The Poetry of Retreat

As noted in the essay in this volume on “The Imaginative Universe of Chinese Literature,” one of the most enduring assumptions in the Chinese tradition was that any consideration of the self inevitably implicated consideration of that self’s relation to a larger, public sphere. In Chinese history, this issue focused on the nature of an individual’s engagement in the running of the state—hence the centrality of retreat, which in this context was the most common means of signaling one’s refusal to become politically involved (whether for reasons of lofty principle or mere expediency), as a literary theme. And indeed, in discussing the topic of retreat in classical Chinese poetry one could incorporate the works of virtually every major figure in the tradition, for it is a theme with a long, broad, and varied history. Even in the pre-Confucian Book of Songs, for example (compiled by the sixth century b.c.e.) one can find an anonymous poem (no. 206) whose first stanza reads: Don’t take the big carriage: You’ll just get dusty. Don’t ponder a hundred worries: You’ll just become ill. ¹