Objects from Jiangnan and the ‘Universe in the Pot’: The Aesthetic of Bai Ju-yi’s Lu-Dao Garden
Resource
臺大中文學報, 35, 085-124
Journal
臺大中文學報
Journal Issue
35
Pages
85-124
Date Issued
2011-12
Date
2011-12
Author(s)
Abstract
Bai Ju-yi, with his creativity and strong sense of gardens, is a landmark in the developmental history of Chinese literati’s garden. He traveled extensively and had abundant garden-founding experiences, about which he left numerous works to document the backgrounds and the founding processes of his garden designs. These works offer later generations plentiful materials to explore the literati garden-founding activity in the Tong Dynasty.
Among all of the gardens that Bai had worked on, his main effort was devoted to the Xia Gui Gardens in the Wei County, the Lu-Dao Garden in Luoyang, the New Chang Garden in Chang’an and the Lushan Garden in the Jiang State. The former three functioned as dwelling houses, while the Lushan Garden served as “another place” divided from Bai’s mundane life when he suffered from severe frustration in his official career. Therefore, its space design and intended purpose can be easily distinguished from those of the other three.
The Lu-Dao Garden is the most representative garden, on which Bai had spent about twenty years in his late life when his position was a sinecure in Luoyang. With the adequate distance from power authorities, he had plenty of time intoning his literary works and was able to ripen his concept of recluse life. The prolonged constructing process brought about the exquisiteness of the garden that provided various aspects for researchers to observe.
This essay firstly depicts the construction of the Lu-Dao Garden, showing how Bai creatively renovated this garden on the basic of its original structure. Then Bai’s collection of objects from Jiangnan will be discussed to indicate how the poet endowed complex feelings and a multiple reflection of life to these objects. The relation between the poet and the garden reveals the development of the ‘universe in the pot’ concept. In the last part of this essay, the ‘heterotopia’ concept from Michel Foucault will be used to tease out the nature of the Lu-Dao Garden: a field Bai created for the purpose of displaying his self-reconstruction.
Subjects
白居易、履道園、中隱、壺中、差異地點 Bai Ju-Yi, Lu-Dao Garden, recluse, the universe in the pot, heterotopia
Type
journal article
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