1 - The early Wei emperors

Summary

Politics was at the center of Juan Chi's preoccupations, as it was of almost all Chinese poets of the Middle Ages. In the fourth and fifth centuries, indeed, ten of the greatest poets of the age were executed for political reasons, and a concern for politics, a yearning for participation in the life of the court at the center of the civilized world, can be felt in most of the poetry of the time, even in the bucolic poetry of the greatest poets of them all, T'ao Yüan-ming and Hsieh Ling-yün. There can be no doubt that Juan Chi was tormented by the state of contemporary political life and that his poetry reflects that torment to a very high degree. Many of the Chinese critics who have studied him see only this aspect of his work and they are surely wrong to neglect the philosophical and religious aspirations he expresses; but the political concern is there and, however obscure his satirical verses must forever remain and however ultimately unsatisfactory our analyses of them must be, we must begin by trying to understand as much of Juan Chi's attitude towards contemporary politics as we can.