李德裕と平泉莊

Abstract

Li De-yu, a famous politician in mid-Tang, is also the owner of the private garden Villa Ping-quan, which is one of the most popular and unique gardens of that time. A lot of works about Villa Ping-quan have been written by him, and they could be called a kind of "Garden literature". By considering his garden literature, his cultural background and moral structure must be explored. The Villa Ping-quan has important meanings for Li De-yu. First, Villa Ping-quan is a mental as well as an actual hometown for him. Li family's grave has been moved to Luo-yang 洛陽 when his grandfather Li Qi-yun 李棲筠 started serving for the central government. De-yu said in his Ping-quan shan-ju jie zi-sun ji 平泉山居戒子孫記 ("The Note advising descendants about Villa Ping-quan") that his father always had a longing for the Yi-Luo 伊・洛 area. De-yu seems to have inherited the Villa from his father. After De-yu retires he also wishes to live in Villa Ping-quan, but this does not become true. Because of political problems, he always has to be distantly separated from the villa, and can compose his poems therfore only with imagination. While his works describe how peaceful, warm, and beautiful Villa Ping-quan is, he often expresses sadness and the unfulfilled wish to live there. Secondly, Villa Ping-quan is, so to speak, his "private museum". De-yu is an eager collector of rare stones and plants, which he displays in Ping-quan's garden. His eagerness makes him write Ping-quan shan-ju cao-mu ji 平泉山居草木記 ("The record of plants collected in Villa Ping-quan") and a lot of poems about collections. These poems have two remarkable points. First, though he writes many poems about stones, these poems never deviate from traditionally used expressions. He feels great interest in writing about many kind of stones rather than being deeply associated with special one to endow unique value. Secondly, his plant poems do not express pleasure or pity for the plant's transformations, which is often expressed in plant poems. What has to be noticed is that he not only writes like a poet who admires the beauty of nature, but also observes like a scholar who carefully describes his collections. Li De-yu's Ping-quan shan-ju jie zi-sun ji strictly advices his descendants not to sell or give the villa and his collection away. But such a strong fixation only invites criticisms of the future generations. In other words it could be said that Ping-quan shan-ju jie zi-sun ji also shows intensive sorrow of a man who must leave his collections behind for which he devoted so much. In this way, by considering Ping-quan poems, we can see the reality and ideal of the man who lived in the mid-Tang period.