Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange in the publication of this book.

Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Pushkin Fund toward the cost of publishing this book.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
How to read Chinese poetry : a guided anthology /
edited by Zong-qi Cai.
p. cm.
Chinese and English.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-13940-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-13941-0 (paper : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-51188-9 (electronic)

1. Chinese poetry—History and criticism. 2. Chinese
poetry—Translations into English. I. Cai, Zong-qi.
II. Title.
PL2308.H65 2007
895.1’1009—dc22
2007023263
002

Columbia University Press books are printed
on permanent and durable acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A NOTE ON HOW TO USE THIS ANTHOLOGY

The goal of this anthology is to help students overcome language barriers and engage with Chinese poetical texts in ways that yield as much aesthetic pleasure and intellectual insight as one gets from the originals.

This anthology features 143 famous poems composed over a period of almost three millennia stretching from the early Zhou all the way to the Qing, the last of China’s dynasties, which ended in 1911. These poems are all called “classical poems,” and classical they truly are—in terms of both their pastness and their revered quality. Yet many of them, especially those written by Tang and Song masters, are amazingly modern or contemporary in the sense that they are being fondly read and recited by millions of Chinese people. In fact, when educated Chinese are called on to recite some poems, what they recite are most likely classical poems rather than those written by modern or contemporary poets. Moreover, many of them continue to write poems in classical forms. So, unlike classical Western poetry, classical Chinese poetry may be regarded as a living tradition, enhanced by the audio-video gadgets of the information age.

A student of Chinese language and culture can and should be an active participant in this great tradition. To aid in the learning process, we introduce here a new approach to the presentation and the interpretation of Chinese poetical texts.

The learning of Chinese poetry should, we believe, begin with a deep, intense engagement with poetical texts—both in the original and in translation. But most major English-language anthologies of Chinese poetry offer only the English translation. Under such circumstances, students cannot possibly understand how diverse poetic elements work together in the original. In translation, many Chinese poems, especially those written in a highly condensed style, can easily appear hackneyed.

Real engagement with poetical texts should be nothing less than an intense visual, oral, and aural experience. Like Chinese readers, students should be able to see the physical shape of a poem in Chinese, read it out loud, and hear it read fluently in the original. So, departing from the common practice of presenting only English translations, we provide Chinese texts, romanizations, a sound recording, and word-for-word translations as well. With only a few exceptions, the poems presented in this anthology are translated by the contributors.

The inclusion of the Chinese texts reveals the nonalphabetical nature of Chinese writing. The romanizations make apparent the monosyllabic and tonal nature of Chinese characters. They carry tone marks that will aid students in reading the poems aloud or reciting them in modern standard Chinese (Mandarin). In some chapters, we also give samples of reconstructed ancient and medieval pronunciations to show how the poems were probably pronounced when they were composed. Some pronunciations are lost in modern Chinese and are preserved only in southern dialects, such as Cantonese. Reading ancient and medieval poems in those dialects restores some of the lost aural nuances.

The sound recording (available online at http://www.cup.columbia.edu/static/cai-sound-files) adds an invaluable dimension to the reading of the poems, turning the silent characters into living speech. We urge readers to listen to the recording repeatedly in order to get a good sense of Chinese metrics. In Chinese poetry, the prescribed rhythm of sounds does not merely yield musical pleasure and “an echo to the sense,” as Alexander Pope said about English poetry, but it is the sense itself because it dictates how words are arranged to generate meaning.

The word-for-word translations, provided for all the tonally regulated poems, afford a direct look at the noninflectional nature of Chinese and demonstrate how the absence of inflectional tags changes the entire dynamic of reading. Instead of being told the poet’s feelings and thoughts, we are often expected to experience them ourselves while creatively engaging words and images in a dynamic interplay. This is particularly true of the highly condensed and allusive works produced by the literati poets. For learners of Chinese, the word-for-word translations provide a handy collection of glosses that should facilitate their learning of characters.

A number of other features of this anthology are crucial to a full comprehension of Chinese poetry. To begin with, each of the 143 poems is accompanied by a detailed commentary, allowing readers to gain a deep appreciation of the intricate interplay of word, image, and sound in Chinese. In analyzing the 143 poems, we have applied various modern methods of close reading and have drawn from contemporary critical theories dealing with oral performance, gender, power, and aesthetics. In addition, this anthology offers two systems of cross-reference. Names and terms in boldface type alert readers to relevant entries in the glossary-index, which contains additional information and references to related subjects of interest. The thematic table of contents offers an equally extensive system of cross-references at a broader level. It surveys the intellectual and cultural milieu of the poems as well as the development of themes, prosody, diction, syntax, and structure in Chinese poetry. By means of these aids, we hope to provide the kind of anthology thus far available to only Chinese readers, one that will help raise the knowledge and appreciation of Chinese poetry among English-language audiences to a new level.

Z. C.

MAJOR CHINESE DYNASTIES

SYMBOLS

Introduction

Major Aspects of Chinese Poetry

Poetry enjoys an unrivaled status in traditional Chinese literature and culture. The Shijing (The Book of Poetry), compiled around 600 B.C.E., is the earliest extant collection of Chinese poems and was regarded by Confucius as an essential part of his educational program. He considered its mastery as a prerequisite for anyone entrusted with state business. In subsequent dynasties, the status of poetry steadily increased. Not only did scholars assiduously study the Book of Poetry as a Confucian classic, but they also occupied themselves with writing poetry in ever more diverse and complex forms. Poetic composition became their indispensable medium of self-expression, social criticism, and even career advancement. Poetic excellence often earned them social prestige as well as entry into officialdom. Common people were equally engaged in composing, chanting, and singing poetry. Their oral tradition was instrumental to the rise of all major Chinese poetic genres.

This anthology traces the evolution of this great poetic tradition as it presents 143 famous poems composed over the long period of almost three millennia. As we read through these poems, we shall gain insight into the major aspects of Chinese poetry. To prepare for our intense engagement with the poems, let me provide highlights of these aspects.

THEMES

A quick and easy way to get acquainted with Chinese poetry is to review the eleven themes listed in the thematic table of contents, which lie at the core of the evolving Chinese poetic canon.

“Love and Courtship” is a prominent theme in the airs of the Book of Poetry. Many of the airs are bona fide erotic love songs, featuring unabashed accounts of a tryst or an affair. In these songs, women show few signs of inhibition and, indeed, are often the daring and resourceful initiators of a secret affair. Such uninhibited, self-willed women are not seen in later literati compositions, with the exception of Yuan song poems (sanqu [chap. 16]). In most literati compositions, women often fall into two rather static types: the beautiful and the abandoned.

“The Beautiful Woman” shows how the literati reconceptualized woman as an abstract, static object of desire—for spiritual fulfillment, sensual pleasure, or both. In “On Encountering Trouble” (C2.3), by Qu Yuan (340?-278 B.C.E.), the first-known literati poet, we can already see feminine beauty conspicuously transformed into a symbol of moral virtue. This allegorization of feminine beauty continues to figure prominently in later poetry and criticism. At the same time, the beautiful woman often appears as a tangible, pleasurable object of a male poet’s gaze (C12.5). By depicting her with evocative yet elegant diction, a male poet seeks to play out his erotic fantasy in a “cultured” fashion. This aestheticization of erotic engagement, real or imagined, is a prominent feature of countless poems about palace ladies and courtesans. According to many critics, some poems on palace ladies written by the Liang poets were also, if not solely, meant to convey the Buddhist belief about the illusory nature of human existence (C7.6). In these poems, the allegorical and the sensual, the sacred and the profane, seem to be intertwined.

“The Abandoned Woman” is a theme that usually involves female impersonation by literati poets. It is true that many anonymous yuefu and ci poems on this theme strike us as authentic self-expressions of real-world abandoned women. If composed by a male literatus, however, a poem on the abandoned woman is most likely a thinly veiled lamentation of his own. By using the persona of an abandoned woman, a literatus hoped to touch his estranged patron and thus increase his chances of regaining his favor (C5.4-7).

“Eulogy and Admonition” is probably a major ancient theme that ceased to be prominent after the Han. Most of the great odes and hymns in the Book of Poetry are eulogies to dynastic founders, mythical or historical (C1.13). Along with praise for dynastic founders, these poems often contain admonitory passages, usually a general warning to the Zhou people rather than a full-fledged admonition directed to a specific ruler. The theme of eulogy and admonition reaches its high point in the large fu (dafu) of the Han. In the grand fu on the Han capitals by Ban Gu (32- 92) and Zhang Heng (78-139), we see a profound transformation of the eulogistic tradition. If the odes and hymns in the Book of Poetry praise the ancient rulers by enumerating their heroic deeds, these famous fu works eulogize the living Han emperors through an encyclopedic display of the splendors of their empire. The transformation of the admonitory tradition is equally profound in the large fu. In “Fu on the Imperial Park” (C3.1), by Sima Xiangru (179-117 B.C.E.), for instance, we observe the author tactfully admonishing the emperor for his indulgence in hunting by telling a story about an extravagant imperial hunting excursion. Lord No-such and the Son of Heaven, two key figures of that story, mirror the author and his intended reader or listener, Emperor Wu. This admonitory poem is a far cry from the general, impersonal admonitions of the Book of Poetry.

New themes on the lives of the literati rose to take center stage during the Six Dynasties period. These themes reflect the three worlds in which the literati lived: the worlds of culture and politics, of nature, and of the imagination.

“The Wandering Man” (youzi) is an enduring theme about the world of culture and politics. It comprises a broad array of depressing topos and motifs: the physical hardships of travel on official duty, the unreliability of political patrons, the treacherousness of court politics, the spectacle of famine and exploitation, the incessant frontier wars, the prolonged introspection of an insomniac man, the departure of a beloved friend, and, above all, the constant homesickness of a scholar-official. Whether for genuine self-expression or as pure literary exercise, literati poets habitually chose to portray themselves as lonely, world-weary wanderers perpetually yearning for home. Of course, in reality the world of culture and politics is not all travail and suffering. “The Depiction of Things” speaks to the leisurely lifestyle enjoyed by some literati poets closely associated with the imperial court.

The world of nature, by contrast, furnishes a backdrop for two themes marked by spontaneous joy and spiritual fulfillment: “Landscape” and “Farming and Reclusion.” For Xie Lingyun (385-433), Xie Tiao (464-499), and others caught in the throes of public life, a landscape-viewing journey provided a welcome escape from cares and offered pleasures of the mind unobtainable by viewing palace ladies or objects of culture. To lofty-minded poets like Tao Qian (365?-427), it is a tranquil farmstead that promised deliverance from the corrupt political world and a transcendent union with the Dao, the everlasting process of nature. Together, the two Xies’ landscape poetry and Tao Qian’s farmstead poetry marked the epoch-making discovery of nature as a primary poetic subject in its own right.

The world of the imagination is the venue for two other important themes: “Imagined Journey to the Celestial World” and “Remembrances.” Transcendental roaming (youxian), a theme first found in ancient shamanistic songs (C2.1-3), is of perennial interest to literati poets. It enables them to fantasize a solitary escape from the mundane world into a pure land of eternal bliss. It also furnishes them with an effective means of ridiculing all worldly attachments. Reflections on history (yongshi) also offer an imaginary flight of the mind, but one within the bounds of historical time and place. They often engender a somber brooding over an irrevocable loss—the death of a loved one, the destruction of a mighty army, the loss of an empire, to name just a few. They tend to end with a melancholy lamentation over the evanescence of all things, grand or small, and the ultimate futility of all human endeavors. Not all historical reflections, however, are negative and gloomy. By looking to the past, some poets, like Tao Qian, found spiritual companions and noble models for emulation in times of adversity.

All these literati-centered themes, once firmly established during the Six Dynasties, remained preeminent in the poetic canon until the twentieth century. After the Six Dynasties, the creative energy of Chinese poets seems to have been directed to broadening and deepening these themes rather than searching for new ones. Think, for instance, of the full flowering of landscape poetry and farmstead poetry during the Tang and Song. Consider, also, how the theme of “Hardship and Injustice” was brought to a new height by Bai Juyi (772-846) and Yuan Zhen (779-831), the leaders of the New Yuefu movement. In revisiting old themes, Tang and Song poets displayed extraordinary innovation and sophistication in blending culture, nature, and imagination. In the pentasyllabic regulated verses by Du Fu (712-770), for instance, the worlds of nature and man are deftly merged into a grand cosmic vision (C8.1). In the finest heptasyllabic regulated verses by Du Fu and Li Shangyin (813?-858), contemporary politics, dynastic history, legends, and personal experiences are seamlessly interwoven into a tapestry of exquisite beauty (C9.3, C9.6, and C18.1).

The dominance of literati themes inevitably led to a marginalization or even an exclusion of themes deemed irreconcilable with refined literati taste. For instance, most literati poets sought to sanitize erotic songs by means of allegory or aestheticization. Bawdy themes were thus suppressed, with no small loss to the Chinese poetic tradition. Hence, there is an absence of much-needed comic relief and the loss of an opportunity to turn comic ribaldry into an effective means of social and religious satire, as Geoffrey Chaucer did so admirably in The Canterbury Tales and John Donne in his metaphysical poetry. Not until the Yuan dynasty, when Chinese literati had become disenfranchised and had lost their role as defenders of mores and refined taste, did they begin to embrace bawdy themes in song poems and drama (zaju), two new genres of popular entertainment on which many of them depended for their livelihood (chap. 16). Besides comic relief, ribaldry allowed Yuan literati writers to mock their own shattered dreams of officialdom and thereby dissipate their despair under the oppressive Mongol rule. Indeed, a rambunctious love poem often belies the heartbreaking poignancy of such self-mockery.

Literati dominance also meant the virtual exclusion of women poets from the canon. Most major poetic anthologies feature only a tiny number of women poets, typically the wives, concubines, or courtesans of the imperial family and renowned literati figures. Relegated to the very end of those anthologies, these women poets became a mere appendage to the male literati poets. As I have noted, male poets even appropriated the voices of women. So when women poets sought to express themselves, they had to find ingenious ways to negotiate around those voices. Some talented women poets rose to this challenge and successfully created genuine, effective voices of their own. Li Qingzhao (1084-1151), for example, expressed her personal feelings in ci poems of the greatest lyric intensity and finest artistry, which earned her a prominent place in a Chinese poetic pantheon otherwise made up solely of men (C13.4).

GENRES AND SUBGENRES

On a more abstract plane, the history of Chinese poetry may be understood in terms of the evolution of its major genres and subgenres, which are extensively examined in this anthology. There are five major genres in Chinese poetry: shi, sao, fu, ci, and qu. Each has traditionally been labeled with a particular historical period in which it achieved dominance: Chu ci, Han fu, Tang shi, Song ci, and Yuan qu. Such labeling may give the wrong impression of a unilinear development of one genre supplanting another. In fact, all five genres continued to be used and even flourished well beyond the dynasties that witnessed their preeminence. With the exception of sao, they remained influential until the twentieth century.

Each of the five genres has a unique pedigree of subgenres. The pedigree of the shi subgenre is the most complex of all. Owing to an almost uninterrupted development of about two and a half millennia, it had an ever-expanding corpus that continually needed to be reorganized. Tetrasyllabic shi poetry, represented by the Book of Poetry, is the oldest shi subgenre. The Book of Poetry is divided by provenance and function into three groups: airs (feng), odes (ya), and hymns (song) (chap. 1). During the Han, tetrasyllabic shi poetry experienced a radical decline and gradually became a niche subgenre of court eulogies and hymns (C4.1-3). This made room for the meteoric rise of pentasyllabic shi poetry. This new shi subgenre emerged toward the end of the Han (chaps. 4 and 5) and quickly achieved dominance in the Six Dynasties period (chaps. 6 and 7). By the sixth century, the shi corpus had become so large that Xiao Tong (501-531), Crown Prince Zhaoming of Liang, undertook to divide it almost entirely by theme into twenty-four subgenres. This new thematic scheme, however, did not catch on. The Early Tang witnessed the rise and explosive growth of tonally regulated shi poetry. It was not long before regulated shi poetry came to rival its old unregulated brethren in importance, if not in sheer volume. This gave rise to a broad bipartite division: “ancient-style shi poetry” (gushi, guti shi) and “recent-style shi poetry” (jinti shi). The former includes all earlier tonally unregulated shi poetry: pentasyllabic poems, irregular-line yuefu poems, and others. The latter encompasses two subgenres: regulated verse (lüshi [chaps. 8, 9, 15, and 17]) and quatrains (jueju [chaps. 10, 15, and 17]). These two new subgenres are, in turn, divided by per-line syllabic count into pentasyllabic and heptasyllabic. This complex multilevel scheme of classification was extensively employed in Ming and Qing anthologies of shi poetry.

The pedigrees of the other four genres are much more straightforward. Strictly speaking, sao poetry (chap. 2) has no subgenres: most sao poems of later times are closely modeled after the original Chuci style, marked by extensive use of its signature pause-indicating word xi.¹ The fu genre is often divided by length and subject matter into the large fu (chap. 3), known for its encyclopedic depiction of Han imperial grandeur, and the small fu, known for its shorter length and its lyrical intensity, even though other, more elaborate schemes of division have been devised to accommodate the rich variety of fu poems composed after the Han. The ci genre is usually divided by length into short song lyrics (xiaoling [chap. 12]) and long song lyrics (manic [chaps. 13 and 14]). The qu genre is usually divided and categorized according to its association with dramatic conventions of different times and locales. Yuan song poems (sanqu [chap. 16]) are one of the best known qu subgenres.

ORAL AND LITERATI TRADITIONS

The evolution of the major poetic genres and subgenres is an intriguing tale of sustained interaction between the oral folk tradition and the literati tradition, or, in the parlance of modern literary criticism, between orality and literacy. We can speak of at least four major oralities: in the shi and sao poetry of pre-Han times, in Han yuefu poetry, in the ci poetry of the Late Tang and the early Song, and in Yuan qu poetry. Each of these four oralities is marked by a new genre or subgenre of oral folk origins having taken center stage in the established literary arena. In each case, literati poets enthusiastically collected, preserved, and polished folk songs, often having them performed at the court or in literati gatherings. At the same time, the literati spared no effort in imitating these songs—both their unadorned language and their music-based meters—in their own works. Often, they vied with one another in adapting music-based meters or in refashioning existent semantic rhythms to fit musical tunes. It is from this deep, wholehearted engagement with oral folk tradition that the five major genres of Chinese poetry were born.

As a rule, the development of a Chinese poetic genre consisted of a long process of imitating, assimilating, and eventually transforming an oral tradition into a purely literary one by the literati. This steady movement from orality to literacy was marked by the gradual disappearance of oral performance, the allegorical appropriation of folk themes, the abandonment of simple language for elegant diction, and the excessive use of allusion. If we trace the development from Han yuefu (chap. 4) to Late Tang regulated verse (chap. 9), or from the early short ci (chap. 12) to the late long ci poems on objects (chap. 15), we can perceive a clear intra-generic trajectory from orality to literacy. Interestingly, an obsessive pursuit of textuality (diction) and intertextuality (allusions) often marks the last great glory of a thoroughly “literatified” (wenren hua) genre and heralds the rapid ascendancy of a new genre of oral folk origin. The blossoming of ci poetry in the Song and qu poetry in the Yuan epitomizes such an inter-generic shift from literacy to orality.

We may conceive of orality and literacy as opposing yet complementary poles of Chinese poetic creativity. The sustained interaction between the two acted like a yin-yang dynamic. While orality is a fount of creative energy to be tapped again and again, literacy is what brings the rich potential of orality to its fullest realization. The waxing and waning of orality and literacy is not a nonprogressive cycle but a dynamic forward movement. Given the pivotal importance of orality in renewing Chinese poetic traditions, it is not surprising that some advocates of a radical cultural revolution in the early twentieth century turned to oral traditions—from the airs of the Book of Poetry to the living oral traditions of Chinese ethnic minorities—to find inspiration for their poetical revolution.

PROSODY

Listening to the sound recording of selected poems, we shall take note of a few prominent features of Chinese prosody. First of all, Chinese rhyme is simpler than English rhyme. Whereas English rhyme requires a matching of vowels and succeeding consonants of accented syllables (for example, “pan” and “can”), Chinese rhyme often involves the matching of vowels only. There are far fewer ending consonants in Chinese than in English: n and ng in Chinese of all periods and unaspirated p, t, and k for entering tones in ancient and medieval Chinese. Rhyme in Chinese does not necessarily require the matching of identical vowels; sometimes vowels of similar phonetic value suffice.

End rhyme is the most important rhyme in Chinese poetry, as in English poetry. The rhyming scheme varies considerably from genre to genre. Shi, sao, and fu poems usually rhyme on even-number lines, and often the same rhyme is employed for most, if not all, of a poem (probably owing to an abundance of homonyms). In tonally regulated shi poetry, rhyme does not change and is required to be in level tone. In the ci and qu genres, however, rhyme sometimes changes two or more times in a poem (C12.7) and occurs with less predictable frequency—sometimes in almost every line (C12.6), other times at extended intervals (C14.3). Moreover, rhyme can be in level or oblique tone or in both (C12.2, C14.1, and C16.8, respectively). All these rhyming features represent a radical break from the entrenched rhyming habit and may be attributed to the influence of new music from Central Asia.

Chinese tonal meter operates through an ordered alternation of two broad tonal categories—level and oblique tones—within lines of a prescribed number of syllables or characters, and it is therefore regarded by some as “tonal-syllabic.” Level tones include the first two tones of modern Chinese; the oblique tones consist of the third and fourth tones of modern Chinese plus the entering tone of medieval Chinese. The complex rules for tonal alternation in recent-style shi, ci, and qu poetry are explained in detail in individual chapters (chaps. 8, 12, 13, and 16).

To take tonal meter as the defining feature of Chinese prosody, however, would be a mistake. Tonally regulated poetry did not firmly establish itself until the Early Tang, about a millennium after the Book of Poetry. And even as it gained prestige and popularity in later dynasties, its predecessor, tonally unregulated ancient-style poetry, continued to flourish. To talk about Chinese prosody merely in terms of rhyme and tonal meter, then, would exclude the greater part of Chinese poetry.

For a complete picture of Chinese prosody, we need to consider what we may call semantic rhythm, which is based on a pattern of predictable pauses between syntactic units within a line of verse. Although English also alternates articulation and silence, this alternation does not represent an established poetic rhythm because English words are composed of a variable number of syllables, making pauses between words unpredictable. In Chinese poetry, however, semantic rhythm is of paramount importance. Chinese characters are all monosyllabic. In a sentence, a character functions either independently as a simple word or as part of a two-character compound, called a binome. Hence a typical Chinese poetic line exhibits a predictable semantic rhythm, characterized by various possible combinations of 1 and 2. Thanks to the consistent predictability of such syntactic breaks, each major poetic genre and subgenre exhibits one or more established semantic rhythms of its own. All these poetic rhythms are ingrained—probably more deeply than any explicit prosodic rules—in the consciousness of poets and readers alike. This makes possible not only an intensified experience of the sound, but also a dynamic creation (re-creation) of the sense of the poetry. The pivotal importance of semantic rhythm to the sound and sense of Chinese poetry will be discussed in greater detail in the concluding chapter.

STRUCTURE

Reading through the 143 poems in this anthology reveals the two competing yet complementary structural principles of Chinese poetry: the temporal-logical and the analogical-associational. The temporal-logical structural principle is conspicuously employed in the great odes and hymns of the Book of Poetry and is referred to as the fu mode in traditional Chinese criticism. In the Book of Poetry, the fu mode exhibits an extended narrative or descriptive continuum that spans large sections of a poem, if not the whole. Accounts of events and things are quite neatly arranged in such a narrative or descriptive continuum (C1.14). So it is no accident that fu later became the name of a new poetic genre—rhapsodies—particularly known for its grandiose narrative/descriptive scheme. Rhapsodic structure tends to be temporal-logical where events are recounted and spatiotemporal-logical where objects and places are exhaustively described (C3.1). The vigorous operation of fu as a principle of global structuring not only is conspicuous in the genre that bears its name, but also is clearly visible in yuefu poetry, fu’s immediate descendant, and in ci poetry, arguably its distant descendant. Many of the yuefu and ci poems in this anthology (chaps. 4, 13, and 14) exhibit a sustained temporal-logical fu structure.

The analogical-associational structural principle figures even more prominently in the Book of Poetry, especially in its airs. Frequently in this collection, we come across a bipartite structural block: two lines of natural description and two or more lines of emotional expression, brought together purely on an analogical-associational basis. In traditional Chinese literary criticism, this bipartite combination of line clusters is called bi-xing or sometimes bi (analogical mode) and xing (associational mode) separately. Unlike its companion term fu, bi-xing did not evolve into the name of a genre, nor was it broadened to denote a principle of global structuring. When traditional Chinese critics employ this term, they are merely thinking of a bipartite combination of disparate line clusters.

In my view, the term bi-xing can be fruitfully reconceptualized to describe the customary bipartite combination of natural scenes (jing) and emotional expressions (qing) in Chinese poetry. A survey of the 143 poems reveals more often than not such a bipartite nature-emotion combination. In shi poems, the two parts are usually quite balanced in length and intended to enhance each other as analogues or correlatives. Such a bipartite structure seems to be modeled on the old bi-xing formula, even though the two parts are less forcibly yoked together. In any event, this bipartite structure signifies a transformation of bi-xing into a global structural principle (C5.6). In ci and qu poems, the nature-emotion combination is often radically reconfigured. A shi-like balance in some poems contrasts with a deliberate, dramatic dissymmetry between the two aspects in others. In one poem, we might see natural description kept to a minimum, while emotional expression fills out the remainder of the poem (C13.4). In another, we might observe a preponderance of natural images, with emotional expression reduced to one or two lines (C16.3). Such an asymmetrical combination of natural images and emotions may nonetheless be characterized as a bi-xing structure, although a much mutated one.

If we plot the fu and bi-xing structures on two perpendicular axes, we shall find that relatively few poems in this anthology are strictly aligned with a single axis. The majority can be seen to lie somewhere between the two. As a rule, poems of a global fu structure also tend to contain analogical-associational blocks within them. This is especially true of works composed by lyrically inclined poets. Qu Yuan’s “On Encountering Trouble” (C2.3) is perhaps the earliest famous example of this kind of admixture. Conversely, a poem of a global bi-xing structure usually features mini-sequences of narration or description, sometimes smoothly blended together and sometimes with abrupt breaks between them (C5.1-7).

Having highlighted the major aspects of Chinese poetry, I shall stop here and let readers begin their own journey of discovery in the great world of Chinese poetry.

Zong-qi Cai

NOTE

1 Sao-style poems composed after the Han are more often than not subsumed under the fu genre and given the name sao-style fu (sao ti fu).

PART 1

Pre-Qin Times

Tetrasyllabic Shi Poetry

The Book of Poetry (Shijing)

The Shijing (The Book of Poetry) is the fountainhead of Chinese poetry. The three hundred-odd poems that make up this anthology are the earliest extant Chinese verse. The edition used today was compiled by a certain Master Mao during the Han dynasty; thus it has become a convention to refer to the poems by their titles and their Mao numbers (1-305). The poems are divided into three sections (sometimes considered three subgenres), given here in their presumed chronological order: song (hymns, laudes [Mao nos. 266-305]), ya (elegantiae or odes, subdivided into greater and lesser ya [Mao nos. 235-265, 161-234]), and feng (airs [Mao nos. 1-160]). There are three subsections of hymns: those of the state of Lu (from the late Spring and Autumn era), those of the Zhou court (the earliest poems dating from the early Western Zhou), and the pieces imitating those of the preceding Shang dynasty (written in the late Western Zhou period). The greater elegantiae are concerned with the Zhou kingdom and its conquest of the Shang, and the lesser elegantiae are often connected to the various regional courts of the states under Zhou control. The airs, sometimes referred to as the “airs of the states” (guo feng), are broken into fifteen sections, thirteen ascribed to northern states or places and two purported to be collections of songs (referred to as nan [southern songs]) of the southern regions under Zhou rule. These poems treat a broad range of subjects and themes, from dynastic songs of cultural heroes to paeans of battles or warriors, court rituals or sacrifice, hunts and feasts. More than half the poems, most found in the “airs of the states” section, are love poems, long considered by most readers to be the most interesting texts. They are thus the primary focus of this chapter. Regardless of a poem’s subject, however, three basic modes of presentation have been identified by scholars: fu (exposition), bi (comparison), and xing (affective image). Although we have little evidence concerning the conditions of composition, it seems clear from the poems themselves that the hymns and elegantiae were probably composed at court, while the airs were originally folk songs that were standardized (in terms of prosody as well as content) for presentation at court.

These folk songs were composed in a social setting that predated Confucian mores. Thus liaisons between unmarried young men and women were not only allowed but encouraged (as the Zhou li [Zhou Ritual] tells us). This, in turn, resulted in many love affairs that ended in disappointment and despair, especially for the young women involved. Many of the airs are plaints apparently sung by these abandoned lovers.

Some of the prosody of these songs may have been the creation of these young men and women themselves, perhaps in part determined by popular tunes associated with certain affective images (xing); “on the mountains there is X,” for example, was usually employed in songs about separation. But the standards in this regard were no doubt established by the court musicians who helped shape these songs before they took their final form in the late sixth century B.C.E. It is possible that the three thousand poems Confucius was supposed to have examined before selecting the three hundred for this class were largely different versions of the same poems, distinguished by region or era.

The standards refined by the court musicians include a four-word line, the four-line stanza, various formulae, a general 2 + 2 rhythm, rhymes on even lines, and the use of various tropes, including metaphor, simile, synecdoche, puns, onomatopoeia, rhyming and reduplicative compounds, alliteration, and puns. Parallelism, especially in stock phrases such as “on the mountains there is X, / in the lowlands there is Y,” is common (for this particular pattern, see Mao nos. 38, 84, 115, 132, 172, and 204). Although there are no fixed syntactic rules, the pattern of topic + comment discerned by many in later Chinese verse is also evident in the Book of Poetry: “Tao yao” (The Peach Tree Tender [Mao no. 6]) begins, “The peach tree budding and tender,” and “Zai qu” (Driving the Carriage Horses) opens, “They drove on the carriage horses, clippedly clop.” Finally, it has been argued that there may originally have been some significance to the sequence of these three hundred-plus poems. Whether such significance existed or can be seen in the extant text is difficult to determine. Yet it is clear that reading one poem in the context of another, often contiguous text proves useful.

I present in this chapter examples from each of the three sections of the Book of Poetry. Although lines from these poems were employed early on by speakers to make a political point and this line of interpretation developed into an identification between the poems and early historical contexts, for the most part I will focus on literary interpretations.

These interpretations, although directed by commentators old and new and informed by parallel poems in the Book of Poetry, represent only one of a number of possible readings. Unlike early Greek verse genres, which were defined by musical accompaniment (lyric), subject matter (iambus), or meter (elegy), the “airs,” “elegantiae,” and “hymns” are labels that are less definitive. Even the origins of the poems in this anthology are still debated, with some scholars denying their oral provenance. Much has been left to the imagination of the modern reader of the Book of Poetry. Thus when we see a dance or a courtship rite in a particular poem—reflecting an ongoing folk tradition with similarities to that which produced “mountain songs” (shan ge) in later eras—other modern readers may prefer other readings. Such is part of the greatness of this collection.

Many of the texts, especially the love songs, need little interpretation. Yet through centuries of oral and written transmission of these three hundred songs, lines and even whole stanzas have been rearranged or lost. The situation admittedly is not as serious as with the Greek poetic fragments of the same period, where we find puzzling little snippets such as Archilochus’s (ca. 680-ca. 650 B.C.E.) fragment no. 107:

I hope that the Dog Star
will wither many of them
with his piercing rays.¹

Who “many of them” refers to is unclear, but the clarity of the poet’s enmity for them allows this poem to resonate even with modern readers. Alkman’s (seventh century B.C.E.?) fragment no. 82 is similar:

The girls sank down,
helplessly,
like birds beneath
a hovering hawk.²

What is the context here? Although without more of the poem or a commentary it remains difficult to say, the sinister image of the hovering hawk and the vulnerability of young girls lying helpless appeal to us across time. Many of the poems collected in the Book of Poetry also lack contexts and have puzzled readers. One such song is “Zhu lin” (The Grove at Zhu [Mao no. 144]):³

C1.1

As with the pieces by Archilochus and Alkman, the reader seeks a context for this song. Although the poem could be simply a love song about an anxious suitor, the references to the historical figure Xia Nan have caused most readers to identify the context of this poem with the affair between Duke Ling of Chen (r. 613-599 B.C.E.) and Xia Nan’s mother, as portrayed in the early Chinese historical text Zuo zhuan (Zuo Commentary on the “Spring and Autumn Annals”). There we learn that after continuing to see Xia Nan’s mother for some time, the duke insulted Xia Nan while they were drinking together. After the feast was finished, Xia Nan shot and killed Duke Ling with an arrow. The song was written, it is said, to satirize Duke Ling’s improper behavior. It is the duke who drove to Zhu. His impatience—he seems to have driven all night—as well as the erotic associations of the groves (where romantic liaisons were common), the racing colts, and even eating (breakfast) only heighten his impropriety even as he tries to excuse it. The demotic style and run-on lines of the final stanza, which allow the lines to be read quickly, suggest the duke’s urgency and his base nature.

As fascinating as this kind of interpretation may be, most of the great poems of the Book of Poetry either provide their own historical background or need no con-textualization, as we can see in “Tao yao” (The Peach Tree Tender [Mao no. 6]):

C1.2

This epithalamium is built around the comparison (bi) between the bride and the peach tree: she is also budding and tender, vivid and bright. The peach itself has associations in traditional China with female fertility, but here the emphasis is on the bride’s suitability for the husband and his entire family, with whom she is going to live. The flowers refer to her beautiful face, which will appeal to her husband in their bedchamber—thus the precedence given to chamber over house in the last line of the first stanza. In the second stanza, the implication is that her body will be capable of producing many sons, the main concern of her parents-in-law, who are represented synecdochically here by their house. By the third stanza, the emphasis has moved from the flowers and the fruit to the leaves of the peach tree, suggesting the passing of seasons from spring to fall (similar to “Meng” [Common Fellow, Mao no. 58] or “Biao you mei” [Falling Plums, Mao no. 20]). The abundance of leaves, and the slightly revised structure of line 10 (here the adjectival reduplicative “luxuriant and lush” follows the noun “leaves”) suggests the children this bride will produce for the family. The lush leaves may also foreshadow a good relationship for the couple, as they do (by contrast) in “Di du” (The Russet Pear [Mao no. 119]) and in the subsequent poem by the same title (no. 169). The rhythm (tetrameter) and rhyme scheme (xaxa / xbxb / xcxc) are also perfectly regular, underlining the theme of the poem expressed in the final line: the bride will fit “with all in the family.” This balance is structurally built into the poem, as in the couplet “The peach tree budding and tender, / Vivid and bright its flowers.”

A similar poem is “Xi sang” (Mulberries in the Lowlands [Mao no. 228]):

C1.3

Although the visual images of the mulberry tree and its leaves are similar to those seen in “Tao yao,” here the persona may be seen either as a subject who admires his lord greatly or as a young woman praising her intended. This ambiguity of this pair (subject to lord or female to male lover) is one commonly seen in later Chinese verse and turns on the term junzi, which means literally “lord” but can also be used to refer to a “lordly man”—that is, a husband, a lover, or someone the persona admires greatly. Indeed, interpretation of similar poems centering on a persona’s praise for a junzi often differs from one subgenre to another: poems in the ya sections (elegantiae) read as referring to the “lord” (compare the fifth stanza of “Chu ju” [The Carts Come Out, Mao no. 168] or “Luxiao” [Tall Is the Southernwood, Mao no. 173]), in contrast to those in the feng section (airs) that are read as love poems in which junzi is interpreted as “lordly man” (“Cao chong” [Insects in the Grass, Mao no. 14], for example). In “Mulberries in the Lowlands” both meanings may apply.

In addition to marriage in “Tao yao” and the more informal ties between the persona and her “lordly man” in “Xi sang,” we also find more direct depictions of courting in the Book of Poetry, as in the following poem, “Qiang Zhong Zi” (I Beg of You, Zhong Zi [Mao no. 76]), the second poem in the state of Zheng section and among the best known of these three hundred verses:

C1.4

Whereas joyous anticipation dominated the poems examined earlier, this is a poem of anticipation and anxiety. Although the persona may secretly welcome her lover’s approach, she is concerned about the reaction of her family and her village to her love affair. Zhong Zi (Second Son), whom we assume to be the singer’s paramour, is warned in lines 1-3 of the first stanza to keep his distance, but as the persona tries to explain to him (and perhaps to herself) why she is putting him off (lines 4-8), Zhong Zi takes advantage to come nearer, so that by line 2 of the second stanza he has progressed from the edge of the hamlet to the wall around her home.

The images in these first lines are of transgression (crossing and breaking), reinforced by the sharp consonantal endings (-eg in reconstructed ancient pronunciation) of the rhymes in lines 1-5 and 7. It is as if the singer is so focused on explaining her motives to hold off her lover that she forgets to vary the rhyme. If we could imagine a performance of this poem, there would be the potential for the singer to elongate the final syllables in lines 1 (a vowel-ending participle), 6, and 8 (both -er rhymes followed by vowel-ending participles). The contrast of these lengthy final syllables to the preceding staccato, consonant-rhymed lines suggest Zhong Zi’s halting (on the syllables ending in stops), then gliding to gain increasing proximity toward his beloved in the held-vowel endings. This effect might be enhanced by the singer’s perspective: her eyes look out over the entire hamlet in lines 1-3, then seem to turn to glance toward her family in lines 5-8. The performer might even choreograph her movements to suggest this change in point of view, first facing the audience, then slowly half turning her back on them in the final lines of the stanza.

Yet this is all very cerebral. The singer does not tell us what she sees, and we readers (or original listeners) can put the scene together only indirectly from her admonitions to Zhong Zi: in the distance, the hamlet wall and willows; closer, the wall around her family compound and the mulberries; and, finally, in the foreground, the hardwood trees on the border of the family garden.

The second stanza begins, as noted, with Zhong Zi now at the wall surrounding her home. Traditional commentators make much of the significance of the three trees the reader encounters, but the images’ intended effect may be simply to suggest Zhong Zi’s ardor, since the trees that are closer to the persona are larger and more of a barrier: from supple willow to denser mulberry to hardwood. As the distance between Zhong Zi and the singer is narrowed, the effect of his visit widens, going beyond the parents (of the first stanza) to include all the singer’s brothers in the second stanza. The rhyme incidence (or frequency) is still heavy, restricting the action and thereby maintaining the suspense: Will Zhong Zi reach the singer or not? By moving from the monotonous rhyme scheme (aaaxbxb) in the first stanza to a slightly more lively one in the second (xccxcbxb), the intended effect may be to suggest an end to the singer’s repetitive reverie.

The third stanza brings Zhong Zi yet closer to the persona (and the reader). Perhaps since we can see him only through his lover’s eyes, there is no physical description of Zhong Zi. Of more importance is his increasing proximity, not his appearance. Rather than a marriage partner, as in “Tao yao,” here we have an aggressive suitor whose sexuality is the main concern. Now he is perhaps only a few feet away from the singer. In this scenario, she speaks no more of family (father, mother, or brothers), who might want to protect her from such a liaison, but of the neighbors, who will want to gossip about her. Through this change of emphasis from family to outsiders, she suggests that the “embraceable” Zhong Zi is sure to live up to his epithet. They will become the couple Mengzi (Mengzi, 3B.3) decries who “climb walls to be with each other” and thus will be despised by their parents and the people of their state. Their lovemaking seems inevitable. The trees are not luxuriant and colorful, as in “Tao yao,” but in danger of being damaged, as is the persona.

This kind of progression in the Book of Poetry has come to be called incremental repetition. In “I Beg of You, Zhong Zi,” there are two such repetitions: Zhong Zi physically crashing through barriers and tree branches to reach his beloved, juxtaposed to the singer’s widening mental picture of those who will object to his wooing. The result is a chiasmatic (the inversion of word order of similar phrases in an a-b-b-a pattern) tension: Zhong Zi approaching in increments, and the effects thereof distancing themselves beyond the singer’s control—or so she imagines it, her emotions crossing in parallel to the chiasmatic repetitions in her song.

If we assume that, as with any oral song, this one would have been performed differently each time it was sung, we can also imagine that there may have been much longer versions of “I Beg of You, Zhong Zi,” in which Zhong Zi might have forded small streams or stepped through thresholds. Moreover, we can imagine the singer redesigning the imagistic furniture (what was jumped or crossed and the breakable foliage one had to be careful with) to fit local conditions and audiences.

Any discussion of “I Beg of You, Zhong Zi” would be incomplete without some comparison with “Ru fen” (The Banks of the Ru [Mao no. 10]), which also invokes the awe and respect most young lovers showed their parents:

C1.5

“Ru fen” has traditionally been read with the final couplet developing from the xing of the reddened bream in line 9. Wang shi, which is here rendered literally as “royal chamber,” is normally understood pars pro toto (a part for the whole) as referring to the royal court, which is “as if ablaze” in some sort of crisis. The final two lines are then read as the wife urging her husband, who is serving at court, to return home because of his parents (which would mean he would also return to her). There is another line of commentary that reads the poem in just the opposite way, of urging her husband to serve an oppressive court so that his parents could be well cared for. But as an air, the poem might easily be read as a love poem sung by a wife whose husband has been away serving the state but who has now returned. This would fit the gathering-plant imagery of lines 1-2 and 5-6, which is often associated with male-female relations. The image of the bream with the reddened tail in line 9, however, is problematic in either reading. Wen Yiduo (1899-1946) has argued that fish are symbols of lovers in the Book of Poetry. Thus the lover in this poem would be ardent after such a long absence from his wife. Hunger (line 4), too, is often equated with sexual desire in these poems. Although there have also been erotic readings of this poem by modern Western scholars, Wen Yiduo’s interpretation of wang shi as referring metonymically to a member of the royal court (as a parallel to two other expressions referring to courtiers, zong shi and wang sun) seems most reasonable. Lines 10-12 would then read:

The royal courtier as if ablaze;
Even though he is as if ablaze,
Father and mother are very near.

In support of Wen’s overall reading of the poem, the following roughly contemporaneous Egyptian love song (thirteenth or fourteenth century B.C.E.) might be cited:

Love, how I’d love to slip down to the pond,
bathe with you close by on the bank.
Just for you I’d wear my new Memphis swimsuit,
made of sheer linen, fit for a queen—
Come and see how it looks in the water!

Couldn’t I coax you to wade in with me?
Let the cool creep slowly around us?
Then I’d dive deep down
and come up with you dripping,
Let you fill your eyes
with the little red fish that I’d catch.

And I’d say, standing there tall in the shallows:
Look at my fish, love,
how it lies in my hand.
How my fingers caress it,
slip down its sides . . .
But then I’d say softer,
eyes bright with your seeing:
A gift, love, no words.
Come closer and
look, it’s all me.⁴

Men are not always portrayed as aggressive, as in “I Beg of You, Zhong Zi,” or as long-absent courtiers, as in “Ru fen.” Sometimes they can only stand and wait for their partners, as does the young man who is the persona in “Jing nü” (The Retiring Girl [Mao no. 42]):

C1.6

“The Retiring Girl” is a poem that shows us only a few minutes of a relationship in real time, but it suggests much more. The first stanza provides an exposition of sorts: we hear of the two characters, their relationship (at least to some degree), and their location, and we are allowed to wait with the young man for the girl to show herself. With him, we look toward the corner of the wall, where he seems to know she is (since he seems certain that she is hiding there). She is reticent to meet him, even in this out-of-the-way place (the corner of the city wall). Of course, she is depicted as a “retiring” or “quiet girl,” but the third stanza suggests they may already be lovers and her hiding may be simply playful. The final line of the first stanza, “As I scratch my head, pace up and down,” slows the action (three of the first four lines rhyme [aaxa] enhancing this stasis) and serves as a background for the persona’s musings that follow in the second and third stanzas. The reader joins the young man in looking inward. Without the quiet girl present, the man’s thoughts wander back, in the second stanza, to the last time he has seen her. He examines a bright-red stalk that the girl had given him then. The vivid color of this natural object in his hand symbolizes the girl’s loveliness and begins to bring her alive for the reader as well. The changed rhymed scheme in this stanza (bbcc) underlines the parallel between gift and girl.

In the third stanza, the persona flashes back to another gift—a reed sprout that his love brought him from the pasture, perhaps the site of a previous rendezvous. At this point, the reader is well prepared for a second comparison of the love token to the lover. This time the token is a small reed sprout. The mundane nature of this token—not even brightly colored—makes it clear that the repeated use of the adjective “beautiful” (mei) in the final five lines (it is used four times!) implicitly refers to the girl. Twice mei is the stressed rhyme word in these final lines, linking the persona’s reveries in the resulting cc / cdcd pattern. In the final couplet, the young man’s impatience for his beloved leads him to address the reed sprout directly. This rhetorical device, known as apostrophe, is yet another thread between the three beautiful “objects” that weave the stanzas together: girl, stalk, and sprout. Read in this fashion, the poem begins as an exposition (fu) in the first stanza but comes to end unresolved in a series of comparisons (bi). The circularity of the young man’s thoughts, as well as the metaphoric binding of gifts and girl, are highlighted by another rhetorical device, the linking of lines 6 and 7 through the repetition of “vermilion stalk” and the doubled “beautiful” that links line 11 to line 12 (a device known in Chinese as lianzhu [linking pearls] and in English as anadiplosis).

