Revisiting the Scene of the Party: A Study of the Lanting Collection

Abstract

The Lanting (sometimes rendered as “Orchid Pavilion”) gathering in 353 is one of the most famous literati parties in Chinese history. 1 This gathering inspired the celebrated preface written by the great calligrapher Wang Xizhi 王羲之 (303–361), another preface by the poet Sun Chuo 孫綽 (314–371), and forty-one poems composed by some of the most intellectually active men of the day. 2 The poems are not often studied since they have long been overshadowed by Wang’s preface as a work of calligraphic art and have been treated as examples of xuanyan (“discourse on the mysterious [Dao]”) poetry, 3 whose fate in literary history suffered after influential Six Dynasties writers decried its damage to the classical tradition. 4 Historian Tan Daoluan 檀道鸞 (fl. 459) traced the trend to its full-blown development in Sun Chuo and Xu Xun 許詢 (fl. ca. 358), who were said to have continued the work of inserting Daoist terms into poetry that was started by Guo Pu 郭璞 (276–324); they moreover “added the [Buddhist] language of the three worlds [past, present, and future], and the normative style of the Shi 詩 and Sao 騷 came to an end.” 5 Critic Zhong Rong 鍾嶸 (ca. 469–518) then faulted their works for lacking appeal. His critique was nothing short of scathing: he argued