頃 , “a
moment”—though a “moment” that is always available, chong 充 ,
“serve to / serve as,” being the term for temporarily acting in a
certain role or office. The closing is enigmatic, as Xie Lingyun’s
closings often are, but does clearly celebrate the beauty of the
10 For example, “Nineteen Old Poems” XIII (Lu Qinli, 1: 332) and Cao Zhi,
“Zeng Baimawang Biao” (Lu Qinli, 1: 454).

Early Medieval China 10-11.1 (2004) 211
place in the moment, as opposed to the place as part of an itinerary
beyond this world; and it celebrates the constancy of the temporary
moment against the permanent.
“Entering Huazi Hill” is not a poem that “uses allusions,” but
rather a poem that grows out of a failed attempt to retrace a prior next.
Ni, as we observed earlier, is imitation in the sense of retracing a prior
text, often couplet by couplet, using different words in a different
register. 11 One of the most common non-literary uses of ni was niji 擬
跡 , to “retrace” or “follow in the tracks of.” A single earlier text or a
composite of old texts sometimes forms the backbone of Xie
Lingyun’s poems; indeed, this occurs with enough frequency that we
can only wonder if this was not one norm throughout Xie Lingyun’s
poetry, a norm that would be clearer if we had more early poetry. This
is to say that Xie Lingyun may have often been writing poetic
“imitations,” in the special sense of trying to retrace a prior text in
experience; and one aspect of the genius of Xie Lingyun may have
been that he often failed—his own situation could never be quite
perfectly mapped onto the precedent poem, with a deeper poem of his
own growing out of that failure.
If we often do not notice the prior text when it does survive, this
may also be because of the commentarial tradition that looks for
sources of phrases and does not notice relationships of ni, in which
the particular words of the precedent text are avoided. In the context
of fifth-century poetics, however, such a relationship would have been
obvious to anyone who knew the source text. In 422, on his way to
Yongjia, Xie Lingyun stopped by his family estate and wrote:
束 髮 懷 耿 介 , 逐 物 遂 推 遷 . 違 志 似 如 昨 , 二 紀 及 茲 年 . 12
When my hair was bound I harbored a splendid uprightness,
then I was jostled along in pursuit of things.
It seems but recently that I strayed from my aims,
11 From the mid-third into the fourth century, ni 擬 , usually translated as
“imitation,” meant rewriting a predecessor poem almost line by line in a higher
register of diction. To judge from Xie’s “Imitations of the Collection at Ye” 擬
鄴 中 集 (Lu Qinli, 2: 1181-5), in Xie Lingyun’s sense it did not necessarily
mean rewriting the entire poem—though it did involve rewriting specific
passages. This form of “imitation” largely disappeared by the end of the fifth
century, transformed into the idea of imitating the “sense” but not the words.
12 See note 19.

212
Owen: Xie Lingyun, Librarian in Exile
but with this year it has been two decades.
Let me begin with the most obvious point: in the fourth line of a
poem on returning to his home estate, Xie Lingyun measures how
long he has strayed from his original aims. It does not take a
profound education in Chinese poetry to know where one has seen
that before in the fourth line of a poem—and indeed there is no
other clear precedent in any extant earlier poem. Therefore we
might take the fact that Xie not only echoes a prior text but echoes
it in the same line as significant. The text is, of course, the first of
Tao Qian’s “Returning to Live in Field and Garden” 歸 園 田 居 13 :
少 無 適 俗 韻 , 性 本 愛 丘 山 . 誤 落 塵 網 中 , 一 去 三 十 年 .
My youth had no comfort in common things,
by my nature I clung to the mountains and hills.
I erred and fell in the snares of dust
and was away thirty [thirteen] years in all. 14
What could be a more appropriate precedent poem for a poet
returning to his family estate—though not to “dwell” or “stay,” ju
居 , but merely “stopping by,” guo 過 ? “Stopping by My Villa in
Shining” is the failed return poem, as Xie Lingyun reads his actual
experience against the model of Tao Qian’s poem. 15
Xie’s twenty years is not Tao’s thirty or thirteen, but when we
subtract those years from Xie’s age at the time, he would have
been eighteen. Tao Qian says simply shao 少 , “as a youth.” Shao is
13 Lu Qinli, 2: 991.
14 The earliest texts of Tao Qian’s poetry all read “thirty,” but to reconcile the
poem with Tao’s biography as it was understood, generations of commentators
explained this as a transposition, with the proper reading being “thirteen.” More
recently, Yuan Xingpei 袁 行 霈 has strenuously argued for a revised date of 352 for
Tao’s birth, which supports the reading “thirty.” See Tao Yuanming ji jianzhu 陶 淵 明
集 箋 注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2003), 76-83, 846-7.
15 The assumption that Tao Qian was a “recluse” and therefore would not
have been known to a younger contemporary like Xie Lingyun overlooks the
immense publicity that surrounded “recluses,” particularly one as wellconnected
as Tao Qian in the contemporary intellectual community. Tao was
known not only to Xie Lingyun’s friend, Yan Yanzhi, but to other prominent
figures of the day.

