The irretrievability of the past: nostalgia in Chinese literature from Tang–Song poetry to Ming–Qing san-wen

Abstract

Nostalgia is an overwhelming trope in Chinese literature. Finding paradigmatic expression in Tang–Song poetry, nostalgia was to become a standard motif in imperial Chinese literature. This article argues that the dominance of the nostalgic motif in Chinese literature is related to the Chinese philosophical conception of time. Unlike the Western tradition which treats time as an inferior to eternal being, the Chinese tradition understands the reality of experience within becoming itself. The remembrance of time’s passing thus becomes a kind of metaphysical experience, to remember the past is to remember that humans are indelibly part of an eternal cycle of change. The self in memory, concomitantly, contra critics who would read autobiography into the “dream reminiscence” (梦忆) genre of late imperial Chinese literature, is thus evoked not as a monument to the self, but to show its ultimate passing. The nostalgic construction of an idealised moment in one’s past, pregnant with the tragic presumption of a happiness never realised in actuality, is paralleled by the literary topos of paradise. Structurally similar to the operation of nostalgia, the encounter with paradise in folklores such as 《刘晨阮肇入天台》 and literati essays such as 《桃花源记》, was a halcyon moment in the protagonist’s life which cannot be regained. The literary topos of paradise in the Chinese in contrast to the pastoral of the Western tradition, thus exists within time. Nostalgia as does paradise, points toward the metaphysical promise of happiness lost in an irretrievable past.