New Music Bureau Poetry as Memorial: The True Significance of Yuan Zhen’s “Shangyang Baifa Ren”†

Abstract

This paper examines Yuan Zhen’s poem of 809, “Shangyang baifa ren” 上陽白髮人, a New Music Bureau poem with the same title as the more famous piece by Bai Juyi, while disputing the judgment of previous scholarship, which asserts that the poem is a thematically jumbled lament for palace women. In fact, the poem is a deliberate, two-pronged argument for the enfeoffment of princes. The poem addresses the problem of the enfeoffment of princes that was revived during the mid-Tang; Yuan has challenged the traditional function of Music Bureau poems by going beyond political critique, making the genre a platform to provide advice on governance, in a manner similar to memorials. This study highlights the innovative nature of Yuan’s New Music Bureau poetry. His New Music Bureau poems comment on the contemporary affairs indicated by the titles, but he often went deeper, to discuss the background of an issue or to offer his views of administration. Moreover, the political situation, particularly regarding the enfeoffment of princes, and Yuan’s own personal endeavors both contributed to the formulation of Yuan’s poem. Yuan’s use of poems as memorials challenges the traditional function of poetry, and exemplifies the mid-Tang trend of experimentation with genre.