Although the poems presented earlier should suggest that tetrameter is the standard rhythm for the Book of Poetry as a whole (over 91 percent of the lines are in tetrameter, about 6 percent in pentameter, and most of the remaining 3 percent in trimeter), there are also a few poems written in lines of varying length, such as “Jiang you si” (The River Has Branches [Mao no. 22]) in trimeter or “Xing lu” (Treading Frost [Mao no. 17]) in pentameter. “Xing lu” is a bit different. There are seven tetrasyllabic lines in this piece. Strictly speaking, there is not a single pentasyllabic poem in the Book of Poetry, while “Jiang you si” is obviously a trisyllabic poem. Both songs are found in the second section of the airs, “Shao nan” (Nan-Type Songs from the States Set Up by the Duke of Shao), and it is likely that both this section and the paired “Zhou nan” (Nan-Type Songs from the States Set Up by the Duke of Zhou) had a musical base that differed from that of the other airs.⁵ To us moderns, however, only the text remains:

C1.7

Line 1 of this poem, along with its variants (lines 6 and 11), has been identified as a xing. It also functions as a comparison (bi), linking the lover, who is often absent, to the River (the ancient name of the Yangtze River), which has branches that wander off from the main channel. Perhaps the wayward lover is a merchant. Each stanza of the poem is in trimeter until the final line, which reverts to tetrameter. Yet even these final lines break on the particle ye, yielding a 3:1 rhythm, the final syllable constituting a kind of exclamation: “And afterward . . . regret!” and so on. If the final lines are scanned so, in performing the poem there seems to be great potential for controlling the audience. The listeners would have empathized with the persona and hoped that her unfaithful mate would somehow be punished. If the singer stressed the ye (which, as a particle, would normally be unstressed), if he or she held this word longer before revealing to the audience the negative effects on the unfaithful lover, the power of the poetic justice would have increased with this suspense. The final line of the third stanza would thereby reveal the ultimate surprise: that the errant lover’s anguish would become the plot for a song—this song. Although the emotions weigh down the reader, the effect of rhyming nearly every line (axaaa, bxbbb, cxccc) lightens the mood and prepares for the almost mocking closing line.

Structurally, there is here, too, a kind of incremental repetition. In the first stanza, although branches of the river depart from the main channel, they return. In contrast, the lover seems to have left for good. His initial emotion will be merely regret. In the second stanza, the many channels between the islets may suggest the lover’s coursing between more than one love interest. Because of this, he did not even try to soften his departure with a final rendezvous. This, the persona tells us, will cause him more anguish even than leaving her. Finally, in the last stanza, there is a suggestion that the river has joined with someone else (as the Tuo joins the River) and that he did not even stop by to see his former lover before leaving. As a result, his anguish will someday cause him to wail, a sorrow that the persona promises to put to song. The more he demonstrates his coldness toward her, the more she wants to believe he will eventually suffer. The force of this reading lies in the contrast between the reality of the first four lines of each stanza and the singer’s fantasy in the final lines.

This poem has also been interpreted as the lament of a young female relative of a bride who has left the relative behind as the bride headed off to be married (line 2 of each stanza could also be read, “She has gone to be married,” as in “Tao yao”). It was a common practice for a bride to take along several young women of her family, who became the husband’s secondary wives or concubines. This reading comes no doubt in part because this poem immediately follows a related poem, “Xiao xing” (Little Stars [Mao no. 21]):

C1.8

The xing (affective image) that opens this poem is also a bi (comparison), linking the stars to lower-ranking palace women. In the growing light of dawn—which may symbolize the waking of the ruler’s favorite—these three and five “stars” grow ever fainter. Why not three or four stars? The answer is that these three and five stars are those in ancient Chinese constellations comparable with our Orion and the Pleiades, the stars that remain visible the longest in the winter’s morning sky. This unusual trope allows the first stanza to link to the second, where the metaphor becomes clearer. The theme of this song is similar to the meaning of the ancient Chinese saying “The hungry sing of their food, the labored sing of their service.” The persona here laments her lower status, which makes it impossible for her to attend her lord for the entire night, as the main wife would. Thus she and her fellow court ladies hurry about. The image of these women with the coverlets and sheets draped on their shoulders suggests both the canopy of the sky (in the appearance of the women) and the hierarchy of the palace women themselves (seen in their hardship). The prosody of this poem is regular except for the “extra” fifth line in each stanza, perhaps lending emphasis to the plaint of the final lines, an emphasis heightened by the rhyme scheme ababb, acacc.

There is a second, relatively common reading of this poem that identifies the persona as a low-ranking courtier (a member of the shi, or petit nobility) who scurries to be on time for the dawn audience, his own star obscured by the higher-ranking grandees of the court. Indeed, many traditional poems have been interpreted variously as political or love songs. Yet the coverlets and sheets argue of love here, and the entire poem bears some resemblance to Sappho’s (late seventh-early sixth century B.C.E.) fragment no. 34:⁶

Stars around the lovely moon
Hide their gleaming beauty away
Whenever she at the full sheds
Over the earth her radiant glow.

Although once again a Greek fragment offers us no context, the juxtaposition of some central female figure (the moon) to her subordinate women (the stars around her) is not unlike the situation in “Little Stars.” That such women could be seen to be “in the ruler’s service” is also apparent from “Cai fan” (Gathering the White Artemesia [Mao no. 13]):

C1.9

Artemesia, varieties of which are also known as wormwood or southernwood, is a decorative, aromatic plant (used for wreaths in modern times). The white variant was used both in sacrifices and as food for silkworms, leading traditional commentators to read this poem as either the plaint of a palace woman who is preparing a sacrifice for her ruler’s ancestors or a peasant girl’s gathering the plant as part of the silk-making process. Since the bi that is referred to twice in the last stanza was a kind of hairpiece woven into the hair atop the head for certain rituals, my reading will follow the former interpretation.

The palace woman’s task is onerous, taking her to various out-of-the-way places. She asks where she will find the plant, not literally to check herself, but to heighten her suffering for her audience. Although her journey from the nearby ponds to the river islets and then up the small valley of a tributary may not seem too arduous, the final stanza reveals the toll it takes. Portrayed synecdocically through her hair knot, the woman works day and night and ends up as exhausted as her fallen coiffure suggests. Her motion is suggested in the first two stanzas by the staccato rhyme scheme: xaxa / xbxb. The doubled rhyme of the first couplet of the final stanza (ccdd) slackens the pace of the song and allows the persona a moment to reflect on her disheveled coiffure as she rushes to return.

The gathering of white artemesia was clearly women’s work, as we read in the final stanza of “Chu ju” (Send Out the Chariots [Mao no. 168]), which depicts the return of a victorious army and the preparation for sacrifices to celebrate that victory:

The oriole seems to symbolize the return from the martial life on campaign to the domestic world of the family, as in “Dong shan” (East Mountain [Mao no. 156]). Another poem about gathering plants is “Ge tan” (The Kudzu Vine Grows Longer [Mao no. 2]):

C1.10

This poem is more disjointed and obscure than any we have examined. Images that may have been familiar to the early Zhou audience have grown strange to us. This has naturally attracted readers and led to many varied interpretations over the centuries. Given the proper textual contexts, however, we can see that this is the song of a bride who is excitedly preparing for the traditional visit back to her parents’ home three days after being married. The key to understanding the poem lies in the xing: “The kudzu vine is grown longer / Spread to the middle of the valley.” The kudzu vine was used in a ceremony celebrated by the Zhou dynasty nobility in which the bridegroom personally received the bride.⁷ At this ceremony, the bride’s mother would receive several pairs of kudzu-vine sandals and then have her daughter tread in them (symbolizing conjugal relations). Thereafter, the mother would give the daughter various instructions about how to comport herself, receive her daughter’s obeisance, and finally place the bride’s hands in those of the groom, who would then lead his wife from the room.

The vine itself produces many narrow pods filled with seeds, which symbolize fertility (the word zi means both “seeds” and “children”), and its fiber is durable, symbolizing a strong relationship between the wife and her husband. In this poem, the affective image is also meant to suggest (by comparison) the initial success of the marriage, in which the bonds have already grown stronger in the first few days of the relationship, as the vines have grown longer. The vines may also suggest the ties to the bride’s new family, as they clearly do in “Ge lei” (Kudzu Vine and Bean Creeper [Mao no. 71]). Although the nature of the persona’s relationship to her in-laws depicted in “Ge lei” differs from that in “Ge tan,” the image of the kudzu as the new entwinements of the bride with her in-laws is the same. Line 3 of “Ge tan” emphasizes the successes the bride is having with her new family, the luxuriant leaves echoing the same image (and same significance) seen earlier in “Tao yao.”

Birds in flight (line 4) are sometimes compared with the appearance of humans, especially in ritual situations (as in “Zhen lu” [Egrets in Flight, Mao no. 278], discussed later). The flight of these yellow birds (probably siskins) may symbolize the bride’s joining the new flock of her husband’s family. Now settled after the bustle of the marriage ceremony, the family is in harmony, as are the birds in their song.

The second stanza reiterates the harmony of the marriage in lines 1-3, echoed by the repeated rhyme scheme (xabbab, xaccac). But in line 10, we move to the making of clothes from the kudzu, also perhaps a marriage ritual. The coarse and fine cloth and the persona’s willingness to wear either without tiring may be something similar to the vows we exchange in marriage: “For better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”

In the final stanza, there is an immediacy and urgency absent in the two previous stanzas. The shi shi in line 13, translated as “duenna,” would normally have indicated a Zhou dynasty official in charge of instructing noblewomen. But here, in a poem about a common young girl, it is used—parallel to the use of junzi for both “lord” and “lordly man”—to refer to a female servant. Lines 13-17 all contain repetition, reflecting the excited state of mind of the persona, a state of mind we all share before setting out on a journey, especially a journey home to our parents. The persona feels comfortable enough in her new home to banter idly with the duenna—“What should I wash, what not?”—and it is this comfort that she hopes to take back to her parents.

Although “Ge tan” shares the motif of gathering plants with “Cai fan,” the ideal mate of “Cai fan” must be “Cai pin” (Gathering the Duckweed [Mao no. 15]):

C1.11

This poem is also tied to the ritual of marriage (according to the “Hun yi” [Meaning of Marriage] chapter of the Li ji [Record of Rituals]). Three months before the marriage is to take place, the prospective bride is instructed at the family’s ancestral shrine in how she is expected to speak and act in her new setting as a wife. At the culmination of her lessons, sacrifices of fish, duckweed, and water grasses are offered. The question-and-answer form of the poem reflects that of the more formal catechism the girl has underdone at the ancestral shrine (perhaps reflected in the balanced rhyme scheme aabb / xcxc / xdxd). The first stanza depicts where the bride-to-be should search for the sacrificial plants; the second, how to prepare them; and the third, where to position them. The shi referred to in the penultimate line is the person who impersonates the ancestors in sacrifices: here the young woman who is to be married. The poem seems not to be sung by her, but about her, perhaps by the women who picked duckweed or other plants regularly.

Sacrifice is a regular theme of the song hymns, as “Zhen lu” (Egrets in Flight [Mao no. 278]) illustrates:

C1.12

The host is the Zhou king, who invites the descendants of the former dynasties (Xia and Shang) to come to court and present sacrifices to their ancestors (and the Zhou predecessors). It has been argued that egrets were selected for this metaphoric poem because the immediate predecessors of the Zhou, the Shang, honored white above all colors. But egrets are elegant birds and are used metaphorically to describe courtiers in “You bi” (The Robust Horse [Mao no. 298]) as well. The idea of the flight of birds suggesting a comparison with human activities is a common one in the Book of Poetry (for example, “Hong yan” [Wild Geese, Mao no. 181]). In this sacrificial hymn, we can imagine perhaps two rows of supplicants: one of the Xia line and the other of the Shang descendants, the rows suggesting the formation of the egrets in flight. After the scene has been set in the first stanza, the second offers the hope that the supplicants will be diligent and the ancestral spirits receptive. In this way, the song argues, both ancestral lines will become immortal. The rhyme scheme (xaxa, bbbb) is striking and seems to suggest (in the second stanza), in its repetitiveness, the solemnity of the moment, perhaps echoed by bells or drums.

The final poem to be examined, “Mian” (Woven [Mao no. 237]), is one of the series of pieces in the “Da ya” (Greater Elegantiae) that depicts the founding of the Zhou dynasty, particularly the exploits of its first ruler, King Wen:

C1.13

Although this poem is primarily expositional in style, it opens with an affective image that suggests the “woven and unbroken” history of the Zhou people, as portrayed in the “Da ya” section. This poem contains an account of Dan Fu, the grandfather of King Wen. The most detailed account of his life and rule can be found in the “Basic Annals of the Zhou” in Sima Qian’s (145-86? B.C.E.) Shiji (Records of the Grand Scribe):

The ancient honorable Dan Fu again cultivated the enterprise [to establish the Zhou dynasty] of Hou Ji and Gong Liu, accumulated virtue, and carried out justice. The people of the capital all supported him. When the Xunyu and the Rong-Di attacked him, desiring to obtain wealth and goods, he gave it to them. Again they attacked, desiring to obtain his territory and his people. The people were all angry and wanted to give battle. The ancient and honorable one said, “The people enthrone a lord in order that he will bring benefits to them. Now the reason the Rong-Di are attacking and battling us is to take my territory and people. For the people to be with me or for them to be with those others, what is the difference? The people want to give battle because of me, but I cannot bear to kill people’s fathers and sons to keep myself their lord.” Thus he left Bin [the capital] with his personal attendants, crossed the Qi and the Ju rivers, traversed Mount Liang, and stopped at the foot of Mount Qi. Every person in Bin, holding up their elders and carrying their children, again submitted themselves to Dan Fu at the foot of Mount Qi. When other, neighboring states learned of the ancient honorable one’s humanity, many indeed submitted to him. At this, the ancient honorable one then abandoned the customs of the Rong-Di, built city walls and residences, and settled the people in various cities. He appointed officials for the five offices. The people all put this to song and music to praise his virtue.⁸

Thus Dan Fu (literally, Generous Man) is the leader of the Zhou who broke with the barbarian customs and moved his people away from the Rong-Di to what is modern southeastern Shaanxi. The other parallels to the more general Shiji account provide a running commentary to this poem. It is only necessary to add that walls were built in the early Zhou era by tamping earth between wooden planks lashed together with ropes (lines 29-33).

Although not a highly literary piece, this long poem evinces careful attention to sound patterns. Almost every line is rhymed. The third through fifth stanzas, lines that could be considered an account of the preparations for the building of Dan Fu’s new capital, are joined by words that all rhyme to the same rhyme category. The rhyme words in the sixth stanza, in which the sounds of construction reverberate, were also skillfully chosen, each ending in the sonorous nasal -ng.

In the final stanza, the focus suddenly switches from Dan Fu to his grandson, King Wen. This section could be a later interpolation designed to help fit “Mian” into the epiclike account of King Wen that dominates most “Da ya” poems.

This selection of poems should provide a good introduction to this classical anthology and to its prosody. Its various themes and even the language helped shape countless later works while providing a source for allusion down to modern times. Many of the poems in the Book of Poetry remain paradoxically alive for the modern reader because of the simple beauty of their imagery juxtaposed to the complexity—often the obscurity—of their messages.

The tetrasyllabic line that the poets of early Zhou times found so natural may represent speech or musical patterns of that era. This meter declined from the sixth century B.C.E. on. By the Han dynasty, when the new pentasyllabic line had become increasingly popular (chap. 5), tetrasyllabic verse had taken on an archaic tone. From the Han on, it was used mainly for hymns and state pieces.

Finally, it must be noted that, although the interpretative approach in this chapter is similar to that promulgated by most modern scholars, in attempting to read these poems as folk songs that have been reworked by court singers, the traditional interpretation of the Book of Poetry as a collection of allegorical works is belied. The reading of these poems as allegories, or the attempts to contextualize them in the complex history of pre-Qin China, dominated the understanding of all three hundred of the poems from the time the poems were first written down in the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. through the early Song dynasty (mid-eleventh century). These traditional interpretations were often quite explicit. The “Xiao xu” (Little Preface) of the Han dynasty, for example, read “I Beg of You, Zhong Zi” not as a love poem (as I did earlier) but as a criticism of the failure by Duke Zhuang of Zheng (r. 743-701 B.C.E.) to restrain his mother. If this correlation seems forced to us moderns, it was nevertheless accepted by most traditional readers until the Song dynasty scholars of the eleventh century began to argue for more literal interpretations of these songs. Nevertheless, some readers continued to understand the three hundred poems in the Book of Poetry as political poems into modern times. Moreover, the millenary acceptance of reading the Book of Poetry’s love poems as politically motivated verse influenced many readers (and writers) of traditional poetry in all genres over many centuries, as will be seen in the following chapters.

William H. Nienhauser Jr.

NOTES

1 Barbara Hughes Fowler, trans., Archaic Greek Poetry: An Anthology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 53.

2 Fowler, Archaic Greek Poetry, 106.

3 This and all subsequent translations are the author’s.

4 “[Love, how I’d love to slip down to the pond]”, trans. John L. Foster, in The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, vol. 1, Beginnings to 1650, ed. Maynard Mack (New York: Norton, 1995), 58.

5 On the meaning of nan, see the detailed discussion in Chen Zhi, “From Standardization to Localization: Reconsidering the Section Divisions of the Book of Songs” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1999), 283-284.

6 Fowler, Archaic Greek Poetry, 133.

7 See the excellent discussion by Chow Tse-tsung, “The Childbirth Myth and Ancient Chinese Medicine, a Study of Aspects of the Wu Tradition,” in Ancient China: Studies in Early Civilization, ed. David T. Roy and Tsuen-hsuin Tsien (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1978), 43-89, especially 47-53.

8 Sima Qian, Shiji (Records of the Grand Scribe) (Beijing: Zhonghua zhuju, 1959), 4.113-114.

NOTES

1 Quoted in Wang Yi and Hong Xingzu, eds., Chuci buzhu (Further Annotated Edition of the “Chuci”) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 49. Unless indicated otherwise, all citations of the Chuci are from this edition.

2 Fan Wenlan, ed., Wenxin diaolong zhu (Annotated Edition of “The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons”), 2 vols. (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1978), 46-47.

3 The English translation of the first two poems is mine. The translation of “Lisao” is from David Hawkes, ed. and trans., The Songs of the South: An Anthology of Ancient Chinese Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets (New York: Penguin, 1985), 67-95, with minor changes. For the translation, I have also consulted Burton Watson, trans. and ed., The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 54-66, and Stephen Owen, trans. and ed., An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (New York: Norton, 1996), 162-175. To facilitate reading and discussion, I have broken “Lisao” into sections. The romanizations of Chinese characters in this poem were added by the editor.

4 Ban Gu, Han shu (History of the Han Dynasty) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 28b.1666, quoted and translated in Hawkes, Songs of the South, 18.

5 Fig trees grow on land, lotuses in water, and thus the speaker is saying that her search for her lord is bound to be fruitless.

6 Most Chinese scholars agree on this. Another view of these two poems is that they are about the two daughters of the ancient sage-ruler Yao, who gave them to his successor, Shun, in marriage. According to the legend, they drowned in the Xiang River when they heard that their Shun had died. Hawkes, who holds this view, states that “the words in both of these songs are sung throughout in propria persona by a male shaman who is pretending to be out in a boat looking for the goddess among her island haunts” (Songs of the South, 106).

7 David Hawkes discusses this theme in “The Quest of the Goddess,” in Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, ed. Cyril Birch (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 42-68.

8 Wang and Hong, Chuci buzhu, does not have this character but notes that it was here in another edition. It is included in other editions I consulted.

9 Wang and Hong, Chuci buzhu, does not have this character but notes that it was here in another edition. It is included in other editions I consulted.

10 Compare with lines 21 and 22 in “The Lord of the Xiang River.”

11 Jiuyi Mountain is the burial place of Shun.

12 Ma Maoyuan believes that these are presents of love given to the Lord of the Xiang by the Lady of the Xiang. Citing some examples from ancient texts, he further maintains that exchanging clothes between lovers was an ancient custom (Ma Maoyuan, ed., Chuci xuan [Selections from the “Chuci”] [Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1998], 63).

13 Hawkes discusses the inconsistencies in the accounts of Qu Yuan in early texts (Songs of the South, 51-66).

14 Sima Qian, Shiji (Records of the Grand Scribe) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1963), 84.2481-2491.

15 Gao Yang, also known as Zhuan Xu, was a legendary lord (di). Qu Yuan’s ancestors were said to be his descendants.

16 Geng-yin is the twenty-seventh day of the month in the ancient Chinese system of calculating days.

17 According to the Shiji, Qu Yuan’s name (ming) was Ping and his title (zi) was Yuan. “True Exemplar” and “Divine Balance” are said to be illustrations of his real name and title.

18 Hawkes, Songs of the South, 27.

19 Wang and Hong, Chuci buzhu, 2-3.

20 Commentators disagree on who these “three kings of old” were. Most adopt Wang Yi’s view, that they refer to King Yu, founder of the Xia dynasty; King Tang, founder of the Shang dynasty; and King Wen of the Zhou dynasty.

21 Yao and Shun were sage-rulers in antiquity.

22 Jie and Zhou were the infamous last rulers of the Xia and Shang dynasties, respectively.

23 The identity of the “woman,” which is my rendering of the Chinese word nüxu (Hawkes translates it as “My Nü Xu”), has been debated for a long time. Wang Yi has claimed, although without offering any evidence, that she was Qu Yuan’s sister. I follow the opinion advocated by You Guoen and others: You regards nüxu as a “common reference to woman” (Lisao zuanyi [Collected Commentaries of “Lisao”] [Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980], 188).

24 Gun was the father of King Yu, founder of the Xia dynasty. According to ancient legends, Shun entrusted Gun with the task of controlling the flood that was devastating China at that time. He failed, and as a punishment, he was put to death by Shun. Most commentators regard this story to be the source of the reference here. Ma Maoyuan, however, has pointed out another source, which seems more relevant. In chapter 13 of the Han Feizi, it is noted that when “Yao wanted to abdicate to Shun, Gun advised against it, saying, ‘Inauspicious indeed! Who would give up the world to a commoner?’ Yao ignored Gun’s words and put him to death in the plains around Yu Mountain” (Chuci xuan, 18).

25 Cangwu is Shun’s burial place. The “Hanging Garden” is said to be on Mount Kunlun, in the far west.

26 Xi He is the charioteer of the sun.

27 Yan-zi Mountain is where the sun sets in the far west.

28 The Pool of Heaven is a constellation in the western sky. The sun is said to bathe there before setting.

29 Fu-sang is a tree that grows in the far east. The sun shines through it when it first rises in the morning.

30 Ruo is a tree that grows in the far west on Mount Kunlun.

31 Wang Shu is the charioteer of the moon.

32 Fei Lian is the god of the wind.

33 “Bird of Heaven” is Hawkes’s rendering of luan, a supernatural bird that looks like a rooster with brilliant colors.

34 White Water is said to flow from Kunlun Mountain, one of whose peaks is Lang-feng.

35 The House of Spring is the residence of the Green God in the east.

36 Feng Long is the master of the clouds; another view holds that he is also the master of thunder.

37 Fu Fei is the goddess of the Luo River. It is said that she was the daughter of Fu Xi, a leader of an ancient tribe. She drowned in the Luo River and later became its guardian.

38 Wang Yi has claimed, although without providing support, that Jianxiu was a minister of Fu Xi, Fu Fei’s father.

39 Qiong-shi was the home of Lord Yi, a master of archery. In “Heavenly Questions,” another work attributed to Qu Yuan, there is a legend about Lord Yi shooting the god of the Yellow River and abducting the Luo goddess to be his wife. Some commentators, among them Hawkes, regard the reference to Qiong-shi Mountain and the Wei-pan Stream as a suggestion that Fu Fei led a wanton lifestyle (Songs of the South, 91).

40 You, Lisao zuanyi, 290, 294.

41 Ling Fen was a master of divination.

42 The Ford of Heaven is a constellation in the eastern sky.

43 According to Chinese mythology, the God of the West, also known as Shao Hao, presides over the western regions.

44 According to ancient myths, Bu-zhou Mountain is northwest of Mount Kunlun.

45 The Nine Songs are the music of heaven. According to legend, Shao music was the music of the sage-ruler Shun.

46 Luan (literally, disorderly) is a musical term designating the final section of a song. It is so called because it sounded disorderly when all the instruments were played together at the end of a piece.

47 Hawkes, Songs of the South, 68-78.

NOTES

1 In the Zhou period, various states were designated as “defensive barriers” of the Zhou kingdom. Qi was the defensive barrier in the east.

2 The modern romanizations of the verse part of this poem were added by the editor.

3 Sushen was a non-Chinese state probably located on the Liaodong Peninsula.

4 This line refers to the king of Qi’s hunts in Qingqiu, a foreign kingdom located in either the China Sea or Korea.

5 Cangwu refers to Jiuyi Mountain, located in modern Hunan. This is the traditional location of the burial place of the legendary emperor Shun. However, this direction is to the south, rather than the east, of Shanglin Park. Thus some scholars have speculated that an artificial mountain named Cangwu was constructed in the eastern limits of the park.

6 Western Limits is the name for the western terminus of the Han empire. A river named Bin flowed through this area, and it is possible that Shanglin Park had a replica of it.

7 The Cinnabar River probably flowed to the south of Shanglin Park.

8 Purple Gulf should be the name of a river located to the north of the park; however, the exact location of this river is not certain.

9 Lines 32-34: the Ba, Chan, Jing, Wei, Feng, Hao, Lao, and Jue are rivers that flowed from the southern part of the park north to the Wei River.

10 Jiuzong Mountain is located about thirty miles northwest of Chang’an.

11 The Southern Mountains are the Zhongnan Mountains, located directly south of Chang’an.

12 Wo Quan is the name of an immortal.

13 Lines 354-358: the Stone Gateway, Great Peak Tower, Jaybird Tower, Dewy Chill Lodge, and Pear Palace were all in the Sweet Springs Palace, located about seventy-five miles northwest of Chang’an.

14 Befitting Spring was located in the eastern part of the imperial park.

15 Lines 360-363: Xuanqu Palace was located near Kunming Pond, which was an artificial lake in the park just to the west of Chang’an. Oxhead Lake and Dragon Terrace were located in the western part of the park. Lithe Willows was a viewing tower located to the south of Kunming Pond.

16 “Wildcat’s Head” and “Zouyu” were two musical pieces that were played for the archery performance of the emperor and vassal lords, respectively.

17 “Black Crane” is the name of a dance composition reputedly composed by the ancient sage-ruler Shun.

18 “Shield and Axe” was an ancient military dance.

19 “Cutting Sandalwood” is a poem in the Book of Poetry that is traditionally interpreted as criticizing greedy, incompetent officials who deprived worthy men of their rightful positions.

20 “Rejoicing All” is a phrase from a poem in the Book of Poetry that describes the vassal lords coming to court to receive favors from the ruler.

21 Xiao Tong, comp., Wen xuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, vol. 1, Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals, trans. David R. Knechtges (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), 207, with minor changes.

22 E. M. W. Tillyard, The English Epic and Its Background (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 6-8.

23 Liu Xie, Wenxin diaolong (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons) (Sibu beiyao ed.), 2.14b.

24 Quoted in Ban Gu, Han shu (History of the Han Dynasty) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 87B.3575.

25 Quoted in Xijing zaji (Miscellaneous Notes on the Western Capital) (Sibu congkan ed.), 2.4a.

26 Liu Xie, Wenxin diaolong 8.4a.

27 Zhi Yu, “Wenzhang liubie lun” (Treatise on Literature Divided by Genre), in Zhongguo lidai wenlun xuan (An Anthology of Writings on Literature Through the Ages), ed. Guo Shaoyu (1962; repr., Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 157.

28 Liu Xie, Wenxin diaolong 2.13a.

29 I base the reconstructions on W. South Coblin’s studies of Western Han phonology: “Notes on the Western Han Initials,” Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies 14, nos. 1-2 (1982): 111-132, and “Some Sound Changes in the Western Han Dialect of Shu,” Journal of Chinese Linguistics 14, no. 2 (1986): 184-225.

30 Ban Gu, Han shu 30.1749.

31 Ban Gu, Han shu 51.2367.

NOTES

1 For a detailed discussion of these issues, see Anne M. Birrell, “Mythmaking and Yüeh-fu: Popular Songs and Ballads of Early Imperial China,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 109, no. 2 (1989): 223-235.

2 Ban Gu, Han shu (History of the Han Dynasty) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 22.1071-1074.

3 Shen Yue, comp., Song shu (History of the Liu Song Dynasty) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965), 19.550; Charles Egan, “Reconsidering the Role of Folk Songs in Pre-T’ang Yüeh-fu Development,” T’oung Pao 86, nos. 1-3 (2000): 77.

4 Egan, “Reconsidering the Role of Folk Songs,” 78-99; Zhang Yongxin, Han Yuefu yanjiu (A Study of Han Music Bureau Poetry) (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1992), 58-63.

5 Ban Gu, Han shu 30.1754-1755.

6 Ban Gu, Han shu 22.1043.

7 Wei Zheng (580-643), ed., Sui shu (History of the Sui Dynasty), 75.1714; Li Yanshou (seventh century), ed., Beishi (History of the Northern Dynasties), 82.2757.

8 Wang Xianqian, Han shu buzhu (Complementary Annotations to the “History of the Han Dynasty” ) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 1:482.

9 The Shiji (Records of the Grand Scribe) records that Emperor Wu began to present sacrifices to the Grand Unity, the highest deity in Han times, in 124 B.C.E. (Xiao Tong, comp., Wen xuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, vol. 1, Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals, trans. David R. Knechtges [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982], 276).

10 For another translation and comments, see Anne M. Birrell, Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993), 38-39.

11 Ban Gu, Han shu 22.1057.

12 For an interpretation of ao or yun, see David R. Knechtges, “A New Study of Han Yüeh-Fu,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 110, no. 2 (1990): 312.

13 Xiao Tong, Wen xuan, 1:214.

14 Sima Qian, Shiji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1963), 12.471.

15 Joseph R. Allen, In the Voice of Others: Chinese Music Bureau Poetry (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1996), 39-40.

16 Knechtges, “New Study of Han Yüeh-Fu,” 310-311.

17 For other translations, see Arthur Waley, trans., Chinese Poems: Selected from “170 Chinese Poems,” “More Translations from the Chinese,” “The Temple” and “The Book of Songs” (London: Allen and Unwin, 1946), 52, and Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo, eds., Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 35-36.

18 For a list of characteristics of the folk yuefu, see Zong-qi Cai, The Matrix of Lyric Transformation: Poetic Modes and Self-Presentation in Early Chinese Pentasyllabic Poetry (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1996), 29.

19 For another translation, see Birrell, Popular Songs and Ballads, 134.

20 Egan has presented systematic and strong arguments about these issues in “Reconsidering the Role of Folk Songs,” 47-99, and “Were Yüeh-fu Ever Folk Songs? Reconsidering the Relevance of Oral Theory and Balladry Analogies,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 22 (2000): 31-66.

21 Egan, “Were Yüeh-fu Ever Folk Songs?” 57.

22 See Hans Frankel’s classic study “Yüeh-fu Poetry,” in Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, ed. Cyril Birch (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 81.

23 Cai, Matrix of Lyric Transformation, 21-59.

24 For other translations, see Waley, Chinese Poems, 54, and Birrell, Popular Songs and Ballads, 147-148.

25 Birrell, Popular Songs and Ballads, 147.

26 Birrell, Popular Songs and Ballads, 148.

27 For another translation, see Birrell, Popular Songs and Ballads, 80-82.

28 For other translations, see Waley, Chinese Poems, 65-67; Liu and Lo, Sunflower Splendor, 34-35; and Birrell, Popular Songs and Ballads, 169-173.

29 Frankel, “Yüeh-fu Poetry,” 81.

30 Hans Frankel, “Some Characteristics of Oral Narrative Poetry in China,” in Études d’histoire et de littérature chinoises offertes au Professeur Jaroslav Průšek, ed. Yves Hervouet (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976), 97-106.

31 Egan, “Were Yüeh-fu Ever Folk Songs?” 47.

32 Frankel, “Some Characteristics of Oral Narrative Poetry,” 105.

33 Cai, Matrix of Lyric Transformation, 33-48.

34 Cai, Matrix of Lyric Transformation, 38.

35 Zhang Qi, “Han yuefu ‘Moshang sang’ xintan” (A New Study of the Han Music Bureau Poem “Mulberry Along the Lane”), Lanzhou xueyuan xuebao 3 (1995): 94-95.

36 Frankel, “Some Characteristics of Oral Narrative Poetry,” 104-105.

37 Frankel, “Some Characteristics of Oral Narrative Poetry,” 105.

38 Birrell, “Mythmaking and Yüeh-fu,” 26-27.

THEME: AGING AND HUMAN TRANSIENCE

What distinguishes the “Nineteen Old Poems” from earlier shi poetry is their central theme. Commenting on this distinguishing trait, Qian Qianyi (1582-1664) wrote, “‘Man’s life is between heaven and earth, / Rushing through like a traveler with a long way to go.’ These poetic lines convey a meaning not to be found in either the Three Hundred Poems [Book of Poetry] or the Lyrics of Chu.”¹ In the “Nineteen Old Poems,” this all-important theme is explored from the contrasting perspectives of the abandoned woman and the wandering man.

Poems 1, 2, 8, 9, 17, 18, and 19 are poems of the abandoned woman. Here, abandoned women lament the misery of separation and dwell on the sorrow of aging. These two motifs figure prominently in poem 1:

C5.1

This poem begins with a poignant moment of reflection by an abandoned woman. Instead of recounting the story of her husband’s departure, she merely utters: “On and on, again on and on [you go].” With a doubling of the reduplicative binome “on and on” (xing xing), she conveys how painful it was to watch her husband disappear down the long road and picture him moving from place to place on his outbound journey. Then, in lines 3 and 4, she tells us that the journey’s completion did not end her misery but actually led to another kind of waiting—the wait for him to return. That proves even more painful than enduring his outbound trip, since she cannot know when (if ever) he will return. So she sighs, “The road is rugged and long, / How can I know when we shall meet again?” Apparently what affects her the most is not so much her husband’s physical separation as her painful awareness of the slow passage of time, measured by her endless yearning for his return.

In the second half of the poem the speaker begins to reflect on time’s passage by measuring it against her own lifespan. Up to line 10, her sense of time is measured by unhappy events. Time seems to drag because she yearns for an end to the separation. But when she notices how she has wasted away in pining, she awakens to a different kind of time, one that is measured against her own biological life. To anyone who treasures life, any passage of time is too swift and any sign of aging too saddening. Seeing time’s passage in this new light, the wife breaks into this lament: “Thinking of you makes one old, / Years and months are suddenly gone.” This dramatic, ironic shift in her perception of time marks the transformation of her sorrow at separation into melancholy over the hastened process of aging.

If we accept the consensus view that the “Nineteen Old Poems” were written by a group of disenchanted literati men living in the capital city of Luoyang, we can say that the author of this poem is adopting the persona of an abandoned woman as a means of subtly expressing his grievances. In Chinese poetry, a woman abandoned by her husband is customarily compared with a scholar-official out of favor with his ruler or patron (thematic table of contents 2.3). Speaking in the voice of a frail, abandoned woman, the poet probably intends to express his grief over abandonment by his patron, or his forlorn pledge of loyalty in the hope of regaining his patron’s trust and favor. By foregrounding the issue of aging, he also turns his political woes into a deeper pain over life’s brevity.

Poems 3, 4, 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, and 15 are poems of the wandering man. Appearing as weary wanderers, the speakers seem less fictional than the abandoned woman seen earlier. This is partly because of the disappearance of the gender difference between speaker and poet and partly because of the presence of some genuine reflections about the conditions of the poets’ actual world. In poem 3, for instance, we find explicit references to the capital city and its major landmarks:

C5.2

“Luo” and “Wan” in line 8 denote, respectively, the capital city of Luoyang and a smaller city to the south of Luoyang; lines 9-14 are vivid descriptions of the royal palaces and mansions. However, even though we encounter the speaker in this realistic locale, we still find it difficult to identify him with the poet. His pursuit of worldly pleasure, his existential anxiety, and his solutions to emotional crises are described in very general terms. There is little solid evidence of the life of a unique individual. The persona of the wandering man seems to reveal merely the collective identity of a disenchanted literati group.

In the poems of the wandering man, we usually encounter three distinct motifs: (1) a lonely wanderer contemplating a desolate scene, either a wintry landscape or a graveyard; (2) a vehement lamentation over human transience; and (3) a sustained reflection on various ways of coping with human transience. Poem 13, for instance, features these three motifs:

C5.3

The speaker first tells us that he catches a glimpse of the graveyard on Mount Mang when his carriage passes through the northern gate of Luoyang. What meets his eyes are weeping poplar trees, pine, and cypress—all associated with the dead because they were often planted to mark grave sites. The sight of these trees evokes a dark mood of melancholy, leading him to conjure up an even more dismal world below. Underneath, there is no life, only a mass of dead bodies from long ago; no light, just an everlasting darkness; and no awakening, but an eternal sleep. After describing the imagined scene of an underworld, the speaker breaks into a lament about the evanescence of human existence: “Man’s life is as transient as a sojourn, / His frame is not as firm as metal or stone.” In the poems of the wandering man, such depressing statements abound:

Such philosophizing about human transience is not found in pre-Han poems. Only in historical or philosophical writings before the Han do we come across statements on the brevity of human life. But in the “Nineteen Old Poems,” such statements occur with a frequency probably unrivaled by any other poetic collection and thus constitute a defining feature of the collection.

In the last part of poem 13, the speaker turns to a search for a solution to human transience. He first dismisses the Confucian pursuit of ming (a name) as useless, since even sages and all others of great name must die just as common people do. Next he ridicules the popular Daoist practice of taking longevity drugs, declaring that those taking such drugs will only shorten, if not end, their own lives. Finally, he settles on the idea of carpe diem as the only sensible thing to do in this world. So he exhorts himself and all others to seek the pleasure of fine wine and clothes. This advocacy of carpe diem, too, abounds in the “Nineteen Old Poems”:

This Chinese version of carpe diem seems to be a poetic rendering of the hedonist ideas attributed to Yang Zhu (fl. third century B.C.E.):

The myriad creatures are different in life but the same in death. In life they may be worthy or stupid, honorable or humble. This is where they differ. In death they all stink, rot, disintegrate, and disappear. This is where they are the same. . . . The man of virtue and the sage die; the wicked and the stupid also die. In life they were Yao and Shun [sage-emperors]; in death they are rotten bones. In life they were Jie and Zhou [wicked kings]; in death they are rotten bones. Thus they all became rotten bones just the same. Who knows their difference? Let us enjoy our present life. Why should we worry about what comes after death?”²

Yang Zhu elucidates three points central to his hedonist philosophy:

1. Death is the final end for the existence of an individual.

2. Man cannot overcome death—that is, the destruction of his physical form—with something extraneous to his body such as fame and glory.

3. Given the preceding two points, man must enjoy the present and forget about death.

Yang Zhu’s argument appears to underlie the entire reflective process in poem 13. Although Yang Zhu’s hedonist ideas echo in many Han yuefu works, they are never so fully expressed as in poem 13 and other similar pieces. The preponderance of hedonist ideas is therefore widely seen as another important thematic feature of the “Nineteen Old Poems.”

POETIC MODE: FROM THE NARRATIVE TO THE LYRICAL

The authors of the “Nineteen Old Poems” adopted a mode of presentation markedly different from that used by yuefu composers. While yuefu composers tended to express themselves through storytelling, they limited the narrative elements to a bare outline while filling in with abundant emotional expressions. To see this reversed balance of narrative and lyrical elements, let us compare three of the “Nineteen Old Poems” with “Watering Horses at the Grotto near the Great Wall (hereafter, “Watering Horses”), a well-known yuefu composition attributed by some to Cai Yong (132-192).

C5.4

This poem may be seen as a refashioning of lines 1-3 of “Watering Horses”:

The motif of riverside lamentation is appropriated and turned into a monologue in poem 6. While “Watering Horses” merely touches on the speaker’s emotional state, poem 6 presents us with a sustained process of self-expression. The speaker complains about the distance preventing him from sending the flowers to his wife, looks longingly toward home, and laments their separation.

C5.5

This poem offers a useful comparison with lines 4-8 of “Watering Horses”:

Again, we can observe the sharp difference between the narrative and lyrical treatments of a similar situation. Both pieces describe a neglected wife’s dream of a reunion with her husband. “Watering Horses” merely tells us when the neglected wife falls asleep, whom she sees in her dream, and where she finds herself upon waking. By contrast, poem 16 provides minute, intimate details of the neglected wife’s dream: her feeling of estrangement (lines 6-7), her subliminal fulfillment of what she cannot fulfill in her waking life (lines 9-12), and her mournful awakening to the impossibility of regaining her lost love (lines 13-16). Her complex emotions range from elation to utter despair.

C5.6

This poem is obviously a “lyricized” version of the last section of “Watering Horses” (lines 13-20):

Both pieces depict a neglected wife’s receiving a letter from her husband. The depiction of the event is of the same length (eight lines) and begins with an identical line. “Watering Horses” devotes six of the eight lines to the description of the event itself. To enhance story interest, it includes the detail of the surprise discovery of the letter in the double carp. Not until the last two lines does the speaker reveal her emotion. If the narrative prevails over the lyrical in “Watering Horses,” the reverse is true in poem 17. There, all but two lines are devoted to the wife’s self-scrutiny. With narrative elements kept to a minimum, the poet explores a much richer world of feelings and thoughts, describing not only the husband’s profession of love but, more important, the wife’s complex response to it.

The shift of balance from the narrative to the lyrical in the “Nineteen Old Poems” is likely the consequence of the disappearance of oral performance. With oral performance gone or marginalized, the authors of the “Nineteen Old Poems” no longer needed to assume the role of a storyteller. As they began to turn inward, a scrutiny of their own emotional condition became the central concern of their works. In exploring their own inner worlds, they were no longer bound by the temporal sequence, as the yuefu composers had been when telling stories to a live audience. Very often they would survey their present condition in the first part of the poem, drift back into memory in the second, and then leap into an imagined future in the third. Indeed, following their reflective impulse, they could move among these three temporal realms in any order they chose. Such complex time frames of emotional response occur in as many as twelve poems in the collection.

POETIC STRUCTURE: BI-XING AS GLOBAL STRUCTURE

The “Nineteen Old Poems” also introduces a binary structure markedly different from the sequential structure of the Han yuefu. In this collection, the speakers usually observe external situations in the first part of a poem and respond to them emotionally in the second part. In poem 17, for instance, we can clearly perceive this binary structure of external observation and inward reflection. The first half of the poem depicts a desolate wintry scene through the eyes of a lonely woman. The “north wind” stirs the sense of touch; the “stars” appeal to the sense of sight; the “moon” and its mythical metaphor, “toad and hare,” evoke the extreme coldness of the Cold Palace (another metaphor for the moon). The second half leads us through a sustained process of self-reflection: the woman’s memory of her husband’s first and only letter, her gratitude for his words of love, her pledge of loyalty to him, and her fear of his failure to appreciate her fidelity and profound love.

This balanced combination of natural description and emotional response bears the imprint of the bi-xing construction in the Book of Poetry, which has long been regarded as the ultimate source for the “Nineteen Old Poems.” Originally a four-line oral formula, the bi-xing construction is substantially expanded in the “Nineteen Old Poems” to become a distinctive global structure. We can locate a binary structure of natural description and inward reflection in all but two of the nineteen poems. A binary structure identical to that of poem 17 may be found in poem 2 (6:4; six lines of external observation and four lines of inward reflection), poem 4 (8:6), poem 5 (10:6), poem 6 (4:4), poem 7 (8:8), poem 9 (6:2), poem 11 (6:6), poem 13 (10:8), poem 14 (6:4), poem 17 (8:6), poem 18 (6:4), and poem 19 (4:6). In addition, we find a binary structure in reverse order—that is, inward reflection preceding external observation—in poem 3 (8:8), and double binary structures in poem 1 (4:2/6:4), poem 8 (6:2/4:2), poem 12 (6:4/6:4), and poem 16 (6:6/4:4).

The transformation of the bi-xing construction from an oral formula to a global structure greatly extended the scope of natural description and emotional expression. In the Book of Poetry, natural images are few in number, devoid of variety, and often highly repetitious. Cast in a rigid formula, these images usually do not link up consecutively and thus cannot form a coherent scene. By contrast, in the “Nineteen Old Poems,” natural images coalesce into a coherent scene through a process of perception (poems 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14) or narration (poems 1, 4, 6, 8, 16, 18, and 19). The extended scope and the internal coherence of natural description have not gone unnoticed by critics. For instance, the Tang poet-critic Wang Changling (6 9 8-75 6) characterized the new bi-xing usage of the “Nineteen Old Poems” in terms of its extended natural description and its perceptual and narrative coherence.³ The presentation of the speaker’s inner world also undergoes profound changes as a result of the evolution of the bi-xing construction. The emotional expression found in these two collections also strikes us as being very different from each other. While in the Book of Poetry we hear short, emphatic emotional utterances about a particular external event, we find in the “Nineteen Old Poems” a sustained, melancholic reflection on the meaning or, rather, meaninglessness of human life.