Early Medieval China 10-11.1 (2004) 213
the “plain style,” sermo humilis, which the ni-imitator always
raises in register; for example, to a phrase like shu fa 束 髮 , “when
my hair was bound.” Likewise wu shisu yun 無 適 俗 韻 is made
“poetic” in huai gengjie 懷 耿 介 . I will return to this, for Xie is using
the more elevated Tao Qian to raise the register of the plainer Tao.
The second line does not quite match Tao’s, but it offers a
context for Tao’s inexplicable “erring.” Zhuwu 逐 物 , “in pursuit of
[outer] things,” was a standard Jin usage for worldly concerns, but
tuiqian 推 遷 , literally “pushing and shifting” (translated as “jostled
along”) was a Tao Qian phrase used in the preface to “Blooming
Trees” 榮 木 . “Blooming Trees, significantly, is one of Tao Qian’s
few poems about the “pursuit of things,” troubled by his failure to
achieve any success as “the days and months jostle along” 日 月 推
遷 . The usage, in the preface, is worth citing because of its close
proximity to questions of hair and time passing.
榮 木 , 念 將 老 也 . 日 月 推 遷 , 已 復 九 夏 , 總 角 聞 道 , 白 首 無 成 . 16
“Blooming Trees” is of brooding about approaching old age.
The days and months jostle along, and now it is the summer
weeks again. When in childhood’s braids I was told of the Way;
now white-haired, I have accomplished nothing.
I might add that this term tuiqian, so common later, makes its
appearance in the written record only in Tao Qian’s generation, and
only in a few uncertain other cases; in effect, as reference to time’s
passage it is, so far as we know, a Tao Qian phrase. 17
Tao Qian is not only silent about how he could fall into such
error, the content of those thirty (or thirteen) years is also passed
over in silence. Xie Lingyun picks up that sense of time spent
16 Lu Qinli, 2: 969.
17 As common as the compound tuiqian became, the earliest extant usages
are Tao Qian’s and that by a contemporary. The phrase was probably constructed
from the proximity of the words in Jia Yi’s 賈 誼 (200-168 BC) “The Owl” 負 鳥
賦 : “They (the myriad things) flow past swirling and shifting on, / sometimes
push forward and return” 斡 流 而 遷 兮 , 或 推 而 還 (Yan Kejun, 1: 208). Since we
cannot date “Blooming Trees,” we cannot entirely dismiss the possibility that
Tao was using a phrase from Xie Lingyun. Since the other echoes of Tao Qian
are from works that clearly predate 422, this seems likely to be the case here too.

