Other Poetry on the An Lushan Rebellion: Notes on Time and Transcendence in Tang Verse

Abstract

abstract:This article examines poetry about the An Lushan rebellion (755–763) written during its course by poets other than Li Bai and Du Fu. Despite the centrality of the rebellion to narratives of Chinese literary history, this corpus of poetry is rarely discussed, in large part because it does not provide the sort of visceral witness to the cataclysm that later readers have expected from verse written in troubled times. Instead, this poetry almost always seeks to transfigure or transcend its historical ground through the invocation of alternate frames by which author and readers come to stand apart from current events. This observation offers us a window onto the relationship between poetic practice during the eighth century and longstanding commentarial ideals about poetry's relationship to history, as well as a way of recontextualizing Li Bai's and Du Fu's innovative poetic responses to the rebellion.摘要:本文討論安史之亂中李白、杜甫以外的詩作。安史之亂於文學史意義重大，但本文所述詩歌因缺乏後世期待的對戰亂切身經歷的描寫，鮮為前人論及。反之，這些詩歌刻意疏離當下，以美化並超越歷史經驗。借此亦可考察八世紀詩歌創作和傳統批評理想間的關係。