Liu Xie’s (ca 465-521) attitude towards ornementation and artistry has often been described as ambivalent or contradictory : between personal involvement or even fascination on one hand, and obsessive condemnation or prohibition of excessive adornment in literary writing on the other. The value of the « chiselled dragon » (diaolong) metaphor, which Liu Xie chose as an emblem designed to identify the very nature, form and ambition of his own treatise (as J. R. Hightower and J. Y. Liu have stated long ago in Western languages), remains itself quite controversial. Taking as a starting point the fact that, by Liu Xie’s time, the usage of this metaphor had already made it, unambiguously, both common and laudatory enough so as to proclaim the glorious legitimacy of beautiful style, this paper tries to investigate the internal logic or presumable discrepancy of some statements on formal embellishment to be found in the Wenxin diaolong. In doing so, the paper does not aim to reconsider Liu Xie’s belonging to one of those literary trends that have been identified as « classicist », « new style » or « compromising ». It would rather try to relate this issue to former or contemporary statements and practices concerning the education of literati, as well as the selection and promotion of officials. Sui and Tang (not even considering later times) stereotyped criticism of the devastating ascendancy of poetry making and/or « worms carving » (diaochong) on Southern Dynasties administration and politics might serve here as a questionning point.