214
Owen: Xie Lingyun, Librarian in Exile
unawares in his third line, which says his own straying “seems but
recent.” We can also hear an echo of Tao’s “Return” 歸 去 來 辭 18 :
實 迷 途 其 未 遠 , 覺 今 是 而 昨 非 .
Truly I have not strayed far off my path;
I realize I am right now, while recently I was wrong.
As we saw in “Entering Huazi Hill,” Xie Lingyun can never
perfectly repeat the past text. Xie Lingyun moves away from Tao
Qian’s poem, but Tao Qian remains in the background throughout.
Xie Lingyun often tries to follow the textual traces, ji, in the
empirical world, and he often loses the trail.
“Stopping by My Villa in Shining” by Xie Lingyun
19
過 始 寧 墅
When my hair was bound I harbored a splendid
uprightness,
then I was jostled along in pursuit of things.
It seems but recently that I strayed from my aims,
but with this year it has been two decades.
Stained and ground down, humbled before openness and
expansiveness, 20
desperately weary, I am shamed by the pure and hard.
Blunders and sickness pressed on me in turns,
now I again get the ease of those who are serene.
With split bamboo I go to govern by the grey sea,
and have turned aside my sail to stop by my former hills.
Walking in mountains, I go up and down everywhere,
faring on water, I go all the way up and downstream.
Peaks are sheer, pinnacles in layers,
sandbars wind, isles continuous.
White clouds embrace hidden rocks,
green bamboo canes lend charm to clear ripples.
束 髮 懷 耿 介
逐 物 遂 推 遷
違 志 似 如 昨
二 紀 及 茲 年
緇 磷 謝 清 曠
疲 薾 慚 貞 堅
拙 疾 相 倚 薄
還 得 靜 者 便
剖 竹 守 滄 海
枉 帆 過 舊 山
山 行 窮 登 頓
水 涉 盡 洄 沿
巖 峭 嶺 稠 疊
洲 縈 渚 連 綿
白 雲 抱 幽 石
綠 筱 媚 清 漣
18 Yuan Xingpei, TaoYuanming ji jianzhu, 460.
19 Lu Qinli, 2: 1159.
20 I would like to thank David Knechtges for calling my attention to this
contemporary usage of xie 謝 .

Early Medieval China 10-11.1 (2004) 215
I build a cottage by the turning river,
erect a lodge based on the layered summit.
I wave and declare to those of my homeland,
after three years I expect to return.
So plant for me elm and camphor trees,
let my desire not be betrayed.
葺 宇 臨 回 江
築 觀 基 層 巔
揮 手 告 鄉 曲
三 載 期 歸 旋
且 為 樹 枌 檟
無 令 孤 願 言
“Stained and ground down,” “weary,” “blundering”—Xie Lingyun
offers a stream of self-reproach, but for what? Tao Qian offered a
poetic model for changing one’s life; Xie fails the model of the
person even as he takes leave of Tao Qian’s poem. Without Tao
Qian’s decisive “return,” Xie’s betrayal of his youthful aims calls
for shame, measuring himself against Confucius’s judgment in the
Analects (XVII.7): “Would we not call something that can be
scraped but not ground down hard? Would we not call something
that is sullied but not stained white?” 不 曰 堅 乎 , 磨 而 不 磷 ; 不 曰
白 乎 , 涅 而 不 緇 .
Xie does use the terms “stained” and “ground down” from the
Analects; but there is another source for the “pure” and “hard.” We
might look at Tao’s “In the Sixth Month of the Year Wushen [408]
We Had a Fire” 戊 申 歲 六 月 中 遇 火 21 :
形 跡 憑 化 往 , 靈 府 長 獨 閒 , 貞 剛 自 有 質 , 玉 石 乃 非 堅 .
Form and traces go off along with Change,
but the soul’s seat is ever uniquely calm.
Having innate substance pure and unyielding,
not even jade and stone are so hard.
Xie Lingyun fails in precisely those qualities that Tao Qian proudly
claims in his moment of introspection. And lest this seem too
arbitrary a culling from Tao Qian, we might quote the lines that
precede this passage, which are the double source of Xie Lingyun’s
opening:
21 Lu Qinli, 2: 995.

216
Owen: Xie Lingyun, Librarian in Exile
總 髮 抱 孤 介 , 奄 出 四 十 年 . 22
When my hair was tied I harbored solitary uprightness,
and suddenly it has been more than forty years.
I hope that, by this point, I do not need to prove any further that
on some basic level Tao Qian, both the person and his poems,
stand in the background of Xie Lingyun’s poem. The first
“Returning to Live in Field and Garden” closes:
久 在 樊 籠 裏 , 復 得 還 自 然 . 23
For a long time I was kept inside a coop,
again I get to return to the natural way.
Xie Lingyun does it a bit differently, but we should recognize the
move:
拙 疾 相 倚 薄 , 還 得 靜 者 便 .
Blunders and sickness pressed on me in turns,
now I again get the ease of those who are serene.
If Tao Qian achieves ziran, “the natural way,” Xie gets only bian
便 , “ease,” which suggests only temporary relief. We are reminded
of what we knew in the title: that this “ease” discovered in return is
merely “stopping by,” on his way to a post elsewhere. This is a
“return” of limited duration.
No sooner does he tell us that he has found peace than he goes
on to say that he is heading off to Yongjia with “split bamboo,” the
tally of a governor’s authority. When they decide to return to their
innate natures, Qu Yuan 屈 原 and Tao Qian turn their carriages
back—Qu Yuan turns a figurative carriage, while Tao turns a
carriage that is literal as well as figurative. 24 The image of turning
22 Modern scholars argue, with justification, that the second line means
“And suddenly I am in my forties.” The interpretation below is the more natural
reading that is heedless of attempts to reconstruct Tao Qian’s biography.
23 See note 13.
24 “Li Sao,” lines 107-8: “I will turn my coach ’round, retrace my path, /
before I stray too far in my going” 回 朕 車 以 復 路 兮 , 及 行 迷 之 未 遠 (Chuci
jiaoshi, 30). This is echoed in Tao Qian’s “Return”: “Truly I have not strayed far
off my path” 實 迷 途 其 未 遠 .