POETIC TEXTURE: THE DYNAMICS OF SILENT WRITING AND READING

Another important change brought about by the waning of oral performance is the emergence of a new kind of poetic texture. If poetic structure is the framework of a poem, poetic texture results from the interface process—borrowing a phrase from computer science—whereby each word is linked to every other word in an organic whole. Just as networking denotes a process of multilateral linkage, poetic texture means a process of multilateral interplay among words in a poetic text. In examining poetic texture, we seek to understand not only the contiguous relationship of any word with other words in the same line or the same syntactic unit, but also the noncontiguous relationship of that word with other words placed in either a corresponding or a noncorresponding position in other lines. To take a concrete example, when we focus on the third word of line 4 of a pentasyllabic poem, we must consider, on the one hand, how it links up with the other four words in the same line and, on the other, how it relates to, say, the fifth word of line 2 or the third word of line 6.

In performed poetry, by contrast, establishing and maintaining a tight contiguous relationship of words is a task of primary importance. An oral presentation is essentially a temporal sequence of sounds or auditory signs delivered within an expected duration of time. Once a composer or performer has started his oral presentation, he cannot easily stop without frustrating the live audience. Maintaining a smooth, rhythmic flow of words without the aid of a script is a great challenge for an oral composer or performer. In the process of his oral delivery, he must constantly think of what he is to say in the next breath. In making this effort, he depends greatly on the use of repetition as his aide-mémoire and his cue for the continuation of his presentation. “Mulberry Along the Lane” (C4.8) provides a good example of two common aides-mémoires: thimble phrasing (interlocking repetitions) and incremental repetition, a device extensively used in the Book of Poetry (C1.4) and evident in other ancient or living oral traditions outside China.

In nonperformed poetry, the importance of the contiguous relationship of words decreases while their noncontiguous relationship strengthens. This change has much to do with the different dynamics of written communication. Writing and reading are not as immediate and instantaneous a form of communication as speaking (or other means of oral delivery) and listening. In most circumstances, when two parties are in each other’s presence, they will choose to address each other orally. Only when one party is separated from the other, or when he is not sure how to best express his thoughts impromptu, or when he wants to convey thoughts too awkward or too embarrassing to say out loud, or when he wants to say something that he thinks the other party will need time to think about before responding, will he decide to write to the other party. Judging by these common circumstances for the use of writing, we can see that writing, as compared with speaking, is a delayed (often purposely) form of communication. In most cases, the writer and the reader are not compelled to respond to each other within a certain time. Consequently, a writer may pause as many times as he wants to think about how to better put his thoughts into words. By the same token, a reader may freely go over the words of a writer again and again before deciding what they mean.

As written communication allows ample time for the coding or decoding of messages, neither the writer nor the reader need depend on word-for-word repetitions to maintain a smooth temporal flow of words. Hence the various aides-mémoires of earlier poems have disappeared in the “Nineteen Old Poems.” Written communication also allows the writer and the reader to explore the noncontiguous relationship of words for the purpose of enhancing an emotive impact. As a writer pauses to review what he has written and makes revisions in the light of what he intends to write next, he naturally builds a system of textual resonance among words placed in different parts of a poem. In fact, this is exactly what the authors of the “Nineteen Old Poems” sought to accomplish in their works.

In describing a natural scene in the first part of a poem, the poets already anticipated the subsequent feelings and thoughts to be expressed and therefore deliberately blended into the scene some words suggestive of the emotive tenor of the second part. Known as shiyan (literally, verse eyes) in traditional Chinese criticism, these words, mostly verbs or adjectives, serve to animate descriptions of nature and prefigure the emotions to be subsequently expressed (thematic table of contents 4.2). In poems 1, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, and 19, such animating words vividly reveal the speaker’s emotional involvement in the external scene. For instance, in the famous lines “The Tartar horse leans into the north wind, / The Yue bird nests among southern branches” (poem 1, lines 7-8), the words “leans” and “nests” unmistakably bring into the scene the speaker’s own sense of homesickness.⁴ Without them, these lines would reveal far less of the speaker’s inner world.

Conversely, when expressing their feelings and thoughts in the second part, the authors of the “Nineteen Old Poems” often refer back to the initial natural scene, purposely using metaphors that resonate with the natural images there. This device I tentatively term “metaphoric resonance.” While verse eyes often anticipate the emotional expressions in the second part of a poem, metaphorical resonance in the second part brings us back to the natural scene in the first part. Poem 7 provides a good example of the interplay of verse eyes and metaphoric resonance:

C5.7

The image of “High you soared, strong, beating wings” in line 10 is intended as a metaphor for unscrupulous self-advancement. The constellations Southern Winnow (line 13) and Dipper in the North (line 13) and the star Draught Ox (line 14) are used as metaphors for empty, false friendship. These three images metaphorically convey emptiness and falsehood because they “falsely” use concrete things to represent intangible or “insubstantial” stars. Meanwhile, the images recall what we have seen in the first part. The beating wings (line 10) recall the flight images of the cicadas (line 7) and dark swallows (line 8); the three stellar names bring to mind the polestar, or “jade handle” (line 3), and the crowding stars (line 4) in the first part. Through such imagistic resonance, the four metaphorical images endow the opening autumnal scene with strong emotional overtones, intensifying the interaction between the binary parts, but in the reverse direction of verse eyes.

We should note that the verse eye and metaphorical resonance each introduces alien elements into the binary parts of a poem. But instead of destabilizing the poem’s structure, these two devices only make it more dynamic and more aesthetically engaging. Like aesthetic catalysts, they oblige the mind to transcend the boundary between the outer and inner worlds and to constantly move back and forth between them. Commenting on this movement of the mind, the famous Ming critic Wang Shizhen (1526-1590) wrote:

When these ancient people wrote, if there was a forward movement, there would be a backward movement; if there was a thrust downward, there had to be a thrust back upward. To soar like a startled wild goose or to wind along like a swimming dragon: this is the way we follow their rules of composition and the way we seek to understand their meaning. Having grasped this point, we will understand why these poems [the “Nineteen Old Poems”] are thought to be “seamless like clothes made by heaven.”⁵

In the “Nineteen Old Poems,” both the binary structure and the multilateral texture are born of a constant movement between outer and inner worlds in the poets’ creative process. In turn, they activate a similar movement in the mind of the reader. The intensification of this mental process can lead to a point where the boundary between the outward and the inward dissolves and a poetic vision emerges.

Zong-qi Cai

NOTES

1 Qian Qianyi, Mu zhai you xue ji (The Mu zhai Records of Learning) (SBCK ed.), 19.22a.

2 Liezi jishi (Collected Commentaries on“Liezi”) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 221; translation from A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, trans. Wing-tsit Chan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), 310-311, with minor changes.

3 Wang Changling, Shi ge (Rules of Poetry), in Xu Tang shihua (A Sequel to the Poetry Talks of the Tang), ed. Shen Bingxun (Qianlong ed.), A.1.16-21.

4 The Tartars and other nomadic tribes, broadly referred to as the Hu peoples, inhabited the vast region of northern China outside the Great Wall during the Han dynasty. Yue is a region of southern China that is within present-day Zejiang Province. The Tartar horse leaning into the north wind and the Yue bird nesting among southern branches are expressive of a yearning to return home.

5 Wang Shizhen, Yiyuan zhiyan (Drunken Words in the Garden of Art), 1, in Lidai shihua xubian (Poetry Talks of Successive Dynasties: A Sequel), ed. Ding Fubao, 3 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 2:964.

THE FARMSTEAD POETRY OF TAO QIAN

Tao Qian’s simple, direct, yet elegant farmstead poetry has led over time to his being considered one of the greatest Chinese poets. Tao came from a minor elite family, which had lost most of its prestige and wealth by the time he was born. He took his first office relatively late in life (in his late twenties) and retired permanently about thirteen years later, most likely disillusioned by the political unrest of his era and wearied by the constraints of official life. This was no facile decision for a literatus schooled in Confucian ethics, since his withdrawal would mean renouncing aspirations to serve state and society, social respect, and stability of income. After retiring from his last post in 405, Tao spent the rest of his life as a farmer-recluse. He experienced both the joys of material self-sufficiency and the hardships of agrarian life. Tao’s life in reclusion, however, was not one of total deprivation or isolation. His love of wine was famous, and while he often drank alone, he was also a convivial drinker who frequently socialized with local officials and other members of the elite. During his lifetime, he acquired local fame as a recluse. It is in this period that most of his surviving works were composed.

Among the poetic subgenres represented in Tao’s extant corpus are poems written on official duty, social or exchange poems, poems on historical figures, and farmstead poems based on various meditations and events during his retirement, the last of which constitute the majority of his oeuvre. His farmstead works speak of the joys of rustic life, such as drinking wine, observing nature, playing the zither, reading books, and writing poetry for his own pleasure. And, although many of his later admirers often seem to forget this, he sometimes writes about the tedium of farm life, professing the toils of farmwork and trials of poverty, such as cold and hunger, which, in one instance, are memorably conveyed by these lines, which express the hope for the swift passage of time: “At dusk we would think of the cock crow, / At dawn we hoped the crow would cross quickly.”¹ Even in his plaints, however, one can still marvel at a tenacious gesture that punctuates many of his works: a reaffirmation of his resolve to remain in reclusion and a declaration of his integrity. But one may also argue that Tao was not consistently at perfect ease with his choice of reclusion, hence the need to frequently reaffirm his resolve.

Farmstead poetry as defined by Tao’s works and interpreted by most later practitioners of the genre (notably in the Tang dynasty) nonetheless typically focuses on the idyllic aspects of rustic life: leisure, calm, and freedom. Accordingly, simplicity and ease characterize its poetic style and diction. This genre is generally indissociable from the context of withdrawal from office (actual or fancied, permanent or temporary), as farmstead poems are born in rustic experience. I have selected four of Tao’s best-known works in the genre to illustrate the ways in which he represents rustic life and reflects on nature, reclusion, and himself.

The following poem is the first of a series of five, probably written shortly after Tao’s retirement from office. The mood is sanguine and the tone, celebratory:

C6.1

The poem’s structure divides into three distinct parts, connected by familiar tropic markers. Lines 1-4 constitute a statement of the poet’s natural disposition and, implicitly, an explanation for his withdrawal from office. The poet’s innate love of nature and his perennial inability to get on with the world lead him to declare the last thirteen years (emended from “thirty”) in officialdom to have been a mistake.² A metaphoric couplet, serving as a bridge between the discursive opener and a series of descriptive couplets, reiterates the poet’s natural inclinations. Just like the caged bird and trapped fish, the poet longs for his native place. By some external intervention, these creatures became confined to a cage, a pond, or the dusty net (that is, official life). The image of displaced animals longing for home is a conventional trope dating from Han poetry about travelers (for example, C5.1), and its use here effectively “naturalizes” the poet’s desire to leave office and return to his farm.

The second part of the poem consists of an extended description of the material circumstances of the poet’s rustic life: from details about the size of his farm, the type of trees surrounding his home, to neighboring villages. This description vividly illustrates the value of the poet’s choice of lifestyle. Next, an allusive couplet (lines 15-16), lifted almost verbatim from a Han ancient-style poem and possibly referring to a passage in chapter 80 of the Dao de jing (Book of the Way and Its Power)—on the peaceful coexistence between neighboring communities that can hear, each in the other, dog barks and cock crows yet have no contact with each other—caps the idea developed in previous lines of a certain rustic tranquillity and harmony. The allusive nature of the couplet does not preclude it from being part of the perceived scene, in view of the descriptive couplets preceding it. Its philosophical point, however, is more remarkable and makes it an apt transition to the meditation in the final part of the poem.

The poem concludes with an affirmation of the freedom gained by withdrawal. The term ziran in the last line may refer to nature (supported by the descriptive couplets), one’s own nature (harking back to the first couplet), and/or freedom (by extension of the first two referents). This tripartite pattern (explanation of natural disposition, description of pastoral life, and affirmation of choice of lifestyle) was often borrowed by Tang writers of farmstead poetry, such as Wang Wei (701?- 761) and Chu Guangxi (fl. 726), who likely found this logic of representation effective in vindicating an alternative way of life, reclusion.

Not all of Tao’s farmstead poems are structured in the same manner, but they consistently display a rhetorical simplicity that approaches oral language. The use of the reduplicative binomes (diezi) aiai and yiyi in the seventh couplet moreover draws on a certain archaic plainness and rhythm associated with the Shijing and Han ancient-style verse, in which such descriptive phrases are common. Reduplicative binomes are a standard feature of ancient speech; their use here heightens not only the archaic but also the colloquial effects of the poem. The copious use of parallelism, it should be noted, is unusual for Tao’s poems but typical in late Six Dynasties poetry; besides the first two and the last couplets, all are parallel, although lines 7-8, 11-12, and 13-14 are not perfectly so. Even in such instances in which technique is evident, the overall effect impresses the reader with a certain artless grace. The lack of craft in Tao’s farmstead poems blatantly opposed contemporary aesthetic taste, which prized artful refinement; his works were thus generally dismissed as the “words of a mere farmer.”³ Yet Tao seems to have found that simplicity and directness of expression accorded best with the basic, rustic life he portrays in his poems. Interestingly, the absence of apparent artifice in Tao’s compositions, once scorned by most, became centuries later one of his most admired trademarks. This attribute supported the interpretation of Tao’s poetry as ziran (natural or spontaneous) in the Song dynasty (960-1279) and onward, which in turn helped establish his inimitability; the significance of this conviction in the elevation of Tao to an absolute poetic model can hardly be overstated.

Images of rustic scenes constitute a significant part of Tao’s representation of his retirement, as in “Returning to Live on the Farm”; yet he is at times more concerned with conveying the feel of the rustic setting than the look of it. With the lines “In a haze lie the distant villages, / Indistinct is the smoke above the houses,” he gives the idea of a small rustic village without defining it in a visually precise way. Emphasis here is thus placed on yi zhong zhi jing (the scene within the mind).⁴ When Wang Wei reworks this couplet for one of his own farmstead poems centuries later,⁵ greater attention is given to the crafting of imagery, which not only defines to a great extent the poetic art of his era but also reveals a difference between Tao’s farmstead poetry and the High Tang (713-755) adaptation of it.

The rustic setting in Tao’s farmstead poems, built by recurring descriptions of such various props as agricultural fields, plants, and animals, provided the poet a space in which he could discourse on a philosophy of reclusion as well as observations on man and nature. No poem in Tao’s oeuvre is more abundant with such meditations than perhaps his most oft-cited poem on wine drinking:

C6.2

The poet’s detached mind (set into relief by the location of his house amid civilization) renders possible the insight of the last couplet. That reclusion is less about physical place than a state of mind is perhaps Tao’s most powerful statement on reclusion. Receptivity to daily scenes in nature often taken for granted depends on the recluse’s state of mind. A detached mind is the precondition for the poet’s attention to details and the chance interplay of these details: he plucks chrysanthemums (often infused in wine for prolonging life) as he happens to catch sight of the southern mountain, symbol of longevity; and he notices the lovely air at dusk as he happens to see the homing birds. The sudden revelation named in the last couplet seems to have evoked a transcendent state of mind that is not merely impossible but undesirable to capture with words. Indeed, this couplet has remained so effective precisely for what it promises but does not say. The source of the last couplet is three passages in the Zhuangzi, either arguing for the incapacity of language for total expression or prizing meaning over its vehicle: words.⁶ Suggesting meaning beyond the words, a literary quality that became increasingly valued, points to the text’s possibility of perpetual signification and continual savoring.

The poet may be reticent, but the literary critic can nonetheless ponder on and say something about this insight in the last couplet. First of all, it involves the exquisite delight the poet finds in the commonplace activities of rustic living, such as plucking chrysanthemums and observing the mountain scene at dusk. Second, it may well be a recognition of correlations between the natural and human realms, whose intersections are often overlooked by men absorbed in the humdrum of mundane life. There are hidden significances in the natural world that either correspond to or are revealed by human actions: the birds’ natural instinct to return home corresponds to the poet’s return, which he presents elsewhere in his writings as his natural course; and as the poet picks chrysanthemums (a substance for prolonging life), he sees the southern mountain (a symbol of long life). Therein lies a truth that no amount of language can adequately convey. Third, it seems to mark a transcendent state in which a mystical union between nature and poet has taken place, and the distinction between object and self has been all but obliterated.

The most impressive couplet of the poem (and undoubtedly the most often quoted from Tao’s writings) is “Plucking chrysanthemums by the eastern hedge, / From afar I catch sight of the southern mountain.” The symbolic significance of the acts of picking chrysanthemums and seeing the southern mountain have been duly noted. While each act may be commonplace in the leisure of rustic life, their coincidence makes the scene poignantly poetic. What makes this couplet even more remarkable is its textual history: in certain Song editions of Tao’s works, wang (to gaze from afar) appears as a variant for jian (to catch sight of). The great Song critic and writer Su Shi (1037-1101) was the first to argue passionately against wang in favor of jian, positing the latter as key to the piece’s shenqi (inspired air). Indeed, for critics following Su Shi’s reading, wang denotes a certain intentionality that runs counter to the happy coincidence of jing (scene) and yi (idea), wherein lies, for Su, the marvelous subtlety of the couplet.⁷ More recently, critics have differentiated further between jian and xian (to appear; the line would then read: “At a distance the southern mountain appears”), reducing even further the subjective presence of the poet. It is possible that the late Qing critic Wang Guowei (1877- 1927) had this reading in mind when he remarked that this couplet describes wu wo zhi jing (a selfless state), in which wu (object) and wo (self) cannot be differentiated from each other and “objects are seen through the perspective of objects” (yi wu guan wu). This state, more difficult to create in poetry than one in which the self is present (you wo zhi jing) and objects are seen through the perspective of the self (yi wo guan wu), is a testimony of excellence of spirit and skill, as Wang suggested.⁸

An intuitive engagement with nature occurs frequently in Tao’s farmstead poetry. In “On Drinking Wine, No. 7,” the poet ponders the beauty and significance of nature on an autumn dusk:

C6.3

Natural phenomena and the poet’s activities are harmoniously integrated into an idyllic rustic scene. The correspondences between nature and the poet’s world can be described as follows: On a basic level, the poet takes in nature by ingesting chrysanthemum petals (infused in wine, or the “Care Forgetting Thing”). Nature provides him with what he needs. On a more meaningful level, the poet is in tune with nature. He whistles at home, while the birds sing as they return to their roosts. While chrysanthemums and homing birds are clearly part of the perceived scene, they also belong to a symbolic code in Tao’s writings. As the definitive flower of autumn, the chrysanthemum represents the year’s end and activities associated with it: most relevant here, meditation on one’s life and mortality. Also, homing birds are never just literally homing birds in Tao’s poetry; they are also a metaphor for the poet’s own returning.

The picture the poem draws may be idyllic (a recluse-poet enjoying the leisure of drinking and appreciating the autumn scene from his veranda), but the hint of disquiet in the second couplet threatens to disrupt the overall tranquil mood of the scene. The poet seems to admit to certain troublesome sentiments about leaving officialdom: the “lingering thoughts of the world” suggest a certain uneasiness or doubt. But this potential conflict is quickly resolved in the next two couplets: the poet is able to dispel his cares by enjoying wine in solitude and nature’s activities at dusk. This transformation paves the way for the remarkable sense of satisfaction in the last couplet. This contentment seems to be the result of having taken stock of all the wonderful aspects of rustic living: enjoying the beauty of natural phenomena, drinking wine to one’s content, living in idleness, and being in tune with nature’s activities. This gesture of reaffirming the choice of reclusion is no doubt familiar by now.

Wine drinking, a standard act in Tao’s poetic portrayals of farmstead life, warrants some explanation. Readers have long noted the copious references to drinking in Tao’s poems: The first known editor of Tao’s works, Xiao Tong (501-531), wrote that “there are those who have doubts about Tao Yuanming’s poetry, since wine is present in each poem.” Xiao then opined that “I, however, think that his true intentions do not lie in wine; rather, he made his mark through wine.”⁹ The notion of ji (trace) refers, in the Chinese cultural lexicon, to an outer manifestation of an inner sentiment that cannot be explicitly or directly expressed. Although regular wine drinking was rarely viewed pejoratively as a form of alcoholism by Chinese literati and had become a defining part of the elite culture of the Wei (220-265) and Jin (265-420) dynasties, Xiao Tong’s defense elevates Tao’s drinking to the level of an outlet for suppressed emotions, much like the use of wine associated with Ruan Ji (210-263), the silenced poet who made extensive use of allegory in his self-expressions.¹⁰ Wine bibbing in the preceding poem does not merely denote relaxed pleasure but also implies a reflection on failed personal ambition and/or the political state of affairs.

Farmstead poems arose from social interaction as well as from solitary reflection. A number of Tao’s farmstead poems refer to the company of family, friends, and neighbors. This should not be surprising, as reclusion was often a highly sociable practice during the Six Dynasties, being defined primarily in contradistinction to office holding rather than to society at large. In “On Moving House, No. 2,” the poet presents the more convivial side of rustic retirement:

C6.4

While the location of Tao’s new residence, “South Town,” was debated by traditional scholars, who variously identified it as Lili (Chestnut Village), Nanli (South Village), or a place in Chaisang (modern Jiujiang in Jiangxi), the date of composition has generally been posited to be sometime after Tao’s house burned down in 408 (the dates of 410 and 412 have been suggested by scholars). The town appears to have been inhabited by “an unusual collection of recluses like Tao himself—literate, educated, but holding no public position and committed to making a livelihood out of farming. Not ordinary peasants, certainly, nor yet landlords with tenants to till the land for them,” as James R. Hightower has convincingly argued.¹¹ The depiction of rustic life here consists of writing poetry, drinking wine, keeping company with like-minded men, and occasionally farming. The last lines in the first poem of the set moreover relate that the poet and his neighbors read and discuss works from the past. Simple pleasures of rustic leisure become uncommon bliss when there are sympathetic friends to share them.

The slight amount of representation of actual farmwork in this poem is typical of the genre. Details of farming are rarely found in Tao’s poems. This poem begins by naming the two seasons crucial to agriculture and concludes by declaring the will to farm. But the lines in between tell mostly of the relationship between the poet and his neighbors, describing thoroughly their activities of leisure. The poem also focuses on the spontaneity and casualness that characterize their interaction, which imaginably opposes that governed by restraint and decorum among men in office.

In addition to a description of rural life, this poem contains two other common features of Tao’s farmstead poetry: a meditation on his way of life and a reaffirmation of his choice of withdrawal. The word li (translated as “way of life,” it literally means “principle”) in line 9 arguably refers to an insight into the way of rustic reclusion: finding delight in the simple yet rewarding aspects of rural life, a view that seems to be supported by others who share his ideals. This “principle” may also refer to an understanding of agriculture, as suggested by the last couplet of the poem: farming is not a lesser endeavor (which counters the attitude generally held by the Confucian elite), since material sustenance is fundamental to life, and honest labor will surely yield tangible rewards. The exhortation to farm in the last line translates to a reaffirmation of the poet’s choice of lifestyle.

Farmstead poetry, as developed by Tao and adapted by later writers, typically includes the following features: depictions of idyllic, rural scenes; a focus on the leisure and contentment of rustic life; the use of symbolic natural images; simple and direct expressions; as well as meditations on reclusion, the significance of nature’s workings, and their correspondence with the human realm. This genre languished for centuries after Tao’s death, attracting little interest from Six Dynasties poets; but during the Tang, many writers found the farmstead topos to be a fruitful medium for creating an idealized realm in which they could seek solace from the constraints of court life and from disappointments in public service. Their portrayals of farmstead life were generally trimmed of practical matters of self-sustenance and of the sense of unease and melancholy sometimes found in Tao’s works. Selections of Tao’s life and works became a rich source of poetic material for new examples of farmstead poems. Writing farmstead poetry became a vogue with High Tang poets, and the development of the genre reached its apex in their works.

THE LANDSCAPE POETRY OF XIE LINGYUN

Xie Lingyun, a scion of an illustrious aristocratic clan of the Six Dynasties, led a life of privilege and leisure. His official biography paints him as an outlandish and temperamental character. Unable to realize his political ambition and finding himself in exile from court in his prime, Xie turned toward an aesthetic engagement with nature and a spiritual quest for enlightenment. Xie has long been acknowledged as the originary model for Chinese landscape poetry. While he was by no means the first poet to use images of mountains and waters or to employ nature as a way to express his ideas and sentiments, he unequivocally established “mountains and waters” as a poetic subject in its own right. Unlike the sparse lines of natural imagery found in xuanyan shi (abstruse poetry), philosophical verse rooted in Daoist thought that was in vogue during the fourth century, extensive exposition of the natural scene in Xie’s works marks the birth of landscape poetry as a genre. In contrast to philosophical poetry, in which natural imagery serves predominantly as metaphors for ideas or the literal background for the figures or events in the poem, Xie’s landscape poetry contains elaborate descriptions of nature in which mountains and waters become objects of the aesthetic gaze. To be sure, Xie’s landscape poems are based on physical and intimate contact with the subject at hand. He toured the magnificent landscapes of Zhejiang with admirable enthusiasm, even designing a type of wooden clog for hiking up and down mountains.

One late Six Dynasties critic, Liu Xie (ca. 465-ca. 522), observed that during the early part of the Liu Song dynasty (420-479), “Laozi and Zhuangzi retreated into the background, while mountains and waters came to flourish.”¹² This influential statement refers to the replacement of abstruse poetry by landscape poetry as the dominant literary mode, and it has generally been interpreted to recount the vanishing of Daoist philosophy from poetry. While it is true that landscape poetry propounds more the aesthetic appraisal of natural scenes than a view of nature as mere metaphor for metaphysical notions, the modern scholar Wang Yao has argued that this shift in literary trend does not mark a transformation in poets’ ideas about life and the cosmos but signals a change in poetic material.¹³ Mountains and waters make ideal vehicles for the manifestation (or contemplation) of the Dao, or Way. Indeed, Xie’s landscape poems almost invariably conclude with some kind of philosophical meditation. Hence, Lao-Zhuang philosophy did not in fact retreat into the background but masqueraded itself in the guise of mountains and waters, as Wang has put it.¹⁴ Landscape poetry may nevertheless be distinguished from plain philosophical verse, characterized by the Six Dynasties critic Zhong Rong (ca. 469-518) as insipid and dicta-like, by its lush descriptions of mountains and waters and a certain emotive lyricism.

Xie’s landscape poems are laden with artfully crafted lines, strictly parallel couplets, obscure words, and literary allusions. Their erudition and denseness make them difficult to read in the original and unfortunate to read in translation. Yet there are great rewards for working through his verse: beautiful representations of natural landscapes that truly enliven his subject and profound insights into nature’s workings and their correlation to man. I discuss three of Xie’s best-known landscape poems to illustrate his aesthetic representation and understanding of nature. In “Climbing Yongjia’s Green Crag Mountain,” the poet describes in full a journey into a mountain in Yongjia (modern Zhejiang), where he held a post in exile in 422 and 423:

C6.5

One fruitful approach to a difficult text is to analyze first its structure and identify the function of its components. Modern scholars have described the structural pattern of Xie’s landscape poems as journey narration, scene description, stirred emotion, and philosophical meditation. While this outline is not inaccurate, it omits a place in the sequence for allusions to the Yijing (Book of Changes), a recurrent source for citation in Xie’s works and an important key to understanding his poetic practice. For Xie, the Yijing imitates, corresponds to, or represents in microcosm the realm of heaven-and-earth. It is thus a handy guide to the ongoing processes in the realm of heaven-and-earth, the study of which may aid people in determining their actions. The relationship between the realms of heaven-and-earth and human society, with the Yijing as mediator, is often duplicated in Xie’s landscape poetry by the structural sequence of natural scenes, Yijing allusions, and a decision on a new course of action.

The allusions in lines 13 and 14 require some explanation. Line 13 alludes to the Top Yang of the hexagram Gu (Decay): “He does not serve kings and princes, / Sets himself higher goals.”¹⁵ Line 14 is drawn from the Second Yang of the hexagram Lü (Treading): “The path to tread on is level and smooth, and if one secluded here practices constancy, he will have good fortune.”¹⁶ The allusions to the Yijing, taken together, present a story of a man whose pursuits lie well beyond the fame and wealth that officialdom has to offer. Prospects of worldly success do not seduce this recluse, who constantly keeps to the level way, which has implications of both the Dao and a path that is free from dangerous obstacles. To particularize the significance of the allusions with regard to the poet’s situation, these lines may mean that by not allowing the affairs of government to shackle him, the poet enjoys the good fortune of visiting the gorgeous sites for which Yongjia is famous. They may also be interpreted allegorically as political criticism: the decadent Emperor Shao (r. 422-423) represents “‘Decay’ at the top,” while the exiled poet is the secluded man who assumes a position of secondary importance.

A comprehensive account of the poem’s structure divides it into five quatrains, each with a different focus. Lines 1-4 recount the entire process of ascent: preparation, the climb, and arrival at the peak. Lines 5-8 describe the winter scene that the poet witnesses from the summit. Lines 9-12 are characterized by confusion and obscurity, which apparently result from the poet’s deep venture into the mountains. Lines 13-16, containing two Yijing allusions, form a self-contained set. A chiasmus yields a tight, circular quatrain. Line 16 expands on the allusion in line 13, while line 15 elucidates the prognostication in line 14. Lines 17-20 reveal the poet’s new course of action, whose features, “all-embracing Unity” (baoyi) and the mending of one’s nature (shan xing), are markedly Daoist. The poet attempts to reconcile himself to his exile from court and plans to seek spiritual enlightenment.

It is by no means coincidental that the allusions to the Yijing are sandwiched between three quatrains that depict a natural landscape and the poet’s engagement within it and a quatrain that evidences a spiritual transformation. It is moreover significant that the two allusions appear between a state of obscurity (the third quatrain) and a state of clarity (the fifth quatrain). In this poem, the allusions to the Yijing signal not only change but also, more specifically, a transition from exterior to interior landscape, which implies the poet’s intention to establish a signifying relation between the particulars of the natural world and his own situation, and thus affirms the link between the realm of heaven-and earth and the realm of human affairs.

Xie’s landscape poems have long been appreciated for embodying philosophical principle (li) as well as exemplifying the art of xingsi (verisimilitude). His descriptive details in lines 5-8 capture the entire appearance of the landscape: from the gently rippling water to the glossy bamboo grove, and from the meandering stream to the extensive forest and dense mountain. The pairing of mountain and water in a single couplet is a staple feature of the landscape poetry of Xie and his followers. This alternation between mountain and water not only identifies the poetic subjects but also, more important, mimics the dense, layered arrangement of crags/ peaks and rivers/streams in nature. Poetic form again imitates natural form in the poet’s use of rhyming binomes, where the same final signals a continuity within variation, hence creating texture. The rhyming binomes dan lian (line 5) and tuan luan (line 6) auditorily convey a certain texture in the appearance of the rippling water and glossy bamboo. Difficult phrasing in this descriptive passage moreover underscores the nature of the mountainous terrain.

Xie’s landscape poems are typically rich in descriptive details of the natural scene. In some cases, an exposition of natural images is made even more interesting by a transformation in the poet’s perception of the landscape. An especially good example is “What I Observed as I Crossed the Lake on My Way from Southern Mountain to Northern Mountain”:

C6.6

The basic story of the poem is straightforward and familiar enough: the poet tours the mountains and waters and describes what he sees and thinks. However, it is not altogether clear from which location and at what time of day the lines in the first half of the poem are written. The poem takes place sometime between dawn and dusk and somewhere between peak and shore. This ambivalence is aimed less at mystifying the picture than at providing a comprehensive representation that transcends time and space.

A look at the function of the allusions to the Yijing will shed some light on the development of the poem. The allusions in lines 11 and 12 refer to how cosmic operations (tiandao [literally, way of heaven]) reified in meteorological phenomena may bring about regeneration in the sphere of terrestrial processes (didao [literally, way of earth]). The poet demonstrates his understanding of this principle by representing springtime growth and activity in the lines following the question posed in line 11: “‘Releasing’ and making bring about what ends?” The allusions to the Yijing mark unequivocal changes in both the style and the perspective of the poem. The description of the landscape that precedes the allusions is written with a grand scope and robust style, while the descriptions that follow have a touch of subtlety and delicacy. The lines preceding the allusions (lines 1-10) contain sublime scenes of mountains and waters, in which the season is not discernible. They contrast with the scenes of minute springtime detail, such as the purple buds of new rushes and the green skin of early bamboo, which appear after the allusions. This difference in perspective coincides with yet another set of stylistic changes. In roughly the first half of the poem, we find the antithetical binaries of dawn and dusk, dark path and bright island, and trees below and torrents above. In the lines that follow the allusions, we note the complementary pairs of early bamboo and newborn rushes and springtime shore and mild wind. This shift from antithetical to complementary parallelism seems to correspond to an increase in intimacy between the poet and nature. The appearance of the Yijing allusions (lines 11-12) marks the beginning of the poet’s union with nature, which is revealed in his understanding and appreciation of its workings (lines 13-18). That the allusions appear immediately before the passage revealing the harmony between the poet and his natural surroundings, moreover, suggests that the Yijing serves as a catalyst to this union.

The poet’s engagement with nature is further specified in the last four lines of the poem. The absence of a like-minded companion may be a source of personal regret for the poet. But the possibility that the principles (li) recorded in the Yijing and manifested in the natural world might go unappreciated (in the sense of both admiring and grasping) is a concern that assumes precedence over individual want. The poet has made it his task not only to enjoy but also to probe into nature’s workings. For Xie, nature is not merely a source of sensuous pleasure but the embodiment of the Dao. The contemplation of natural landscapes may thus lead the viewer to enlightenment.

Certain formal features of the poem augment its semantic points. For example, each of the lines describing springtime growth and activity (lines 13-16) contains a shiyan (verse eye), a masterfully employed word (often a verb) that animates the entire line, hence providing a focal point (thematic table of contents 4.2). The characters bao (enwrap) and han (hold) imply a gentle hold that is appropriate to the handling of delicate new growth. The verbs xi (sport) and nong (play with) render the subjects dynamic: seagulls are not merely seeking food on the vernal shore, ascending and descending according to the tides carrying their bounty, but sporting with it; pheasants are not simply brushing the temperate wind, flapping their wings as if to take flight, but playing with it. It is little wonder that critics have long marveled at Xie’s use of verse eyes in his landscape poems, which ingeniously enliven the scenes described.

In addition to actual landscapes, symbolic ones in some cases may become the site for meditations on the way of life. In “Climbing the Lakeside Tower,” the binary of retirement versus service underlies the entire poem:¹⁷

C6.7

This poem contains two types of landscape: a symbolic one of lines 1-6 and a perceived one of lines 11-16. In the first part of the poem, the poet reflects on the issue of service versus withdrawal, without apparent resolution. This introspection is soon replaced by outward observation of the early-spring scene. The poet’s engagement with nature brings about new reflections and a resolution. Lines 17- 20 reveal the uneasy feelings of the poet regarding his exile from court. The poet is grieved by the song of Bin (Shijing, Mao no. 154), in which a girl longs to find a mate and go home with him, just as Xie longs to return home; he is also moved by the song of Chu that summons the recluse from the mountains. Although the poet admits the difficulty of steadying the mind in seclusion, he finally decides to maintain his principle and embrace quietude.

Three allusions to the Yijing develop the main theme of the poem. These allusions do not occupy a pivotal position in the poem, bridging the passage from natural scenes to inner transformation, as in “Climbing Yongjia’s Green Crag Mountain,” or preceding a transformed landscape and subsequent inner meditations, as in “What I Observed as I Crossed the Lake.” Rather, they are employed to set up and answer the dilemma of retirement versus service. Line 1 of the poem alludes to the First Yang of the hexagram Qian (Pure Yang): “A submerged dragon does not act.”¹⁸ This statement applies to the superior man who has yet to reveal his virtue and capabilities. Line 2 calls to mind the hexagram Jian (Gradual Progress), whose six statements outline the gradual advancement of the wild goose, from shore to highland to hill.¹⁹ This ascension parallels the rise of the superior man.²⁰ The juxtaposition of retired life and successful career in lines 1 and 2 sets up a pattern of binary oppositions within the next four lines. In lines 3 and 5, the poet addresses the allusion to the flying goose by stating that he has failed in court life. Lines 4 and 6 hark back to the allusion of the submerged dragon as the poet admits that he has also not succeeded in retirement. The first two allusions resonate through the poem’s first six lines and help build a microstructure for the first three couplets: images, significations of the images, and the application of the images to the poet’s own situation.

The allusions in the first couplet work additionally with the poem’s last line to give the poem a closed, circular structure. The last line alludes to the following comments in the Yijing, which explain the passage to which line 1 refers: “‘A submerged dragon does not act.’ What does this mean? The Master says: ‘This refers to one who has a dragon’s virtue yet remains hidden. He neither changes to suit the world nor seeks fulfillment in fame. He hides from the world but does not regret it, and though this fails to win approval, he is not sad [wu men].’”²¹ The poet’s comparison of the hidden dragon whose virtue is out of tune with the world to his own plight is as much a final consolation as an affirmation of his decision to withdraw, if only temporarily. By reinforcing the first line of the poem, the last line offsets the perfect balance between retirement and officialdom introduced in lines 1-6 and developed throughout the poem: the observation of spring scenes while in retirement in lines 11-16 and the lamentation of frustrated ambition in lines 17-20.

The presentation of the natural scene in lines 11-16 contains a number of distinguishing formal features of Xie’s landscape poetry. The familiar pairing of mountains and waters combines with a pairing of sight and sound: the poet listens and observes a scene containing both water and mountain, which suggests a comprehensive engagement with nature. His perception of the mountains in line 12 is conveyed both visually and auditorily: the use of the characters qu and qin, which have the same radical, shan, creates a visual continuity with variation, resembling a mountain ridge. The alliteration of qu and qin presents variation within similarity, suggesting a notable texture or unevenness, as in a mountain range. Remarkably, the elements of opposition and variation in these lines are smoothly integrated into a coherent visual sequence: attention proceeds from the distant seas, the nearer mountains, to the pond and trees next to the tower.

The most interesting couplet in this poem (and the most often quoted of Xie’s oeuvre) is: “The pond’s banks grow spring grasses, / And garden willows have transformed the singing birds.” These lines brilliantly convey the look and feel of spring: the pond’s banks give birth to spring grasses, while the willows in their vernal look transform the attitude of the birds that sing there. This couplet, with an apparently disarming simplicity, appears refreshingly spontaneous in a poem laden with symbols, allusions, alliteration, and complex phrases. The popular story about its origin would support the view that an impression of natural beauty is the object of the couplet: Xie dozed off after having worked for days on the lines of his poem. He then dreamed of his cousin Xie Huilian (397-433), also a famous poet, and awoke with these two lines, later crediting them to divine inspiration rather than to his own language. This is only a tale, but it reveals an admiration for spontaneity (even in artful lines) rather than obvious effort in Chinese aesthetics. The spontaneous nature of the couplet is wonderfully problematized by its compressed syntax, which yields a certain ambiguity to its meaning. My translation merely offers the neatest interpretation, but the couplet has also been rendered as, “Upon the pool, spring grass is growing, / The garden willows have changed into singing birds.”²² In this interpretation, the garden willows seem to have turned into singing birds, which populate the trees and fill them with sound. Xie may well have had this poetic image in mind, but one wonders about the replacement of willows by birds, which causes the former to disappear from the picture and privileges the aural over the visual. This spring scene surely needs the copresence of birds and willows. This translation moreover ignores the lines’ parallel relationship. The relationship among the components in each line (the subjects, verbs, and objects they act on) is usually assumed to be parallel in a parallel couplet. Yet another translation, more mindful of their parallel relationship, reads: “The pond is growing into springtime plants / Garden willows have turned into singing birds.”²³ The interpretation of sheng as “grow into” stretches the semantic range of the word even more than a reading of bian as “turn into”; hence, this translation was explicitly presented as a poetic reading of the lines. The poeticalness of this couplet, however, derives less from an unusual usage of verbs than their ingenious choice and part in the syntactic composition. As verse eyes, the two verbs not only animate their lines but play with signs of the season (pond, grasses, trees, and birds) in a way that truly captures the mood of early spring. Although earlier readers have been fond of commenting on the apparent simplicity of these lines, what has continued to captivate readers is their surprising ambiguity.

Xie’s landscape poetry is marked by certain formal characteristics, such as verisimilar description, abundant use of allusions, animating verse eyes, and difficult phrasing, and by a conceptual feature, the poet’s contemplative engagement with a signifying nature. His extensive use of the Yijing is part of both his reading and his representation of nature. Later writers in the genre, which was popular in the Six Dynasties and peaked during the Tang, did not necessarily adopt Xie’s stylistic form and conceptual framework in their entirety, adapting the genre according to their individual styles. But vivid descriptions of the landscape and meditations on nature, its workings, and their relevance to one’s view of life remain constant markers of the genre. The culmination of the development of landscape poetry coincided with that of farmstead poetry during the High Tang, whose poets, in exploring the basic spirit shared by the two traditions—a return to nature and simplicity—brought the two genres into close affiliation by synthesizing aspects of both Tao and Xie in their examples of nature poetry.

Wendy Swartz

NOTES

1 Tao Qian, “A Lament in the Chu Mode: To Show to Recorder Pang and Scribe Deng,” in Tao Yuanming ji jiaojian (The Works of Tao Yuanmngi [TaoQian], with Collations and Notes), ed. Gong Bin (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1999), 98.

2 Most modern scholars have emended the text to read “thirteen years” (shisan nian), which is based on the traditional belief that Tao entered officialdom in 393 and retired in 405. Some scholars prefer to keep “thirty years” (sanshi nian), as it indicates the span of time covering Tao’s preparation for and tenure in office, from the age of ten to forty.

3 The late Six Dynasties critic Zhong Rong cites this contemporary assessment in the entry on Tao Qian in Shipin jizhu (Collected Annotations of the “Grading of Poets”), ed. Cao Xu (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1994), 260.

4 Ge Xiaoyin, Shanshui tianyuan shipai yanjiu (Research on Schools of Landscape and Farmstead Poetry) (Shenyang: Liaoning daxue chubanshe, 1993), 80.

5 Wang Wei’s “At My Wang River Retreat, Presented to Candidate Pei Di,” contains the following couplet: “At the ford lingers the setting sun, / From the small village rises one wisp of smoke” (Quan Tang shi [Complete Shi Poetry of the Tang] [Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960], 126.1266). The visual dynamics created by the downward and upward movements of the setting sun and the rising smoke against the horizontal planes of the river and the village indicate a concern with the balance of forms that is an unmistakable mark of Wang Wei’s craftsmanship.

6 These three passages are (1) “The Great Way is not named; Great Discriminations are not spoken” (“Discussion on Making All Things Equal”); (2) “Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know. Therefore the sage practices the teaching that has no words” (“Knowledge Wandered North”); and (3) “Zhuangzi says, ‘Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words’” (“External Things”) (The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, trans. Burton Watson [New York: Columbia University Press, 1968], 44, 235, 302).

7 Su Shi, “Ti Yuanming ‘Yinjiu shi’ hou” (On Yuanming’s “Poems on Drinking Wine”), in Su Shi wenji (The Collected Prose of Su Shi) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 67.2092.

8 Wang Guowei, Renjian cihua, Renjian ci zhuping (“Remarks on Lyrics in the Human World, Lyrics in the Human World,” Annotated and Evaluated), ed. Chen Hongxiang (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 2002), 7.

9 Xiao Tong, “TaoYuanming ji xu” (Preface to the Collected Works of Tao Yuanming), in Quan Liang wen (Complete Liang Prose), in Quan Shanggu Sandai Qin Han Sanguo Liuchao wen (Complete Prose of the Three Ancient Dynasties, Qin, Han, Three Kingdoms, and Six Dynasties) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958), 20.3067a.

10 According to Wang Yao, by the Wei dynasty drinking had become a means for the gentry to escape from cruel political reality (Zhonggu wenxueshi lun [Essays on Medieval Literary History] [Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1998], 172-180). The transition from the Wei to the Jin was marked by great instability, during which expressions of opinion or position were terribly unsafe. Drinking and drunkenness were used most notably by the Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove as a defensive guise, as well as anesthesia for their sorrow over the contemporary state of affairs.

11 The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien, trans. James R. Hightower (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 75.

12 Liu Xie, Wenxin diaolong zhu shi (“The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons,” Annotated and Explicated), ed. Zhou Zhenfu (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1998), 49.

13 Wang Yao, Zhonggu wenxueshi lun, 271.

14 Wang Yao, Zhonggu wenxueshi lun, 272.

15 Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes, trans., The I Ching, or Book of Changes, Bollingen Series 19 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), 78. “Top Yang” refers to a solid (yang—) line at the top of the hexagram, which is composed of six solid and/or broken (yin --) lines.

16 Richard John Lynn, trans., The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 201.

17 I have interpreted this line with the Song variant for fan (to return), ji (to arrive at), in mind. Scholars generally do not alter the text, but note that ji makes more sense inasmuch as Xie was a native of Guiji, not Yongjia Commandery, where the poem was composed.

18 Lynn, Classic of Changes, 132. “First Yang” refers to a solid (yang—) line at the bottom of the hexagram.

19 Wilhelm and Baynes, I Ching, 208.

20 Lynn, Classic of Changes, 473-477.

21 Lynn, Classic of Changes, 132.

22 J. D. Frodsham, The Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yün (385-433), Duke of K’ang-Lo (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967), 1:121.

23 Francis Westbrook, “Landscape Transformation in the Poetry of Hsieh Ling-yün,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 100, no. 3 (1980): 243.

XIE TIAO

Belonging to the same illustrious clan as the famous landscape poet Xie Lingyun (385-433), Xie Tiao nevertheless achieved a completely different style from that of his senior and had a more visible impact on the development of the regulated verse of the Tang.

