The many voices of the lanting poems: Society and seclusion in the Eastern Jin

On the third day of the third month of 353 CE, Wang Xizhi (303-361) and a handful of friends and associates, including representatives from other prominent aristocratic families, gathered at the Lanting to celebrate the end of Spring by composing poetry in a drinking game and enjoying the scenery. Viewed in the immediate historical context of the Eastern Jin dynasty (317-420), the poems acquire a new significance as written examples of the construction and performance of the 'self' so crucial to the social and political lives of the literate class. The types of interactions and expressions that defined this social and political world are documented in the collection of historical anecdotes, Shishuo xinyu. Though these poetic expressions of identity had a definite social function, they also relied on a cultivated sense of loftiness that glorified the exploits of recluses who abandoned society completely. This paper seeks to examine the Lanting poems in relation to stories about their authors in the Shishuo xinyu in order to understand the role of poetry in the Eastern Jin construction of identity. This identity was informed by the importance of social bonds and communal interaction, the idealization of reclusion from courtly life, and character assessment and ranking based on philosophical rhetoric. The Lanting poems reveal tension in a society in which conformity and uniqueness had become bound together. Though tension was inevitable, the crafting of a social persona often relied upon a resolution of such opposing values.