Early Medieval China 10-11.1 (2004) 217
back on a figurative or literal journey was an immensely resonant
one, so we appreciate the ironic precision of Xie Lingyun’s wang
fan 枉 帆 , “I turn aside my sail.” Wang 枉 , “turn aside,” is “to go
out of one’s way,” to make a side trip in a larger journey elsewhere.
The destination of this “side trip” is his “former hills,” the family
home. This is a most imperfect “return.”
This declaration of “turning aside” is also the moment that Xie
Lingyun leaves the poetic world of Tao Qian. I have always felt
uncomfortable with the commonplace contrast between Tao Qian
as the poet of “fields and garden,” tianyuan 田 園 , as opposed to
Xie Lingyun, the poet of “mountains and waters,” shanshui 山 水 .
In this poem and a few others, however, I think the cliché becomes
valid: in poems that have much in common in a discursive frame
segment, Xie Lingyun will often insert a shanshui passage where
Tao has a tianyuan passage: Xie Lingyun’s shanshui thus becomes
a substitution. Xie Lingyun is quite explicit about it: in “Climbing
a Tower by the Pool” 登 池 上 樓 , he understands that “my strength
is not up to withdrawing to farm” 退 耕 力 不 任 . 25 As with allusion,
if we think of this not as a bland alternative, but as an active and
significant replacement of Tao Qian’s world, as it clearly is in this
poem prior to all the famous Yongjia and later poems, then the
quality of Xie’s description of “landscape” changes.
In place of Tao Qian’s more active description of farming and
the pleasures of his rural community, Xie Lingyun gives us a setpiece:
he declares his passage through the landscape and describes
points in it. This is the “core” of the poem, the poetic idyll to
which he returns but temporarily, framed by coming from
elsewhere and going elsewhere.
Walking in mountains, I go up and down everywhere,
faring on water, I go all the way up and downstream.
Peaks are sheer, pinnacles in layers,
sandbars wind, isles continuous.
White clouds embrace hidden rocks,
green bamboo canes lend charm to clear ripples.
I build a cottage by the turning river,
erect a lodge based on the layered summit.
25 Lu Qinli, 2: 1161.

218
Owen: Xie Lingyun, Librarian in Exile
We can now ask not “what is significant about this description,”
but “how does this description differ from Tao Qian’s representation
of home space.” It might be useful here to recall the
famous preface of 400 by the disciple of Huiyuan’s 慧 遠 (334-416)
school on the visit to Shimenshan. 26 Here and elsewhere around
this period, we note a shift of attention from the centrality of the
object of vision to interest in the vantage point. We never know
from where Tao surveys his farm; but if we begin with the end of
this passage in Xie’s poem, we see him building vantage points
from which to look.
We will note the obvious. Characteristically, every couplet
balances a “mountain” line with a “water” line. Like the “everywhere,”
qiong 窮 , and “all the way,” jin 盡 , this balance is a claim
of completeness, from the heights that can be reached to the lowest
points that can be reached. Like the perpipatetic Qin Shihuang 秦
始 皇 who took possession of his realm by traveling through it, Xie
poetically takes possession, beginning with a general claim in the
first descriptive couplet and progressing to greater detail.
On a more basic level, however, there is the question of agency,
the ability to do things. When in “Returning to Live in Field and
Garden” Tao Qian speaks of kai huang 開 荒 , “clearing wilderness,”
we always read the phrase as “I clear the wilderness,” not as
the no less plausible “I have the wilderness cleared.” We attribute
immediate agency to Tao Qian. When, however, Xie Lingyun
speaks of “building a cottage” or “erecting a lodge,” no one
suspects he is doing this himself or even so much as lifting a
hammer. Xie Lingyun is a looker and not a doer; he is an aristocrat,
a reader, and a librarian. This issue of immediate agency is the very
heart of this poem, the point where Xie Lingyun fails to “follow
the traces” of Tao Qian. Tao acts; Xie Lingyun gives orders. And as
Xie gives orders, he receives orders—the “split bamboo” that sends
him to Yongjia and makes his return imperfect and temporary.
Tao Qian chances on interesting sights, but he does not
construct vantage points, either architecturally or textually. There
is, however, a relation between representing scenes in poetry and
creating comfortable (bian 便 , translated as “ease” above) spaces
from which to view them: these buildings are the means by which
26 Yan Kejun, 3: 2437.

