Expounding on Liu Xizai’s Theory of “Zao Kong Luan Dao”

Abstract

The "General Survey of Arts" by Liu Xizai is an important work of literary and art criticism in the late Qing Dynasty, which discusses the issues related to prose, poetry, fu (descriptive prose interspersed with verse), ci (a type of classical Chinese poetry, originating in the Tang Dynasty and fully developed in the Song Dynasty) and qu (a type of verse for singing, which emerged in the Southern Song and Jin Dynasties and become popular in the Yuan Dynasty), calligraphy and Confucian classics argumentation in different categories. In the opinion of Liu Xizai, different categories of art have their own standards of creation and evaluation, but "zao kong luan dao" is one of the few ideas that runs through several arts. He used "zao kong luan dao" many times to make high comments on the works of the past dynasties, which differed from the original meaning of the expression and formed a great contrast with the mainstream views of historical theory and poetic theory on the need to avoid kong (emptiness) and luan (disorder). The unique artistic condition of "zao kong luan dao" is jointly shaped by the connotation of "having substance" and the creative techniques of "feng and xing", which reflects the characteristics of Liu Xizai's literary and artistic thoughts that are flexible, unconstrained, stable and inclusive.