C7.1

Less dense in diction than the works of his Liu Song predecessors, Xie Tiao’s poems often flow with an easy grace. Although still far from Tang regulated verse, “An Outing to the Eastern Field” comes close in terms of its brevity (ten lines as opposed to the sixteen or twenty lines of an average Xie Lingyun poem) and its attention to tonal euphony. The third couplet, for instance, is a perfect example of tonal patterning, with deflected and level tones alternating in the key positions in the first line of the couplet (second and fourth characters) and then level and deflected tones used in the corresponding positions in the following line.

The pleasurable outing is set against a background of mysterious melancholy—the poet never tells us what it is that makes him despondent. The Eastern Field was at the foot of Zhong Mountain, where Crown Prince Wenhui (458-493) of the Qi had constructed a luxury villa. Xie Tiao himself was said to have owned a villa in the same area. The poet claims that he and his friend ascend the lofty terrace to seek clouds, but once they climb to the top, a mist rises and spreads everywhere; along with the lushly growing trees, it blocks the poet’s view of the distant vista.

Perhaps because of the obstruction of his view, the poet, in the fourth couplet, turns his eyes to a scene close at hand. The new growth of the lotus leaves indicates the season: it is early summer. The stirring of the new lotus leaves leads the poet to notice the playing fish; the “sport” of the fish, a symbol of marital happiness and fertility, is imbued with sexual undertones. The liveliness and vitality of nature are, however, soon offset by a scene of dispersal and destruction. Following the principle of the parallel couplet, which demands that the reader understand the second line of a couplet in the same way as the first line, we are able to construct the causal relationship between the scattering of the birds and the falling of the blossoms from the tree; that is, it is the movement of the birds that shakes the flowers off the branches, and it is most likely the human presence—the approach of the poet and his friend—that has startled the birds. The flowers are mere remnants of their former splendor (and as such, fall easily): as summer begins and lotus grows, spring is coming to an end, and tree blossoms are fading away. Even as the fish are mating and the lotuses are sprouting new leaves, there are withering and death. Or, if we turn the argument around, nature is ever renewing itself, and there is always new life (the tree will blossom again next year)—not so, however, for human beings.

Moved by the cycle of nature he observes, the poet thinks of drinking spring ale, a gesture reminiscent of “Duan ge xing” (Short Song) by the Jian’an poet Cao Cao (155-220): “Facing the ale, one should sing, / How long does human life last?” Thoughts of mortality and the impermanence of things may have initially driven the poet out to make merry on a fine late-spring day, but nature turns out to be not so much a consolation as a reminder of the brevity of human life. While it is the poet’s vision that connects all the things in nature and makes them into self-contained scenes in well-crafted couplets, there is an irreconcilable difference between man and nature that marks the human presence in the landscape as essentially alien. All that is left for the poet to do is to “gaze” (wang) from a distance, to be an onlooker able to appreciate but unable to participate in nature’s cycle of renewal.

The fourth couplet in Xie Tiao’s “An Outing to the Eastern Field” is a well-known parallel couplet in Chinese literary history. Its force comes from an intricacy that goes well beyond prosodic or formal perfection. It says much in a limited space, and what it says depends very much on how it is said.

C7.2

“Jade Stairs Resentment” (also translated as “Lament of the Jade Stairs” [C10.10]) is a quatrain (jueju), a verse form that had grown increasingly popular in the fifth to sixth centuries. Quatrains could be written in either five- or seven-syllable lines, although the full development of the seven-syllable quatrain occurred only in the Tang. There are several theories regarding the origin of jueju, one of which is based on the literal meaning of jue: “cut-off.” According to this theory, poets used to compose quatrains in response to one another, but when a quatrain received no response, it became “cut-off lines,” or jueju. During the Southern Dynasties, poets were fascinated with quatrain songs performed at court; these songs, although commonly regarded as folk songs, were often composed by court musicians as well as by aristocrats—sometimes the emperor himself. Xie Tiao’s quatrain, written to a yuefu title, was much more decorous than many of the quatrain songs in the court music repertoire, but it nonetheless belonged to such a tradition.

“Jade Stairs Resentment” describes a woman yearning for her absent beloved. Everything points to her loneliness: the lowering of the bead curtain implies that no one is coming and she is ready to retire, the flying and resting of the glowworms denote the passage of time, and the sewing of clothes through night suggests sleeplessness. Everything becomes a sign of something else that is kept well hidden, just like the resentment (yuan) of the woman. In lines 1-3 of the poem, the only word that might suggest the woman’s feelings is the term modifying “night,” which she perceives as “long.” This subjective sense of “long” prepares the reader for the last line, which breaks into a rhetorical question: “This longing for you—when will it ever cease?” The emotional power of the ending is very much intensified by the holding back of the first three lines.

For the informed reader, there is much more to the poem. In ancient Chinese lore, glowworms were believed to be produced by rotten grass—an indication that the lady’s courtyard is overgrown with weeds, yet another sign of her having no visitor. Since glowworms generally appear in late summer, their inclusion in the poem also functions as a marker of the season; autumn is a time not only of cooling passions but also of decay. Her resentment (yuan) of the absent lover is, therefore, strengthened by this subtle reminder of the brevity of youth, beauty, and human life itself. The larger temporal background, however, invests her sewing with a sense of irony: it is, after all, not a piece of warm clothing for the approaching cold weather but a “gossamer dress” appropriate only for summer. Does this anachronistic gesture bespeak a desperate desire to prolong the summer days? Or, as the ancient saying goes: “A woman adorns herself for the one who loves her.” Is she cherishing the hope that one day her beloved will return and that she will wear the dress for him? Or does the line suggest that she is soon to be put away like the gauze dress? In this quatrain, we hear the echo of a yuefu poem attributed to Lady Ban (ca. first century B.C.E.), in which a gossamer fan worries that it will be discarded once the cold season arrives. These interpretations do not necessarily exclude one another but altogether contribute to the richness of the image of sewing.

Xie Tiao’s poem exemplifies one particularly desirable quality for a quatrain, which is the use of simple language to create a world of complex nuances. Although one may still detect Xie Lingyun’s influence in some of Xie Tiao’s landscape poems, on the whole Xie Tiao’s poetry is characterized by a refined elegance that differs remarkably from Xie Lingyun’s exuberant density. Xie Tiao was one of the most revered poets in the early sixth century; his graceful, measured expression of feelings in simple, clear diction became the new poetic ideal for the court poets of the Liang dynasty (502-557).

XIAO GANG

The major theme of Xiao Gang’s poetry is transience. It is a Buddhist theme, but it is also a universally human one. To identify the major theme of Xiao Gang’s poetry as transience does not mean that Xiao Gang was always writing about the impermanence of human life; it means simply that he was intensely concerned with moments: his poetry uses words to arrest fleeting moments in the flow of time. It was perhaps for this reason that he was so taken by shadows and wrote about shadows so often in his poetry, as shadow marks a specific time of day, a particular moment. By portraying the world in terms of moments, Xiao Gang represented both its fragility and its aliveness. Many critics have accused Xiao Gang of being too delicate; in a gendered distinction of qualities, delicacy still suggests femininity, a quality considered unseemly in a man and doubly suspicious in a ruler. Such a view, however, mistakes an extraordinary power of observation for mere delicacy. In the end, the delicacy of Xiao Gang’s poems is no more than an extension of the vibrant and ephemeral world depicted in them.

C7.3

“Autumn Evening” depicts a particular time of the year and a particular time of the day. Both autumn and twilight are times of division as well as of transition and ambiguity: the heat of summer has not quite turned into the cold of winter; the day has ceased to be day, but the night has not quite begun. In the west, the sun is setting; in the east, where the moon should be, drifting clouds are pouring out from the mountains. Even as the last rays of the sun penetrate the window, shadows are gradually spreading over the walls, and darkness is closing in from all sides.

In the gathering darkness, two sources of light catch the poet’s attention. The tangled clouds, glowing with the red of sunset, are reflected in a circular pool, shining forth with a momentary splendor. The circularity of the pool also gives the tangled clouds a shape—a roundness that, in Buddhism, indicates perfection, be it the perfection of the Buddhist teachings or of enlightenment. In the next line, we see another light source: lamps are lit, which indicates the increasing density of the dark. The poet notices the dark silhouettes of tiny tree leaves outlined by the lamplight. Thus, in a world gradually sinking into shadows, the poet traces luminous patterns and forms, affirming an order created by human effort.

In these lines, we can see a peculiar vision of the world—and a peculiar way in which poetry is made to work. We may compare Xiao Gang’s fragmentary poem with couplets by previous masters, such as the couplet from “Zeng Wang Can” (To Wang Can), a poem by Cao Zhi (192-232):

or the couplet from Xie Lingyun’s poem “Written upon Returning over the Lake from My Meditation Lodge at Stone Cliff”:

These couplets, although no less beautiful or poetic, are clearly of a different kind from Xiao Gang’s couplets, as they are more straightforward, more linear in their movement. In Xiao Gang’s poem, even the first couplet, which is the simplest of the three in its movement, requires a going back in reading for us to better grasp the picture, for we would not understand the significance of the clouds in the eastern sky until we are told that the sun has sunk to the river’s level in the west; only then do we realize that darkness is all around. The poem represents a moment when, at a time of decreasing visibility, vision is focused on even the smallest change in nature, and as a result, nature becomes illuminated, just as the lamplight delineates the dark shape of the tiny autumn leaves.

Another poem, “Evening Sun in the Rear Hall,” again opens with the movement of shadows:

C7.4

The “emerald stairs,” which are actually seen by the poet, and the remote corner of the city wall, which can only be imagined by the poet because he is in the rear hall, are linked by shifting shadows: just as the sun moves across the sky, so the shadows move across the earth. From this point on, the boundary between what is seen by the bodily eye and what is seen by the mind’s eye becomes blurred. “Willows on the bank” of a river, a distant scene, are juxtaposed with the “peach blossoms by the window,” a scene close at hand. Indeed, the poet is so close to the peach blossoms that he can see the shedding of their delicate calyxes. This also reminds the reader that, just as the day is advancing, springtime is also coming to an end.

The third couplet again sets side by side an image grounded in empirical experience and a semi-imaginary scene. According to the Bowu zhi (A Comprehensive Account of Things), a work by the Western Jin writer Zhang Hua (232-300) that records many fantastic phenomena: “On the fifth day of the fifth month [that is, mid- to late June], if one buries the head of a dragonfly under a west-facing window, after three days of not eating anything, it will turn into a green pearl.” Now, if a butterfly indeed has powder on its wings and may leave it on the flower petals, “dragonfly pearls” are no more than a figment of the poet’s imagination. Moreover, he claims that they are concealed by the growing bamboo, so that this fantastic image is negated as soon as it is evoked, and the reader is left wondering if that which is being concealed is actually there.

But even if it might be empirically true that a butterfly stains a flower with its powder, is it visible to even the most perceptive human eyes? Much of what is depicted in this poem seems more the product of the poetic imagination than of even the most careful observation. In this poem, the act of looking and seeing is also the act of visualizing and creating. Perception becomes indistinguishable from representation. Precisely for this reason, it is difficult to find an appreciative friend to share the scene with, for the scene is as much real as imagined, and visualization is always a private, individual act. Sitting alone in the late afternoon—with time flying away in the shifting shadows of the sun, darkness approaching, and springtime ending—Xiao Gang finds that the only enjoyable activity is to write.

Xie Lingyun, the great landscape poet of the fifth century, had once famously said that a fine hour, beautiful scenery, an appreciative friend (shangxin), and an enjoyable activity were four things hard to come by all at once. Indeed, the desire for an appreciative friend is so prominent in Xie Lingyun’s poetry that it became his hallmark. Xiao Gang’s poem both pays tribute to the earlier master and demonstrates the immense difference that separates the two: while Xie Lingyun’s poetry often attempts to offer a panoramic view of the landscape and creates an impression of all-inclusiveness and a cosmic vision, Xiao Gang’s intense gaze is focused on a much smaller sphere, and he resorts to the mind’s eye no less than to his physical vision to detect and construct the complex relations existing among the myriad things of the world apparently all standing alone. As Stephen Owen has said, “His was a poetry of beautiful, enigmatic patterns, often drawing the eye closely to some detail.”¹

Beginning in the Qi dynasty, yongwu shi (poetry on things) became increasingly popular. It gradually developed into an important subgenre of classical Chinese poetry, continually practiced throughout history and, in fact, enjoying a place in modern poetry as well. Of Xiao Gang’s extant poetic collection, which contains over 250 poems, about one-sixth belong to the yongwu category. The usual yongwu poem of the Qi describes the characteristics of a given object and often ends with an appraisal of how the object may be of service to its human owner. As Cynthia Chennault has noted, “Instead of things that stand free in nature, the new trend of Southern Qi odes was to depict small decorative items which had incidental uses, such as musical instruments, utensils for a banquet, a lady’s toiletry articles, and so on.”² And yet, it is noteworthy that only one-fifth of the approximately forty yongwu poems by Xiao Gang are about inanimate objects. Xiao Gang was far more interested in portraying natural phenomena or living things, from clouds and rain to horses, birds, flowers, and insects. They are not depicted as static, inanimate, and generic, but as specific, particular, and vulnerable to the ravages of time.

“On Clouds” is a fine example of Xiao Gang’s yongwu poetry:

C7.5

This poem shows Xiao Gang’s familiarity with the literary tradition and his ability to make it new. The first line evokes “Fuyun fu” (A Poetic Exposition on the Floating Clouds), by the Western Jin writer Lu Ji (261-303), in which he compares the clouds of “five colors” to lotus blossoms, rose of Sharon, agate, and carnelian. Lu Ji also describes the clouds as “jade leaves,” which are blown off “golden branches.” Noticeably, what Xiao Gang chooses to take from Lu Ji’s metaphors are not organic things of nature, such as lotus or rose of Sharon, but “carnelian” and “jade leaves,” to which he adds “a metal wind”—in Chinese cosmology, autumn is considered the season of metal, and so the autumn wind is also referred to as a “metal wind.” The result is striking, for the airy, constantly shifting forms of clouds are connected with the hard textures of minerals and metal. On the one hand, the poet uses words of insubstantiality, such as “floating,” “shadows,” and “mist”; on the other, those of solidity, like “carnelian,” “jade,” and “metal.” That the sky should be “frosty” intensifies the sense of coldness and hardness and accentuates the ethereality of the shape-changing clouds.

The clouds depicted in this quatrain are specifically autumn clouds. Real leaves wither and decay in autumn, but not these jade leaves. And yet, as the metal wind blows, even the jade leaves are scattered and turned into mere puff.

The jade leaves would have had a special resonance for Xiao Gang and his contemporaries, who grew up against an intensely Buddhist background, were devout Buddhist believers, and regularly attended Buddhist lectures. The Buddhist paradise, known as the Pure Land, is described as a land made of diamonds and decorated lavishly with the Seven Jewels, including agate, carnelian, jade, and gold (which, in Chinese, is the same word as “metal” [jin]). In the Pure Land, even trees are made of precious gems: of some trees, The Sutra of the Buddha of Infinite Life says the roots are made of diamonds, the trunks of gold, the branches of silver, the twigs of beryl, the leaves of lapis lazuli, the flowers of coral, and the fruits of red pearls; the sutra goes on and on in this manner. That trees should be made of various jewels might seem unnatural or artificial to some lay readers, and yet diamonds, silver, lapis lazuli, and coral are things of nature, as is organic vegetation. Being made of jewels only means that the trees in the Buddhist paradise do not wither and decay, as do trees in the mortal world; they are beyond the cycle of life and death. Xiao Gang was obviously fascinated by the blissful land sumptuously portrayed in the sutras. In another poem, “Xizhai xing ma” (Riding in the Western Residence), we see such a couplet:

Viewed in the Buddhist context, Xiao Gang’s poem “On Clouds” becomes poignant. As the illusory jade leaves are scattered by the autumn wind, we see the contrast between the solidity and permanence of the diamond land inhabited by heavenly beings and the fragility of the human world inhabited by the poet—and us.

Many of Xiao Gang’s poems are informed by his intimate knowledge of Buddhist texts. The following poem, “On a Fair Lady Viewing a Painting,” recalls the Buddhist story of the mutual deception of a carpenter and a painter. The carpenter played a practical joke on his painter friend by making a wooden statue of a pretty girl, which the painter took to be real and fell in love with. Upon learning of his error, the painter decided to get back at the carpenter. He made a painting of his hanging himself, which looked so real that the carpenter was led to think that the painter had committed suicide. Terrified, the carpenter rushed to cut the rope—only to discover that it was an object in a painting. This story illustrates the fallacy of human perception and the unreal nature of the physical world. It is included in the Jinglü yixiang (Differentiated Manifestations of Sutras and Laws), a large Buddhist encyclopedia commissioned by Xiao Gang’s father, Emperor Wu of the Liang, in 516.

C7.6

In a rather humorous tone, Xiao Gang points out that both women—the one in the painting and the one viewing it—are “painted,” no doubt alluding to the court lady’s heavy makeup. The last couplet, as Kang-i Sun Chang has observed, underlines the “permanent value of art”: only the painted woman is always in good spirits.³ The modern reader may find it distasteful that Xiao Gang should treat the real woman as an object of art by comparing her to a painting; and yet, the contrast effectively brings out the vital energy and fragility of the human condition: unlike the painted beauty, the real woman may become sick, grow old, get angry or become sad, and easily lose her “good spirits,” which only a painted beauty is privileged to possess “always.” Indeed, for those who were saturated in Buddhist teachings and frequently attended Buddhist lectures, like the Liang royal family and members of the nobility, the very statement “One is always in good spirits” is tongue-in-cheek: painting is one of the best-known metaphors in the Buddhist scriptures for the illusive nature of the phenomenal world, and so the “permanence” of a painting is itself an illusion because it is relative, measured against the brevity of human life.

Buddhist doctrine teaches that when a child sees the moon in the water, he tries to grab it, while the wise adult laughs at the child for doing so. The wiser adult understands that the impulse to grab the moon in the water is owing to the child’s adhering too much to the sense of “I” and that of “what I see” as reality. In fact, “I” is constituted of the Five Skandhas (wuyin or wuyun)—form, feeling, perception, impulse, and consciousness—all essentially illusory and transitory. Considered in this light, the following yongwu poem by Xiao Gang, “On a Lone Duck,” seems to take on a more complicated meaning, as the lonely duck, enamored of its own reflection, is sadly deluded in its attachment to something insubstantial and unreal:

C7.7

The last line contains an unsolvable paradox: the poet suggests that the discovery of its own reflection prompts the duck to stay, and yet, its staying conditions the existence of the reflection. The illusion of having a companion (that is, its own reflection in the water) gives rise to fond attachment, but the attachment itself turns out to be the raison d’être for the illusion and its preservation. Cause and effect become hopelessly entangled.

Two general points need to be made about the reception and evaluation of Xiao Gang’s achievements as a poet. First, modern critics tend to focus their attention on Xiao Gang’s poems about palace ladies and boudoir life, but these poems take up less than half of his extant oeuvre, and their preservation is due primarily to their inclusion in the sixth-century poetic anthology Yutai xinyong (New Songs of the Jade Terrace), which was intended for an upper-class female readership. This is the only pre-Tang poetic anthology that has survived more or less intact to the present day. But when these poems are taken to represent the entire corpus of Xiao Gang’s largely lost writings, we are prevented from seeing that he has a much wider range. Second, while the modern feminist critique of voyeurism may be applied to some of Xiao Gang’s poems on women, it is worthwhile to remember that in appreciating the poetry of a different age, we should take its historical and cultural contexts into account. Xiao Gang lived in an intensely Buddhist era, and the key to understanding the larger significance of his poems is to remember that for Xiao Gang and his contemporaries, sensuous forms paradoxically bespoke the illusory, ephemeral nature of the phenomenal world. One of Xiao Gang’s most notorious poems on a beautiful woman taking a daytime nap is, as some Chinese scholars have pointed out in recent years, clearly influenced by the long versified account of Śākyamuni Buddha’s life (Acts of the Buddha), translated into Chinese by the monk Bao Yun (376?-449) in the fifth century. In the account, sleeping palace ladies remind Śākyamuni, who was then the crown prince just like Xiao Gang, that alluring forms of the physical world are but an illusion, and his determination to forsake the secular life is subsequently strengthened.

If we look beyond the conventional criticism of Xiao Gang either as a decadent prince indulging in sensuous pleasures or as a male chauvinist voyeur, we will notice some wonderful love poems in his collection, such as the quatrain “Returning to the South of the City from the Encampment.” This quatrain was written when the young Xiao Gang was serving as the governor of Yongzhou (in modern Hubei Province) between 523 and 530, during which period he carried on several military campaigns against the Wei, the enemy dynasty in northern China.

C7.8

Like many of his contemporary poets, Xiao Gang was skillful at producing a vignette and sketching a dramatic situation. In this poem, the poet describes the reunion with his beloved, and he chooses to focus on the moment when the lovers first set eyes on each other after a temporary parting. During their separation, they have been tortured by suspicion and fear about the inconstancy of the beloved; now that they are together again, there is a moment of pause before they rush into each other’s arms, a moment of hesitation, even abashment, before old memories revive and a new passion is awakened. Although the poem was written more than 1,500 years ago, the lovers’ sentiments as portrayed in it are fresh and familiar, as if it had been composed only yesterday.

YU XIN

Yu Xin grew up in the southern elite culture; his father, a famous poet, was one of Xiao Gang’s closest companions, and Yu Xin himself had enjoyed Xiao Gang’s favor and patronage. After the Hou Jing Rebellion, Yu Xin went to Jiangling (in modern Hubei) and served under Xiao Gang’s younger brother, Xiao Yi (Emperor Yuan of the Liang [r. 552-555]). In 554, Yu Xin was sent on a diplomatic mission to Chang’an (modern Xi’an), the Western Wei (535-556) capital, and was subsequently detained. While Yu Xin was there, Jiangling fell to the Western Wei army; on January 27, 555, Emperor Yuan was brutally killed. Shortly afterward, the new Liang emperor was deposed by a powerful southern general, Chen Baxian (Emperor Wu of the Chen [r. 557-560]), who founded the Chen dynasty (557-589), the last of the Southern Dynasties. Yu Xin was never able to return to his native land. The Western Wei was soon overthrown and replaced by the Northern Zhou dynasty (557-581), and Yu Xin held a number of official positions under the new regime. He was treated with affection and respect by the Zhou princes, who loved poetry, but the poems of Yu Xin’s later years are marked by sadness over the fate of the south and the Liang princes and by a profound sense of survivor’s guilt.

Yu Xin was a consummate southern court poet, a master of elegant, restrained expression, which was the legacy of the fifth-century aristocratic poet Xie Tiao. In Yu Xin’s later poems, the intricate parallelism developed by the Liang court poets is employed with a much simplified diction and an apparently casual ease, which, combined with his frequent description of a bleak, sparse northern landscape in autumn and winter, convey a particular emotional force. Nevertheless, Yu Xin manages to frame the intensity of his feelings with a cultivated grace that is the hallmark of the southern courtier, and his poetry achieves powerful poignancy precisely because of such decorous restraint. Yu Xin’s works not only became a model for the northern poets of the late sixth century, but also produced a far-reaching influence. Du Fu (712-770), the great Tang poet, was an admirer of Yu Xin and praised him in the following lines: “Yu Xin, all his life, was most forlorn: / In his old age, his poetry and rhapsodies moved rivers and passes.”

C7.9

“A Cold Garden: On What I See” has a deceptive title, for the poet is depicting not only what he sees but also what he does not see: underneath the several feet of snow and a frozen riverbed that human vision cannot penetrate, the “underground spring” is stirring and the “energy of the earth” is spreading. This optimistic statement is immediately undercut by the next couplet: a “dark hawk” is circling in the sky, flying so low that the poet can tell it is looking sideways, and a “white egret” is also searching for food. These birds of prey are waiting patiently for the snow and ice to melt so they can strike their victims—the pheasant and fish now being protected by the thick coverings of nature. The poet sees the movement of those creatures of prey and knows that it bears the sign of spring’s imminent arrival; he also knows that with the return of spring, there will be bloodshed and death. The poet’s thoughts turn to something beyond his garden: another time, another place, when the noble lords of the Western Han took leave of the two Shus—Shu Guang and Shu Shou (fl. first century B.C.E.)—the two imperial tutors who retired at the summit of their careers and were upheld as role models in “getting out before it was too late.”

The peaceful, erudite indoor pleasures—the walls painted with “roaming immortals,” the books in bed—are thus enclosed in a cold wintry landscape beset by lurking dangers, murderous plots, and small deaths. Nature is neither at peace nor in harmony; it is populated with creatures of prey and victims. The poet’s little house may be safe and warm, as opposed to the cold and harsh world outside, but he cannot help thinking warily of the arrival of springtime—a rare moment in Six Dynasties poetry indeed, when spring becomes so threatening and ominous. In the last couplet, the natural world and the social world are brought together in the poet’s mind: Yu Xin seems to be entertaining the possibility of withdrawing from public service like the two Shus. He is, in truth, reflecting on an escape route for himself, who is at the moment both protected and trapped, like a pheasant or a fish, by the deep snow and ice.

Yu Xin uses almost no allusions in the whole poem, except for a reference to the two Shus in the last couplet. And yet, the white egret observing the fish echoes a well-known story about Zhuangzi, in which the ancient philosopher Zhuangzi and his friend Hui Shi look at the fish swimming in the water and hold a famous discussion about “whether one knows if the fish are happy.” The irony here, of course, is how the fish might be swimming happily under the ice while completely ignorant of their menacing observer and the danger they face.

The political situation in the Northern Zhou court toward the last years of Yu Xin’s life was indeed unstable, as the ambitious minister Yang Jian (Emperor Wen of the Sui [r. 581-604]) garnered all power into his own hands. In 579, Yu Xin retired because of illness. In the following year, several of his former imperial patrons, including the prince of Teng, who had written a preface to Yu Xin’s collection of literary writings, were executed on Yang Jian’s orders. In 581, Yang Jian forced the abdication of the last Northern Zhou emperor and established the Sui dynasty (581-618).

In the autumn of 581, the Sui emperor commanded a military campaign against the Chen dynasty in the south. Yu Xin’s friend Liu Zhen (d. 598), who had also served under the Liang in his youth, was sent along as the commander-in-chief’s secretary. The following quatrain, “In Response to Director Liu Zhen,” was apparently composed on this occasion. If so, it would have been one of Yu Xin’s last datable poems, for he died soon afterward in the same year.

In this quatrain of twenty characters, there are two place-names (which take up one-fourth of the poem): Guangling and the Fortress of the Shooting Star. The Fortress of the Shooting Star was to the west of Jiankang (modern Nanjing), the capital of the Liang, where Yu Xin had spent most of his youthful years. Guangling (modern Yangzhou) is located just to the north of the Yangtze River, very close to Jiankang. It had been conquered by the Zhou army two years earlier. Yu Xin, an old man now, did not take part in the military campaign undertaken in 581, and his description of Guangling and the Fortress of the Shooting Star was, as indicated by the title of the poem, imagined from his friend Liu Zhen’s perspective:

C7.10

The first two lines are directly taken from a well-known poem, “Qi ai” (Seven Sorrows), written by Wang Can (177-217). In 192, Wang Can was forced to flee the western capital Chang’an and go to the south during the chaos of the civil war. On his way there, he observed the devastation caused by years of fighting; before going on, he turned back and looked at the once prosperous metropolis once more:

To the south I climbed the slope of Ba Mound
and turned my head to gaze on Chang’an.
And I understood why someone wrote “Falling Stream”—
I gasped and felt that pain within.⁴

Ba Mound (Baling) was the tomb of Emperor Wen of the Western Han (r. 179-157 B.C.E.), and the allusion to his reign, a period characterized by peace and prosperity, was intended to bring out a poignant contrast with the present state of Chang’an. “Xia quan” (Falling Stream) is the title of a poem from the Shijing (The Book of Poetry) that, according to the traditional commentary, expresses a longing for a wise king:

Biting chill, that falling stream
that soaks the clumps of asphodel.
O how I lie awake and sigh,
thinking of Zhou’s capital.⁵

Yu Xin’s quatrain is therefore like a textual set of Chinese boxes, with one box containing another containing yet another. We should keep in mind, however, that these literary echoes would have been so obvious to Yu Xin’s contemporaries or any educated premodern Chinese reader that the quatrain, rich with associations, would have remained transparent.

Just as Wang Can had looked back at Chang’an from Ba Mound, Yu Xin imagined his friend ascending the riverbank at Guangling to gaze on the Fortress of the Shooting Star, which was an indirect way of referring to the old Liang capital, Jiankang. And yet, looking through historical sources, we find that the Shooting Star was not a walled city (fortress) after all; there was a Hill of the Shooting Star to the west of Jiankang, and that was the very place where the Liang troops had fought against and eventually overpowered Hou Jing’s rebel army. As a matter of fact, the Liang general who had set up a camp at the Hill of the Shooting Star was none other than Chen Baxian, who later forced the abdication of the last Liang emperor and founded the Chen dynasty. Was Yu Xin’s choice of place-name an acknowledgment of the irony of history? Or was it simply a way to avoid a painful direct reference to Jiankang? Or was it because the verbal image of the shooting star matched so beautifully with the real beacon fires raging along the Yangtze River?

In many ways, the city of Jiankang was indeed a Fortress of the Shooting Star, whose light, although brilliant, was transient in the course of human history. Remaining the capital of the south for three centuries, it was once the “jewel in the crown of south China’s commercial empire,” whose population “topped one million individuals, including Han Chinese, aboriginal peoples, and foreigners (especially merchants and members of the Buddhist Sangha).”⁶ During the long, peaceful, and prosperous reign under Xiao Gang’s father, Jiankang had reached a dazzling height of cultural glory. But even in Yu Xin’s day, Jiankang had already lost its former splendor; devastated by the Hou Jing Rebellion, its light had long dimmed. What Yu Xin did not know was that, eight years after his death, following the conquest of the Chen in 589, an edict by Emperor Wen of the Sui ordered the destruction of the entire city of Jiankang: “its walls, palaces, temples and houses were to be destroyed and the land returned to agriculture.”⁷ Yu Xin’s quatrain was prophetic in a way that he would never have wanted it to be. The star fell from heaven; once the raging beacon fires died out, it would be dark.

From the time he left Jiangling in 554 until his death in 581, as far as we can tell from the historical sources, Yu Xin not only never returned to the south, but never even got as close to Jiankang as Guangling. The quatrain, one of his last, envisions his old capital illuminated by a blazing light before being engulfed by darkness. The pathos lies not only in seeing one’s hometown torn apart by war and destruction, but also in witnessing the fall of an empire and the end of an age.

The Chinese like to situate a poem in the context of a poet’s life and times: indeed, without the background information, we would never have known what a poignant poem “In Response to Director Liu Zhen” is, and how much emotional power, intensified by restraint, is packed into a quatrain of twenty words. Yu Xin was the last of the Southern Dynasties masters. It would soon be the Tang, the golden age of Chinese poetry.

Xiaofei Tian

NOTES

1 Stephen Owen, trans. and ed., An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (New York: Norton, 1996), 326.

2 Cynthia Chennault, “Odes on Objects and Patronage During the Southern Qi,” in Studies in Early Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History: In Honor of Richard B. Mather and Donald Holzman, ed. Paul W. Kroll and David R. Knechtges (Provo, Utah: T’ang Studies Society, 2003), 332.

3 Kang-i Sun Chang, Six Dynasties Poetry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 156.

4 Wang Can, “Qi ai” (Seven Sorrows), in Owen, Anthology of Chinese Literature, 252.

5 “Xia quan” (Falling Stream), in Owen, Anthology of Chinese Literature, 253.

6 Shufen Liu, “Jiankang and the Commercial Empire of the Southern Dynasties: Change and Continuity in Medieval Chinese Economic History,” in Culture and Power in the Reconstitution of the Chinese Realm: 200-600, ed. Scott Pearce, Audrey Shapiro, and Patricia Ebrey (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Asia Center Press, 2001), 35-36.

7 Arthur F. Wright, “The Sui Dynasty (581-617),” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3, Sui and T’ang China: 589-906, Part 1, ed. Denis C. Twitchett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 112.

THE LÜSHI FORM

The poem chosen to demonstrate the complex lüshi form is “Spring Scene,” written by Du Fu in March 757. About nine months earlier, the capital city of Chang’an had fallen into the hands of the rebel general An Lushan, and Du Fu had been captured and briefly detained by the rebel troops. This poem about his war-torn country and family is one of the best known and most frequently recited of the pentasyllabic lüshi poems.

C8.1

Reading this translation, an English reader may not find the kind of poetic greatness that he or she has encountered in, say, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, or Keats. There is no profound philosophical or religious contemplation, no astonishing flights of imagination, no dazzling display of poetic diction. Nonetheless, as I shall demonstrate, Du Fu’s “Spring Scene” deserves no less acclaim. The poetic greatness of Du Fu is of an entirely different kind. To appreciate it fully, we must go beyond the English translation and find out how the poem was composed and read in the original.

Word and Image

To begin, let us look at a word-for-word translation of the poem and consider its use of words and images:

We are first struck by the extraordinary lexical economy: a total of only forty words. Many literary critics and scholars contend that the lexical economy stems from the noninflectional nature of the Chinese language. Inflection refers to the variation in words used to delineate the relations of tense, voice, gender, number, case, person, and so on in an alphabetic language like English. By contrast, in Chinese these complex relations are expressed by means of a rather small number of “empty words” (xuzi) with the aid of context and semantic rhythm (thematic table of contents 3.3). Unencumbered by inflectional variations, Chinese is far more economical than a Western language in its use of words. To attribute the lexical economy of Tang regulated poetry solely to the Chinese language itself, however, is not entirely convincing. The rise of this condensed poetic form also has much to do with the evolution of the Chinese poetic tradition. In a Tang regulated verse, forty or fifty-six words could do so much only because most of those words had accrued so much evocative power in the long poetic tradition before the Tang. Thanks to their repeated and innovative use during the millennium preceding it, many words and collocations had become imbued with various feelings and thoughts and could evoke touching scenes of history or fiction in the mind of the informed reader. There is no doubt that the increased efficacy of the poetic lexicon led to a steady shortening of poem length toward the end of the Six Dynasties (C7.3, 7.4, and 7.6) and to the eventual birth of the lüshi form in the Tang.

Imagistic appeal is another prominent feature revealed by the word-for-word translation. The poem is made up overwhelmingly of “content words” (shizi), words that have an actual and usually visualizable referent, thirty-six in all. Indeed, these content words produce vivid images of the following kinds:

Tangible things: grass, wood, flower, tear, bird, beacon, fire, home, letter, gold tael, head, hairpin

General scenes: country, mountain, river, city, spring

Concrete actions: shed, startle, scratch, hold

Mental conditions: feel, hate

Physical conditions: broken, remain, thick, separation, span, equal, white, able

Temporal conditions and quantities: time, three, month, ten thousand, shorter

Only the remaining four words (“even,” “simply,” “about to,” and “not”) are empty words. Such a lopsided ratio between content and empty words is characteristic of regulated verse in general and of High Tang regulated verse in particular. Having only forty or fifty-six words to work with, a lüshi poet often sought to maximize the use of imagistic content words while keeping empty words to a minimum.

The conspicuous absence of personal pronouns is another noteworthy feature apparent in the word-for-word translation. Contrary to the assertions by some scholars, the absence of personal pronouns is not characteristic of all Chinese poetic genres. For instance, the pronoun “I” (for example, wo, wu) appears profusely in many Han-Wei yuefu and gushi poems. Only in the Tang regulated verse do we observe an almost uniform exclusion of personal pronouns, especially that of the lyrical “I.” The hiding of the lyrical “I” produces a further liberating effect on the reader. Thanks to the absence in Chinese of the inflectional marking of time and space, Chinese readers enjoy much more freedom than readers of inflected languages in situating the depicted poetic experience. Moreover, with the lyrical “I” hidden, Chinese readers can easily enter the role of the poet and vicariously reenact his process of poetic creation. In consequence, the dynamics of reading is drastically changed from passive reception to active re-creation, as we shall see shortly.

Rules of Syntax

For readers familiar with Western modernist poetry, it is not hard to see that the three features just noted—lexical economy, maximization of imagistic appeal, and minimal use of nonimagistic words—are practically the same aesthetic ideals pursued by Imagist poets like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. Indeed, the word-for-word translation of “Spring Scene” may seem at first glance to resemble an Imagist poem marked by a jumble of disjointed images. However, although the two traditions seem to share similar aesthetic ideals, they definitely follow opposite strategies to achieve them. While Imagist poets tend to maximize the impact of words and images by breaking up their syntactic connections, Chinese lüshi poets seek to produce the same impact by exploiting two covert nexuses of syntactic linkage inherent in the lüshi form.

The first is the nexus of words within a line. Taking another look at the word-for-word translation, we can clearly see that each line consists of a disyllabic and a trisyllabic segment, separated by a caesura (as indicated by the dotted line). Each trisyllabic unit has a one-character word and a binome, separated by a very slight pause (as indicated by ◦). So, instead of being a cacophony of disjointed words, each line creates a pleasurable 2 + 3 semantic rhythm, or, more accurately, a 2 + (1 + 2)/2 + (2 + 1) rhythm (thematic table of contents 3.3). This semantic rhythm, first firmly established in Han pentasyllabic yuefu and gushi poetry during the third century, is faithfully observed in pentasyllabic lüshi and jueju. It is also adopted intact in heptasyllabic lüshi and jueju.

The second is the nexus of words between the two lines of a parallel couplet. In a lüshi poem, the two middle couplets are strictly required to be parallel in thematic categories as well as in parts of speech. “Spring Scene” provides a well-wrought parallelism of this kind. In the second couplet, we note a neat pairing of “feel” with “hate” (emotive verbs), “time” with “separation” (nouns of time and space), “flower” with “bird” (nouns of natural life), “shed [tears]” with “startle” (verbs of emotional response), and “tear” and “heart” (nouns related to emotion). In the third couplet, there is the meticulous matching of “beacon fire” with “home letter” (binomes relating to the transit of messages), “span” with “equal” (verbs indicative of temporal-spatial linkage), “three” with “ten thousand” (numbers), and “month” with “gold tael” (nouns of measurement).

These two nexuses of words signify a well-codified web of prescribed syntactic links underlying the forty or fifty-six words and integrating them into a unified whole.

Rules of Structure

There are also two structural rules, one mandatory and the other optional, that serve to bind together the four couplets of a lüshi work. The first rule is a mandatory alternation of nonparallel and parallel couplets (duiju). The majority of lüshi works begin with a nonparallel couplet, continue through two parallel couplets, and end with another nonparallel couplet. A lüshi poet normally should not end a poem with a parallel couplet, although he could choose to begin with a parallel one. This alternation of the two couplet types gives rise to a tripartite structure of beginning, middle, and end. This structure does not, however, effect a straight sequence of narration or description. Instead, a poem’s middle part often functions to suspend the temporal flow and allow for an intense perception and reflection in the timeless lyrical present. References to a specific time and place seldom occur in this middle part. In “Spring Scene,” for instance, the two middle couplets are composed solely of words and images detached from any specific time and place.

The second structural rule is the optional observance of a four-stage progression: qi (to begin, to arise), cheng (to continue, to elaborate), zhuan (to make a turn), and he (to conclude, to enclose). This four-stage progression was widely observed in High Tang lüshi. In every poem discussed in this chapter, for instance, the four couplets are cast in this fashion. Now let us trace the four-stage progression in “Spring Scene”:

Performing the function of qi, the opening couplet sets the time, place, and theme for the entire poem. In the first line, what is human (“country”) is set against what is natural (“mountain,” “river”), and what is “broken” by men is pitted against what “remains” in nature. The contrast between human destruction and nature’s luxuriance is not explicitly stated but implied in the second line. The thick growth of grasses and trees clearly signifies the state of an abandoned city in the springtime.

The second couplet performs its expected function of cheng: to continue by focusing on a set of paralleled images. Turning away from the external scene, the poet here begins his mental engagement with the images of “flower” and “bird.” The fixing of his inward gaze on these two images eventually leads him into a reverie-like experience. Instead of giving a discursive account of this experience, however, Du Fu lets us directly experience it through a masterful play of syntactic ambiguities. The omission of the subject in the disyllabic segment allows us to infer different subjects and therefore have five different readings of the couplet (the fifth reading is discussed in chap. 18). First, we can take the poet himself to be the implied subject of both the disyllabic and trisyllabic segments, and give this reading of the couplet:

I feel about this wretched time so badly
that even flowers make me shed tears.
I hate separation so much
that a bird[’s call] startles my heart.

In this reading, the verbs “shed” and “startle” are taken in the causative sense. The poet is the real subject, who sheds tears and gets startled, while the flowers and the bird are merely nominal subjects or simply the cause of the poet’s emotional response.

Then, with a slight stretch of the imagination, we may combine the word “time” with “flower” and “separation” with “bird” to produce two binomes: seasonal flower and straying bird. This leads to a second reading of the couplet:

Feeling affected by the seasonal flowers,
I shed my tears.
Hating to see the straying bird,
My heart is startled [by its call].

This reading entails a change of semantic rhythm to 3 + 2, or (1 + 2) + 2. The 2 + 3 rhythm of a pentasyllabic line generally could not be altered, but Du Fu is known to have deliberately violated established semantic rhythms to achieve a special effect (a more detailed discussion of this issue appears in chap. 9). Thus this second reading is quite plausible.

Next, we can take the flowers and bird to be the subjects of the trisyllabic segments and come up with a third reading of the couplet:

As I feel the wretched time, flowers shed tears,
As I hate separation, birds are startled in their hearts.

Finally, we can take the flowers and the bird to be the subjects of both the disyllabic and trisyllabic segments. This allows for the fourth reading:

Feeling the wretched time, flowers shed tears,
Hating separation, birds are startled in their hearts.

The four readings of the second couplet present three distinct perspectives on human suffering. In the first two readings, human suffering is regarded from a purely human point of view. From such a perspective, nature appears separate from man and hence indifferent to his suffering. Worse still, nature’s indestructibility and perpetual renewal, and its springtime luxuriance, only serve to painfully remind man of his frailty and misery. This unsympathetic contrast of man with nature is a time-honored theme in Chinese poetry and is unambiguously employed in the first couplet of this poem. Although this contrast is sustained by the first two readings, it is subverted in the third and fourth readings. In the third reading, human suffering is viewed from the broader perspective of man and nature as a whole. When so viewed, man’s suffering is none other than nature’s, and vice versa. For this reason, there is a touching resonance between man’s lamenting his wretched time and flowers’ shedding their tears. In the fourth reading, human suffering is viewed from the perspective of an empathetic nature. Here, it is not man but nature that gives expression to human sorrow.

The succession of these three perspectives reveals a radical change of realities as perceived by the poet: from a disheartening juxtaposition of suffering man and indifferent nature, to the mutual resonance between man and nature, and finally to a complete empathy between man and nature. As we follow this change of perceived realities, we can vicariously relive the poet’s innermost experience as he deepens his observation into a reverie.

This third couplet faithfully performs the function of zhuan: to engineer a turning by introducing a contrasting set of parallel images. The turning in this particular case is a shift from nature to the human world. In contrast to the flowers and bird, we have now things of the human world: “beacon fire” (fenghuo) and “home letter.” At first glance, these two seem to make an odd pair, as there is no apparent similarity between beacon fire and letter. But once we learn of the ancient practice of lighting a fire atop a watchtower to relay the message of an invasion by nomads, we can see that the two binomes make a perfect pair. Du Fu’s exploitation of the double entendre of fenghuo is indisputable. While using this meaning of “beacon fire” to produce an ingenious parallelism with “home letter,” he taps its other meaning as “flames of war” to reveal the causes of the country’s ruin and the separation of his family. The verbs “span” and “equal” are also perfectly paired, as they each denote a linkage in space or time. The lighting of a beacon fire normally signifies a linkage of two or more points in space, and so does the delivery of a family letter. However, the “beacon fire” and “home letter” are instead perceived to span time. “Three months” explicitly marks a long duration. In Chinese, the word san can function as either a cardinal number (three) or an ordinal number (third), depending on the context in which it occurs. According to many scholars, it works both ways here in the binome sanyue. First, “three months” furnishes a nice parallelism with “ten thousand gold taels” in the next line. It seems to denote the first three months of 757, when the rebels and government troops fought pitched battles. It may also allude to a historical event that occurred in 206 B.C.E.—the three successive months of the burning of the Qin capital (located in essentially the same place as the Tang capital) after the rebel forces of Xiang Yu (232-202 B.C.E.) had overrun and torched it. Then, “third month” refers to March 757, when Du Fu composed this poem. The verb lian (span) leads to the suggestion that Du Fu might have been thinking of the yearlong warfare spanning the two “third months” (March 756 and March 757). “Ten thousand gold taels” is far less ambiguous. It is meant to signify the high value ascribed by Du Fu to a family letter due to the extraordinary length of separation. It also reveals the extreme difficulty of communication because of the partition of the land by the warring parties. Finally, we should take note of a touch of irony in this third couplet: it is two linking verbs that set forth all the temporal and spatial realities of separation.

