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This study explores Qian Qianyi’s (1582-1664) vision for the poetics of Ming loyalism: shishi, “poet-historian” or “poetry-history.” Qian’s theory of shishi synthesizes paramount values of Chinese historiographical and poetic traditions. Although he draws heavily on ancient intellectual and literary precursors, his purpose is not to restore the values of antiquity. Qian strives, rather, to demarcate a poetic space for Ming loyalism, a space and value Qian no doubt desires to share with the Ming loyalists; and to devise, for this line of writing, a hermeneutic strategy for his contemporaries and posterity. We will expose elements of this theory in a close reading of an important essay that Qian wrote in 1656, “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” (Preface to Hu Zhiguo’s Poetry), and an examination of related literary, cultural and historical contexts. Despite its brevity, this essay is of great significance, critically and polemically, in the contexts of Ming poetics and the Ming-Qing dynastic transition. More specifically, it not only reflects the general literary temperament of the Ming remnants, but it also provides a critical apparatus with which to approach the kind of poetry Qian himself labored over in his later years, which became his most celebrated.
We argue that Qian’s essay can be seen as targeted at the Ming loyalists and their sympathizers, in their day and in the future. A promise to the loyalists and a guide to posterity, the message can be interpreted on three levels. First, it issues an assurance: Qian assures the Ming loyalists that posterity will remember them, through their writings, just as the Ming people remember the Song loyalists. It is meant to impress on every loyalist the urgent necessity to recora. Second, there is a summons: Qian urges the Ming loyalists to write shishi, the most effective record of their times. Third, Qian offers a reading strategy for posterity: read between the lines to flesh out the Ming loyalists’ intent as embodied in those “subtle words.” For the loyalists, Qian’s promise is an immortality secured by writing a particular kind of verse, in a time when the loyalists were marginalized and had no authority except in the realm of literature. The writing of “Hu Zhiguo shi xu” might be an act of self-redemption on Qian’s part, too. Qian knew if he could inscribe his own name on the monument of the loyalists, posterity would form a more favorable impression of him, and save him from the disgrace he had to bear in his mortal life.