Early Medieval China 10-11.1 (2004) 219
to repeat experience. Here we might recall the strange line in
“Entering Huazi Hill”: “Constantly it serves to fulfill use for the
moment” 恆 充 俄 頃 用 . The purpose of Xie Lingyun’s architectural
vantage points is exactly this: the buildings are always there to
offer enjoyment, but each time only for the moment. This all
comes back to the temporary nature of such experience, “stopping
by” only to continue on, which is the condition of the desire to
repeat experience.
Xie Lingyun’s characteristic parallelism takes on an interesting
function in this context. The charms of his home landscape are
always paired, so that no single point finally absorbs his attention:
he can go to the cottage by the river or the lodge on the summit.
Even within his domestic landscape he travels and reproduces
experience that is essentially temporary. The constant representation
of alternatives, embodied in parallelism, defers some
final fixity—though at the end he foresees an ultimate fixity and
return.
The internal landscape of his home space thus mirrors the
larger world in which it is set. Everywhere he goes, he is only
“stopping by.” At last he waves goodbye and promises to return
after his three year appointment. He promises to come back after
three years; he does not promise to stay. The only way he can
complete the Tao Qian poem of final return is “return,” gui 歸 , in
death. The “elm and camphor trees” are wood for a coffin. His
injunction to plant them now defers this final return, but he does
wish in the end to come home. Even in this, however, he cannot
plant the elm and camphor trees himself; he can only issue orders.
Xie is “alluding” to Tao Qian, but in a more profound sense
than we usually grant to allusion. He is poetically mapping his life
against Tao Qian’s textual self-representation. He was traveling to
Yongjia with a “bellyful” of texts, and it was through those texts
that he comprehended experience.
Although there are other poems in which Xie Lingyun
approaches experience with a single text in mind, the more familiar
form of allusion is in multiple references, discovered in experience
rather than brought to it. Xie began “Entering Huazi Hill” by
comparing landscape and text; in other cases, however, old texts
“appear” in the world around him and in his self-representation.
Unlike more purely “literary” allusions that often have only a

220
Owen: Xie Lingyun, Librarian in Exile
single “point,” Xie Lingyun’s allusions often come with fragments
of their context in other phrases and associations from the primary
source.
“Visiting South Pavilion” by Xie Lingyun
27
遊 南 亭
The season ends, the evening perfectly clear,
the clouds go back, the sun speeds west.
Dense forests hold in the remaining clarity,
a far peak shadows half the sun’s disk.
Long heartsick, overwhelmed in suffering,
from the guest lodge I stare at the paths diverging
in meadows.
Marsh orchids gradually cover the trail,
and the lotus first come out on the pool.
I had not yet wearied of green spring’s goodness,
now already I observe the red brightness shift.
Depressed, I sigh, stirred by things,
white hair hangs down, flecked with stars.
My concerns stay with medicine and fine food;
all at once sickness and decline are upon me.
I’ll be off as soon as autumn’s floods arrive,
to rest my shadow, I’ll rest on my former slopes.
To whom can I make clear my mind?—
only a mind that can appreciate will know instinctively.
時 竟 夕 澄 霽
雲 歸 日 西 馳
密 林 含 餘 清
遠 峰 隱 半 規
久 痗 昏 墊 苦
旅 館 眺 郊 岐
澤 蘭 漸 被 徑
芙 蓉 始 發 池
未 厭 青 春 好
已 睹 朱 明 移
戚 戚 感 物 嘆
星 星 白 髮 垂
藥 餌 情 所 止
衰 疾 忽 在 斯
逝 將 候 秋 水
息 景 偃 舊 崖
我 志 誰 與 亮
賞 心 惟 良 知
This poem is generally understood as having been written at
Yongjia in 423, in the year following the preceding poem. The
opening gives us both the season and the moment—the season
ending must be spring, but that only frames the immediate scene. It
is a moment of clarity, just before darkness. There are clouds withdrawing
from the sky and perhaps there is a suggestion of recent
rain in the allusions. The moment is framed by continuous
depression or sickness (if we read mei 痗 as literal sickness with
27 Lu Qinli, 2: 1161.

