How Verses on Walls Found a Universal Voice in Notebook Literature

<jats:p>As the forms and range of their contemplative poetry grew to maturity, the Chinese scholarly elite took to brushing verses on the walls of buildings where society moved and gathered—temples, monasteries, bridges, places of entertainment, above all government hostels strung out along the empire-wide communication routes. The inscriptions were ephemeral, like the buildings themselves, and are no longer physically there to be read. Yet a rich literature of this verse does come down to us. This was a reflective literature, overwhelmingly locating the writer in a physical or social setting that called forth an inner response. It was also a self-conscious literature, aware of its own ephemerality as buildings fell into disrepair over time, or swiftly-changing careers brought writers into new contact with walls they had inscribed in earlier years. That such verses survive to be read in later times is because many were copied to the paper medium, transcribed into notebooks and literary collections, then printed or sanctioned in forms that survived as part of a recognized literary heritage. The present paper looks at five examples to study the random dynamics of that process.</jats:p>