The final couplet unfailingly performs its expected twin functions of he: to move toward a closure and to make a well-rounded whole (yuanhe) by joining beginning and end. If, in the third couplet, we see a shift from the country to the family, here we observe a further shift from the family to the poet himself—the quickened process of his aging. A return to the poet’s experiential world in the final couplet is a conventional move in a lüshi poem. As noted earlier, the two middle couplets are strictly parallel and usually stripped of references to a specific time or place, thus projecting a timeless world in the imagination of the poet. By contrast, the final couplet is by convention nonparallel and, as such, particularly conducive to a realistic portrayal of the poet’s present condition. Consider how the dispensing of parallel syntax enables the poet to depict his own condition with a long, uninterrupted sentence: “My white hairs, as I scratch them, grow more sparse, / Simply becoming unable to hold hairpins.”

Unlike in the first three couplets, there is a single subject, the white-haired head, and all the remaining words are devoted to describing it. In presenting such a close-up portrayal of his white-haired head, the poet intends to tell us not so much his physical condition as his innermost suffering. Although it may seem to be an understatement of the poet’s intense emotion, this close-up is actually a very powerful expression of it. When a poet’s sorrow reaches the point of rapidly ruining his health, what better way can he find to indicate the depth of his suffering than by depicting the destruction of his body? While rendering pointless any abstract emotive words, this evocative image of the poet’s white-haired, balding head inevitably harks back to the broken country in the first line and thus produces the dual effect of “moving in a cycle, going and returning” (xunhuan wangfu). As the sensitive reader goes through again the images of the broken country, the scattered family, grieving nature, and the aging poet, he perceives a grand Confucian cosmic vision, characterized by the inseparable, empathetic bonds a moral man forges with his fellow human beings, his country, and the universe at large. By his creation of such a Confucian vision of the universe and the self, Du Fu earned the appellation of “poet-sage” (shisheng), the highest honor to which a Confucian-minded poet could aspire.

Rules of Tonal Patterning

Chinese tonal meter is much more complex than English poetic meter. Whereas a sonnet writer only needs to alternate five unstressed and stressed syllables within a line, a lüshi poet has to do more. He must meticulously alternate level and oblique tones between as well as within lines. Level tones refer to the first and second tones—the flat tone (for example, mā) and rising tone (má)—in Mandarin. Oblique tones consist of the third and fourth tones—the falling-rising tone (mă) and the short falling tone (mà)—of Mandarin and the entering tones (rusheng) of Middle Chinese.¹ This patterning of tones is constructed with a precision that leaves nothing to chance.

Ironically, this precision is what makes the complex tonal patterning easy for us to observe and master—it becomes a fairly simple matter of observing its three basic rules.² Turning again to “Spring Scene” for our example, let us go through these rules and work out all the major tonal patterns of recent-style shi poetry, as shown in the table.

The first rule demands a maximum contrast of tones within a line. This rule dictates that the tones of a pentasyllabic line must appear in two opposite pairs, a pair of level tones ( 809

) and a pair of oblique tones (| |), with an odd “one” ( 809

or |) tipping the balance. This casting of tones mirrors the semantic rhythm of 2 + (1 + 2/2 + 1). If the odd one is placed at the end of a line, we have the first two of the four line types in recent-style shi poetry: (1) | | 809

| and (2)

| |

. If it is placed at the beginning of a line, we have the other two line types: (3) 809

| | and (4) | | | 809

.³

The second rule demands a maximum contrast between the two lines of a couplet. In a standard couplet, the tonal combination of the opening line is antithetically matched by that of the closing line. For instance, if the opening line is | | 809

|, the closing line must be 809

| |

. Alternatively, 809

| | is to be followed by | | | 809

. These two line combinations (1 and 2; 3 and 4) constitute the two standard couplets in recent-style shi poetry.

Tonal Pattern of “Spring Scene”

Reverse combinations of the four line types (2 and 1, 4 and 3), however, are not permissible. What complicates the matter here is two unbending rhyming rules: all even lines must rhyme and all rhyming words must be in level tones (as indicated, in the tables, by the hollow triangular rhyme marker △). So line types 1 and 3, which end with oblique tones, cannot be the closing lines of a couplet. The resulting loss of two alternative couplet forms is, however, partially compensated for by the formation of two variant couplets. Poets choosing to employ rhyme in both lines, instead of in just the second line, of the opening couplet had no choice but to use both line types 2 and 4, which end with a level tone. They could combine them in the order of 2 and 4 ( 809

| |

, | | |

) or 4 and 2 (| | | 809

| |

). It is important to stress that these two variant couplets are used only in the opening couplet.

The third rule demands a partial equivalence between two adjacent couplets. Known as nian (to make things stick together), this rule is intended to help integrate the relatively self-contained couplets into a whole. It stipulates a correspondence in tone between the first two words in the closing line of a couplet and those in the opening line of the next couplet (as indicated, in the table showing the standard jueju tonal patterns, by the shaded areas). To avoid monotony, these two adjacent lines cannot be of the same line type. For instance, 809

| |

cannot be followed by another 809

| |

. The next line must be 809

| |.

So this leaves us with only two possible ways of combining two couplets into a quatrain. If line type 2 is employed in the second line, it must be followed by line type 3 in the third line; if line type 4 is employed in the second line, it must be followed by line type 1 in the third line. This combining process yields the two standard jueju tonal patterns, as shown in the table.

The use of rhyme in both lines of the opening couplet gives rise to two variant jueju tonal patterns, as shown in the next table. If we compare this table with the preceding one, we can clearly see that the two variant tonal patterns are almost identical to the two standard ones, with only a slight one-line variation (as indi-cated by the shaded areas). In these two tables, I have added in parentheses the tones for the two additional characters in a heptasyllabic line, which contrast with those of the first two words of a pentasyllabic line. As shown by the vertical lines, the tonal patterns of heptasyllabic jueju are an exact copy of those of pentasyllabic jueju, with only the addition of two more characters.

Standard Jueju Tonal Patterns

Variant Jueju Tonal Patterns

Once we have worked out the four jueju tonal patterns, it is easy to construct the four lüshi tonal patterns. All we have to do is follow the same rule of partial equivalence between couplets and add two more couplets—that is, another quatrain—to each of the four jueju tonal patterns. This brings us to the four lüshi tonal patterns. As shown by the horizontal dotted lines in the two tables, the four lüshi tonal patterns constitute a doubling of the two standard jueju tonal patterns. This doubling is exact and complete in the two standard lüshi patterns, but involves a slight, one-line variation (the shaded part) in the two variant lüshi tonal patterns.

Standard Lüshi Tonal Patterns

Variant Lüshi Tonal Patterns

In the final analysis, we can say that there are only two basic types of tonal patterning: type I and type II. All the tonal patterns presented are merely their derivatives at different removes. A fourfold division (I, II, Ia, IIa) is derived through a slight variation of the opening line for the sake of rhyming. At the next remove, an eightfold division is derived through a further differentiation by poem length (four-line jueju versus eight-line lüshi). At the last remove, even a sixteenfold division may be derived through yet another differentiation by line length (pentasyllabic versus heptasyllabic). This analysis, I hope, lays bare the inherent relationships among all the tonal patterns of recent-style shi poetry.

It is important to remember that the tables represent perfect tonal patterns that exist in theory but not always in practice. Rigid adherence to a tonal pattern can lead to a sacrifice of meaning for the sake of tonal regularity. So poets often took advantage of a certain amount of freedom to diverge from the set tonal patterns. For an example of the employment of one of these tonal patterns, let us return to Du Fu’s “Spring Scene.” The tonal pattern employed is type I. With four entering tones (kwok, bjet, yowk, pwot) restored, this poem demonstrates a much more rigorous observance of the required tonal pattern than if read in modern standard Chinese. Nonetheless, we can note four instances of variation from the established tonal pattern. For instance, from a purely technical point of view, the first character in line 3 should be in level tone, but the character găn is in oblique tone. Generally speaking, it is often permissible to deviate from the required tones of the first and third characters in a pentasyllabic line or the first, third, and fifth characters in a heptasyllabic line. All but one of the four violations here occur in the first word of a line. Students who wish to reconstruct the tonal pattern of a lüshi or regulated jueju poem need only mark out its alternation of level and oblique tones and then find out to which tonal pattern it conforms. The tonal patterns for all recent-style shi poems presented in this book are identified at the end of each citation and listed in the preceding tables.

THE LÜSHI FORM AND YIN-YANG COSMOLOGY

The establishment of any regulated poetry, whether Chinese lüshi or English sonnets, represents an endeavor to formalize and amplify our delight in the natural order of language—the rhythm of both its sounds and its sense. On a more abstract plane, the lüshi form may be seen to reflect the order of the universe at large. To embody the grand cosmic order in a finite work has been a high artistic ideal long pursued by the Chinese, and the lüshi form is a prime example of this quest. In collectively developing the lüshi form during the Qi-Liang and the Early Tang periods, Chinese poets, consciously or unconsciously, modeled it on the yin-yang cosmological scheme to such an extent that it practically became a microcosm of that scheme. Indeed, all its syntactic, structural, and metrical rules bear the imprint of the yin-yang operation as represented by this well-known symbol:

In this symbol, the sharp contrast of the black and white parts is meant to show the opposition of the basic cosmic forces of yin and yang. This fundamental opposition is mirrored in the major aspects of the lüshi form. As we have seen, its basic semantic rhythm consists of a contrast between a disyllabic segment and a trisyllabic segment that is usually made up of a binome and a monosyllabic word. Also, the construction of a parallel couplet often entails a matching of opposite or different images (heaven versus earth, and so on). The organization of four couplets, too, often involves a broad, bipartite contrast between nature and man, scenes and emotions. On the level of prosody, we note a maximum contrast between level and oblique tones both within a line and between two lines of a couplet.

The black and white dots inside the opposed areas of the symbol are meant to show a subtle equivalence between yin and yang that accompanies and tempers their mutual opposition. In the lüshi form, too, such an equivalence of bipolar opposites is readily noticeable. For instance, the two middle couplets each demand a stringent equivalence in parts of speech, often set against an antithesis in meaning. In addition, there is the prosodic rule of partial equivalence (nian) between any two adjacent couplets.

The gently curved borderline between the white and black parts of the symbol is intended to indicate a tendency of yin and yang to transform themselves into their opposites—yin becomes yang, and yang becomes yin. The dynamic interplay of yin and yang thus follows a cyclical path of thrust and counterthrust, ascendancy and decline, instead of a teleological path of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. In lüshi prosody, the regular alternation of parallel and nonparallel couplets traces a similar cyclical path.

Finally, the circle of the yin-yang symbol itself speaks to the all-inclusiveness, completeness, and eternity of the yin-yang operation. In the lüshi form, the repetition of the same or essentially the same tonal patterns in two quatrains and the joining (he) of the beginning and ending couplets are no doubt intended to create the image of a cyclical, perpetual return that resonates with the everlasting cosmic order.

VISIONS OF THE UNIVERSE AND THE SELF

That the lüshi form represents a microcosm of yin-yang cosmology does not mean that all lüshi poems project a grand cosmic vision. In fact, countless lüshi poems are devoted to trivial subjects—although even the trivial gains significance when presented in the lüshi form. Nonetheless, when it reached its apex of development during the High Tang, the lüshi did become a prized vehicle for conveying grand cosmic visions. In each of the three poems to be examined, we perceive a distinct vision of the universe and the self.

C8.2

This poem by Du Fu disproves the simplistic notion that poetry is a temporal art, while painting is a spatial one. It lends itself to both a spatial and a temporal reading. If we divide the poem into two columns along the vertical line separating the disyllabic and trisyllabic segments, we may read it vertically, column by column. Such a reading is spatial in the sense that it breaks up the line-by-line sequence of normal reading to reveal two highly coherent clusters of images. One consists of images of the universe, ranging from the “Qian Kun” (an alternative name for heaven and earth) to the panoramic river scenes and to atmospheric phenomena (“cloud” and “autumn wind”). The other cluster consists of a series of remarks about the self: Du Fu as a “homeward traveler,” his sense of failure, his exile and loneliness, and his determination to achieve his ambitions despite his illness and aging. While this spatial reading underscores the juxtaposition of the universe and the self, a temporal reading reveals the poet’s inner process of observation and contemplation.

Reading the poem line by line, we see a topic + comment construction in all but the last two lines (thematic table of contents 5.3). In each of the first six lines, the initial disyllabic segment presents a topic, a broad cosmic image observed by the poet; the trisyllabic segment, however, introduces a comment induced by the act of observation. In the opening couplet, the immense universe (“the Jiang and Han rivers” and “heaven and earth”) induces a pathetic and diminutive self-image: “homeward traveler” and “worthless scholar.” In the second couplet, the images of “lone cloud” and “long night” thicken the mood of loneliness and melancholic brooding, but the ensuing comments signify a slight relief from loneliness through an empathetic joining of man and nature. Like the second couplet of “Spring Scene,” this second couplet creates the idea of a nature-man empathy through a deft manipulation of syntactic ambiguities. Here, “join” and “share” imply two or more subjects, but only one is made explicit (“sky” and “moon”). Depending on which implicit subject(s) we supply, this couplet lends itself to three different readings:

A lone cloud and the sky are together faraway,
A long night and the moon share the loneliness.

A lone cloud, and the sky (and I) are together faraway,
A long night, and the moon (and I) share loneliness.

A lone cloud—the sky (and I) are together faraway,
A long night—the moon (and I) share the loneliness.

The coexistence of these three possible readings serves to create a sense of togetherness in the world—the togetherness of inanimate things and the togetherness of nature and man. The conception of this pervasive togetherness reveals a lessening of the poet’s loneliness and prepares us for a rather dramatic “turning” in the third couplet. The turning is dramatic because of the unusual juxtaposition of “setting sun” and “autumn wind”—two common images of decay and melancholy—with a surprisingly positive attitude toward the onset of illness and old age. The setting sun only spurs the poet to strive for great accomplishments, and the autumn wind only speeds up his recovery from illness. Echoing this optimistic note, the poem ends with a metaphorical statement about the true worth of an aging man.

The poet with whom Du Fu is often paired is his friend Li Bai, widely known as the “poet-immortal” (shixian). Widely hailed as the two greatest Chinese poets, they are the subject of a continuing debate about which is greater. They have often been perceived to be diametrically opposite types. Du Fu is sober, earnest, and morally committed, whereas Li Bai is inebriated, carefree, and transcendent. Although such a simple dichotomy inevitably obscures the complexity of the two poets’ lives and works, it has taken hold of the popular imagination. Consequently, they are both best remembered for those works that reveal these character traits. While many of Du Fu’s great poems are lüshi works, most of Li Bai’s best-loved and most widely recited works are ancient-style poems (chap. 11). The highly restrictive lüshi form seems to have been ill suited to Li Bai’s unbridled temperament and poetic style. Yet, in fact, he wrote a number of lüshi poems, in which we catch a glimpse of the quintessential Li Bai:

C8.3

The opening couplet shows the poet in the act of viewing a panoramic scene. In the second couplet, his gaze shifts to two concrete images. The flying “wild geese,” a common image for homesickness, are here used to signify the relief of homesickness, or the “heart’s sorrow.” This transformation of a conventional image is followed by a sudden flight of imagination: the mountains have become giant birds “carrying the fine moon in their beak” and flying toward us.

The third couplet engineers a turn quite characteristic of the poet-immortal: a flight into the celestial world. Taking the poet as the implicit subject, however, we can render the couplet as follows: “In the midst of clouds I reach the honored guest’s bed. / In heaven above I receive the passing wine cup.” The appearance of the poet in the final couplet makes this reading sensible and appropriate. Here Li Bai does not make man and nature equal companions, as Du Fu does, but elevates man or, rather, himself above nature to the extent that he becomes an immortal residing amid clouds and receiving a passing cup in heaven. Like Du Fu, he avails himself of personification. But for him, personification is largely a means of turning nature into a joyful playmate. The wild geese that take away the heart’s sorrow and the mountains that bring in the fine moon for enjoyment become his imagined playmates.

As Li Bai consistently endows nature with his unique character traits, it is little wonder that most of the personifying verbs in his poems are not those of grief and lamentation (like “shed tears”) but depict instead energetic, sprightly, and often magical action. In transforming nature into a playmate at his bidding, he in effect elevates himself to the status of the creator or master of the universe. He is not at all shy about this, and in fact speaks explicitly in the voice of the heavenly master in a poem like “Drinking Alone Under the Moon, No. 1” (Yue xia duo zhuo [QTS 6:182.1853]). His lively self-deification as lord of the universe is considered by many as the hallmark of Li Bai’s greatest poems. At the very least, it sets his poems apart from the earlier quotidian poems on roaming immortals (youxian) and helps earn him the title of poet-immortal. Moreover, it has inspired the great ci poems of heroic abandon by Su Shi (1037-1101) and Xin Qiji (1140-1207) (C12.2 and C12.5).

In stark contrast to Li Bai’s unabashed deification of the self, we observe a deliberate suppression of the self in this poem by Wang Wei:

C8.4

Unlike Du Fu and Li Bai, Wang Wei does not tell us about his emotional and physical conditions or his imagined feats of transcendence. Instead, he leads us through successive acts of intense visual perception. In the first couplet, he points out the Zhongnan mountains in the distance, first directing our gaze upward via Taiyi Peak to heaven and then horizontally along the linked mountains all the way to the sea. In the second couplet, he leads us away from the panoramic scene and engages us in a hide-and-seek with two atmospheric images up close. By a turning in the third couplet, he changes the object of observation from the mountains to the vast plain below. This new panoramic scene delights us with its kaleidoscopic formation of patterns and colors under the effects of the sunlight and clouds. In the last couplet, he shifts back to a nearby scene and shows us traces of man: a woodcutter and a call to him from the other side of a valley brook, asking for a place to stay for the night.

A renowned painter credited with founding the Southern School of Landscape Painting, Wang Wei is often praised for the painterly qualities in his poetry. This poem is certainly an excellent example of the painterly qualities in his finest landscape poems. It alternates panoramic scenes with close-ups and delights us with its delicate play of colors (“white clouds” versus “greenish haze,” the chiaroscuro effect of the sun). It constantly shifts the angle of observation—now horizontal and vertical, now from below upward and from above downward. All these painterly qualities work together perfectly to yield a rare feast of visual pleasure. Moreover, the depicted scenes and images trace the stages of a day’s journey of landscape viewing: starting with a distant view (first couplet), continuing through an uphill climb (second couplet) and the arrival at the summit (third couplet), and ending with a descent into the valley at dusk (last couplet).

This poem is also a perfect example of an even more important quality of Wang Wei’s finest landscape poems: their artistic embodiment of a Buddhist worldview. Interestingly, if we direct our attention to the last word in each line of the two middle parallel couplets, we notice a string of four terms frequently used in Chinese Buddhist texts to explain the Buddhist worldview: he, wu, bian, and shu. The word he is part of the term hehe (Sanskrit sāmagari), which refers to a composite of causes and conditions (yinyuan; Sanskrit hetupratyaya) underlying the existence of all phenomena, objective or subjective. The word wu is part of the term wu’er (negation of two sides; neither ... nor), which denotes a Mahayanist exercise of double negation aimed at preventing the reification of any thing or concept as the ontological absolute. Insofar as all things, physical existences or mental constructs, arise from a composite of causes and conditions, they cannot possibly possess any essential substance, and therefore are all subject to mutability (bian) and differentiation (shu). It follows that Buddhist truth is neither being nor emptiness (śūnyatā).

Wang Wei’s brilliant employment of these four terms in this poem attests to his consummate achievement as a visionary poet. With a touch of genius, he turns each of the four abstract philosophical terms into a lively verse eye, a pivotal word that animates an entire poetic line (thematic table of contents 4.2). Together, these four verse eyes engender a sustained play of perceptual illusion. The first two verse eyes, he (converge) and wu (disappear), render the atmospheric images of clouds and haze ever so elusive that their very existence becomes a question. Next, the other two verse eyes, bian (change) and shu (become different), turn the valleys and the plain into a spectacle of changing shapes and colors. This play of perceptual illusion culminates in the final couplet. There, we are led to envision a dwelling of man hidden in the woods, and yet we cannot actually see it and have to ask the woodcutter for its whereabouts. We seem to see a woodcutter out there, and yet we cannot get close and have to shout across the valley brook. The echoes of our own call in the empty valley, we surmise, may be the only answer we get. As this perceptual illusion reaches its climax, a sensitive reader may experience something like Buddhist enlightenment, or at least share the Buddhist insight into the illusory nature of existence and emptiness, the universe and the self. For this perfect fusion of the artistic and religious, the sensory and suprasensory, Wang Wei is rightly honored with the title “poet-Buddha” (shifo).

Zong-qi Cai

NOTES

1 All entering tones end with an unaspirated consonant: p, t, or k. Although prevalent during Tang and Song times, entering tones no longer exist in modern standard Chinese but are preserved in many regional Chinese dialects like Cantonese and Hakka. Owing to its loss of entering tones, modern standard Chinese is considered by many to be less desirable than a dialect like Cantonese for reading Tang regulated verse out loud. (See, at the end of this volume, “Phonetic Transcriptions of Entering-Tone Characters.”)

2 I am deeply indebted to my teacher Professor Yu-kung Kao for his insightful comments on the three rules.

3 The fifth and sixth possible line types (| | 809

and

| | |) are not employed in recent-style shi poetry.

THE LEGACY OF DU FU

Du Fu was undoubtedly the most adventurous writer of heptasyllabic regulated verse of his age. The form was one in which he seems to have been drawn to challenge the boundaries of poetic craft. He composed, for example, a number of heptasyllabic verses that follow the general eight-line expositional structure of regulated verse but that also include deliberate violations of the regulated tonal patterns or the customary syntactic groupings within the line, intended to create the “craggy” or “rough-hewn” feel of “ancient-style” poetry (guti shi). Later critics formulated the category “skewed regulated verse” (ao lü), largely to accommodate this sort of formal experimentation by Du Fu. The poems discussed here are all prosodically strict regulated verses, but we can see in these works as well Du Fu’s recurrent preoccupation with the tension between technical polish and deliberate awkwardness.

C9.1

In “The Qu River, No. 2” we recognize tonal pattern Ia (chap. 8)—that is, a slight modification of type I to allow for a rhyming first line (as indicated, in the table, by the hollow triangular rhyme marker △).¹ Deviation from the expected tonal category (as indicated by X) is always permissible in the first syllable in the heptasyllabic regulated line, and is usually permissible in the third syllable (that is, the position corresponding to the first syllable of the pentasyllabic line).² Thus the only deviations from the expected category that need comment are those appearing in the fifth and sixth syllables of line 7. The level tone in the sixth syllable is felt to “correct” the preceding oblique tone. This particular modification of the fifth and sixth syllables of the type III line is quite common, particularly in a poem’s penultimate line.

“The Qu River” is one of Du Fu’s earlier efforts in the form (at least among those that have come down to us), dating from his brief stint as a court official in 758. Yet already we glimpse the juxtaposition of dazzling technical craft with the elusive ironies of the poet’s self-depiction that continued and intensified in his later work. The Qujiang (winding river) was in fact a lake, surrounded by a park, at the southeastern corner of the Tang capital Chang’an; it was a favorite spot for outings among the capital elite. The poet presents himself in an attitude of studied casualness, and the tone oscillates between delighted absorption in the natural beauties of the season and wry commentary on the poet’s own state of unkempt dissipation.

Tonal Pattern of “The Qu River”

Lines 3 and 4 juxtapose a deflating avowal of the poet’s condition (debt) and its cause (drinking) with a sort of banqueter’s philosophizing on life’s impermanence. The interest of the couplet stems in part from the way in which its informal tone belies its virtuosity. The parallel relations established between the two lines—such as that between wine debts and human life (both noun phrases, formed of attributive plus class noun), which seems to posit the open bar tab as a universal condition of existence—display a whimsical brilliance. The parallel between xun chang (ordinary, -ily) and qi shi (seventy), furthermore, depends on a sort of pun on the alternative sense of xun and chang as measures of length; it is as quantities that they form a suitable parallel for the number seventy. This device of treating terms as parallel via wordplay on secondary meanings is a bravura technical effect that later critics called borrowed parallelism (jiedui).

The third couplet, though, is clearly the poem’s center of gravity. Here we see both vividly detailed observation and a masterful display of technique—note, for example, the way our sense in these lines of sudden, fleeting revelation is reinforced by the striking syntactic device of delaying the verb to the very last position in the line. In fact, for some later critics, the delicate artfulness of this couplet seemed almost symptomatic of the sort of display of small-scale craft for which they would criticize Late Tang and Song poetry.³

As we see in the following poem, this seeming tension between technique and naturalness is a persistent concern, for both Du Fu and his readers:

C9.2

The first couplet of this poem is often cited as perhaps Du Fu’s most forthright statement of his obsessiveness as a verbal craftsman. The poem’s reticences and ambiguities, however, are equally important. First of these concerns is the relation of the poem to its title. Typically, the title of an occasional poem simply states the occasion: the poem is understood as the poet’s response to something in the world; the title reports what that something was. Clearly, such a straightforward formula cannot be applied here. The something that initially happened—Du Fu’s vision of the river waters as vast and powerful like the ocean—is never treated directly (although we may read the third couplet as alluding to it obliquely). The train of thought linking the title and the poem would seem to go something like this: “The grandeur, vastness, and power of that scene was too great for my meager ability to do justice to it. Therefore, in place of the ‘proper’ poem on that topic that I was unable to write, I substitute these lines, as a comment on this breakdown of my ability as a poet.” Read in this way, then, this is a poem about the failure to write a poem, and the final couplet a gently self-mocking wish for a more qualified substitute poet to call on whenever the demands of a poetic occasion are too much for Du Fu to handle.

This approach allows us to make general sense of the poem but is far from resolving the ambiguities of its tone. As a submerged counterpoint to that self-deprecatory admission of failure, we can hear another set of possibilities: “I live for, and in, poetry. My faculty of poetic creation is as natural and powerful as the waters of a river. Whether or not my poem describes the flooding river waters, each remains the other’s perfect analogue. To find my true peers, one would have to look to the great poets of past centuries.” These tonal ambiguities are at their height in the poem’s middle, parallel couplets. The third couplet’s account of the poet’s “equipment” for enjoying the river scenery (his pier and his raft) emphasizes its slapdash, make-do aspect. Yet might it be that just such improvised, homemade work best suits the river; that the pavilions and excursion boats of more high-toned outings are, in comparison, artificial and inauthentic? In the second couplet, the poet’s wry self-mockery is again, paradoxically, voiced in language of startling technical brilliance. The opposition of lao qu versus chun lai is another instance of borrowed parallelism: while laoqu and chunlai work perfectly as parallels in the noun-verb senses “old age-go/springtime-come,” in Du Fu’s poem only the second pair, chun lai, can actually be construed as noun-verb; the first line of the couplet requires that we take lao verbally as “grow old” and qu as a verbal complement, “-away.” While parallel couplets generally tend to create a sense of stasis and balance, this stroke of verbal invention gives this couplet a dynamic asymmetry and an effect of informal spontaneity. In fact, the poem as a whole is remarkable for the way in which, even while rigorously observing the symmetries and formal constraints of the regulated verse form, it conveys the immediacy of rambling speech.

The word man (in line 3) is a key term here. In its basic sense, it refers to the “overflow” of a liquid. In its derivative adverbial uses, it describes things that happen in a manner that is out of control, excessive, sloppy, impulsive, or not thought out. Thus Du Fu jokingly reassures the flowers and birds (which might have their secret essence revealed, or be definitively “captured,” by a more impressive poetic talent) that they need not worry—this particular old man has no pretensions to being a great poet, so they can rest easy. Yet even as we register this surface meaning, it is impossible not to hear an alternative suggestion: this effortless and slapdash manner is a sign not of a lack of power but of a fully achieved power; the flowers and birds have no more need to fear this power than they fear any other power of nature. The man (slapdash) manner of his poetry is a counterpart to the “overflowing” power of the river’s surging waters. Characteristically, Du Fu’s deepest reflections on poetry here are inseparable from the ironies of his self-depiction.

The set of eight heptasyllabic regulated verses entitled “Qiu xing” (Autumn Meditations) represents a point of culmination, for both the qilü form and these tensions within Du Fu’s poetry between the image of the powerful creator and that of the quirky and ineffectual old man. Written in 766, within four years of the end of his life, they show us the poet as he realizes that his dreams of making a mark in public life are not to be fulfilled. The “Autumn Meditations” reflect on the end of a year, of a life, and of an age—and the idea of autumn becomes a hall of mirrors within which all those endings are jumbled and superimposed. Following is the final poem of the series:

C9.3

Kunwu Park, Yusu Lodge, Purple Tower Peak, and Lake Meipi were excursion sites nestled in the Zhongnan mountain range, south of Chang’an. Du Fu had frequented this area on outings during stints at the capital early in his career and had composed occasional poems on those visits. Line 2 of this poem seems to be a deliberate echo of a striking image from one of these earlier poems, “Song of Lake Meipi” (Meipi xing), in which the poet, on a boating excursion on the lake as evening falls, sees the black masses of the surrounding mountains inverted on the water’s surface.

Thus as the Du Fu of the “Autumn Meditations,” in his southern exile at Kuizhou on the banks of the Yangtze River, gazes out into the imagined distance far into the north to the capital, he gazes back as well into his own past as a minister of the empire and as a poet. This personal retrospective is, in turn, interwoven with a more general meditation on the fortunes of the Tang, which seemed already to Du Fu—as for many writers throughout the remaining century and a half or so of the dynasty—to have permanently lost something magical with the fall of the capital and the flight of Xuanzong (r. 712-756) in 756. Moreover, particularly in the final poems of “Autumn Meditations,” this retrospective extends still further to include the far remoter Han dynasty past. The poem immediately preceding this one in the cycle is largely a meditation on fragmentary remnants of Han grandeur, and we are meant to register that the very names “Kunwu park” and “Yusu lodge” are themselves relics of the grand Shanglin Park, developed under the auspices of Emperor Wu of the Han (Yusu means “imperial lodging place,” so-called because Emperor Wu stayed there on his excursions) and immortalized by the fu (rhapsody) writers of that age.⁴ All these frames of reference are telescoped together, creating extreme compression, multiplicity, and fragmentation of meaning.

The most striking case of such compression in this poem occurs in the second couplet. Here parallelism becomes a formal container that suggests a completeness and stability that the words themselves never quite yield. As we move through each line, we are repeatedly thrown back and forced to start over in our effort to resolve the syntax. Nouns are followed by verbs but cannot be the subjects of those verbs—rice does not “peck,” and wutong trees do not “perch”—and these verbs are immediately further skewed by the addition of the odd verbal complements “leftover” and “old,” and so on through the line. Parallelism by its nature allows for more syntactic flexibility than would be possible in linear composition, as the stability of the “vertical” relations between lines within the couplet allows the “horizontal” relations of line syntax to be correspondingly relaxed. But the degree of syntactic disruption in this couplet remains extraordinary. We might compare the much milder effect of the third couplet in “The Qu River”: “A flower-weaving butterfly, deep within, appears; / a water-dabbling dragonfly, slow and placid, flies.” As we saw, these lines involve a kind of “loading” in which the somewhat complex relations of attributive clause, noun, and adverb await a release that is delayed to the very end of the line. The far denser syntactic loading in the “Autumn Meditations” couplet, by contrast, leads not to a clear moment of resolution, but to an indefinite suspension. We finally have to construe the syntax of the third through sixth syllables of these lines as attributive clauses with inverted subjects, together modifying the final-position nouns “grain” and “branch.” But the exact relation between these nouns and the “fragrant rice” and “emerald wutong tree” that open the lines could be predication, apposition, or contrast or a range of other possibilities. All that seems certain of the relation is that a grain is a fragment of rice, and a branch is a fragment of a tree. Thus all our efforts to resolve the line’s fragmented syntax leave us with fragments. In this cycle, Du Fu meditates on the material and literary remnants of personal and cultural history, saddened by the failure of those fragments to cohere, to recapture a lost wholeness. In couplets like this, we see the poet creating a verbal texture that mirrors that struggle in the mind.

The poem’s close alludes to a story told of the Southern Dynasties poet Jiang Yan (444-505): Jiang Yan meets the Jin dynasty writer Guo Pu (276-324) in a dream; Guo Pu asks him to return the multicolored writing brush that Guo Pu had lent him long before. On waking, Jiang Yan finds that his literary talent has left him. By now, it should not be entirely surprising that even as Du Fu creates radically new possibilities for poetic language, he presents himself as a poet whose talent has failed him, a bitter old man by the riverside.

AMBIGUITY AND FRAGMENTATION IN LATE TANG STYLE

One of the pivotal figures in creating a distinctively Late Tang poetic landscape is Li He (791-817). Li He came to be viewed as the very embodiment of many characteristic Late Tang traits: an obsessive, even pathological, fixation on craft; an aesthetic sensibility centered on the fragmentary line or image; and more generally the idea of poetry as difficult, for both the poet and the reader. Li He wrote very little in the regulated forms, but he was a key influence on several important writers who did, so our discussion of Late Tang style will begin with the following example from Li He, an unregulated heptasyllabic song:

C9.4

One perceptive critic has noted that in “Dreaming Heaven” we cannot tell whether the dream is in heaven or heaven in the dream.⁵ The translation may seem to leave many of the relations between images undetermined, but in fact in many instances it involves a narrowing down of the imaginative possibilities that remain open in the original. In line 2, for example, we do not know whether the cloud tower is a tower veiled wholly or partly in clouds (which would be the normal terrestrial way of construing the phrase), or a tower built on, in, or out of clouds (all of which, for all we know, might well be normal heavenly ways of construing it). “Slanting” is often used in descriptive poetry of oblique rays of light, but in this poem the marked absence of any clear sense of up or down or level makes it anyone’s guess whether it is the light or the wall that “slants.” “Jade wheel” is a familiar kenning for the moon, but the specificity and concreteness of the idea of a jade wheel pressing dew makes it impossible to resolve the image into any single recognizably human perspective on the moon. Here and elsewhere in Li He, we are dealing with a poetic language that creates a remarkably vivid and immediate experience—but in the end leaves us unable to pin down what it is an experience of. For example, synecdoche—the designation of a whole by one of its parts—is a familiar device by which traditional descriptive poetry achieves economy and vividness of expression. In Li He, however, synecdoche is commonly used to defamiliarize the familiar, or to hint cryptically at modes of perception that are beyond ordinary human bounds. When “simurgh bells” (conventionally an ornament found on carriages) and “pendants” meet in the “cassia-scented lanes” (the cassia being the tree traditionally supposed to grow on the moon), we may be dealing with a meeting of carriage riders and pendant wearers, but the predominant impression we retain is of an otherworldly strangeness. Any whole of which these fragmented images might be part remains tantalizingly beyond our grasp.

Li Shangyin (813-858), perhaps the most important Late Tang poet, was deeply influenced by Li He—in fact, the only model of comparable importance for his work was Du Fu. We see something of this blend of influences in “Milky Way: Syrinx-Playing”:

C9.5

Several of Li Shangyin’s most distinctive heptasyllabic regulated verses are left untitled. Other poems, like this one, have enigmatic titles drawn from phrases in the poem’s opening lines. As we have seen, the customary function of the title in classical Chinese poetry is to state the poem’s occasion—or at the very least, as in the case of yuefu poetry, to give clear generic signals as to how to go about reading the poem. To leave a poem untitled, or to give it an enigmatic title, is therefore a pointed gesture. Many critics of Li Shangyin, taking this gesture as a challenge to the reader to ferret out some actual context of composition that the poet withheld, have read such poems as veiled expressions of erotic or political meanings that were too scandalous to be stated more openly. For our purposes, however, it would seem more promising to look at these untitled or ambiguously titled poems in a different way: by suspending the usual relation between title and poem, Li Shangyin has created a form in which he can explore disorienting poetic textures and images that deliberately allow for a multiplicity of readings. This poem, for example, might be (and has been) read as a yongwu poem on the syrinx, as an occasional poem upon hearing syrinx-playing (Li He had written several fantastic poems on listening to music that might have served as models), as a poem on roaming transcendents, or as a poem about, or in the voice of, a lover longing for an absent beloved.

If the general atmosphere of chilly, nighttime mysteriousness recalls Li Shangyin’s debt to Li He, the middle couplets show a compression and multivalence that recall late Du Fu. Line 3 involves the shattering of a dream—but were those “other years” something dreamed of, is a dream once dreamed in other years now recalled, or do those “other years” themselves appear now like a broken dream? While the idea of a causal link between the sound of the bird’s cry and the waking is there if we choose to take it up, what the lines convey more immediately is the awakening mind’s state of disorientation. The bird’s cry, in turn, can be either a literal birdcall or a figure for the sound of the syrinx. The sense of temporal disorientation in particular is developed in the following couplet, where the terms “familiar” and “dwindling” both point to unspecified spans of past time, the first on the scale of a life, and the second on the scale of one night (and the dream that unfolded as the candle was burning down). Beneath the surface of these images lies that commonplace dear to Late Tang storytellers and poets alike: life is like a dream.

The final couplet involves a flurry of allusions to traditions about immortals. The penultimate line refers to Prince Jin (also known as Prince Qiao), a Daoist transcendent and master syrinx player who rode into heaven on a white crane on the seventh day of the seventh month from Mount Gou. In the final line, the phrase “zither of the Xiang” refers to the consorts of the legendary sage-king Shun, E Huang and Nü Ying, who became goddesses of the Xiang River—a passage in the Chuci poem “Yuan you” (Far Roaming) portrays a spirit of the Xiang River playing the zither. The phrase “panpipe of Qin” refers to the tale of Xiao Shi, who summoned a phoenix with his panpipe and, together with his betrothed, the princess Nong Yu, rode into heaven. This set of allusions to immortal lovers also calls to the association of the Milky Way with the Oxherd and Weaver Girl, celestial lovers (and constellations) separated by the “river” of the Milky Way and allowed to cross and meet for one night each year, on the seventh day of the seventh month. Thus the final couplet seems a call to choose companionship over a solitary quest for transcendence—although the context in which this call is voiced remains impossible to pin down.

Another type of poem in which Li Shangyin wrote quite innovative regulated verse was the historical meditation, of which “Sui Palace” is one of the most renowned examples:

C9.6

Ninth-century poetry on historical themes often shows affinities in both choice and handling of its material with works in short narrative fiction (the genre later referred to as chuanqi) from the same period. Whereas historical poetry of earlier eras tends to didacticism, elegy, or veiled allegory on contemporary events, poets in this period often used historical themes as vehicles for daring flights of fancy, or to delight in logical paradoxes of historical causation.⁶ This poem meditates on traces of the Sui dynasty, the regime that, in 589, reunified China after the long period of division known as the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-589), only to be quickly supplanted, in turn, by the Tang in 618. The central figure of this poem is the Sui emperor Yang, who spent huge sums on massive public-works projects and indulged in frequent excursions through the newly conquered south. He ordered the construction of elaborate palace compounds in the southern city of Guangling (present-day Yangzhou), to serve as a temporary capital during these southern sojourns; a newly constructed system of canals linked the Sui’s northern and southern capitals.

Here, the place-names “Purple Spring palace” and “ruined city” are fraught with irony. The Southern Dynasties poet Bao Zhao (414-466) had written “Wu cheng fu” (Fu on the Ruined City) on the history of Guangling. This piece was commonly read as a veiled commentary on a Southern Dynasties prince who had begun an ill-fated rebellion in the Guangling area during Bao Zhao’s time. Thus to say that Emperor Yang wanted to “take the ‘ruined city’ as a home of emperors” amounts to an implicit criticism of his failure to learn from history. A still more recondite layer of ironies in these opening lines relates to the given names of Emperor Yang and the Tang founder who displaced him. Purple Spring was the name of a river in the Chang’an area, so “Purple Spring palace” refers to the Sui palaces at Chang’an, which Emperor Yang left behind, neglected and shrouded in mist, on his southern excursions. During the Sui, the place-name Purple Spring would have been written Ziyuan. But Li Shangyin, writing more than two hundred years later as a Tang subject, was required to observe the taboo on the name of the Tang founder, Li Yuan (r. 618-626), and call it, by a conventional substitution of synonyms, Ziquan. The city referred to indirectly here by means of the reference to Bao Zhao’s fu would have been properly called by its ancient name of Guangling during Li Shangyin’s time, but during the Sui it had been renamed Jiangdu (Metropolis on the Yangtze) to avoid violating the taboo on Emperor Yang’s given name, Guang. Through such arcane wordplay, Li Shangyin conveys a vision of history as a disorienting space of ironies and unrealized possibilities.

The view of history as a chain of cryptic ironies is carried to an extreme pitch in the second couplet. The “jade seal” is the symbol of imperial office, while the “brocade sails” refer to one of numerous fantastic narratives about Emperor Yang’s southern excursions, which describes brocade-sailed boats following one after the other for miles along the newly opened waterways. The couplet initially seems as dense as anything in “Autumn Meditations” and yields its meaning only when we recognize the extreme instance of borrowed parallelism around which it is constructed. In order to understand the couplet, we need to take ri jiao as the term from the art of physiognomy for hornlike protuberances on the forehead indicating a person destined to become emperor—that is, Li Yuan. Thus the couplet yields the sense, “If the seal of office had not been destined for Li Yuan, those chains of boats would have continued forever, to the very ends of the earth.” The riddling and eerily synecdochic quality of the lines presents the workings of history as something just as mysterious as the celestial realm depicted by Li He.

The poem’s second half alludes to further anecdotal traditions about the latter years of the Sui. Emperor Yang is supposed to have imposed a levy of fireflies on the populace, solely for the sake of releasing them to provide light during a nighttime excursion (medieval science held that fireflies were generated from rotting grass). Willow trees were also reportedly levied, to be planted along the banks of the extensive canal system that was to become, for later ages, the Sui’s most lasting monument. The surname of the Sui imperial house, Yang, was itself also the name of a kind of willow. The final couplet refers to an episode in an apocryphal tale about Emperor Yang in which he visits the former emperor of the last of the Southern Dynasties, the Chen. In the story, Emperor Yang requests to hear the former emperor’s favorite consort sing “Flowers in the Rear Courtyard”—a song that had become associated with the extravagance of the former emperor and, in retrospect, with the Chen’s downfall. Li Shangyin suggests that in the afterworld Emperor Yang, having himself succumbed to a similar fate, might be less quick to mock a defunct emperor.

The mode of poetic writing with which Li Shangyin was to be most closely associated was his distinctive hermetic brand of the poetry of romance:

C9.7

The opening images of the onset of a rainstorm are fresh and vivid, and at the same time erudite: they echo atmospheric passages from the “Jiu ge” (Nine Songs) in the Chuci, particularly “Shan gui” (Mountain Spirit), depicting a thwarted tryst between a goddess and her mortal lover. The suggestion of a lovers’ tryst, whether actual or imagined, successful or frustrated, is continued in the sound image of line 2, since the rumble of thunder, in the poetry of romance, is a stock metaphor for the sound of the lover’s carriage wheels. But in this poem, while this stock image suggests a possible range of associations, we are never given quite enough context to allow us to determine a definite frame of reference. Thus the “faint thunder” here may be actual thunder or the rumbling carriage wheels of the lover, approaching or receding, in the distance. Li Shangyin seems to delight in creating ambiguous poetic atmospheres such as this one, in which we hear a sound, muffled by an indefinite distance, that might be either.

The second couplet shows us this evocative and atmospheric style at its best. The toad would seem to be part of a metal ornament on a lock, and the tiger a figuration on a well pulley. These zoomorphic ornaments may be read as a scene setting of the interior space in which the lover waits, and they may also suggest enigmatic analogies with the tryst. Although the lock is secure, the incense smoke seeps through; although the well is deep, the bucket returns to the surface, bearing water from the depths. More important, again, than reaching a definitive solution is to register the quality of mystery and indeterminacy created in this couplet, where we can see both the fragmentation and the compression of late Du Fu and the brand of synecdochic fantasy pioneered by Li He.

The third couplet hinges on allusions to legends of illicit loves. Line 5 continues the veiled analogy in line 3 between incense smoke, in its ability to penetrate otherwise impermeable barriers, and erotic mingling: Han Shou was a young and handsome clerk in the employ of the Jin dynasty official Jia Chong; Jia Chong’s daughter glimpsed Han Shou through a window and began an affair with him; the lovers were found out when Jia Chong, while meeting with Han, detected the scent of a rare incense from a private Jia family stock. The “headrest” of line 6 is involved in a more complex web of textual references, in which it may stand for either the frustration or the consummation of clandestine desire. The Wei dynasty prince and renowned poet Cao Zhi (192-232) wrote “Luo shen fu” (Fu on the Luo River Goddess), a fu that became one of the most renowned literary depictions of romance between a goddess and a human lover. Later tradition linked this poem with an apocryphal story of star-crossed love between Cao Zhi and Empress Zhen, wife of Cao Zhi’s elder brother, Cao Pi (187-226), Emperor Wen of the Wei dynasty. Cao Zhi, the story has it, had unsuccessfully sought the hand of the future Empress Zhen before her betrothal to Cao Pi. Years later—after Empress Zhen had been murdered through the machinations of a rival empress—Cao Zhi made an appearance at Cao Pi’s court, and Cao Pi happened to show him an ornately inlaid headrest that had belonged to the late empress. Cao Zhi burst into tears on seeing this object, and Cao Pi, divining the reason, gave him the headrest as a memento. On his journey away from the capital back to his own fiefdom, Cao Zhi paused by the Luo River, musing on Empress Zhen. Her spirit then appeared to him, identified the headrest as part of her dowry, and announced that she was transferring that dowry, and herself, from her former husband to Cao Zhi; their love was at last consummated. Cao Zhi then composed “Gan Zhen fu” (Fu in Response to Zhen’s Epiphany). Only afterward, the story goes, was the title altered by Cao Pi’s heir to “Fu on the Luo River Goddess,” to avoid scandal.