Early Medieval China 10-11.1 (2004) 221
Fang Dongshu 方 東 樹 ) and anticipation of aging, autumn floods,
and return home. 28
The sun’s swiftness was an old figure for time passing swiftly,
made partially literal in Cao Zhi’s famous “To Xu Gan” 贈 徐 乾 29 :
驚 風 飄 白 日 , 忽 然 歸 西 山 .
A blast of wind sends the bright sun whirling,
and suddenly it is back to the western hills.
In Xie Lingyun’s opening here the poetic figure perhaps becomes
literal in visual illusion, as the retreating clouds seem to make the
sun speed ahead. But at this moment the speeding sun seems to
stop and hang for a moment, half hidden behind the mountains to
the west. It is a final moment of light before darkness.
Season and weather are common poetic settings, but this one is
particular by its focus on a transient moment, on the edge of
darkness and seasonal change. This brings the poet to himself at
the moment, also framed in a longer span:
Long heartsick, overwhelmed in suffering,
now from the guest lodge I stare at the paths diverging in meadows.
Marsh orchids gradually cover the trail,
and the lotus first come out on the pool.
The interval of spring passing matches Xie’s jiu mei “long
heartsick.” Mei 痗 (“heartsick”) was an archaic word carrying the
memory of its use in Shi 62, “Bo xi” 伯 兮 . 30 Rain’s darkness and
light figure here too. The husband is away is away on campaign;
the third and fourth stanzas read:
其 雨 其 雨 , 杲 杲 出 日 . 願 言 思 伯 , 甘 心 首 疾 .
焉 得 諼 草 , 言 樹 之 背 . 願 言 思 伯 , 使 我 心 痗 .
Ah the rain, ah the rain!
the sun comes forth shining.
28 Fang Dongshu ping Gushi xuan 方 東 樹 評 古 詩 選 (rpt. Taibei: Lianjing
chuban shiye gongsi, 1975), 157.
29 Lu Qinli, 1: 451.
30 Ruan Yuan 阮 元 , Shisanjing zhushu 十 三 經 注 疏 . Mao shi zhengyi 毛 詩
正 義 (Taibei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1955), 140.

222
Owen: Xie Lingyun, Librarian in Exile
I am filled with desire for my lord,
the heart is overfull, the head sick.
How can I get the plant of forgetfulness.
and plant it behind the house?
I am filled with desire for my lord,
it makes me heartsick.
When mei appears in later texts, it is often in the compound xinmei
心 痗 , literally “heart-sick.” I have deliberately mistranslated the
first line of the Shijing passage above (which should mean “May it
rain!”) for the sake of Xie Lingyun’s poem. Rain and something
like depression seem to come together here, continuing in the next
phrase. Hundian 昏 墊 , lamely translated as “overwhelmed,” was
the term for the mind’s confusion and the physical flooding suffered
in the great flood described in the Shu (IV.I.1): “Mighty waters
inundate the heavens; spreading surges encircle the mountains and
spill over hills; the folk below are overwhelmed” 洪 水 滔 天 , 浩 浩 懷
山 襄 陵 , 下 民 昏 墊 . 31 The hun of hundian is precisely the sense of
darkness or shadow, confusion. Xie Lingyun’s use of “allusion” here
seems to be a way to represent depression.
Out of this line archaically resonant with despondency,
confusion, and water, the poet, who we see now as only a wayfarer
in a guest lodge, rises and gazes out into the darkening scene. What
he sees is a vision emerging out of old poetry, in this case the coda
of “Calling Back the Soul” 招 魂 . 32 The speaker is galloping in the
darkness with the king, which is somehow linked to the wandering
soul of that other famous exile, Qu Yuan, wandering, mad, in the
southern wilderness:
Those on foot reached to where we charged,
and the hunt-leader galloped ahead.
We curbed their stampede to an easy gait,
then bent the chariots round to the right.
With the king I dashed through the fens,
we raced to see who would be the first.
The king himself made the shot,
步 及 驟 處 兮 誘 騁 先
抑 騖 若 通 兮 引 車 右 還
與 王 趨 夢 兮 課 後 先
君 王 親 發 兮 憚 青 兕
31 Ibid., Shang shu 尚 書 , 66.
32 Chuci jiaoshi, 142-3.

