War and Poetry

Chapter 1 describes Gao Pian’s personal background and sketches the salient traits of his multi-faceted character. “Ancestral Geography” traces the clan history of the Bohai Gao to the Hebei-Manchurian borderlands and the northeastern Tang prefecture of Youzhou. “Military Men of Letters” outlines Gao Pian’s family legacy as a poet-general, giving particular attention to the example of his grandfather Gao Chongwen. “Patterns of Patronage” discusses the late Tang shift of the patronage system from the imperial court and the households of the central elite to the military headquarters of regional potentates. Gao Pian’s patronage of technical, religious, and literati retainers, among them several distinguished poets and authors, exemplifies this process. The section “Worldly Recluse” focuses on the religious dimension of Gao’s personality as a lay adept drawn to Daoist military strategy, alchemy, and the esoteric arts. Gao’s Daoist poetry shows how the upheavals of the period were reflected in lay religious experience and how Daoists sought to sublimate its violent conclusion.