Such elaborate echoes of narrative prose texts remind us again of the close interrelations between the fantasies of storytellers and of poets in this period. Like the elusive and fragmented images, however, the references are used in this poem in such a way as to open up spaces of association while preventing us from being able to settle on a definite version of just what story the poem itself is telling. The observation about passion with which the poem closes could be applied as well to the texture of Li Shangyin’s language in this poem: cryptic clues create a tantalizing illusion of an alluring scent and suggest the nearness of a burning heat. When we attempt to gain a firm hold on just where and what it is, it proves as fragile and insubstantial as ash.

C9.8

“Brocade Zither” is almost certainly Li Shangyin’s best-known poem, and it is the poem with which many early editions of his works opened. Depending on how we look at it, it is either paradoxical or perfectly fitting that it is also surely the one poem in his collection whose precise meaning has been the subject of the greatest controversy. Here we lack even the sort of hint about the poem’s mode that we are given in the untitled poem just discussed. Like the poem “Milky Way: Syrinx-Playing,” “Brocade Zither” has been read as a yongwu poem on a musical instrument, as a lament for the poet’s wife, as a veiled comment on an illicit affair, and as a complaint about a patron’s neglect. Any reading offered here will necessarily be hypothetical, one possibility among many. I follow the lead of those traditional readers who have read the poem as introducing Li Shangyin’s collected poetry and thus more generally as a poem about the poetic art.

Line 1 alludes to an etiological myth (that is, a story purporting to explain the origins of an object or institution) about the zither. In the story, White-Silk Maiden played on a fifty-string zither for the mythic sage-ruler Fuxi, and the sound was unbearably mournful. To find relief from this sound, Fuxi broke the zither in half, creating the latter-day twenty-five-string zither. The fifty strings thus suggest a kind of expressive power and complexity that overwhelm the listener’s ability to bear; here, as each zither string is supported by its bridge, each element in that overwhelming mass of sound stirs corresponding tones in memory.

The middle couplets create networks of association within which these correspondences are free to resonate. The images center on mysteries of transformation, and of occult sympathy, that span the gap between human experience and the creatures and objects of the natural world. Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly—so vividly that, on waking, he could no longer feel sure whether he was really Zhuangzi or a butterfly. Emperor Wang, legendary ruler of Shu, sent his minister Bie Ling to work on irrigation and flood control, and in Bie Ling’s absence had an adulterous affair with Bie Ling’s wife. On Bie Ling’s return, Emperor Wang was overcome with shame. He departed, abdicating his throne to his minister, and was transformed into a cuckoo. This bird was then forever linked in memory with Emperor Wang, whose given name, Du Yu, became an alternative name for the species. The verb tuo (entrust) is also used to describe the use of a figure of speech, so that when we use the image of a cuckoo as a metaphor to express feelings of sadness or regret like those of the legendary Du Yu, we also “entrust the spring heart of Emperor Wang to the cuckoo.” The third couplet alludes to still further myths of sympathy and transformation: line 5 combines the legend that pearls wax and wane in phase with the moon with the legend of ocean-dwelling mermaids (or shark people [jiao ren]) who weep pearl tears. Line 6 draws on a range of possible textual echoes: Lantian (literally, Indigo Fields) was in fact the name of a place renowned for its jade. The story of a hero named Chang Hong tells how, after he was unjustly killed, his blood turned to jade. The tale of a girl named Purple Jade tells how she returned as a spirit after her death to clear the name of her would-be lover, Han Zhong, of a charge of tomb robbery. Moved by Han Zhong’s earnest grief, she appeared to him in spirit and gave him a pearl from her grave hoard. When her mother rushed forward to embrace her, she dissolved like smoke. Another text often cited as a possible point of reference is the comment by Dai Shulun (732-789) that the scenes of poetry are like the mist that rises from the fine jade of Lantian in the warmth of the sun; they can be gazed at from afar but cannot be placed immediately before the eyes.

Li Shangyin seems to admit here that he himself has a difficulty similar to that we face as his readers: while the compression of his poetic language leads us to infer a latent intensity of emotion, that same compression obliterates the particularity of reference, and in the end the exact source and nature of this feeling eludes any attempt—by poet or reader—to pin it down once and for all. The problem of indeterminacy of poetic meaning, in this view, is ultimately a counterpart of the indeterminacy of feeling and memory: the heart, like the poem, is a zither with too many strings. Late Tang writers were indeed drawn to the poetic fragment; what we can see more clearly now is the way they seem haunted as well with a sense of the fragmentation of experience itself.

Robert Ashmore

NOTES

1 Such rhyming first lines are optional in all regulated verse, but in practice they are a bit more common in the heptasyllabic forms, where the longer line seems to make it more desirable to establish the rhyme in the first couplet.

2 The exception to this rule occurs in line type II (| | 809

| |

), where an oblique-tone third syllable (or first syllable in the pentasyllabic line) requires alteration of the fifth syllable (or third in the pentasyllabic line) from oblique to level tone to preserve euphony. See the discussion on the four lüshi/jueju line types in chapter 8.

3 In fact, we can see anticipations of what we might call a Song manner in such works by Du Fu. A comparison of this poem with Lin Bu’s “Small Plum Tree in a Garden in the Hills, No. 1” (C15.1) suggests some of the “hereditary” connections between Du Fu and Song poetry.

4 For a sense of the literary legacy of these Han sites, see the discussion of Sima Xiangru’s “Fu on the Imperial Park” (C3.1).

5 Huang Zhouxing (1611-1680), Tang shi kuai (Pleasures of Tang Poetry), cited in Tang shi huiping (Collected Commentaries on Tang Poetry), ed. Chen Bohai (Hangzhou: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 1995), 2:1948.

6 For another classic example of this mode of poetry in the ninth century, see the discussion of Du Mu’s heptasyllabic quatrain “Red Cliff” (C10.15).

WUJUE

Although Tang poets all used wujue to record concentrated poetic experience, and pursued the same fundamental aesthetic goals for the form, differing styles of poems can be discerned. Here I present two basic styles of Tang wujue, differentiated primarily by the choice of themes and the type of language employed. The first can be called a “colloquial style” and the second a “descriptive style,” although both terms require qualification. For a context in which to approach these styles, a brief look back at pentasyllabic quatrain composition in the Six Dynasties period (222-618) is helpful.

Six Dynasties yuefu songs were a major source for wujue. These anonymous songs fall into three subcategories: “Wu songs of the Jiangnan region” (Jiangnan Wu sheng), from the southern capital area (present-day Nanjing); “western songs of Jing and Chu” (Jing Chu xisheng), from the area around the confluence of the Yangtze and Han rivers (present-day Wuhan); and “songs accompanied by drum, horn, and transverse flute” (gu jiao hengchui qu), from the north. These quatrains, predominantly love songs in a first-person female voice, were cited as a source for Tang wujue by literary historians as early as Gao Bing (1350-1423) and Hu Yinglin (1551-1602). Thematically, the songs are limited mainly to broken love affairs—and the occasional happy reunion. Description of the settings and characters is also quite limited. The language is colloquial, direct, and highly emotionally charged. Analysis of linguistic elements suggests the oral performance milieu: the extant texts are characterized by strong and continuous syntax, a use of first- and second-person pronouns, and often puns. Most tellingly, a continual use of the linguistic categories of deixis and modality gives the impression of direct speech. Deixis includes words and expressions that are ambiguous without specific knowledge of the context of the speech act (for example, “Hey you! Bring that over here!”).⁴ Modality refers to subjectivity of expressions, as inferences, conditionals, imperatives, questions, and so on; it is the grammaticalization of speakers’ subjective attitudes and opinions.⁵

Colloquial elements in the songs also created a tone and pace starkly different from those in contemporary shi, which strongly influenced the course of wujue (and qijue) development. In languages that use alphabets, the distinction between written and spoken forms at any one time is not that great; the written generally follows the vernacular and remains a language of action and direct communication. However, Chinese characters do not spell out spoken words, but are symbols for words; this fact allowed the classical written and the vernacular forms semi-independent evolutions. Classical Chinese did not develop in the direction of easy communicability or even clear referentiality, but toward dense, concise, and erudite presentation. It tended toward monosyllabism and was undergrammaticalized and ambiguous relative to the spoken language. Thus the injection of vernacular elements into jueju had the effect of considerably lightening the tone and speeding the pace relative to denser forms like lüshi.

Another product of Six Dynasties yuefu music was the fixed-length pentasyllabic quatrain form itself: it appears that popular southern musical tunes and phrasing dictated the length. A singer standing in front of an audience creates a context full of dramatic potential. The language and phrasing used are designed for maximum emotional impact. The fixed-length quatrain form of Six Dynasties music required the singer to say more by saying less and so was the catalyst for the gradual invention of standard compositional formulas that relied on implicit suggestion. Fixed length had not heretofore been a feature of Chinese poetry. It can reasonably be argued that experimentation with quatrains in the Six Dynasties led to interest in the fixed-length octet and eventually the development of the lüshi forms.

One Six Dynasties technique to overcome short fixed length was to employ clever homonym puns in the final couplet of quatrains, which, depending on which side of the pun one considered, cast the lines in wholly different ways. Consider the following couplet from a “Ziye ge” (Ziye Song):

The lines can be rendered, “The bright lamp shines on the empty chessboard / —For a long time there won’t be any game.” Yet when puns in the last line are factored in, it also reads, “The oil burns on but no date [for our reunion] has been set.”⁶ Other Six Dynasties songs omit puns, but the goal of projecting meaning and emotional resonance beyond the literal words remains intrinsic.

A representative example of Six Dynasties yuefu songs is another “Ziye Song”:

C10.1

In the space of a four-line speech act, the mood of the singer changes completely, from concerned solicitude for her lover to resignation or even anger at his (apparent) betrayal.

Six Dynasties literati shi poets also adopted the pentasyllabic quatrain form and explored its potential. Yet, stylistically, their written quatrain-length shi are almost the opposite of the yuefu quatrain songs. Like longer contemporary shi poetry, these quatrains are in a descriptive mode, aiming toward what the critic Zhong Rong (fl. 502-509) called “artful structure and descriptive similitude” (qiaogou xingsi).⁷ Such poems create a vibrant verbal texture (often through parallelism) but maintain a somewhat neutral or distanced emotional stance. This effect is in part due to the fact that the writers tended to avoid the use of grammatical function words, which were considered “empty words” (xuzi), in favor of “content words” (shizi)—nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on. The goal was to encompass objective reality through written patterning. Declarative statements dominate, and images are chosen primarily to appeal to the visual sense—in aggregate, to paint mental pictures with words. Yet, what such language may lack in personal tone, it more than makes up for in philosophical/cosmological resonance, for it developed in the context of nature poetry by poets such as Xie Lingyun (385-433 [chap. 6]). The poem “In Praise of Pear Blossoms on the Pond,” by Wang Rong (468-494), typifies the literary quatrain style:

C10.2

In Praise of Pear Blossoms on the Pond

On ruined steps they cover the fine grass
In pooled water they scatter among the duckweed
Fragrant spring shines on flowing snow
Deep night reflects myriad stars

[XQHWJNBCS 2:1403]

The transformation of the pear blossom petals floating in the wind to snow and stars is both striking and beautiful. The lines in each couplet are strictly parallel, but the language evokes an element of dynamism due to the use of strong verbs in the third position in every line—such key words were termed juyan (verse eyes) by later critics.

The same literati poets who wrote shi quatrains were also a major audience for the yuefu songs. Cross-fertilization was both natural and inevitable. Yuefu quatrain songs by named authors incorporate descriptive language (including parallelism) more than do most of the anonymous songs. And as time went on, shi quatrains increasingly exhibited elements derived from the subjective voice of the yuefu singer. In particular, Yu Xin (513-581) did much to transform the literati pentasyllabic quatrain into a medium for personal statement; his works can be considered precursors of many Tang wujue.⁸

Both of the two proposed styles of Tang wujue build on Six Dynasties antecedents, but in different ways. Colloquial-style quatrains hark back directly to the Six Dynasties songs by presenting archetypal yuefu characters in dramatic situations using a first-person colloquial voice to express fundamental emotions. Often such Tang quatrains are “ancient jueju” (gujue), a term applied by commentators such as Wang Li to the minority of jueju that do not follow the rules of tonal prosody or use oblique-tone rhymes.⁹ The reason for bypassing the tonal patterns appears to have been a conscious attempt by poets to evoke an archaic flavor in their verse. Yet the colloquial style is reflected in many proper wujue poems as well—it is theme and voice that dictate their inclusion. Two colloquial-style quatrains are presented, given pride of place at the outset. It should be noted, however, that it is unlikely that these poems were actually sung in the Tang. The musical tradition of Six Dynasties pentasyllabic quatrains—and that of the old Han yuefu as well—had all but died out by the Early Tang dynasty. Poets were making use of the ready-made resonance of old yuefu as source material for new kinds of poetry.

The descriptive style in fact is more prevalent in Tang wujue composition. It can be explained as a hybrid that merges the descriptive and visual power of shi with the emotional voice of the yuefu singer. One compositional method dominates: the first couplet is devoted to a description of images and often demonstrates parallelism; the second couplet is a continuous syntactic proposition and frequently exhibits deixis and modality. The first couplet is generally in the declarative mode and provides the setting or necessary background information for the second couplet. In the second couplet, the emphasis is on the subjective evaluation of all of the poem’s imagery. The voice of the singer is internalized by the poet and becomes less stridently expressive and more subtly reflective. Strong emotion remains, but it is generally presented through indirection and understatement.

A premier example of the colloquial-style wujue is “Spring Lament,” by Jin Changxu (fl. 713-742). No other poem by Jin Changxu is extant, and he is a virtual unknown. Yet this poem struck a chord with readers and was held up by some as the model for jueju composition.

C10.3

Spring Lament

Hit the yellow oriole
Don’t let it sing on the branches
When it sings, it breaks into my dreams
And keeps me from Liaoxi!

[QTS 22:768.8724; QSTRJJ, 219-221]

The Qing dynasty critic Shen Deqian said of this poem, “It proceeds continuously in a single breath.”¹⁰ Strong, forward-moving syntax is evident in every line, and each couplet is a complete sentence. The point where one couplet ends and the next begins potentially could mark a break in continuity and thus retard the flow of a poem; this poem adopts the common solution of repeating the character in the last position of one couplet in the first position of the next. Further, the eight verbs (out of twenty characters!) give the language dynamism and power. The first-person pronoun qiè (a humble form used by women) and the modal constructions in line 1 (dăqĭ [hit], an imperative), line 2 (mò jiào [don’t let], a negative imperative), and line 4 (bù dé [cannot get], a judgment concerning ability) emphasize the voice of the speaker/singer and tie the poem to the earlier tradition of performed yuefu poetry. The impression is of a voice from the heart.

Thematically, the poem is firmly in the yuefu tradition. An archetypal lonely woman despairs over the fate of her absent husband or lover, who is gone to be a soldier on the border. Liaoxi refers to the region to the west of the Liao River, in present-day Inner Mongolia. Only in dreams are they together—until she is rudely awakened by the oriole. The poem seems just that simple, but the image of the oriole in fact carries subtle associations. On one level, the springtime bird is certainly calling its mate to the nest; this symbol of togetherness is in ironic contrast to the woman’s lonely state. Yet on another, more disturbing level, the image may allude to poem no. 131 in the Shijing (The Book of Poetry), in which the song of the oriole is a harbinger of the death of warriors for their lord. Thus the bird not only keeps the lonely woman from dreams of happiness but also represents her worst fears.

Wang Wei (701-761) is universally recognized as a master of wujue, particularly for his limpid landscape descriptions, which often contain Buddhist allegories. Yet the few colloquial-style quatrains he composed are also justly famous. He writes of lovers’ separation, this time from the man’s point of view, in the second of three “Miscellaneous Poems”:

C10.4

Miscellaneous Poems, No. 2

You’ve come from our hometown
And must know what’s happening there
The day you left, by the patterned window
Was the cold plum tree in bloom?

[QTS 4:128.1304; QSTRJJ, 107-108]

By addressing the poem to the second-person pronoun jun, a dramatic situation with two actors is created, with the poet taking the speaking role. An impression of direct and natural speech is given by the strong syntax used throughout and the use of grammatical function words—the preposition zi (from) and the negative question word wei. The repetition of guxiang (hometown) in lines 1 and 2 and lai (to come) in lines 1 and 3 imparts a sense of informality to the speaker’s words and emphasizes the linguistic continuity. The words jun, guxiang, and lairi (come day; that is, the day of departure) are examples of deixis (person deixis, place deixis, and time deixis, respectively), as their exact referents require knowledge of the speech context. The inference in line 2 and the question in line 4 are modal statements that imply a speaker as point of reference.

The subtle emotion of the second couplet is what makes this poem memorable. In line 3, the word qichuang (patterned window; that is, a window with delicately carved or latticed decoration that makes it resemble qi [patterned silk]) almost certainly refers to a woman’s boudoir. We assume that the occupant is the speaker’s wife or lover, from whom he is separated. The question in line 4 is thus projected onto the personal level. The “cold plum” becomes a symbol of the couple’s love, which has endured separation the way plum trees endure the cold of winter. The rest of the question reveals the speaker’s anxiety about the continuing strength of this love: his asking whether the flowers bloom is an indirect way of asking whether his wife’s or lover’s feelings are as strong as before.

A representative example of quatrains in the descriptive style is Wang Zhihuan’s (688-742) famous “Climbing Crane Tower”:

C10.5

Climbing Crane Tower

White sun rests on mountains—and is gone
Yellow River enters sea—and flows on
If you want to see a further thousand miles:
Climb another story in the tower

[QTS 8:253.2849; QSTRJJ, 54-56]

Crane Tower commanded a vista from a bend in the Yellow River, at a site in present-day Yongji, Shanxi Province. On one level, this is a simple landscape poem, in praise of the view. Yet when we analyze the relationships between the images in the parallel first couplet in the light of the modal conditional proposition in the second couplet, our thoughts may shift to the metaphysical realm.¹¹ The permanence of mountains is paired with the transience of water, the light of day with the dark of night, and the termination of movement (resting, disappearing) with continuing movement (entering, flowing). A cosmological cycle of yin and yang is described. Indeed, we might go further: we are exactly at the midpoint in the cycle when yang yields to yin—the point of balance. The first couplet thereby creates a seemingly complete conception of the world, but then the second couplet asserts that there is an even greater view open to those who climb higher in the tower. Implicit is that there is a truth about the cosmos that is beyond our normal understanding. There is a Tang dynasty basis for this interpretation: Guifeng Zongmi (780-841), both a patriarch of Huayan Buddhism and a major Chan (Zen) master, uses the analogy of climbing a nine-story tower to describe the relationship between cultivation and enlightenment.¹²

Wang Wei shared with Tao Qian (Tao Yuanming, 365?-427) a love of nature and a frequent tendency to use natural description as a springboard to philosophical and religious investigation. “Most mature nature poetry ... would seem to look upon the configurations of landscape as symbols charged with a mysterious power.” ¹³ While Tao Qian was a follower of the Daoist philosophers, Wang Wei was a devout Buddhist—he studied with the Chan master Daoguang for ten years and even converted part of his country estate into a monastery. His landscape poems are characterized by an integrated minimalism: in them, nature is distilled to a few essential images, which are harmoniously arranged in a balanced and stable whole that yet pulses with the energy of their interrelationships. Nature is the main actor; the poet becomes a distanced observer, or even seems to be absent. An overall impression of direct and unmediated reality is imparted, although in fact the landscapes are idealizations created by Wang Wei’s poetic imagination. He carefully chooses his images to appeal to the senses, primarily the eye; this has given rise to an oft-repeated maxim about Wang Wei: “In his poems, there are paintings” (shizhong you hua). Following are two fine examples of his landscape wujue; the first, “The Deer Fence,” is from his famous “Wang River Collection,” which describes sites at his estate at Lantian, south of the Tang capital of Chang’an (present-day Xi’an, Shaanxi Province):

C10.6

The Deer Fence

On the empty mountain, no one is seen
But the sound of voices is heard
Returning: light enters the deep forest
Again: it shines on the green moss

[QTS 4:128.1300; QSTRJJ, 112-113]

This deceptively simple poem is in fact more difficult than it looks—one book discusses how nineteen different translators have rendered it in nineteen different ways!¹⁴

What is an “empty mountain”? Clearly it is not barren, as we are informed that there is a “deep forest” there. Kong (empty) is the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit Buddhist term śūnyatā. Primarily the word is a negation, a denial that phenomena have self-existence—that is, permanence independent of causes and conditions. Yet emptiness does not imply nihilism, for it is also “empty.” Rather, it is a practical term that has meaning only in the context of salvation; in Edward Conze’s description, through the exercise of wisdom (prajñā), the practitioner negates the world and thereby gains emancipation from it.¹⁵ Paul Williams has explained: “To see entities as empty is to see them as mental constructs, not existing from their own side and therefore in that respect like illusions and hallucinatory objects.... Emptiness is the ultimate truth (paramārthasatya) in this tradition in the sense that it is what is ultimately true about the object being analyzed, whatever that object may be.”¹⁶ Meditation on emptiness leads to the realization of the only permanence or self-existence, which is variously called the dharma body or law body of the Buddha (dharmakāya), the Buddha realm (dharmadhātu), or enlightenment, nirvāṇa. Thus Wang Wei’s “empty mountain” is the mountain as it really is from the perspective of an enlightened person. The first couplet as a whole affirms that this truth is not distant from our human world—it is indeed right here among us. The schools of Chinese Buddhism followed the traditional Indian Mādhyamaka (Middle Way) understanding that the true nature of phenomena is nondual: all things lie somewhere between the extremes of being and nonbeing. This is as true for the unconditioned law body as it is for things in this conditioned world—thus there is no possible separation between nirvāṇa (the other shore, or enlightenment) and saṃsāra (this shore, or the world of suffering, the round of rebirth). Looked at from another perspective, both nirvāṇa and saṃsāra are empty; thus both are the same. The implication is that all things are related and all are inter-penetrated by the law body. Enlightenment is not transcending one reality to reach another, but is the discovery of the law body within this reality.

The second couplet—as always in jueju—is dominant. Why is the light returning and shining again on the green moss? Consider that in a dense forest on a mountainside, logically the only times during the day when moss on the forest floor might be illuminated are sunrise and/or sunset, when light can shine in underneath the tree canopy. The description Wang Wei presents suggests that this is part of his meaning: fanying (returning light)¹⁷ recalls the phrase huiguang fanzhao (returning light shining back), which refers to the glow of colored light in the sky right at sunset. There is something suggestive about the scene: the light seems to purposefully illuminate the moss, over and over again. Both the light and the moss become important symbols—but for what?

An enlightenment metaphor is at work here. The interpenetration of nirvāṇa and saṃsāra suggests that the law body is innate within us. Indian writers termed this aspect tathāgatagarbha (Buddha essence, Buddha nature) and held that it is a common possession of all sentient beings. This Buddha nature is, on the one hand, what makes us yearn for nirvāṇa in the first place and, on the other, what makes it possible for us to reach it. Enlightenment does not produce anything; instead, it is a paring away of illusions (caused by ignorance) to reveal the Buddha already within us.¹⁸ Chinese Buddhists referred to this realization in many ways, one of which was the borrowed term huiguang fanzhao—here, the returning light shining back illuminates one’s original nature.

That explains the light, but what of the moss? One feature of early Chinese Buddhism was an expansion of the scope of tathāgatagarbha: it came to be viewed as the common endowment of not only sentient beings, but also nonsentient things.¹⁹ The idea is implicit in several sutras, but it became a major focus in China, particularly through the influential teachings of the Huayan school. Conze has summarized basic Huayan thought as follows:

Each particle of dust contains in itself all the Buddha-fields and the whole extent of the Dharma-element; every single thought refers to all that was, is and will be; and the eternal mysterious Dharma can be beheld everywhere, because it is equally reflected in all parts of this universe. Each particle of dust is also capable of generating all possible kinds of virtue, and therefore one single object may lead to the unfolding of all the secrets of the entire universe.²⁰

Although moss is perhaps the most insignificant thing in the forest, Wang Wei presents it as a symbol of absolute truth.

With the previous poem in mind, even a glance at the following wujue, “Calling-Bird Brook,” suggests its Buddhist overtones:

C10.7

Calling-Bird Brook

Man quiet: sweet osmanthus falls
Night tranquil: the spring mountain empties
The rising moon startles mountain birds
Which call awhile in the spring stream

[QTS 4:128.1302; QSTRJJ, 119-120]

Both the emptiness of the mountain in spring and moonlight so powerful that it startles birds in the spring stream can be readily interpreted as Buddhist metaphors. Let us look closely at only the first couplet, as it introduces an aspect of Buddhist thought and practice not yet mentioned. The couplet is strictly parallel and made up of only content words (shizi). Thus the relationships between the images are suggested through juxtaposition and not grammatically marked. Although we could read each of the two lines as simply additive, I prefer to read each as a cause-effect proposition (because the man is quiet, therefore the sweet osmanthus falls; because the night is tranquil, therefore the spring mountain is empty). Such an interpretation is in keeping with ideas about meditation practice contemporary to Wang Wei. The major influence on Early and Middle Tang Buddhism in this regard came from the Tiantai school, whose founder, Zhiyi (538-597), had reformulated and systematized earlier Hinayana meditation techniques and set them firmly in a Mahayana context. Practice revolved around the dynamic relationship between zhi (śamatha [cessation, calming]) and guan (vipaśyanā [insight, contemplation]). The two always go together. In Zhiyi’s words, “śamatha (or zhi) is the hand that holds the clump of grass, vipaśyanā (or guan) the sickle that cuts it down.”²¹ In Wang Wei’s poem, “man quiet” and “night tranquil” are zhi, and “osmanthus falls” and “spring mountain empties” are guan. Cessation of mental activity allows the poet to experience true reality. When the realization of emptiness is attained, out comes the bright moon of enlightenment.

Li Bai (701-762)—brilliant, insouciant, frequently inebriated, and mostly unemployed—was a master of both the wujue and qijue forms. His “Quiet Night Thoughts” exemplifies perfect control of structure to create a suggestive closure:

C10.8

Quiet Night Thoughts

Before my bed, the bright moonlight
I mistake it for frost on the ground
Raising my head, I stare at the bright moon;
Lowering my head, I think of home

[QSTRJJ, 146-147; QTS 5:165.1709]

The first couplet presents an arresting image: the poet is awakened by brightness streaming in the window, and he misinterprets its origin. The moon up above seems to him to be the reflection of frost down below. The second couplet ties the images of moon and frost to the poet’s homesickness and thereby makes them significant. Repeating mingyue (bright moon), line 3 directly refers to line 1. As line 3 directly refers to line 1, we expect line 4 to refer to line 2. That is, line 4 will in some manner concern frost on the ground. Frost is not mentioned directly, but with the poet’s lowering his head, it is implied. This is because the first couplet has presented a two-part visual scene in which the moon is above and the frost is below. The second couplet repeats the first half of this pattern in line 3—the poet looks up to see the moon. In line 4, the poet looks down, and so we assume the rest of the pattern. The round (full) moon, which in Chinese poetry often carries connotations of unity and family togetherness, has caused the traveler to lower his head and think of home. Yet his thoughts are permeated by the frost, now transformed into a symbol of his homesickness and still carrying its connotations of coldness, harshness, and destructiveness. Thus the poem has very subtly projected us into the poet’s raw emotional state. The first couplet provides the images and structural pattern that are the backbone of the second couplet. However, the second couplet is dominant, as it reinterprets what has come before.

By far, Li Bai’s favorite topic was Li Bai. More than any other Tang poet, he created a recognizable poetic persona, a free-spirited, spontaneous, larger-than-life bohemian. This persona is reflected in “Amusing Myself”:

C10.9

Amusing Myself

Facing wine—I don’t notice the dusk
Falling flowers cover my robe
Drunkenly I rise, and walk with the moon in the stream
Birds have gone back, and people are few

[QTS 6:182.1858; QSTRJJ, 155-156]

Li Bai presents himself as a figure of fun—the drunken poet covered in flowers and following the moon’s reflection in the stream. The vignette is utterly charming. Yet poems like this should make us ask ourselves: Is the Li Bai who appears in his poems the real Li Bai or a fictional construct? This is an important issue in the Chinese context, as the root of the poetic impulse is said to be shi yan zhi (poetry expresses intent), which would suggest that poems are always spontaneous, true reflections of the writer’s inner being.

Let us read one more wujue poem by Li Bai. The lonely woman figure in yuefu was not limited to the common folk. The abandoned palace lady offered a host of new possibilities, particularly for rich description. The prototypical lady of this type was Ban Jieyu, once the favored consort of Emperor Cheng (r. 32-6 B.C.E.) of the Western Han dynasty. She was displaced when the emperor became infatuated with the lovely Zhao Feiyan and her sister. Fearing jealous recriminations, she retired to serve the dowager empress in Changxin Hall, a separate building within the Changle Palace complex. A poem attributed to Ban Jieyu describes her love as like a round silk fan, pure and white as snow, which is put away in a box when the chill of autumn comes.²² The story and poem became the basis for a host of yuefu compositions by later writers, under titles such as “Jieyu’s Lament” and “Changxin Lament.” I discuss a series of poems about Ban Jieyu in the following qijue section of this chapter. Li Bai’s “Lament of the Jade Stairs” is a contribution to the tradition. Although the theme of this poem derives from the ancient yuefu tradition, the language places it squarely in the descriptive style of wujue:

C10.10

Lament of the Jade Stairs

On jade stairs, the rising white dew
Through the long night pierces silken hose
Retreating inside, she lowers crystal shades
And stares at the glimmering autumn moon

[QTS 5:164.1701; QSTRJJ, 143-145]

Li Bai’s poem is in part a tribute to the Six Dynasties poet Xie Tiao (464-499), whom he much admired. Xie Tiao had also composed a poem on the theme, “Jade Stairs Resentment” (C7.2). Although lovely, Xie Tiao’s work is much simpler than Li Bai’s. Li Bai borrows several elements—the lady’s sleepless night, the jeweled blinds, the glittering light, silk clothing—and creates a masterwork through the subtle interplay of the images.

Li Bai’s lines describe the palace lady in terms of both her languor and her obsession with the past. Despite her opulent surroundings and dress, she feels only sorrow as, under the light of the moon, she stares over the palace walls to where the emperor dwells. The poem presents the constancy of her love, by means of her long, sleepless watch from the courtyard and the boudoir; the fickleness of the emperor is only suggested by contrast. The full moon is the key, not only because it is generally a symbol for family reunion but also more specifically because in the shi poem attributed to her, Ban Jieyu had written:

Newly cut, fine white silk
Fresh and pure as frost and snow
I sew it into a “togetherness fan”
Round, round like the bright moon.

She had given it to the emperor, who cast it aside when the warmth of their relationship was replaced by the cool of autumn. Thus the “autumn moon” in Li Bai’s poem is an ironic symbol of her abandonment. The glittering of the “crystal shades,” which scatter the moonlight into a thousand stars, recalls the drops of dew on “jade stairs” in line 1—or is it that both the crystal and the dewdrops suggest that she stares through the window with eyes filled with tears?

QIJUE

Although a small number of Six Dynasties heptasyllabic quatrains are extant, and Early Tang poets experimented with the form, stylistically mature qijue poetry was an invention of the High Tang poets, most notably Wang Changling (698-ca. 755) and Li Bai. Qijue developed along with Tang popular music, for which it was the major song form. Thus initially the thematic scope was narrow: qijue lyrics were generally limited to popular yuefu themes (which, for the Tang, can be roughly divided into frontier songs about homesick soldiers and boudoir songs about abandoned ladies) and those describing parting from friends and loved ones. Only gradually did the scope of qijue themes expand, until by the Middle and Late Tang, the form had become a flexible tool for personal expression.

Let us look at one of Wang Changling’s frontier poems, from a set called “Following the Army”:

C10.11

Following the Army

Signal fires west of the wall, hundred-foot watchtowers
Climbing alone at dusk—an autumn of desert wind
What’s more—“Mountain Pass Moon” plays on a nomad flute
No way to reach the golden chamber, past ten thousand miles of sadness

[QTS 4:143.1443-1444; QSTRJJ, 77-80]

Typically, the poem presents no actual warfare; qijue poets were more interested in the emotions of the soldiers when in moments of rest between battles. A secondary interest was the great desert itself, which had a strangely romantic attraction for the city dwellers of Chang’an. Wang Changling liberally spices his qijue with Central Asian geographic names, nomadic accoutrements, and bleak vistas. In this poem, a soldier climbs a tower to look back toward his home in China; when he hears “Mountain Pass Moon” (a song associated with homesickness), he despairs of the distance to the “golden chamber” where his wife or lover waits. The huge landscape between them is suddenly suffused with their mutual pain.

One of Wang Changling’s innovations was the qijue poem series, a useful means to overcome the brevity of the form. Each stanza is a complete qijue, but when all are read together, there is an exponential buildup of emotional resonance. Whereas the total length is similar to that of heptasyllabic ancient poetry (qigu), the effect of the presentation is quite different: the qijue series comprises multiple moments of great intensity. A fine example is Wang Changling’s five-poem series “Autumn Songs of the Hall of Abiding Faith,” which is his version of the Ban Jieyu theme:

C10.12

Autumn Songs of the Hall of Abiding Faith

On the paulownia by the golden well, autumn leaves have yellowed
The pearl blinds are not rolled against the night-coming frost
By fragrant drying rack and jade pillow, her face is pale
She lies listening to the south palace clock—clear drops without end

An autumn wash stone by the high hall sounds far into the night
Deep frost still recalls the chill of an imperial robe
Beside silver lantern and painted door lock—she puts aside her sewing
And looks toward the golden city, and her Bright Lord

Clutching a broom at daybreak, she opens the golden hall
Then, clasping her round moon fan, she wanders for a while
Her jade face can’t compare with the brightness of cold crows
Which still carry reflections of the sun at Zhaoyang Palace

Obsessed with thoughts of a truly ill-fated life
In dreams seeing her lord, and upon waking, almost believing
Torches shine in the western palace, proof of night revels
In palace corridors this night, clearly someone has found favor

The autumn moon is bright within Changxin Hall
The slapping sound of washing clothes below Zhaoyang Palace
In a mansion of white dew—traces of thin grass
Under a canopy of red silk—limitless feelings

[QTS 4:143.1445]

The series presents Lady Ban through the course of two nights and a day. The cumulative effect is to show the obsessive quality of her despair and the hellish nature of her existence. Her emotion is in strong contrast to her opulent surroundings, which, as a result, appear as a prison. Solitude and too much time on her hands allow her imagination to run wild; in the fourth poem, she does not actually know that the emperor is in the Zhaoyang Palace romancing Zhao Feiyan. The entire series takes place in her fevered mind. Note that the second couplet of the fifth poem uses static parallelism. There is no resolution, no conclusion, for Lady Ban. Moreover, only in this final poem is the tonal prosodic pattern slightly off (it does not follow the nian rule [chap. 8]), which gives a disquieting effect.

Poetry of parting is judged by its power to present personal affection in novel ways. A fine example is Li Bai’s “Sending Off Meng Haoran to Guangling at Yellow Crane Tower”:

C10.13

Sending Off Meng Haoran to Guangling at Yellow Crane Tower

An old friend leaves the west at Yellow Crane Tower
And in flower mists of the third month descends to Yangzhou
The far shadow of a lone sail is lost in the azure sky
I see only the Yangtze River, flowing to the edge of heaven

[QTS 5:174.1785; QSTRJJ, 163-164]

In just a few words, Li Bai evokes the vastness of the Yangtze River. His focus on the river landscape belies his true purpose—expressing his grief at parting from a friend. In line 3, Meng Haoran’s boat slowly sails over the horizon, and in line 4, there is only the great river. By subtle implication, Li Bai reveals that he has been standing atop Yellow Crane Tower all the while, watching the scene and thinking of his friend.

The great poet Du Fu (712-770) is not well known for his jueju quatrains; as the critic Gao Buying put it, “Du Fu’s talent encapsulated heaven and sustained the earth; he could not fully bring his strengths to bear in a little quatrain.”²³ Yet, in his last years, Du Fu did turn his hand to quatrains, especially qijue, and Gao Buying pointed out that the forceful and direct works he produced constituted a new style. By challenging the countervailing aesthetic, it appears that Du Fu was deliberately trying to widen the scope of the jueju genre. The following is an example:

C10.14

Three Quatrains, No. 3

Palace guards should be heroic and brave—
Not wild and cruel, like Tangut and Tuyuhun!
I hear they’re killing men up on the Han River;
Many girls and women are in the army camps

[QTS 7:229.2490; QSTRJJ, 252-253]

In about 759, an ailing Du Fu moved his family to Shu (Sichuan); he remained in the south for the rest of his life. In the spring of 765, Shu was thrown into chaos by the fighting of military factions. In the autumn of the same year, the Gansu Corridor in the northwest was repeatedly wracked by invasions of Tangut, Tuyuhun, Tibetan, and Uighur forces, some of whom reached as far as the area of the Chinese capital. Countless refugees fled south to safety. However, at the Han River, an army of the Imperial Guard set upon them, extorting money, raping, and killing. Du Fu wrote this poem to express his outrage. He is deliberately unpoetic here (if we consider frontier poetry like that by Wang Changling to be the norm for military topics); his point is to shock and shame his countrymen.

A greater influence on qijue development came from the regulated verse of Du Fu’s late period, particularly his qilü (chap. 9). To express the complexities of a lifetime of hard experience, Du Fu abandoned the unity of scene that characterizes most High Tang poetry and, through the use of dense symbolism and rich cultural allusions, created sudden shifts of point of view that obliterate barriers of time and space, and distinctions between self and world. Late Tang qijue often present a shortened version of Du Fu’s “shifting style”: the first couplet describes an experience in the present that serves as a catalyst for mental projection in the second couplet. Thus later qijue poets often juxtaposed different realms of existence: past glory with present ruin, consciousness of age with memory of youth, mundane reality with supramundane legend or imagination.

A fine example is “Red Cliff,” by Du Mu (803-852). Du Mu had a moderately successful bureaucratic career in the polarized political climate of the period, but the image presented in his qijue (and affirmed in popular anecdotes about him) is that of a playboy. Even a weighty historical subject like that of “Red Cliff” becomes, in Du Mu’s hands, a romantic daydream:

C10.15

Red Cliff

Buried in sand a broken spear, its iron not yet gone
I take up and burnish it, and recall an ancient age
If east wind had not aided young Master Zhou
Still: spring would bind the Qiao girls deep in Bronze Bird Tower

[QTS 16:523.5980; QSTRJJ, 676-678]

The final years of the Han dynasty coincided with a great power struggle for dominance. Eventually only three great warlords were left: Cao Cao (155-220) of Wei to the north, Sun Quan of Wu to the southeast, and Liu Bei of Shu Han to the southwest. When Cao Cao invaded the south, Wu and Shu Han allied to fight him. The site of the climactic battle in 208 between the two forces was at Red Cliff, on the Yangtze River in modern Puqi, Hubei Province. Confident of victory, Cao Cao had chained his troopships together, bow to stern, and sailed east downriver to meet his foes. Making use of a fortunate change in the direction of the wind, the general of the allied forces, Zhou Yu, dispatched a wave of fireships and succeeded in annihilating the enemy fleet. Thus the fate of the empire depended on a turn of the wind. Du Mu’s focus is, however, not the battle but the two daughters of the Han official Qiao Xuan, who were acknowledged as great beauties of the empire. The elder had been the wife of Sun Ce, Sun Quan’s deceased elder brother, and the younger was the wife of Zhou Yu. One of the goals of Cao Cao’s invasion was, reputedly, to claim the Qiao sisters for himself; he planned to remove them to Bronze Bird Tower, his pleasure palace at a site in modern Linzhang, Hebei Province. Cao Cao had also ordered that, after his death, all his palace ladies and dancing girls were to reside there and maintain sacrifices to his memory. What a pity, Du Mu suggests, if Cao Cao had succeeded and the Qiao girls had been taken from the world!

In “Dispelling Sorrow,” an older and wiser Du Mu looks back on his life of pleasure and does not like what he sees:

C10.16

Dispelling Sorrow

I sunk my soul in the river lands, wandered with wine,
Broke the hearts of Chu girls dancing lightly in my hands
Ten years on, I wake from a Yangzhou dream—
All I’ve won: a callous name in the green mansions

[QTS 16:524.5998; QSTRJJ, 684-685]

“Dancing lightly in my hands” (zhangzhong qing) is a glancing allusion to the great Han beauty Zhao Feiyan, who, it was said, was so light that she could dance on the emperor’s palm. “Green mansions” is a euphemism for the dwellings of the courtesans.

Li Shangyin (813-858) deserves his reputation as one of China’s most obscure poets; some critics have explained certain poems as autobiographical works about clandestine love affairs with palace ladies and Daoist priestesses, while others see the same poems as simple expressions of personal sadness, or even as satirical political allegories.

C10.17

Chang’e

Behind the mica screen, candles cast deep shadows
The Great River slowly sinks, and dawn stars are drowned
Chang-e must regret stealing the elixir—
Over blue sea, in dark sky, thinking night after night

[QTS 16:540.6197; QSTRJJ, 755-757]

Chang’e, the goddess of the moon, had been the wife of the legendary archer Yi. After he saved humankind by successfully shooting down nine of the ten suns that were burning up the earth, the Queen Mother of the West rewarded him with the elixir of immortality. Chang’e stole and consumed the elixir and became immortal. However, in doing so, she lost her corporeality and, to her surprise and horror, floated up to the moon, where she remains. Li Shangyin integrates the Chang’e legend into his own melancholy reflections. After sitting up through the night by candlelight, he watches the “Great River” (Milky Way) fade in the dawn light. His thoughts turn to Chang’e, up in the moon. Yet who or what is she to him? A former lover who is now unattainable? An unattainable ideal? Or does he see himself in Chang’e, a loner emotionally or spiritually cut off from others by circumstances? The first couplet may provide a hint: the candles reflected in the mica screen glitter like a thousand stars in his room, just as Chang’e is surrounded by stars in the sky.

PROSODY OF JUEJU

By now readers are familiar with the prosodic rules of regulated verse, so those of jueju should pose few difficulties. The prosody of jueju allows for some variation, but it is by and large standardized. Line length is fixed and regular, and, as in most other forms of shi poetry, lines are read with breaks or pauses in predictable places. As Zong-qi Cai writes in chapter 5, the pentasyllabic line is made up of a disyllable and a trisyllable separated by a caesura and presents semantic rhythm in either of two patterns: 2 + (1 + 2) or 2 + (2 + 1). The extra two characters in the heptasyllabic line are added to the beginning of the pentasyllabic structure, thus giving 4 + 3, or, more specifically, (2 + 2) + (1 + 2) or (2 + 2) + (2 + 1).

Every two lines are a couplet, which is not only a formal unit but also a semantic /thematic unit. A rhyming word always falls at the end of each couplet. The basic rhyming scheme of jueju is xAxA, which presents the first half as one discrete unit, followed by the second half comprising a unit of identical meter, with the resonating punctuation of the rhyme at the very end. This scheme is typical for wujue, although it is found occasionally in qijue as well. All but two—“Spring Lament” and “Quiet Night Thoughts”—of the pentasyllabic quatrains discussed earlier follow the pattern xAxA. The AAxA rhyming scheme is typical for qijue but rare for wujue. Every one of the qijue examples follows the pattern AAxA, although due to pronunciation change (especially the loss of entering tones), the rhymes are not always evident in modern Mandarin.

Tonal patterning provides a textured pattern of sound that both demarcates the individual couplets and unifies them in a balanced quatrain structure (chap. 8). In short, there are only four possible tonal patterns for regulated jueju: standard types I and II, and variant types Ia and IIa. As wujue seldom rhyme the first line, types I and II are dominant; since qijue usually rhyme the first line, types Ia and IIa are most common. Yet observance of tonal patterns is not quite as strict in jueju as in lüshi. “Violations” can be found in all positions (words) of a pentasyllabic or heptasyllabic line. Sometimes otherwise regulated poems break the nian rule, which ties couplets together. Tonal patterns of jueju examples that contain violations are marked in the preceding as “imperfect.” Presumably, prosody for jueju was more flexible due to the close connection that both wujue and qijue had with music.

Moreover, as mentioned, a subset of Tang jueju examples does not conform to normal tonal prosodic patterns and/or use oblique tone rhymes. Due no doubt to the influence of the Six Dynasties yuefu tradition, these gujue examples are overwhelmingly pentasyllabic. The qijue was primarily a Tang invention, so it follows that heptasyllabic gujue are rare. The earlier examples without an identification of a tonal pattern are gujue, composed during the Six Dynasties or the Tang. Notably, these gujue works still often contain an element of prosodic design, although it is idiosyncratic. Wang Wei’s “The Deer Fence,” for example, uses oblique tone rhymes and displays clear tonal alternation in each line—but not between lines in each couplet. Distinguishing between a regulated jueju with an imperfect tonal pattern and a gujue with level-tone rhyme that displays some tonal design can at times be a matter of opinion (see, for example, Li Bai’s “Amusing Myself”).

CLOSURE

Closure is considered by many what jueju do best. Various epithets used to describe jueju—“one note, three echoes” (yichang santan), “meaning beyond the words” (yanwai zhi yi), “flavor beyond flavor” (weiwai zhi wei), and “lines that end but meaning that does not end” (ju jue yi bujue)—all clearly refer to strong closure.