Early Medieval China 10-11.1 (2004) 223
the black buffalo was slain.
Red brightness is follow by night,
the time does not let us linger.
Marsh orchids cover the trail,
the path here fades away.
The river rolls in swollen floods,
above there are maples.
The eyes reach a full thousand leagues
wounding the heart in spring.
O soul! Turn back!
Alas for the Southland.
朱 明 承 夜 兮 時 不 可 以 淹
皐 蘭 被 徑 兮 斯 路 漸
湛 湛 江 水 兮 上 有 楓
極 千 里 兮 傷 春 心
魂 兮 歸 來 哀 江 南
The “lotus first coming out on the pool” is also from earlier
“Calling Back the Soul,” the first four syllables verbatim as a line,
and the “pool” from the preceding line, indicating where the
lotuses were growing. If the poet looks out on diverging paths, he
also sees that “marsh orchids cover the trail”: the soul of the sick
and dying man, a heartsick Qu Yuan, wants to go home, but the
way is disappearing.
It is easy to get lost in the accumulating echoes of earlier texts,
but they have both a pattern and a flavor. “Stopping by My Villa in
Shining” is closely engaged with Tao Qian and has few of the
archaic echoes of “Visiting South Pavilion.” Here, however, lost
bearings are everywhere; darkness is coming on; if the poet is only
a sojourner, the paths that lead away from this place are covered
over; sickness and depression gradually modulate to the wandering
soul, like Qu Yuan. The references of words blurs: the “red
brightness,” 朱 明 , which in “Calling Back the Soul” referred to the
daylight, seems to come back in its more common sense as the
attribute of summer. 33
33 Li Shan 李 善 (d. 689) cites the Erya 爾 雅 , defining zhuming 朱 明 as
summer. Xiao Tong, Wen xuan (Taibei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1987), 1041. Huang
Jie has zhuming as summer coming in; but by his citation of Huananzi 淮 南 子
regarding the heavy rains in the last month of summer, Li Shan clearly takes
summer’s zhuming as passing on. Huang Jie 黃 節 , Xie Kangle shi zhu 謝 康 樂 詩
注 (rpt. Taibei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1967), 79-80. The lotuses first coming out in
line seven strongly suggests that this is the transition from spring to summer.
The blurring of referents is proper: all brightness and clarity is going.

