Chapter 3 - A Recluse’s Frustration? Reconsidering Yu Xin’S (513–581) “Fu on a Small Garden”

Summary

THE FU AS a genre is usually said to have reached its peak during the Han dynasties. The period witnessed the flourishing of the epideictic fu, namely, the lengthy and lavishly written rhapsody characterized by its use of binomes, extensive cataloguing, and hyperbole. The fu, especially the epideictic fu, is now recognized as part of the cultural splendour of the Han empire and thus has contributed to its glory. Nonetheless, the fu never faded away after the collapse of the Han and continued to be written in the following millennia. During the Six Dynasties, the fu shifted its focus from metropolises and royal hunts to a much more diverse set of topics, ranging from natural phenomena, flora and fauna, daily objects such as zithers, flutes, and mirrors, to lived experience of the writers such as reflections about military expeditions, vicissitudes of the world, and personal choices about serving the court and retreating from society. Accompanying the relatively smaller scope and more diverse range of subjects was the shift of rhetoric and style. Although lavish verbal display is still an important component of some fu in the Six Dynasties, in many other fu pieces during this period, we see noteworthy changes in the use of diction and imagery. To be specific, fu pieces increasingly adopt vocabulary and images more directly associated with the immediate surroundings and emotions of the writers.

One of the most significant attributes of the fu that marked its development in the Six Dynasties is its emotional expressiveness and thus a stronger presence of the poetic persona.Because of the smaller scope and size compared to their predecessors in the Han, the fu pieces during this period are sometimes called shuqing xiaofu 抒情小賦 (lit. “shorter rhapsodies that express emotions”). But the notion of “shortness” is only a relative idea. In general, rhapsodies still tend to be longer than shi poems, the latter ofwhich usually run no more than a dozen lines. The longer length of fu allows more space for the writer to be not only elaborate in their description, but also more eloquent in their unfolding of logic, and more articulate in their display of sentiments.