The closure functions akin to the way musical phrasing can create an emotional response. Let us first consider how semantic rhythm contributes to closure. While there are no strict rules for this aspect, frequently jueju poets present patterns of the final trisyllables in the four lines, which aid closure. For example, in “Quiet Night Thoughts,” both lines in the first couplet end (2 + 1), while both lines in the second couplet end (1 + 2). Closure is particularly evident in “Lament of the Jade Stairs” and “Red Cliff.” In both poems, the lines in the first couplet end (1 + 2). Line 3 changes to (2 + 1), while line 4 returns to (1 + 2) and the familiar pattern.

Jueju rhyming schemes, whether xAxA or AAxA, also help to create closure. In the former, rhyming characters are present at the end of each couplet, but the reader or listener experiences the rhyme only once—at the very end. The repetition of couplet structure and the rhyme integrate the two halves and complete a stable pattern, engendering a gratifying sense of closure. AAxA also leads to closure, but in a different way. The ringing of the rhyme in line 2 marks the first couplet as a seemingly finished unit. The poem in a sense starts again in line 3, and the reader or listener has a certain expectation that the second half will follow the pattern of the first. The omission of the rhyme in line 3 then presents a disquieting break in the sequence. However, the return to the familiar rhyme in line 4 confirms the original pattern and unites the two couplets.

It is also revealing to consider the tonal patterns in terms of closure of both couplets and entire quatrains. Since the patterning is determined by the opposition of tones two syllables at a time, and because the lines have an odd number of characters, maximum contrast within the single line will always be imperfect. Only when two lines with exactly opposite tonal patterns are combined does the prosody balance perfectly. The reader or listener perceives the completion of the couplet structure, confirming expectations created by the ongoing sequence.

The tonal alternation of two couplets again emphasizes closure. Remember that the various line combinations result in only two standard couplets. In xAxA rhymed quatrains, one of each is required, yielding either standard type I or standard type II. Consider the resulting structures from the perspective of the reader or listener. The first couplet presents a unified and complete prosodic structure of maximum tonal contrast. Yet, rather than repeating the pattern, line 3 begins a different pattern; only when line 4 is finished does it become apparent that the second couplet also presents a structure of maximum tonal contrast. The two couplets affirm an identical structural principle but do so in different ways. The revelation of this dual quality of sameness within difference and difference within sameness creates closure. Put another way, it is because the pattern of the second couplet differs and yet follows the same principle that closure is ensured: if both couplets used the same pattern, the prosody would be merely repetitive, and no ending point would be implied.

When the rhyming scheme is AAxA, the prosody indicates closure in a somewhat different way. In the variant patterns types Ia and IIa, the first couplet does not present perfect maximum contrast but only generally does so. The only perfectly balanced unit is the second couplet, so it dominates, prosodically speaking. Yet it does not provide closure all on its own but also reintegrates the first couplet: notice that the pattern of line 4 is identical with that of line 1—the poem has returned to its starting point.

Apart from prosody, the organization of contents is invariably designed to lead to a sense of closure as well. The first couplet tends to be a setup for conclusion in the second couplet, and it is at first glance not necessarily memorable. Unlike in lüshi, in jueju parallelism is not required, although it is an option. When found, it is more frequent in first couplets, where it efficiently presents multiple scene-setting images in a few words. However, parallelism is generally avoided in second couplets, because its static quality makes conclusions difficult. The second couplet is the focus of the poem: it is successful when it completely integrates all four lines. Closure of a theme in jueju does not imply predictability. The first couplet sets up a theme or topic, perhaps by suggesting a question, a dramatic situation, or an archetypal character. The reader has an expectation of where the poem is going, but the successful jueju will “turn” (zhuan) the pattern in the second couplet and bring about a gratifying closure in a way that is surprising, transformative, yet still a natural outgrowth of what has been said before.²⁴

The subtle design of Li Bai’s “Quiet Night Thoughts” has already been mentioned. Another illustrative example is Jin Changxu’s “Spring Lament.” The first couplet sets a conundrum: Why does the speaker so desperately want to stop the singing of the birds? The second couplet sends us in an unexpected direction but, at the same time, explains the mystery. The power of genre also helps to create thematic closure. As jueju became established, knowledgeable readers became accustomed to looking for closure in the second couplet, even when doing so was difficult. The “green moss” in Wang Wei’s “The Deer Fence” is an “image in suspension” that is at first glance enigmatic, but, because of its position in the poem, the reader knows it must be important and so actively tries to unify it with the rest of the poem.

Finally, a word about the differences between the two forms. Frequently, critics have assumed that the qijue is merely a longer version of the wujue. However, there are significant structural differences between the two that led to clear divergences in their aesthetic potentials and the styles that poets developed.

The pentasyllabic line invariably follows a 2 + 3 meter, which is most often used to present a single subject + predicate or topic + comment structure (thematic table of contents 5.2 and 5.3). The two parts of the line are read together as related units. Alternatively, both lines in a couplet may constitute one continuous proposition. It is possible, but very uncommon, for one pentasyllabic line to present two separate topic + comment structures. This is because the two-character part of the line is too short to say very much. The three-character part, however, shows considerably more potential to complete a topic + comment, with its 1 + 2 or 2 + 1 pattern variability. Thus when we consider the pentasyllabic quatrain, generally we see a maximum of four topic + comment structures, but more usually three (as second couplets tend to be continuous propositions to create closure) or even two.

The heptasyllabic line, with its 4 + 3 meter, can and frequently does present two distinct topic + comment structures. (In fact, this is its birthright: the heptasyllabic line developed gradually out of the tetrasyllabic couplet during the Han and Six Dynasties periods.)²⁵ A heptasyllabic quatrain could thus theoretically comprise as many as eight topic + comment structures, although a number between four and six is the norm, as poets tended to employ a balance of imagistic language (that is, undergrammaticalized content words) and continuous propositions. Although the qijue form is only eight characters longer than the wujue, it contains far more space for development; moreover, since the overtones in a poem are often suggested through implicit comparisons between the parts, the more parts there are, the more potential there is for complexity.

The rhythm of the heptasyllabic line also differs from that of the pentasyllabic line, which has implications for how poets approached it. When pentasyllabic poetry is chanted, it rather naturally falls into eight beats per line: tum tum, tum tum tum (rest, rest, rest) / tum tum, tum tum tum (rest, rest, rest). The length of the silent rests gives the overall rhythm a slow and stately quality, which implicitly suggests that the content is weighty and important. When heptasyllabic poetry is chanted, it also naturally falls into eight beats per line: tum tum tum tum, tum tum tum (rest) / tum tum tum tum, tum tum tum (rest). The four-beat unit at the beginning of the line creates more momentum than does the two-beat unit at the beginning of the pentasyllabic line; moreover, the single beat of rest at the end of the heptasyllable gives the impression that each line rushes into the next. Thus heptasyllabic poetry has a distinctive flow, continuity, and lightness. The best poets of qijue carefully crafted the sound quality of the syllable combinations, employing alliterations, internal rhymes, and reduplication more frequently than in the pentasyllabic line. Hu Yinglin observed: “Pentasyllabic jueju emphasize the real and tangible; usually the substance exceeds literariness. Heptasyllabic jueju emphasize the lofty and beautiful; usually literariness exceeds substance.”²⁶

The differences between wujue and qijue had a clear impact on poetic practice. After the Tang, wujue became increasingly rare; we can conclude that poets no longer saw creative potential in the form—the great Tang writers had exhausted it. Qijue, on the contrary, remained one of the most popular and expressive poetic forms throughout the classical period.

Charles Egan

NOTES

1 Wang Kaisu (Qing dynasty), Saotan balüe (Eight Sketches of the Literary World), quoted in Qianshou Tangren jueju (One Thousand Jueju Poems by Tang Writers), ed. Fu Shousun and Liu Baishan (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985), 1020.

2 Gao Buying, ed., Tang Song shi juyao (The Essential Shi Poems of the Tang and Song) (Hong Kong: Zhonghua, 1985), 750.

3 Charles Egan, “A Critical Study of the Origins of Chüeh-chü Poetry,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 6, pt. 1 (1993): 83-125.

4 Stephen C. Levinson, Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

5 F. R. Palmer, Mood and Modality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

6 Shuen-fu Lin, “The Nature of the Quatrain from the Late Han to the High T’ang,” in The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late Han to the T’ang, ed. Shuen-fu Lin and Stephen Owen (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 306-308. Lin proposes three major jueju characteristics derived from Six Dynasties songs: simple diction, dynamic syntactic continuity, and sententiousness (296-331).

7 The term is from Zhong Rong, Shi pin (An Evaluation of Poetry). See Kang-i Sun Chang, “Description of Landscape in Early Six Dynasties Poetry,” in Lin and Owen, Vitality of the Lyric Voice, 105-129.

8 Daniel Hsieh, The Evolution of Jueju Verse (New York: Lang, 1996), 206-216.

9 Wang Li, Hanyu shilü xue (Studies in Chinese Verse Regulation) (Shanghai: Jiaoyu, 1963), especially 33-41.

10 Shen Deqian, Tangshi biecaiji (A New Selection of Tang Poetry), quoted in Fu and Liu, Qianshou Tangren jueju, 220.

11 The second couplet is technically parallel as well, but the conditional proposition gives it continuous syntax; this type of parallelism is called liushui dui (running-water parallelism).

12 Peter N. Gregory, “Sudden Enlightenment Followed by Gradual Cultivation: Tsung-mi’s Analysis of Mind,” in Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought, ed. Peter N. Gregory (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1987), 279-320, especially 281-284.

13 J. D. Frodsham, The Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yün(385-433), Duke of K’ang-Lo (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967), 1:90. For the development of landscape verse, see 86-105.

14 Eliot Weinberger, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei: How a Chinese Poem Is Translated (Mount Kisco, N.Y.: Moyer Bell, 1987).

15 Edward Conze, Buddhist Thought in India: Three Phases of Buddhist Philosophy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962), 60-61.

16 Paul Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (London: Routledge, 1989), 2.

17 The second character here is read ying, not jing (scene).

18 Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism, 96-115.

19 Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism, 112.

20 Conze, Buddhist Thought in India, 229.

21 Quoted in Neal Donner, “Sudden and Gradual Intimately Conjoined: Chih-I’s T’ien-t’ai View,” in Gregory, Sudden and Gradual, 201-226, especially 212-213.

22 Lu Qinli, comp., Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbei chao shi (Poetry of the Qin, Han, Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 1:116-117. A rhyme-prose (fu) composition in the Han shu (History of the Han Dynasty) is also attributed to Ban Jieyu.

23 Gao, Tang Song shi juyao, 750.

24 In chapter 8, Zong-qi Cai describes the functional hierarchy of the four couplets using the traditional critical terms qi (introduction), cheng (elaboration), zhuan (transition), and he (conclusion). Traditional critics also frequently applied this quadripartite pattern to jueju, with the difference that each part was assigned to an individual line. However, difficulties arise when attempting to interpret jueju in this way, as it requires that the two lines in a couplet fulfill different functions, which is counter to usual poetic practice. If we instead employ a simpler bipartite pattern, then the terms remain useful. Thus the first couplet of a jueju is for introduction/elaboration, and the second is for transition/conclusion.

25 Luo Genze, “Qiyanshi zhi qiyuan ji qi chengshu” (The Origin and Maturation of Heptasyllabic Poetry), in Luo Genze gudian wenxue lunwen ji (Collection of Discourses on Classical Literature by Luo Genze) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1985), 167-209.

26 Hu Yinglin, Shi sou, quoted in Fu and Liu, Qianshou Tangren jueju, 1020.

NOTES

1 For further reading on Chen Zi’ang’s life and his contributions to the development of Tang poetry, see Stephen Owen, Poetry of the Early T’ang (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977), 151-223.

2 For a history of interpretations of the title and the overall significance of these poems, see Tim W. Chan, “The ‘Ganyu’ of Chen Zi’ang: Questions on the Formation of a Poetic Genre,” T’oung Pao 87, nos. 1-3 (2001): 14-42.

3 An alternative version of this line substitutes meng (muddled) in line 7 with xiang (images), changing the verse to “The sense of the Obscure is not apprehended in images.”

4 For a translation of this section of the Book of Changes, where the dragon figures prominently, see Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes, trans., The I Ching, or Book of Changes, Bollingen Series 19 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950), 3-10, 369-384.

5 In my translation, I have, in order to avoid redundancy, not rendered the word xing, leaving it implicit in the word “hinder.”

6 The reduplicative binome youyou has been associated with at least two distinct meanings since as early as the Shijing: the feeling of mournfulness, and the spatial property of great breadth or distance. By the time of the High Tang, as we see here, the two meanings were frequently combined.

7 Typically in this category, known as “climbing high” (deng gao), the poet ascends to a high place, atop either a mountain or a tower, looks out on the landscape, and, stimulated by the sight of an onward-flowing river, contemplates the passage of time and his own ephemerality.

8 In this couplet, where the mythical and terrestrial realms continue to merge, the term “Five Mountains” seems to refer to both the Five Sacred Mountains of China and the five mythical Daoist mountains of the immortals.

9 Silver River is the Chinese name for the Milky Way.

10 Incense Burner Waterfall is so named because of the cloudlike mist that rises above it.

11 “Master Xie” refers to the poet Xie Lingyun, who mentions the Stone Mirror—a round stone on the side of one of the mountains that is so smooth it reflects the light—in his poem “Entering Pengli Lake.”

12 The term “reverted cinnabar” refers to the ultimate product of the completed cycle of the Daoist alchemical transformation of cinnabar into an elixir of immortality.

13 The fixed expression “lute-heart plays all three chords,” like “reverted cinnabar,” derives from the vocabulary of Daoist alchemical practices. In this context, a “lute-heart” is one that has attained harmony, and the “three chords” refer to the central, controlling regions (known as “cinnabar fields”) of each of the three divisions of the body: upper, middle, and lower. These divisions correspond to the vertical axis of the world and, within the body, are the respective lodging points of “essence” (jing), “breath” (qi), and “spirit” (shen). The point of this line, then, is that the poet has achieved a perfectly harmonious state both within himself and in relation to the Dao.

14 Lu Ao is a legendary figure who was sent by the First Emperor to seek immortals, never to return. This line alludes to a story about him in the Huainanzi, where, after having wandered beyond this world to almost every corner of the universe—and being convinced that he was alone in having done so—he meets someone who has voyaged even more extensively than he has. As if to prove the point, the stranger declines to tarry any longer, claiming a previous engagement with (we assume) an otherwise unidentified wandering immortal named Han Man, somewhere beyond the Nine Regions (which themselves are located beyond the Nine Heavens!). By the Middle Tang, “Han Man journey” came to mean a journey to far-away places.

15 Lu Mountain, which roughly translates as “Hut Mountain,” is known for its nine folds (with nine being an auspicious number) and supposedly derives its name from the presence, during the Zhou dynasty, of seven brothers who built a hut there and practiced the Daoist arts, eventually becoming transcendents. The mountain was also the site, during the Eastern Jin dynasty, of the monastery founded by the famous Buddhist monk Huiyuan (334-416).

16 The two versions are somewhat different, with the Zhuangzi account offering more detail. This translation is from Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 63. For the Analects version, see Confucius: The Analects, trans. D. C. Lau (New York: Penguin Books, 1979), 149-150.

17 Looking back at this scene, which is the object of Li Bai’s act of guan (beholding), it is interesting to recall Chen Zi’ang’s use of the same verb. For Chen Zi’ang, this type of viewing takes him past the surface appearance of the natural world before him to reveal the invisible, ineffable workings of the Dao. When Li Bai executes the same gesture, at least in this case, his gaze rests on the surface of things; it is there, in the impenetrability and ambiguity of surface perception, that the very same workings of the Dao are to be beheld.

18 Stephen Owen, The End of the Chinese “Middle Ages”: Essays in Mid-Tang Literary Culture (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), 10.

19 Bai Juyi was foremost among those who took up the declining balladic tradition of yuefu, reviving it as a medium of social and political critique. One interesting point of comparison between Li Bai and Bai Juyi lies in their common use of the yuefu genre to radically different effects and ends.

20 The Chinese chi is approximately the equivalent of one foot, and there are ten chi in one zhang.

NOTES

1 My approach in this chapter is certainly informed by these perspectives, although it is by no means strictly feminist.

2 Shuen-fu Lin, “The Formation of a Distinct Generic Identity for Tz’u,” in Voices of the Song Lyric in China, ed. Pauline Yu (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 21.

3 The wutong is the Chinese parasol tree (Firmiana simplex).

4 Shuen-fu Lin, The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K’uei and Southern Sung Tz’u Poetry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), 106-107.

5 Other manuscripts have a closely related character meaning “monkey” in place of “child.”

6 The character sì is read here with the fourth tone because the pattern for this tune title requires an oblique tone rhyme in this position.

7 Zhangtai was a street in Han dynasty Chang’an that became a euphemism for the brothel district.

NOTES

1 For a detailed discussion of Liu Yong’s use of lingzi, see Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry: From Late T’ang to Northern Sung (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 123-133. See also Shuen-fu Lin, “The Formation of a Distinct Generic Identity for Tz’u,” in Voices of the Song Lyric in China, ed. Pauline Yu (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 20-21, and Stuart Sargent, “Tz’u,” in The Columbia History of Chinese Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 319.

2 Kao Yu-kung, “Xiaoling zai shi chuantong zhong de diwei” (The Place of Xiaoling Lyrics in the Poetic Tradition), Cixue 9 (1992): 17.

3 Shuen-fu Lin was the first to employ this Greek prosodic term, which literally means “act of turning” and hence a division of a poem, to refer to a structural unit in a song lyric (The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K’uei and Southern Sung Tz’u Poetry [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978], 106-107).

4 Kao, “Xiaoling,” 17.

5 Kao, “Xiaoling,” 17.

6 Kao, “Xiaoling,” 18-19.

7 Lin, “Formation of a Distinct Generic Identity for Tz’u,” 22-24.

8 Ronald C. Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi, Harvard-Yenching Studies, vol. 39 (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, and Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1994), 326-327.

9 A detailed discussion of this issue can be found in Egan, Word, Image, and Deed, 315-317, 322-330.

10 The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 302.

11 Although the last character of line 14, fu, fits into the rhyme, it is not marked as a rhyming character because its position is designated as ju (unrhymed) in standard rhyme books.

NOTES

1 Zhu Yizun, “Introduction,” in Ci zong (Selected Song Lyrics [from the Tang Through the Yuan Dynasties]) (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1978), 11.

2 Kao Yu-kung, “Xiaoling zai shi chuantong zhong de diwei” (The Place of Xiaoling Lyrics in the Poetic Tradition), Cixue 9 (1992): 20. I have discussed Kao’s idea of spatial design and Joseph Frank’s idea of spatial form relevant to the works of such twentieth-century writers in the West as Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot in “Space-Logic in the Longer Song Lyrics of the Southern Sung: Reading Wu Wen-ying’s Ying-t’i-hsü,” Journal of Sung-Yuan Studies 25 (1995): 169-191. Joseph Frank’s ideas can be found in The Idea of Spatial Form (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991).

3 Kao, “Xiaoling,” 8, 20.

4 Huang Zhaohan has created a rather comprehensive collection of available explanatory notes and interpretations on all of Jiang Kui’s song lyrics in his book Jiang Baishi ci xiangzhu (The Ci Poetry of Jiang Baishi, with Detailed Annotations) (Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 1998). I use this text as the main source of the texts of Jiang Kui’s two song lyrics and of the information and ideas of previous scholars on them.

5 Some of my discussion on Jiang Kui has been extracted from Shuen-fu Lin, The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K’uei and Southern Sung Tz’u Poetry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978). My views on Jiang Kui’s poetry have changed somewhat in the interim; these changes are reflected or accounted for in the discussion in this chapter.

6 Huang, Jiang Baishi ci xiangzhu, 281.

7 Huang, Jiang Baishi ci xiangzhu, 280-352.

8 Huang, Jiang Baishi ci xiangzhu, 282.

9 Huang, Jiang Baishi ci xiangzhu, 316.

10 Huang, Jiang Baishi ci xiangzhu, 316-317.

11 Huang, Jiang Baishi ci xiangzhu, 317.

12 Wuchao xiaoshuo (Fictions from Five Dynasties), juan 3, Xijing zaji (Miscellaneous Notes of the Western Capital), ab.

13 Huang, Jiang Baishi ci xiangzhu, 317.

14 Liu Wan has discussed this and other issues in her brilliant article on “Dappled Shadows”: “Jiang kui shuying ci de yuyan neibu guanxi ji shidian yiyi” (Jiang Kui’s “Shuying”: The Internal Patterns of Its Language and the Meanings of the Allusions Used Therein), Cixue 9 (1992): 22-30.

15 Huang, Jiang Baishi ci xiangzhu, 317.

16 Huang, Jiang Baishi ci xiangzhu, 317.

17 Huang, Jiang Baishi ci xiangzhu, 318.

18 Huantuo, rendered “playful spit” here, seems to allude to the following lines in the song lyric “Yihu zhu” (A Bushel of Pearls), by Li Yu (937-978):

Charmingly she leans across the embroidered bed,
Chews thoroughly at scraps of red wool,
Laughs, and then spits at her lover.

It seems clear that Wu Wenying uses this allusion to Li Yu’s woman’s dalliance as a symbol of his happy union with his own beloved.

19 This translation is an adaptation of the magnificent translations in Grace S. Fong’s study of the thirteenth-century ci writer, Wu Wenying and the Art of Southern Song Ci Poetry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), 110-112, and in Stephen Owen, “A Door Finely Wrought: Memory and Art,” in Remembrances: The Experience of the Past in Classical Chinese Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 114-130. In the translation, I have supplied the pronoun “I” throughout, which is absent in the original Chinese text. I hope that the addition of “I” has not spoiled the quality of spatiality in the song lyric.

20 Yang Tiefu, Wu Mengchuang ci jianshi (The Ci Poetry of Wu Wenying, with Notes and Explanations ), ed. Chen Bangyan and Zhang Qihui (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1992), 1.

21 Much of my interpretation of Wu Wenying’s “Prelude to the Oriole’s Song” and of other materials related to this great song lyric is drawn from Lin, “Space-Logic in the Longer Song Lyrics of the Southern Sung.”

22 Liu Yongji, Weidishi shuo ci (Discourses on the Song Lyric from the Weidi Studio) (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1987), 58.

23 The first three themes were noted by the late Qing and early Republican scholar Chen Xun in his book Haixiao shuoci (Haixiao’s Discourses on Ci Poetry), in Mengchuang ciji (The Collected Ci Poetry of Mengchuang) (Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1967). Curiously, he did not give a theme to the last section of the song lyric (8b-9a). The modern scholar Wan Yunjun has added pingdiao (mourning for the dead) as the theme of the fourth section, but he has changed the theme for the first section to duyou (journey alone) (“Lun jinren guanyu songci yanjiu yixie pianxiang” [On Some Orientations in the Recent Studies on the Ci Poetry of the Song Dynasty], in Jinian Gu Jiegang xueshu lunwen ji [Collected Essays in Commemoration of Gu Jiegang’s Scholarship] [Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1990], 802). I think that Chen Xun’s shangchun (lament for spring) is more precise.

24 Yang, Wu Mengchuang ci jianshi, 185-186.

25 Yang, Wu Mengchuang ci jianshi, 213-214,

26 Yang, Wu Mengchuang ci jianshi, 193-195.

27 Yang, Wu Mengchuang ci jianshi, 210-211.

28 Yang, Wu Mengchuang ci jianshi, 191.

29 Yang, Wu Mengchuang ci jianshi, 1-2.

30 Yang, Wu Mengchuang ci jianshi, 266-267.

31 Liu, Weidishi shuo ci, 60.

32 Yang, Wu Mengchuang ci jianshi, 192.

33 Chen, Haixiao shuoci, 9a.

NOTES

1 Quan Song shi (Complete Shi Poetry of the Song), 72 vols. (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1991-1998). The compilation runs to 45,698 pages, with, on average, four poems per page.

2 Quan Tang shi (Complete Shi Poetry of the Tang), 25 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960).

3 The subject has been exhaustively and masterfully written about by Maggie Bickford, Ink Plum: The Making of a Chinese Scholar-Painting Genre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

4 Wang Zhifang, Wang Zhifang shihua (Poetry Talks of Wang Zhifang), no. 28, in Song shihua quanbian (The Complete Collection of Poetry Talks of the Song Dynasty), ed. Wu Wenzhi (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1998), 2:1147.

5 Ban Gu, Han shu (History of the Han Dynasty) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 96A.3873.

6 Ban Gu, Han shu, 41.2072; Sima Qian, Shiji (Records of the Grand Scribe) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), 95.2659.

7 Most commentators assume that line 2 refers to Hua Mountain, rather than to any other of the sacred mountains or even, conceivably, all of them together, because of the frequent pairing of the Yellow River and Hua Mountain in Lu You’s poetry, and because the height Lu You gives for the mountain matches that given for Hua Mountain in early writings.

MUSIC AND PROSODY

The early song poems were really “song words” created to fit the music. As the tunes themselves got lost with the passage of time, only the word or verse formulas—the tune patterns, as they are called—remained, and the practice of sanqu writing became a matter of composing verses to fit the existing tune patterns. Each tune pattern belongs to a certain musical mode. The mode differs from the tune in that the latter can be defined as the metrical pattern informed with the melodic spirit of the music, whereas the former is the key or the tonality of the music, reflecting such values as the pitch and color of notes as well as their interval patterns, all of which were believed to have had a significant impact on the tone and mood of song poems in the early days of the genre, when they were meant to be sung. The extant corpus of the nondramatic song poems includes more than two hundred tune patterns but only nine musical modes in common use. A considerable number of the tune patterns used in the composition of song poems are also found in the arias in the Yuan variety plays.

There are two forms of sanqu: the single song poem (xiaoling) and the song suite (santao). The single song could be expanded by a reprise or combined with one or two other single songs of different tunes to form a bigger unit. It was also a common practice for songwriters to compose several single songs to the same tune but with different titles and put them together in a loosely connected sequence. A song suite consisted of the integration under one title of a group of single songs in the same mode and with the same rhyme. The number of songs included in a song suite could be as few as a couple or as many as two to three dozen. Each song suite is usually introduced by a “head” composed of one or two short stanzas and concludes with a coda.

To better understand sanqu prosody, let us look at two song poems and examine their metrical patterns and rhyme schemes. The first is “Fat Couple,” by Wang Heqing (fl. 1246):

C16.1

To the Tune “The Unbreakable String” [shuangdiao key]: Fat Couple

A rather obese Master Shuang
2 Bore off an overweight Miss Su-niang
(Each one of that pair
4 Was the size of a bear!)
On the wings of romance, off they sped,
6 But paused a while at Yü-chang to pant—
These lovebirds the size of an elephant—
8 And bang their bellyskins in bed!

[QYSQ 1:47]³

With its lines of irregular length, this song poem looks very much like a stanza taken from a ci. Indeed, it “sounds” like a ci, too. The novel rhythmic effect resulting from the alternation of the long and short lines we have seen in the ci can also be strongly felt in this sanqu. If we ignore the italicized syllables in the song, we can extract the skeleton of its tune pattern:⁴

The tonal patterns of the three-, four-, and seven-character lines are no different from those found in commonly used ci lines. Indeed, the types of seven-character lines in this poem are exactly the same as typical seven-character ci lines, which were actually “inherited” by the ci from the lüshi (regulated verse).⁵

This similarity, however, is not always the case. The second example, a poem by Ma Zhiyuan (1250?-1323?), clearly illustrates this:

C16.2

To the Tune “The Song of Shouyang” [shuangdiao key]

Things in my heart,
2 To him I did impart.
“It’s finished between us!” his reply came quick, as always.
4 How can such cruel words be “just a joke,” as you said.
Should I not be afraid?

[QYSQ 1:247]

Again, we can ignore the italicized syllables and extract the tune pattern of the song:

The tonal patterns of lines 3 and 5, 868

(

(fourth tone) ▲, and of line 4, ( 809

)

(

)

(third tone) ▲, are common in seven-syllable lines of the song poem, but are not found in those of the ci and the lüshi. One cannot but wonder if it was not the different characteristics of the musicality of the song poem that brought about these new types of seven-syllable lines, whose tonal patterns deviate so much from the norms of the ci and the lüshi.

The rhyme scheme of the song poem also claims our attention. As can be seen from the two preceding examples, only one rhyme is allowed in a song poem. Since the Yuan sanqu writers used the northern vernacular, they did not follow the archaic rhyme categories used in the lüshi and the ci but adopted a new system that reflected more accurately the realities (not the least of which was the disappearance of the entering tone) of the living language. Unlike in the lüshi and the ci, level tones and oblique tones can be rhymed in song poems. This did not mean, however, that a sanqu composer could disregard the difference between the level and the oblique tones. On the contrary, some tune patterns strictly stipulated that certain rhymed words could be in only certain tones. For instance, in “The Unbreakable String,” the rhymed word in the last line had to be in the fourth tone; in “The Song of Shouyang,” the rhymed words in lines 3 and 5 had to be in the fourth tone, and the rhymed word in line 4 could be in only the third tone. A possible reason for this is that rhymed words with carefully chosen tones better matched the music underlying the tune patterns.

The italicized syllables in the two preceding poems, which we ignored in order to see the basic tune patterns, should not be overlooked. They are the “padding words,” or extrametrical syllables (chenzi). It is in them that we see the most important difference between the meters of ci lines and sanqu lines. A sanqu composer could add to any verse line—almost at will, although not at the end of the line—extrametrical syllables and thus further vary the shape of the verse. There was no limit to the number of syllables that could be added. For example, there is the following line from “Not Giving In to Old Age” (Bufu lao), by Guan Hanqing (ca. 1220-ca. 1307):

I am a jingling tingling bronze bean that remains hard after being steamed, raw after being stewed, that bounces under a big hammer and will not pop when being baked.

wŏ shì gè zhēng bú làn zhŭ bù shóu chuí bù biăn chăo bú bào xiăng dāng dāng yí lì tóng wăn dòu

[QYSQ 1:173]

Only the first two and the last five syllables—“I am a bronze bean”—are required by the tune pattern; the other sixteen are all padding syllables! With the help of the extrametrical syllables, composers of song poems could alter the pace and rhythm of the verses in imitation of the natural flow of everyday speech. This may partly explain why, compared with ci verses, song poem verses are more complete in their syntactic structure and read more like sentences from spoken language. Where one finds poetic ellipsis in a shi or a ci poem, one often finds padding words in a song poem.

Besides the colloquial nature of the language of song poems, the musical origin of the genre can also shed some light on its abundant use of the extrametrical syllables. Inasmuch as the tune patterns are the vestiges of the original music, it is only natural that, even after the tunes themselves were lost, the intrinsic musical quality of the tune patterns would prompt the later song poem composers to fill in the gaps left by the silence of the lost melodies.

POEMS ON NATURAL SCENERY AND HUMAN SENTIMENT

A favorite theme of song poems is natural scenery and the poet’s reflection on it. The following example happens to be the single best-known sanqu work by arguably its best writer, Ma Zhiyuan. Ma Zhiyuan is one of the four great Yuan dramatists, but he is better known for his sanqu works. His mastery of the art is exemplified by “Autumn Thoughts,” in which a series of carefully chosen images establish the mood. His meditative song poems on the quiet life of seclusion reveal the influence of Daoism, and they are considered by many to be too pessimistic. His works in this genre generally are representative of the more refined literati style, and yet there is no lack of the freshness and verve seen in works of the popular style.

C16.3

To the Tune “Sky-Clear Sand” [yuediao key]: Autumn Thoughts

Withered vines, old trees, crows at dusk,
2 A small bridge, flowing water, people’s homes,
An ancient road, the west wind, a lean horse.
4 The evening sun goes down in the west.
One heartbroken man at the end of the earth.

[QYSQ 1:242]

The imagistic nature of this song is obvious. Except for the word xia (goes down) at the end of line 4 in the original, the whole song contains no active verb but only descriptive noun phrases. To compare it to a picture and say that “the poet unfolds a scene like a scroll of Chinese painting”⁶ might, however, oversimplify the poetic experience and miss the real spell of the piece. Indeed, the poet does not encourage readers to view as onlookers the picture of a traveler on an autumn evening; rather, he invites them to identify with the traveler. Thus by the end of the song, the traveler’s homesickness comes to readers not as a trite sentiment but as a personal experience with a heartrending freshness.

The identical verse structure of the first three lines often leads the unwatchful eye to read them together as a parallel triplet. A close examination of the values carried by the three clusters of images embedded in these lines, however, reveals that, as far as the poetic narrative is concerned, lines 1 and 2 form a thematic unit, while line 3 functions on a different level. The “withered vines, old trees,” and flocks of black crows present a wild and repellent—if not threatening—nature, whereas the “people’s homes” and “small bridge” (which, as a man-made object, evokes everyday human activity), with the gurgling water under it, create a congenial ambience. The implication of the contrast between these two sets of images, however, renders itself fully only when readers come to line 3.

Compared with the concrete images (although not without their symbolic connotations) in the two foregoing lines, the images in line 3 are less specific and appear more like symbols. The ancientness of the road, something not actually discernible, leads readers beyond the scope of the scene at hand and lets them see in their mind’s eye the endless road extending into other spaces and other times. The “west wind” not only indicates the time of year but also implies the sadness felt during the season of decay—that is, all the burden carried by the image of autumn in the Chinese literary tradition. Most significantly, the synecdochical use of the “lean horse,” in turn, puts readers in the place of a weary traveler in order to feel the hardship he endures. Line 3 thus allows readers—from a traveler’s point of view—to interpret and comment on the situation presented in the couplet preceding it:⁷ the homey scene in line 2 appears so inviting simply because it is a familiar scene that the weary traveler sees, however, in an unfamiliar and forbidding setting (represented by the images in line 1) in his journey. It touches off his memory of home; yet, paradoxically, it also reminds him that his own home and its comforts are in another place far beyond reach.

The sight of the crows at dusk at the end of line 1 makes clear the time of day. As if this were not enough, however, the time is pronounced again in line 4: “The evening sun goes down in the west.” This line is the shortest in the song, and it contains the only action verb, whose function is to convey with a sense of urgency and inevitability the message: the day is running out, just as the year is approaching its end. It is at such times that the traveler most keenly feels he should be home. But, alas, everything he sees tells him that home is at the other “end of the earth.”

The following song poem is by Zhang Yanghao (1269-1329), whose reputation as an upright high-ranking official perhaps threatens to eclipse his literary achievements. His rich personal experience, on the one hand, empowers his sanqu works with an insight into history and human suffering and, on the other, makes his song poems on withdrawal and retirement seem more genuine and sincere.

C16.4

To the Tune “Sheep on Mountain Slope” [zhonglü key]: Meditation on the Past at Tong Pass

Peaks and ridges press together,
2 Waves and torrents rage,
Zigzagging between the mountains and the river runs the road through Tong
Pass.
4 I look to the Western Capital,
My thoughts linger.
6 It breaks my heart to come to the old place of the Qin and the Han.
Now palaces and terraces have all turned to dust.
8 Dynasties rise,
The common folk suffer;
10 Dynasties fall,
The common folk suffer.

[QYSQ 1:437]

The poet begins the song by directing the reader’s eye to the road that runs through Tong Pass, which guards the passage to the ancient Western Capital and has witnessed numerous bloody battles. Two verbs—“press” and “rage”—are used in lines 1 and 2 to personify the ruggedness of the geography. The static mountains are thus set in motion, and the irresistible force of the running river is vividly brought forth, suggesting the fierceness of the military conflicts staged in this locale in ancient times. The personification also lends feelings to the mountain ridges and the river waves, so much so that it seems as though they are responding to the poet’s thoughtful gaze. The phrase “between the mountains and the river” in line 3 is a quote from the classic Zuo zhuan (Zuo Commentary on the “Spring and Autumn Annals”), in which a military strategist uses the phrase to illustrate the impregnability of his country’s natural defense. The allusion gives the images the weight of its 2,000-year-old history. It is they, “the mountains and the river,” that bear witness to the rise and fall of dynasties.

Meditation on the past (huaigu) is an old poetic tradition. Numerous poems on the subject were written before—and after—Zhang Yanghao, yet this modest piece stands out as one of the most frequently anthologized huaigu poems. A possible explanation can be found in the poet’s skill in turning the formal restrictions of the poetic form of the song poem to advantage. The eight short lines—two of them have only one syllable each—are combined with the three long lines to form a rhythmic and easy-to-memorize sound flow. The most forceful and unforgettable are the four concluding lines. Each of the two monosyllabic lines—“[Dynasties] rise” and “[Dynasties] fall”—is followed by the same refrain: “The common folk suffer.” The idea that, whatever the case, the people suffer could never have been expressed with such clarity and emphasis had the poet not had this terse contrastive formal structure at his disposal.

The fact that the thematic content of “Meditation on the Past at Tong Pass” is necessarily sustained by its formal properties can be seen even more clearly if we examine the eight other songs by Zhang Yanghao written to the same tune on the same subject. Each of the eight songs uses a historical site as the vantage point from which the poet contemplates the past, and each exploits the tight antithetic structure at the end required by the metrical pattern to drive home its message. The following examples show how some of these huaigu songs end the same way as “Meditation on the Past.” The tone of sententious certainty, tinged with resignation, is hard to miss:

[Kingdoms] win, / They turn to dust; / [Kingdoms] lose, / They turn to dust.

yíng / dōu biàn zuò liăo tŭ / shū / dōu biàn zuò liăo tŭ

[QYSQ 1:436]

[Dynasties fall] sooner, / Heaven makes it so; / [Dynasties fall] later, / Heaven makes it so.

jí / yĕ shì tiān qì chāi / chí / yĕ shì tiān qì chāi

[QYSQ 1:438]

The King? / Sacrificed in vain; / The subjects? / Sacrificed in vain.

jūn / gān sòng liăo / mín / gān sòng liăo

[QYSQ 1:436]

Glory, / It does not last; / Fame, / It does not last.

gōng / yĕ shì bù cháng jiŭ / míng / yĕ shì bù cháng jiŭ

[QYSQ 1:437]

Zhang Yanghao’s creative use of the tune pattern of “Sheep on Mountain Slope” is but one example of how a song poem master can turn the restrictive formal requirements of a sanqu matrix into powerful devices for thematic expression. I return to this issue later in the chapter.

POEMS ON THE LIFE OF A RECLUSE

Let us look at two song poems by Qiao Ji (1280-1345), a master songwriter who was very conscious of the technique of sanqu composition. Qiao Ji’s best song poems are fresh, with sharp images and novel expressions, and the aesthetic finish of his works is not achieved at the expense of natural simplicity and ease.

C16.5

To the Tune “Drunk in a Peaceful Time” [zhenggong key]: Idle Chats of the Woodcutter and the Fisherman

The fish, skewered on a willow twig, is cooked without delay.
2 The wine was newly obtained by bartering the firewood away.
Now the old woodcutter and the old fisherman have the leisure to watch
fighting bulls,
4 And exchange gossip and idle hearsay.
The hardship of going through rain and snow troubles their heads,
6 Yet they make the best of their meager living by chanting of the moon and
discussing the wind on a straw mat,
And with blurry eyes, they talk about heaven and earth over a wine gourd.
8 What a painting of mountains and rivers!

[QYSQ 1:574]

The two images at the beginning of the song, the fisherman’s fresh catch from the river and the wine that the woodcutter purchased with the worth of a day’s labor, conjure up a bright picture of the callings of the two men. Their lives are spontaneous, free, and self-sufficient. However, had the poet not skillfully suggested the pleasant freshness of the fish and the “newness” of the wine, which appeal to both the reader’s palate and mind, the images could well have projected a very different view: of two poor fellows barely able to eke out their existence by living from hand to mouth. Throughout the song, in fact, it is the poet’s selective candidness and light tone that make readers see the ease and satisfaction in an otherwise hard and scanty life. So even when the hardship that the two men have to endure is presented (line 5) side by side with the leisure they enjoy (lines 6-7), readers nonetheless feel that the physical hardship is more than compensated for by the richness of their spiritual enjoyment.

As mentioned, Qiao Ji was a conscious stylist who concerned himself with the art of writing. He is said to have set certain rules for the composition of song poems. A good song, according to him, should have “the head of a phoenix, the belly of a pig, and the tail of a leopard”⁸—that is, a beautiful beginning, a substantive middle section, and a powerful ending. Judging from what we have seen so far, “Idle Chats of the Woodcutter and the Fisherman” seems to have an eye-catching beginning and a healthy body. How about its ending?

The poet brings his description to a sudden stop with the authorial comment that the idyllic life he has presented would fit perfectly in a landscape painting. The scene he has depicted instantly becomes an object within a frame to be admired. This unexpected move concluding the song is, indeed, as powerful as a leopard. It forces readers—now the viewers of a painting—to step back and look at the woodcutter and the fisherman in perspective and to realize that they are no ordinary woodcutter and fisherman, but symbols of certain values that deserve to be treasured dearly.

The woodcutter and the fisherman had long been used as stock images of the recluse and were a favorite topic of Yuan sanqu writers.⁹ It is interesting to note that actual woodcutters and fishermen could not read and write and did not know the beauty of being in a “painting of mountains and rivers.” It was the educated elite who narcissistically saw themselves in the idealized recluse images they created.

Hu Zhiyu (1227-1293) must have had this in mind when he wrote two songs on the subject. The first is about an educated fisherman; the second, a pair of illiterate woodcutter-fishermen recluses.¹⁰ Hu Zhiyu took pains to show the differences between the two types of recluse. The first piece uses elegant language and is replete with allusions to literary and classical texts, giving a learned appearance; the second is colloquial in tone and, in syntactic structure, imitates the easy flow of everyday speech through its lavish use of extrametrical syllables. But language aside, there is no other clue to any major differences between the literate recluse and his illiterate counterparts in these two songs. For instance, what the literate fisherman does all day in the first song is exactly the same as what the unlettered woodcutter and fisherman do in the second, which is to engage in high-minded talk about the vicissitudes of life. The poet creates two kinds of recluse in the two songs in an attempt to give some legitimacy to the scholar-official recluse under the guise of the woodcutter-fisherman. But one can see that, educated or not, the personae in the two songs are not those who really cut wood and catch fish; rather, they are transfigured images of what the poet imagines he himself could be.¹¹

In another song eulogizing the life of a recluse, Qiao Ji speaks in the voice of an “I”:

C16.6

To the Tune “Lüyaobian” [zhenggong key]: Of Myself

I was not chosen to head the dragon list,
2 Nor was my name entered into the biography of worthies
From time to time I’m a sage of wine,
4 Finding everywhere the Zen of poetry—
Highest graduate of the college of clouds and mists,
6 Drunken angel of rivers and lakes,
My talks and jokes are fit for the Imperial Academy of Compilation.
8 Loitering,
I’ve been writing commentaries on the wind and the moon for forty years.

[QYSQ1:574-575]¹²

With its ostentatious celebration of the freedom from the burdens of officialdom, this song also belongs to the tradition of recluse literature. Seldom do we see in similar works written before it the carefree playfulness it demonstrates.¹³ The persona in this song does not disguise himself as a woodcutter or a fisherman. On the contrary, he makes no secret of his impressive educational background in this humorous poetic version of his curriculum vitae. Of most interest about this retired scholar is that, in order to articulate his rejection of the civil service examination system, he has to borrow a whole set of vocabulary from that system. For instance, to thumb his nose at the academic honor, he boasts of the honor of not being honored for academic success. He titles himself the “highest graduate of the college of clouds and mists,” only to show how little he cares about the same title in the mundane world. Even when he is drunk, he remains sober enough to claim himself the “sage of wine,” trusting that his readers will see the new meaning of “sage,” a loaded term in the Confucian tradition.

The poet’s tongue-in-cheek tactic is quite effective. By using the discourse of the established value system to attack the system itself, he makes his stance very clear that success in a public career means nothing to him and all he wants is the simple life of a recluse. It is hard to doubt his sincerity when he talks about the joy of “finding everywhere the Zen of poetry,” which could not be found in the busy world of officialdom. However, when he compares, in line 7, the talking and joking in his leisurely life with the official duties in the Imperial Academy of Compilation (a more literal translation of the line reads, “Talks and jokes are my Imperial Academy of Compilation”), a problem arises: the poet cannot simply relish the joy of his life without comparing his leisure with the burdens of official duties. The last line brings this out more sharply. Granted that the expression “writing commentaries on the wind and the moon” is a cliché connoting the literary elite’s elegant enjoyment of nature, the kinetic details suggested by the two verbs—pi (to correct with a writing brush) and mo (to write or to cross out), meaning “to comment”—are reactivated by their contextual association with the daily routine in the Imperial Academy (line 7). It is amazing that the poet, not a bureaucrat himself in real life, would know so well the thrill of wielding an editorial brush. The wit of the metaphor drives his point home, yet one cannot but wonder why, to illustrate the pleasure of a recluse, the natural beauty of the wind and the moon should be turned into lifeless papers and documents. Does the poet know of no other way to define his life besides keeping an anxious eye on what the social climbers—whom he despises so much—are doing and gloating over their misfortune? Shouldn’t a true recluse, who has nothing to do with the world of fame and gain, be more confident in the value of his quiet and plain life and leave alone the world he considers inferior and undesirable? The semantic field that Qiao Ji carefully builds in “Of Myself” betrays some inner conflict: his unconscious obsession with the value he consciously, and vigorously, rejects.