224
Owen: Xie Lingyun, Librarian in Exile
We have something of textual free association. To be at a
“guest lodge” and notice “paths diverging” makes him less the
governor than the “passing traveler.” What makes the passing
traveler stay? Old words provide that answer, from Laozi 35:
“Music [medicine] and fine food, / the passing traveler stays” 樂
[ 藥 ] 與 餌 , 過 客 止 . 34 These should be the pleasures of the senses,
with the reading yue 樂 , “music”; but the figure of illness,
“heartsickness” and depression turned to physical debilitation, calls
for medicine, yao 藥 .
Flood and the change of seasons become the “autumn floods”
of Zhuangzi, leading not to the vastness of the ocean (gui), but gui
as return home, to rest the shadow that frightens one into constant
motion. The last lines are the usual Xie Lingyun closure, looking
for someone to understand him and the way he sees the world. All
the commentators agree that liangzhi 良 知 should mean a “good
friend”—and clearly does so by the beginning of the next
century—but Xie Lingyun the librarian must have known Mencius
VIIA.15: “He who knows without reflection, knows intuitively” 所
不 慮 而 知 者 , 其 良 知 也 . He does seek a good friend, but a good
friend who “knows without reflection.”
Throughout his poetry Xie Lingyun is less using allusion than
recognizing the references of his textual learning in his life and the
landscape. In one version, the previously read text is possibly xu
虛 , “empty”; through experience they may become shi 實 , “actual.”
Such texts seek confirmation in experience and the world—though
confirmation does not always come. At other times fragments of
old textual knowledge appear without being sought. Xie reads
hexagrams in the landscape in “On Climbing Green Screen
Mountain in Yongjia” 登 永 嘉 綠 嶂 山 and in “Fuchun Isle” 富 春 渚 :
34 Huang Jie cites Yao Jichuan’s 姚 姬 傳 proposed emendation of 藥 餌 to 樂
餌 on the basis of Laozi’s 樂 與 餌 , 過 客 止 . In the Six Dynasties, this is cited as
yaoer 藥 餌 rather than yueer 樂 餌 . It is clear the phrase refers to the Laozi
passage in Bao Zhao’s “The Bitter Sorrows of the Poor Man” 代 貧 賤 苦 愁 行 :
“Music and fine food shame the passing traveler” 藥 餌 愧 過 客 (Lu Qinli, 2:
1268). We can see, however, that this is understood as “medicine and fine food”
rather than “music and fine food” in a line by Jiang Zong 江 總 (519-94):
“Dwelling in seclusion, I swallow medicine and fine food” 幽 居 服 藥 餌 (Lu
Qinli, 3: 2586).

Early Medieval China 10-11.1 (2004) 225
“Nature” is read in terms of textual knowledge, texts which make
authoritative claims on the meaning of Nature’s images. 35
When we have a strong sense of the textuality of his gaze, it
often gives a force to the phrasing that is otherwise flat. In “Seven-
League Rapids” 七 里 瀨 , 36 he concludes:
目 睹 嚴 子 瀨 , 想 屬 任 公 釣 . 誰 謂 今 古 殊 , 異 代 可 同 調 .
With my own eyes I have seen Yanzi’s Rapids,
which my fancy links to the fishing of Duke Ren.
Who claims that past and present differ?—
different ages can share the same temper.
It is not simply that he sees, but in seeing he recognizes what he
already knows; it is not just that he “sees” Yanzi’s Rapids, but that
he sees them “with his own eyes.” This is the model that clinches
the movement of the poem from depression to exhilaration; but
then the poet’s mind moves again out from the world to old texts
and fancies (xiang 想 ), from Yan Guang to Zhuangzi’s Duke Ren.
Leaving his books, he comes to the text in the world, and from one
text to another text, which is the past echoing in the present.
All of the allusions in the poems above would have been easily
recognizable, except perhaps for Xie Lingyun’s personal engagement
with Tao Qian’s poem and the model of Tao Qian. And
because the reference to Tao Qian’s poems did not use the same
words, it would not have been later recognized as allusion per se.
If one looks for old texts in the world, they would probably not be
the most erudite, but the most familiar, virtually “known without
reflection,” suo bu lü er zhi 所 不 慮 而 知 . The question here is not a
display of erudition—though Xie was indeed very erudite—but
rather the ratification of the familiar.
We began this paper with the question of allusion. Later in the
tradition, allusion was often a way of ratifying a closed community
of learning—those who can understand. Once Li Shan appears
with his meticulous annotations, we presume a world of those who
do not have the texts “in their belly,” and thus cannot “know
without reflection.” When we read Xie Lingyun, we should never
forget that he was not simply (or even willingly) the poet in the
35 For these poems, see Lu Qinli, 2: 1160, 1162-3.
36 Lu Qinli, 2: 1160.

226
Owen: Xie Lingyun, Librarian in Exile
mountains wearing oddly shaped shoes; he was a librarian, one
who read, anthologized, and indeed catalogued what was probably
the best library of his day. He had more texts “in his belly” than
most of his contemporaries ever saw. Since those texts were “in his
belly” before he ever went forth into the mountains, he read the
physical world through those texts—and the scenes of the physical
world had a resonance for him that they had for few of his
contemporaries. In this sense, his constant wish for someone to
understand takes on a rather different flavor: it is not really
“intuitive knowledge,” liangzhi, but rather the cultural weight of
his perceptions and the terms of his thought. He could justifiably
feel that no one understood, because probably few in his age knew
enough to understand. Perhaps, like Li Shan, they could recognize
the source of a phrase; but they could not feel the weight of seeing
the past in the present.