There is a reason for the perhaps overzealous scrutiny of the inner realities of a self-glorifying recluse. Although eremitism has a long tradition in Chinese literature, the disproportionately great number of songs in this category found in the bulk of sanqu works reflects the awkward situation in which Yuan intellectuals found themselves. Unlike other non-Han peoples before them, who embraced Chinese culture after taking over the control of the heartland of China, the Mongol rulers never really trusted the Han populace. It was very difficult for Confucian scholars to enter, as their Song predecessors had, the civil service, even after the examination system had been restored after a long hiatus.¹⁴ For many of the scholarly class, therefore, giving up their ambitions for a public career and settling down into a quiet private life was more a necessity than a choice. It should not be surprising, then, to see the lofty ideal of the recluse’s life complicated by the new social and political realities of the time.

LOVE SONGS

Love songs account for a great portion of the extant sanqu works. Except for their greater boldness in depicting the sensual pleasures of love, which has caused some critics to regard this group of songs as erotic, song poems do not tell us much more about love’s ennui and other boudoir sentiments than the song lyrics of the Huajian tradition. It is in their freshness of poetic expression, reminiscent of the voice of the folk songs of the period of the Great Division (420-581), that song poems stand alone. The following three love songs all show some influence of this folk tradition.

The author of the first song is Guan Hanqing, generally considered the best and certainly the most productive Yuan dramatist. His skill as a playwright can be seen in many of his sanqu works. His description of scenes of parting and longing, when at its best, is often combined with a subtle revelation of the inner lives of the lovers. Guan Hanqing’s keen sense of the living language of his day enabled him to employ different voices to suit different poetic situations.

C16.7

To the Tune “A Half ” [xianlü key]: On Love

All was quiet outside the green-gauze window curtain;
2 He knelt down in front of my bed and wanted to get intimate.
I just called him an ingrate and turned my back on him.
4 Though there was annoyance in what I said,
Half of it meant to reject; the other half, consent.

[QYSQ 1:156]

Using his skills as a playwright, the author is able to create a dramatic scene in this poem with economy. The persona does not explain why her lover deserves to be called an “ingrate.” It could be that she is just playing a game with him so as to heighten the pleasure of lovemaking. More probably, her lover has a fickle heart, and she decides that his frivolity should not pass unpunished. Still, she finds it hard to reject him.

The bittersweet experience of love is captured in the dialectic structure at the end. It should be noted that the metrical tune title of the song, “A Half,” requires that any piece written to the tune end with “half . . . ; half . . .” In fact, “On Love” is selected from a quadruple song sequence, each poem of which deals with one aspect of a complicated love affair. In the first song, the persona tells that her relationship with her “cute wretch sweetheart” (which is itself an excellent example of the “half . . . half” contradiction) has been “half pain and half fun.” In another, she complains that, because of her lover’s absence, her bed is “half-warm and half-cold,” just like their unstable relationship. In the last song of the sequence, she simply admits that there is no way to know his heart, for “half of it is true while the other half is false.”¹⁵

We thus have another example showing how the formal properties of the tune patterns became an integral part of the poetic expression of sanqu works. Statistics support this observation. Of the forty-three extant song poems written by eleven poets to the tune “A Half,” thirty-nine take love and boudoir sentiments as their subjects. Twenty-nine of these bear thematic titles, of which thirteen use the word “love,” seven use “spring” in the amorous sense of the word, and the rest are about the lovelorn sentiments of female personae touched off by fallen flowers or wine, and tears over tokens of love like a kerchief or a letter, and so on. All of them fully exploit the ambivalent “half . . . half” in the coda, which is stipulated, or, rather, guaranteed, by the tune pattern. Unique as it might be, the case of songs composed to the tune “A Half” provides a wonderful example of the interaction between the thematic content and the formal pattern in the creation of sanqu. On the one hand, the special features of a tune pattern (which originated in music) facilitated and encouraged the use of the pattern for certain topics; on the other, songwriters’ conscious experimentation with the pattern sharpened (or, paradoxically, in less successful cases, stylized or fossilized) the expressive power of such special formal features.

The second love song is by Guan Yunshi (1286-1324), also known by his Uighur name, Sewinch Qaya, the most outstanding of several non-Han sanqu poets, whose achievements compare with those of other poets on an absolutely equal footing. His versatile style enabled him to show distinctive personal traits in his treatment of such conventional subjects as romantic love and the celebration of rustic life. His mastery of language, especially his ability to use individual speeches to enliven dramatic scenes, sets him apart from other sanqu writers.

C16.8

To the Tune “Clear River, a Prelude” [shuangdiao key]: On Separation, No. 4

If I meet him again,
2 This live message I will deliver to him:
Not that I didn’t want to write,
4 Nor that I ain’t talented and bright—
I circled along the Clear River, but could not find a piece of sky-size paper.

[QYSQ 1:370]

The persona is rehearsing what she will say when she sees “him” again: she did not write to him precisely because she loves him too much! She could not find a piece of paper large enough to contain all her thoughts and feelings.

Does the girl mean that, had she written to him, her love for him would have been less? The logic behind her explanation seems hard to follow, but it makes perfect sense to those in love. The “live message” in line 2 means a spoken “letter.” In the Chinese, the adjective “true” modifies “message.” Not lifeless ink on paper but the living words from the girl’s mouth, delivered in person with charm, are what express her true love. Her true and living “letter” will contain so much love that—if her claim of an attempted purchase of paper is to be believed—its contents would fill up the space between heaven and earth. The girl’s forceful argument is itself ample proof that she is not without talent (line 4). No matter how incredulous her lover might be, one can well imagine that his heart will be tender with the joy of love when he hears her witty explanation.

Although short, “On Separation, No. 4,” is greatly expressive. Every word, every image counts. The “if” at its beginning, for example, tells that what it depicts has not yet happened. It sets a vivid scene of the persona engaged in intense mental communication with her lover at the moment when we come upon her. This attests to the truthfulness of the claim she makes, by implication, later: although she did not write to him, she thinks about him all the time. The “Clear River” in the last line cannot, therefore, be taken as simply a proper noun. It does not matter whether it is the name of a town or a river—the crystal clarity of the image, together with the cleanness of the image of the “sky-size paper,” symbolize the purity, hence chastity, of the persona. The transparency of the two images best exemplifies the song’s unornamented, colloquial language and its straightforward tone.

Like Guan Hanqing, Bai Pu (1226-after 1306), the author of the next love song, was one of the great dramatists of the Yuan. His descriptive song poems are full of bright colors and fresh images, while those on romantic love are alive with dramatic scenes depicted in the language of everyday speech and yet free from the bawdiness frequently seen in similar sanqu.

C16.9

To the Tune “Spring Song” [zhonglü key]: On Love

Laughing, I block out the silver candlelight with a red sleeve,
2 And forbid my erudite dear one to read books.
Nestling together, we have such fun.
4 Isn’t that only about exams?
Who cares even if you pass?

[QYSQ1:195]

Although the translation adopts a first-person female voice, there are other ways to read the song, because not a single personal pronoun is used in the original, and it is hard to tell if this is “my” story or “his” or “her” story. Readers can choose to take the first three lines as a third-person narration and the last two lines as a direct quote from the girl, or even to treat the whole piece as a third-person story, with the two concluding lines being the poet’s authorial comment. In any case, no one will miss the message conveyed by this lighthearted love song.

The girl’s “laughing” (depicted by a verb in the original) at the beginning of the song sets the tone for everything that follows. The coquettish laugh makes the girl’s move a loving gesture when she tries to prevent her lover from reading and gives him no excuse to get annoyed. It also brings out the naïveté in her undisguised refutation of his worldly ambitions (lines 4-5) and makes her exhortation sound somewhat pleasing. The charm and sweetness of the female character, which can be palpably felt between the lines, is living proof that the joy of love is far more desirable than success in one’s official career. Judging from the intensity of the love scene in the middle of the song (line 3), the “red sleeve” successfully overcomes the “silver candlelight” (line 1).

The word “silver,” which modifies “candle,” refers either to the color of the candle or of the light it casts or to the material of the candle stand. The only thing that matters is the original meaning of the word: “money.” The blocking out of the silver candle by the red sleeve—whose symbolic meaning is evident—is therefore a metonymy standing for the conflict between two values. The conflict is further complicated by the “books” (line 2) the girl’s lover reads, since it is with them that she must compete for his attention.

The entanglement can be explained by a possible subtext in the poem, a popular saying that enjoys the same status as that of the best-known nursery rhymes in the Chinese language. It reads like a lampoon definition of the civil service examination system: “In books there are thousands of bushels of grain; in books there is no lack of golden mansions; in books there are girls as beautiful as jade.” The argument that concludes the poem takes the same utilitarian approach. Isn’t it just about money and women? Whether one can find such things in books is questionable. But just look at the “red sleeve” that is close at hand, the argument urges; the girl “as beautiful as jade” is right in front of you. Therefore, “who cares even if you pass?” (line 5). The rhetorical question forcefully declares that the “red sleeve” should outweigh the “books.” (Had the question been posed as “who cares even if you fail?” it would have implied that success is the first choice and the “red sleeve” only the comforting compensation one gets after failing the exam.) Seen in this light, besides the alternatives previously mentioned, perhaps there is yet another way to interpret the point of view of “On Love.” The concluding lines could be the exclamation uttered by the male character, who has just been enlightened by the education of love and wants to throw away his books for good.

POEMS OF RAMBUNCTIOUS WIT AND IMPUDENT HUMOR

Any survey of representative sanqu works, no matter how brief, cannot leave out song poems of witticisms and humor. The following poem is by a poet whose hallmark can be easily seen from even a casual glance at the list of his songs: “On Baldness,” “Big Fish,” “Turtle with Green Hair,” “Long-Haired Little Dog,” “Sister Wang Got Beaten in the Bathroom,” and “Fat Couple,” presented in the introductory section as an example of sanqu prosody.

The poet Wang Heqing is known almost exclusively for his raw and exuberant humor. His works on trivial, “vulgar,” and erotic subjects are worthy of inclusion in any survey of sanqu works because they tell about the cultural milieu of their time and are among the best reminders of the genre’s origins in the streets, marketplaces, and entertainment quarters. The following song poem is about a big butterfly.

C16.10

To the Tune “Heaven in a Drunkard’s Eye” [xianlü key]: On the Big Butterfly

Having emerged from Zhuangzi’s dream,
2 With its two wings mounting on the spring wind,
It empties three hundred gardens in one gulp.
4 Can this be the gallant breed?
How it scares away the flower-chaser bees!
6 With a gentle flap of its wings
It blows the flower vendors to the east side of the bridge.

[QYSQ1:41]

The song is a parody of the yongwu (poetry on things). Anecdote has it that in the early 1260s there appeared in the grand capital Dadu (present-day Beijing) a gigantic butterfly, and it is believed that the insect gave the poet an excuse to write this song.

Since the poet tells us unmistakably that his butterfly flies directly from Zhuangzi’s famous dream, this is a good place to examine how a seemingly simple sanqu ditty, in the plain language of everyday speech and on a flippant subject that appeals more to the unlettered, can also be charged, or riddled, with allusions, a game any lettered practitioner of traditional classical poetry was good at.

According to Zhuangzi’s famous dream, the philosopher does not know whether he is his own self taking the form of a butterfly in a dream, or a butterfly dreaming that it is Zhuangzi. The original message is that there is no hard-and-fast demarcation between reality and illusion. But, with the passage of time, the butterfly dream has become a fable reminding people of the illusory and ephemeral nature of human life: it is but a dream. The poet borrows the powerful image from Zhuangzi and then remolds it into a clichéd metaphor of a two-winged pleasure-seeker (lines 2-3), which itself alludes to numerous “flower-picking” verses exemplifying the Chinese version of carpe diem.¹⁶ In this way, Wang Heqing defends with disarming wit the dissolute lifestyle of a womanizer; using the simplistic, yet popular, interpretation of Zhuangzi’s philosophical butterfly, he repeats the adage that life is short and one should pick the flower while it is in blossom.

The image of the butterfly’s “two wings mounting on the spring wind” (line 2)—with the literal “east wind” standing for springtime—does not merely imply the high time for flower picking and emphasize the sense of urgency in the carpe diem motif. The image is also meant to convey the sensual pleasure that the butterfly experiences in its carefree “sweeping” of the flowers. The thrill and sense of freedom in the airborne pose is reminiscent of the well-known image of the Big Roc (Peng bird) in the Zhuangzi, whose two wings are as big as clouds and “mount on the back of the wind” in its “ninety-thousand-mile journey.” The title of the chapter from which this image comes is, as it happens, “Free and Easy Wandering,” and it has become a set phrase used to describe total, unlicensed freedom. The reading of this hidden allusion into the image can be justified with further internal evidence in the song. The big butterfly “shames to death”¹⁷ small-time flower chasers, like the honeybees (line 5), with his enviable virile feats (line 3), in exactly the same manner in which Zhuangzi’s Big Roc thwarts the small creatures, like the little doves and quails with his size and movement of heavenly proportions.

Wang Heqing ends the song by making, as if effortlessly and in passing, yet one more allusion to old texts. The “flower vendors” (line 7) allude to a Song dynasty poem, “On Butterfly,” in which flower sellers, urged on by the excitement of the beautiful spring scene, “one after another, rush to the other side of the bridge.”¹⁸ In this new context, the role played by the “flower vendors” changes. Can they be those who sell the flower—that is, pimps? By having them fanned across the bridge, the poet seems to allow the big butterfly one more chance to demonstrate his capability “with a gentle flap of its wings” (line 6)—the butterfly requires no help from matchmakers of any kind.

The travesty of the Zhuangzi images carries, in this song, only the positive note. The poem totally transfigures the otherwise disdainful and distasteful playboy image of the butterfly and makes it glow with the luster of the carefree spirit of the original butterfly of the Zhuangzi and the ease and the elegant, condescending air of the Big Roc from the same text. One can label the butterfly “gallant” (fengliu) (line 4), but just as the term fengliu can mean anything from “debauched” and “dissolute” to “talented” and “elegant,” even “heroic,” the butterfly’s true color is open to anybody’s interpretation. Judging from the way the poet presents the butterfly, the apparent uncertainty and puzzlement expressed by the inquisitive phrase nandao (couldn’t we say . . . ? isn’t it . . . ?) at the beginning of line 4 actually betrays his admiration for and wonder at the amazing creature he has created.

The carefree playfulness of the butterfly and the poet’s appreciative attitude toward it thus tell us much about the cultural milieu of the time when the sanqu and its sister genre, the zaju (variety play), flourished. Those who might be surprised by the bold message of this song need only read the following selections from the song suite “Not Giving In to Old Age” to see that the impudence of “On the Big Butterfly” was by no means abnormal in its time. The author of this song suite is none other than Guan Hanqing (whose work is discussed earlier in this chapter), the greatest playwright of the time and a close friend of Wang Heqing:

I’ve plucked every bud hanging over the wall,
and picked every roadside branch of the willow.
The flower I plucked had the softest red petals,
the willows I picked were the tenderest green.
A rogue and a lover, I’ll rely
on my picking and plucking dexterity
’til flowers are ruined and willows wrecked.
I’ve picked and plucked half the years of my life,
a generation entirely spent
lying with willows, sleeping with flowers.

I’m champion rake of all the world,
The cosmic chieftain of rogues.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
You think I’m too old!
Forget it!
I’m the best known lover anywhere....

[QYSQ 1:172]¹⁹

The persona is thus an even bigger, and much more brazen, butterfly. He certainly will “shame to death” the small crooks:

You boys are baby bunnies
from sandy little rabbit holes
on grassy hills,
caught in the hunt
for the very first time;
I’m an ol’ pheasant cock plumed with gray;
I’ve been caged,
I’ve been snared,
a tried and true stud
who’s run the course.

[QYSQ 1:172-173]²⁰

The whole song suite, from which the preceding quotes are taken, consists of the libertine’s monologue only, modified by no editorial frame or authorial intrusion. There is no sign in it suggesting that the persona is cast in the light of a villain. On the contrary, from the confidence expressed in his shameless flaunting, one can see that he expects himself to be the object of everybody’s envy and admiration. The image of such an antihero had never been seen in Chinese literature.²¹

Guan Hanqing’s experience with the zaju partly explains his success in his characterization of the colorful and rambunctious rogue. The format of the sanqu song suite, which is similar to the zaju song suite used as the basic structural unit in the variety plays, also helped by providing him with ample space to elaborate on the topic. Due to the limits of space, only a small portion of the suite has been quoted. So just imagine that the same voice brags and babbles on for five times as long, telling you that the speaker is a “tough old bronze bean” that will not be softened by cooking, or smashed, and that he will not cease his flower picking until he is summoned by the King of Hell.

Xinda Lian

NOTES

1 James I. Crump, Song-Poems from Xanadu (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 19 93), 10.

2 Under Mongol rule in the Yuan, the populace fell into four hierarchical categories. The Mongols were ranked on top, followed by various ethnic groups from the west and the northwest, while northerners of Chinese origin and the subjects of the former Southern Song and their descendants were at the bottom of society and denied opportunities to advance in public service. Some scholars believe that this deprivation of opportunities forced many educated Chinese to turn their attention to popular literature.

3 Crump, Song-Poems from Xanadu, 44. This song is a parody of a well-known love story, said to have taken place in the city of Yuzhang. The poet borrows the names of the two lovers in the story, Mr. Shuang and Miss Su, and reassigns them to the fat couple in the poem.

4 For an explanation of the symbols used here, see p. xxv.

5 For discussions of the prosodies of regulated verse and song lyrics, see chapters 8 and 12.

6 James J.Y. Liu, The Art of Chinese Poetry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 42.

7 Regarding this song, Wayne Schlepp observes that “without verbs there is no question of the poet’s interpreting the scene,” and “the reader feels he can experience [the scene] directly” (Sanch’ü: Its Technique and Imagery [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970], 125).

8 For a biographical note on Qiao Ji, see Sui Shusen, Quan Yuan sanqu (Complete Song Poems of the Yuan) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1964), 1:573.

9 A well-informed and comprehensive discussion of the topic is in James I. Crump, “Tales by Woodsman for the Fisher’s Ear,” in Songs from Xanadu: Studies in Mongol-Dynasty Song-Poetry (San-ch’ü) (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1983), 81-105.

10 Sui, Quan Yuan sanqu, 1:69.

11 It might not be irrelevant to note here that Hu Zhiyu was one of only a few of those Han Chinese who was able to serve in an office of the Yuan government and rose to a high position.

12 Qiao Ji, “Of Myself,” trans. Sherwin S. S. Fu, in Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry, ed. Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 437-438.

13 The following lines by Liu Yong from the Song dynasty, whose works are discussed in chapter 13, might come close:

Since I fail to soar high,
Why not just indulge in pleasure?
There’s no need to talk about loss and gain—
A talented songwriter
Is no doubt a high minister in plain robe. (QSC 1:57)

14 For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Frederick W. Mote, “China Under Mongol Rule,” in Imperial China, 900-1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 474-513, especially 474-477, 504-507.

15 Sui, Quan Yuan sanqu, 1:156.

16 The best example of these verses is in “Jin lü yi” (The Garment Embroidered with Gold Thread), by an anonymous Tang author:

Treasure not the garment embroidered with gold thread,
But seize the young spring day.
Just pick the flower when you see one—
You’ll have no time to regret when there’s none. (QTS 11:8862)

17 There is no translation that can better capture the meaning of the verb at the beginning of line 5 than this rendition by Crump, in Songs from Xanadu, 14.

18 Xie Wuyi (1068-1112), “On Butterfly,” in Quan Song shi (Complete Shi Poetry of the Song) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1991-1998), 22:14858.

19 Guan Hanqing, “Not Giving In to Old Age,” in An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911, trans. and ed. Stephen Owen (New York: Norton, 1996), 729.

20 Guan Hanqing, “Not Giving In to Old Age,” 730.

21 The term “antihero” is used by Owen in his comment on the song suite in Anthology of Chinese Literature, 728.

POETIC THEORY AND POETIC PRACTICE

The first important literary movement to arise in the Ming was the Archaist school represented by the Former Seven and Latter Seven Masters, many of whom were scholar-officials in government. Its influence dominated the poetic scene in the sixteenth century, particularly in the capital, Beijing. The Archaist poets advocated emulation of poetic models from the past, specifically the Tang. The best-known leader, Li Mengyang (1475-1531), one of the Former Seven Masters stated famously that when it came to ideal models, “prose must be that of the Qin and Han, and poetry must be that of the High Tang.”⁷ They rejected Song poetry for its discursiveness and sought to imitate the grand, expansive vision, affective intensity, and perceptual qualities embodied in the allusive diction and powerful imagery of Tang verse, particularly those found in the poetry of Du Fu (712-770). The following widely anthologized heptasyllabic regulated poem by Li Mengyang exemplifies these characteristics:

C17.1

Autumn Gaze

The Yellow River winds around the Han frontier walls,
2 Over the river in the autumn wind, a few lines of wild geese.
The attackers crossing trenches pursue on wild horses,
4 The general with his bow case and arrow shoots at the Heavenly Wolf.
Yellow dust by the ancient ford confuses the swift chariots,
6 White moonbeam across the void chills the battleground.
Up north in Shuofang there were many bold plans, they say,
8 Only nowadays where is there a Guo Fenyang?

[MSBC, 717]

The northwestern frontier became a popular theme in High Tang poetry, attending the military expansion of the empire.⁸ In the Ming Archaist valorization of Tang models, the frontier theme was often taken up by both male and female poets as a literary exercise and, in some cases, as poetic records of actual expeditions. By its very subject matter, the frontier topos lends itself to capturing the strength and vigor of Tang poetry. The title of the poem, “Autumn Gaze,” sets up the anticipation of a seasonal view. Li Mengyang skillfully deploys Tang poetic conventions to re-create the broad expansive prospect of the border region. The opening couplet begins with the scene of a vast horizon suggested by the view of the Yellow River meandering along the Great Wall of the Han dynasty, using the conventional temporal displacement to the past employed in Tang poetry. The visual trajectory is directed upward to the sky by the image of wild geese migrating south, seen as distant lines above the riverscape. The two required parallel couplets in the middle each form perfect syntactic, semantic, and tonal contrasts (lines 3-4 and 5-6). These formal symmetrical structures further elaborate on details of the frontier. In an offensive attack, the non-Chinese nomadic tribes, riding on horses, cross the defensive moats into Chinese territory. Li Mengyang cleverly employs the term “wild horses,” an allusion for rousing energy (qi),⁹ to create the spectacle of nomadic attackers galloping across the dusty desert. This invasion is countered by the force of the defensive act of the Han general aiming his arrow at the “Heavenly Wolf” (the star Sirius), here standing for the “barbarians.” The scene depicted in this couplet with such vivid imagery, as though witnessed by the poet, is temporally ambiguous, suspended between past and present in the poet’s imagination. It is an imagined battle scene in the past triggered by the poet’s arrival at the frontier. Its pastness is reinforced in the next couplet by the timeless quality of the “ancient ford,” enduring moon, and deserted battleground frozen in history. Only with the rhetorical question in the closing couplet, in which the poet follows the desired move to the affective mode in regulated verse, does he articulate his admiration for the military glory of the Tang and his present doubts by alluding to Guo Ziyi (697-781), the Tang military commissioner of the Shuofang commandery where the poet was at the time of the poem. Guo Ziyi was one of the leading loyalist generals who helped defeat the rebellion started by An Lushan (d. 757) under the Tang emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-756). He was enfeoffed as prince of the Fenyang commandery for his efforts to save the Tang and was referred to as Guo Fenyang in later periods. This poem is an esteemed emulation of Tang poetics.

In the Archaist desire to emulate Tang diction and imagery, the individual voice of the poet is often suppressed, and the less successful efforts resulted in turgid and uninspired formalistic pieces. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, a strong opposition to Archaist practices arose, spearheaded by Yuan Hongdao (1568-1610) and his two brothers—Yuan Zongdao (1570-1626) and Yuan Zhongdao (1560- 1600)—that came to be known as the Gong’an school after their native district in Hubei. Yuan Hongdao emphasized individual expression and the use of natural and simple language. He famously pronounced that poetry should “only express one’s natural sensibility [xingling] and not be restricted by conventional form.”¹⁰ In emphasizing the expression of genuine feelings in simple language, Yuan Hongdao valorized folk songs and village ditties. He also commended Song poetry, anathema to the Archaist school. The poetic language he adopted tends toward the colloquial and easy, the diction being less formal and allusive. The heptasyllabic regulated poem he sent to a friend exemplifies these characteristics:

C17.2

Composed at Random: Sent to Master Fang

With a flask, a bamboo hat, and a cape of straw,
2 I am skilled at playing Wu melodies and Chu songs.
The wild crane’s clearheaded because its bones are aged,
4 Mandarin ducks gray together because their love is deep.
Pendants worn at the waist are antiques a thousand years old,
6 The topsy-turvy script written when drunk are waves ten yards long.
Recently in making verse I have become more attentive,
8 When it comes to long lines every time I study Dongpo.

[YHDJJJ 2.540]

Yuan Hongdao’s use of the conventional title “Composed at Random” calls attention to the very casualness of the occasion of writing itself. The poem begins by projecting the image of a carefree rustic man, wearing a straw raincoat, enjoying himself with a bottle of wine, and making music. The melodies of Wu and songs of Chu are precisely the kind of regional folk tunes and ditties that he endorses as genuine poetry of the people. Even when Yuan Hongdao has to observe the strict rules of tonal antithesis and syntactic and semantic parallelism required in the regulated form, as in the second and third couplets, he avoids erudite language and allusive imagery. Instead, he draws on birds with common cultural associations to further highlight his natural inclinations. The crane, a symbol of immortality, is here the poet’s self-image—old but clearheaded. The mandarin ducks, a symbol of conjugal love, represent the poet’s depth of feeling and romantic devotion. In the third couplet, the antique pendants worn at the waist and the free-flowing calligraphy convey the literati culture in which Yuan Hongdao participates; their unique characteristics suggest his individualistic manner. In the closing couplet, the poet explicitly comments on his poetic practice—his turning to the more discursive style of the great Song poet Su Shi (style name Dongpo, 1037-1101), one of whose poetic trademarks is his carefree attitude and inimitable wit.

While Yuan Hongdao’s poetic theory proved to be a powerful antidote to the Archaist influence, his poetic practice did not merit much commendation by later critics. The early Qing critic Zhu Yizun (1629-1709) castigated the worst of Yuan Hongdao’s poetry for being vulgar, facetious, and flippant in expressing his unrestrained inclinations and feelings.¹¹ Although not all above partisanship, poets of the late Ming and early Qing—such as Chen Zilong (1608-1647), Qian Qianyi (1582-1664), and Wu Weiye (1609-1672)—were prolific writers who produced poetry that stood on their own merits. Chen Zilong infused his poetry with intensity of emotion more akin to Tang verse; Qian Qianyi wrote extremely erudite and difficult poems, some reminiscent of the dense, allusive Late Tang style and others of the Song style; and Wu Weiye was acclaimed for his long narrative poems, redolent of his nostalgia for and guilt toward the fallen Ming dynasty. Wang Shizhen (1634-1711), of the younger generation, impressed his contemporaries as a talented poet and theorist. With a preference for Tang poetry, his poetics turn on the concept of shenyun (spirit and resonance), which combines the evocation of intuitive perception with a personal tone and placid imagery, as exemplified in the following heptasyllabic quatrain, the first in a series of fourteen:

C17.3

Qinhuai: Miscellaneous Poems

In past years heartbroken on the Moling boat,
Dreams encircle pavilions by the Qinhuai River.
After ten days of drizzling rain and wisps of wind,
The misty scene of lush spring seems like remnants of autumn.

[YYJHLJS 1.226-227]

On his visit in 1661, the poet paints a wistful spring scene of the Qinhuai River district, once the magnificent pleasure quarters of the Ming southern capital, Nanjing, where talented scholars and beautiful courtesans shared in the splendor of late Ming culture. In the opening line, the poet creates a sense of distance and history by using the ancient name Moling to refer to the ill-fated city. However, immediately in line 2 the dreams that encircle suggest emotional attachment, an inability to let go of the painful truth of dynastic transition. Even if the pavilions still stand, they seem to be remnants of a vanished past that the poet clings to in a dream. This site of romance was destroyed by the invading Manchus, but the nostalgia for the lost world remains, barely articulated, pervading the scene like fine mist transforming the spring, normally a time of renewal and hope, into the wilted remains of late autumn. Nature, in Wang Shizhen’s poetic construct, resonates with human emotion.

The last poem we read by a major poet-critic is a heptasyllabic quatrain by Yuan Mei (1716-1798), the prolific poet who promoted expressing one’s “natural sensibility” (xingling) in poetry and who wrote more than 4,400 poems in his long life. Disagreeing with the orthodox critic Shen Deqian (1673-1769), who emphasized the moral, didactic function of poetry and Tang poetic models, Yuan Mei advocated naturalness and personal expression in writing poetry above learning and formal and ethical concerns. To him, what one writes should be true to one’s feelings and character, one’s “native sensibility.” Thus, recalling Yuan Hongdao of the Gong’an school, Yuan Mei also appreciated simple folk songs and natural, unadorned diction. He encouraged women to write and publish their poetry, famously taking on scores of female students, to the disapproval of more conservative critics. According to Wang Yingzhi, the modern specialist on Yuan Mei’s poetry, his vast corpus can be said to reflect his theory of “native sensibility” in practice.¹² The result is often an affable charm and urbane humor.

C17.4

Traveling in the Mountains: Miscellaneous Poem

Rugged and steep for ten li, for half a li flat,
Just as one peak says farewell, another bids me welcome!
Green mountains wrap round me like cocoons,
I don’t believe there could be a pathway ahead.

[YMQJ 1.633]

Yuan Mei records in a realistic and personable tenor his experience of traveling through a mountain range. To convey the ever-changing visual field on the mountain trail as the peaks appear and disappear, he likens them to friends who welcome and see him off one after the other. Being situated in the midst of a mountain range, Yuan Mei describes the experience of being enclosed by the surrounding peaks with the simile of a silkworm being wrapped inside a cocoon, so tightly that he declares wittily that he does not believe there is an opening ahead. Yuan Mei’s advocacy of individual, spontaneous, and natural expression in poetry widely encouraged among men and women the practice of recording everyday experience. Whether traveling, staying at home, visiting with friends, or conducting any other activity—the mundane and personal, as well as the sublime and precious—all can become subjects of poetry.

POETRY AS DIURNAL PRACTICE

The Expediency of Poetry in Times of Violence and Disorder

Chinese poetry has a long tradition of recording the sufferings and disasters caused by war. Poems dating from as early as the sixth century B.C.E. in the Shijing (The Book of Poetry) already describe the hardships of military expeditions; many are set in voices of complaint, as soldiers campaigned far from home for long periods of time and their loved ones were left behind. The yuefu ballads of the Han also represented these voices of antiwar protest.¹³ Yuefu poetry, as it evolved in the shi form during the Wei-Jin and period of disunion, continued the tendency to represent the sufferings of the downtrodden classes, especially in times of political and social disorder. Originally sung to musical accompaniment, some old yuefu song titles clearly indicate the theme of war and military expedition—for example, “Zhan cheng nan” (We Fought South of the Walls), “Cong jun xing” (Song of Serving in the Army), and “Yin ma chang cheng ku xing” (Song of Letting Horses Drink at the Long Wall Spring). A definite subgroup in the yuefu genre is related to the theme of war. Many yuefu titles continued to be used in the later periods; they often serve as an index to the subject of the poems.¹⁴ Although generically not considered yuefu, Du Fu’s ballads, such as “Bingche xing” (Ballad of Army Carts), “San li” (Three Officers), and “San bie” (Three Separations), and the Late Tang poet Wei Zhuang’s (ca. 836-910) long poem “Qin fu yin” (The Lament of the Lady of Qin), on the devastations of the Huang Chao Rebellion (875-884) written in the persona of a woman, are modeled on the yuefu song tradition of recounting the destruction of war from the experiences and point of view of the common people.¹⁵ In the Middle Tang, we see an explicit move among poets, notably Bai Juyi (772-846) and Yuan Zhen (779-831), to develop the xin yuefu (new yuefu) as a poetry dedicated to social criticism.

Poetry recording the writer’s own experience of war is often traced back to the poem “Beifen shi” (Poem of Lament and Indignation), attributed to the woman poet Cai Yan (176?-early third century), in which the female narrator describes the carnage wrought by the invading Xiongnu and her own capture by them at the end of the Later Han dynasty (25-220).¹⁶ But the poet who made poetry into a consistent and effective medium to record personal experience and eyewitness accounts during wartime atrocities was Du Fu.¹⁷ His long poems in the song form, such as “Bei zheng” (Northern Expedition) and “Zi jing fu Fengxian xian yonghuai wubai zi” (From the Capital to Fengxian: Expressing My Feelings in 500 Words), to name the most famous two, recount the devastation of the An Lushan Rebellion (755-763) as experienced by him and those whom he came into contact with in the chaos. They remain strong indictments of the brutality of war, all the more powerful and moving for being personal, firsthand experiences. Implicitly or explicitly, Du Fu remained the model of inspiration for poets writing about the horrors of war that they personally witnessed.

The widespread violence during the Ming-Qing dynastic transition in the middle decades of the seventeenth century not only was perpetrated by the Manchus during their military conquest, but also encompassed attacks, pillage, plunder, and destruction carried out during internal uprisings by native groups of local bandits, thugs, rebels, and roving soldiers. The lives of countless men and women, old and young, were displaced and often destroyed regardless of class and region. Recording the common experience of fleeing from Qing troops, renegade Ming soldiers, and local bandits in this disordered time forms a thematic subgenre of poetry. Many poems are identified explicitly in the title with the term bi luan (avoiding, escaping from disorder), bi bing (escaping from the soldiers), bi kou (escaping from the bandits), or bi lu (escaping from the caitiffs). Many of these poem titles also specify one of the two years in the Chinese sexagenary cycle of the Manchu conquest: Jiashen (1644) and Yiyou (1645). The fall of the Ming empire, at first heard as the tragic news that arrived from the distant capital Beijing and later the southern capital Nanjing, materialized into the presence of Manchu forces at the gates of southern cities and on the poets’ very doorsteps.

The famous dramatist Li Yu (1611-1680) lived through the worst years of the Ming-Qing transition as a fugitive in the mountains of his native district, Lanxi, and neighboring Jinhua in central-eastern Zhejiang.¹⁸ Several poems in his collection record his experience of disorder and dislocation during the two calamitous years. Even when he was writing about a disaster of such “national” magnitude, Li Yu the indefatigable individualist with a bent for the comic still employs his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style in his narrative:¹⁹

C17.5

Li Yu begins the poem by explicitly referring to Du Fu’s war poems as a foil to the severity of the present situation (lines 1-14). In times of peace, he had thought that Du Fu had exaggerated the turmoil of the An Lushan Rebellion in his poems. But Li Yu now realizes that his previous reading was erroneous. When Du Fu’s poems are read against the present peril that Li Yu is experiencing all around him, he finds them to be insufficient expressions of the horrors of war. After noting how he and other local people hesitated when the battles began between whether to stay put or try to escape from the disaster besetting their area (bi nan), Li Yu turns to describe what clinched people’s decision to leave—the rampant and continual violence inflicted by soldiers and bandits alike. Lines 21-26 are structured with repetitions of “bandits” and “soldiers” that emphasize their mutual substitutability and the recurrence of violence. This repetitive pattern is picked up again in lines 37-46 and produces an overall parodic and theatrical effect. The poem also emphasizes the inversion of values and twists of fate in times of disorder. In lines 31 and 32, Bodao is the style name of Deng You of the Jin. During the Yongjia period (307-313), when he was trying to escape from a mutiny into the mountains with his small son and nephew, he altruistically gave up his son when he could not protect both children. As a result, he ended up sonless.²⁰ [Zi]ping is the style name of the Eastern Han scholar Xiang Chang, who disappeared as a wandering recluse after taking care of his children’s marriages.²¹ Li Yu uses these two allusions to demonstrate the inversion of normative values: in such an age of violence, it would be better not to have children at all. The next couplet (lines 33-34) follows with examples of misfortunes that befall people and things of high value in the social and political chaos of the period. There is no real safety even in the deep mountains, as they are infiltrated by both soldiers and rebels. In the end, the poet could only conclude, in a self-mocking tone, with the grim and fatalistic view that an age of disorder is part of heaven’s workings, from which hapless fugitives, like inconsequential ants, cannot escape.

In contrast, the woman poet and critic Wang Duanshu (1621-ca. 1680), a native of Shaoxing (also in present-day Zhejiang), recorded in an entirely serious tone her plight of fleeing with the retreating Ming soldiers from the advancing Qing troops in 1645. She vividly recounts her harrowing experience in the heptasyllabic ancient-style poem “Kunan xing” (Song of Suffering Calamity):

C17.6

The poem opens with a picture in the poet’s memory of the peaceful life of luxury before the Manchu conquest. Surrounded by feminine images such as “brocade flowers,” “curtains,” and “scented bed,” the female persona is ensconced in the inner quarters, the proper spatial location for women. This dreamlike life of comfort is rudely disrupted by the imminent arrival of invading troops in line 5. The remainder of the poem turns to a narration of the poet’s arduous flight from the Manchus, her equally harrowing journey home, and the state of devastation she discovers on her return.

Along with her young son and other kin and townspeople, Wang Duanshu was thrown onto the open road as a fugitive. She records how they fled with the retreating Ming troops when the Qing forces crossed the Qiantang River and took Shaoxing and Ningbo in July 1645.²² She describes their nightmarish march to Dinghai (on Putuo Island off the Zhejiang coast), sleeping in the open and on wet beaches along the way because they were traveling with troops. They traveled along the northern coast until they reached the island. In line 24, the image of her shoes with heels ripped from trudging poignantly reminds the reader of the difficulty of the march for women with bound feet. After the poet reaches Dinghai, she has almost lost all hope of living. Structurally at almost midpoint in the poem, the narrator, motivated by a strong sense of filial piety to look after her parents, begins to make her journey home through dangerous conditions (lines 27-28). Somewhere along the way, their boat gets lost and they are robbed (lines 30-31). Wang Duanshu probably made her way home sometime in 1646.²³ However, when she arrives back, she learns that her elder sister has left home to become a nun and her father, the loyalist scholar Wang Siren (1575-1646), has committed suicide in Beijing. They both took the two common but radical responses of Ming loyalists to the Manchu conquest. Near the end of the poem, even amid her shattered life, as a learned gentry woman Wang Duanshu is able to find consolation and hope in the remains of Chinese culture, signified by the Confucian canons the Book of Poetry and the Shangshu (Classic of History) that have survived the ravages of war and foreign invasion (line 39). However, the final image of the “wild goose” injects a note of personal loss. Geese flying in formation conventionally denote the intimacy and sense of togetherness between siblings. The poet identifies with the sad cries of a wild goose, which suggests that it has lost its flock. The closure inscribes a sense of personal loss experienced by a “remnant” subject of a fallen dynasty and a survivor who has lost her sister and father.

The experience of loss and dislocation was so complex and traumatic that, for those who had the means and skill, writing must have served as a therapeutic means of regaining some sense of control, order, and personal dignity. The poetic form itself provided the formal regularity of structure, rhyme, and rhythm, into which literate victims of war and violence were able to channel their anguish and seek to manage their trauma.

Life Histories: Poetry as Autobiography

In no other comparable literary tradition was the autobiographical potential so strongly embedded in the orthodox conception of poetry as that in China. The function of poetry to articulate what was in one’s heart and on one’s mind (shi yan zhi)—private emotion as well as moral ambition—facilitated the development of the poetic medium into a versatile vehicle of self-writing and self-recording for educated men and, increasingly in the later periods, for women. This lyric expressiveness was reinforced by the strong subjectivity in the oral tradition, particularly of songs in the first-person voice, which provided much of the corpus that came to form the first canon of poetry, the Book of Poetry, privileged as a Confucian classic since the Han period (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.).

As Stephen Owen has demonstrated so cogently in his seminal study, the autobiographical dimension in Chinese poetry was taken to a sophisticated height early in the literary tradition by Tao Qian (365?-427) and later Du Fu.²⁴ The training in and practice of shi and, later, ci poetry can be viewed as discursive regimes that produced certain articulations of individual subjectivity in imperial China. Even with the customary omission of personal pronouns in the Chinese poetic language, the common assumption among writers and readers of shi poetry of a “single unified lyric speaker”²⁵—the poet’s persona and subjectivity—informing the poetic utterance ensured the development and persistence of a significant personal and subjective dimension in poetry. It is not surprising that poetry remained, for the majority of educated men and women, the most prevalent medium of self-representation. Situated in the present moment of inscription, the poet, by articulating emotion or intellection (yanzhi) in response to a wide range of experiences, both actual and textual, constructed and recorded a multifaceted life history with an eye to a community of contemporary and future readers that often included older versions of the authorial self, who would reread and sometimes revise particular poems or parts of poems, especially at the time of publication. The material accumulation of this process of poetic inscription over time was the making of the individual collection of poetry (bieji), which could be edited, arranged in order, and molded into a loose and selective form of self-narrative. As Owen has observed, since the ninth century, poets increasingly undertook the editing of their own poetry collections, creating what he has termed a “species of interior history,” “letting a life story unfold in the author’s sequence of responses.”²⁶

In the late imperial period, men and women alike exploited this textual means for constructing a self-record that comprised lyrical moments of interior life, situated in or juxtaposed to external, social occasional events. These records participated in a highly formalistic and conventionalized “grammar” of poetic language. As we have seen in previous chapters, a comprehensive repertory of the basic forms and structures as well as the essential vocabulary and subgenres of the two major genres of shi and ci had been developed by the Tang and Song periods. Contextualized by titles, often also by prose prefaces and even interlineal explanatory notes by the poet, such poetic self-textualization constituted a quotidian process that would continue as the author’s life progressed. In this practice, writing poetry functioned in a way similar to keeping a diary or personal journal. When the poems were collected and compiled into a chronologically sequenced whole, the resulting text would embody a form of life history.

In poetry collections, the autobiographical narrative frame can be further reinforced by volume and chapter divisions that are named meaningfully, according to stages in the self-narrative. I illustrate this autobiographical practice in the exemplary poetry collection of Gan Lirou (1743-1819), a gentry woman of Fengxin County, in present-day Jiangxi Province, who lived in the era of peace and prosperity referred to as the High Qing.²⁷ I discuss the overall organization of her collection in relation to the production of a life history through poetry and read examples of her autobiographical voice in selected poems.

Gan Lirou’s remarkable poetry collection is entitled Yongxuelou gao (Drafts from the Pavilion for Chanting About Snow). As a programmatic and lifelong self-representation by a woman, it epitomizes the many strands of autobiographical practices in late imperial China. Gan Lirou’s autobiographical collection stands both in contrast with and in complement to the many poetic texts by men and women—whether comparably long or exceedingly short, whether complete or fragmented and unfinished—each attempting to articulate and record some local sense of subjectivity.²⁸ The collection is remarkable not only for demonstrating the sustained effort in self-writing that Gan Lirou made throughout her long life, but also for the way she structured the collection to tell her personal history conceived in the chronological frame of the paradigmatic life cycle of a Chinese woman in the imperial era. Gan Lirou was keenly conscious of the changing roles in her life course, which she recorded conscientiously in her poetry.

In a preface she wrote to her collection when she was seventy-three, Gan Lirou indicated how she had been stringent in selecting poems from a lifetime of writing to form the text through which she wished to be known by posterity. She stated that she had edited out half of her poems. This process of self-selection and censorship was effectively a means to shape her self-representation.

Gan Lirou arranged her poems in four chapters according to the stages of her life—as a young daughter living at home with her parents and siblings, as a loving wife and dutiful daughter-in-law after marriage, as a bereft widow bringing up her children, and, finally in old age, as a contented mother living in retirement with a successful son. She named each chapter accordingly, beginning with “Xiuyu cao” (Drafts After Embroidering), which consists of poems from her maidenhood; followed by “Kuiyu cao” (Drafts After Cooking), of poems from her married life; “Weiwang cao” (Drafts by the One Who Has Not Died), of poems from her widowhood; and finally “Jiuyang cao” (Drafts by One Who Lives in Retirement with Her Son), of poems written while she lived with her younger son after he had passed the jinshi examination and obtained official appointment as a magistrate. Each chapter title is meant to capture the most significant womanly “occupation” or status for each phase: embroidering is a young girl’s work and training in feminine skills, food preparation in daily life and on ritual occasions is the duty of a married woman, the widow is the “one who has not died” (after the death of her husband), and living in retirement with one’s son is a woman’s fulfillment in old age. As the autobiographical record of her everyday and emotional life over time, this edited collection of over 1,000 poems bears witness to the vital role that writing played throughout the various stages of one woman’s life.

The first poem in Gan Lirou’s collection is a pentasyllabic quatrain, “On the Full Moon.” Written at age six, it was a poetic exercise prompted and then probably corrected and improved by her parents and elder siblings, a piece the poet treasured and preserved as the opening poem in her collection:

C17.7

On the Full Moon: Written at Age Six

Who sent Wu Gang’s axe
Clearly to chop it exactly round?
How come not long after it’s been full
Again a crescent forms where it has waned?

[YXLG 1.1a]

The moon, a ubiquitous trope in the poetic tradition, recurs throughout Gan Lirou’s entire collection, varying in its many emotional and cultural valences in the context of her life course. Here, in the first preserved effort by Gan Lirou, a child’s curiosity about the waxing and waning of the moon is animated by reference to the legend of the mythical figure Wu Gang cutting away at the 5,000-foot osmanthus tree on the moon.²⁹

Gan Lirou’s happy childhood and adolescence were soon devastated by a series of successive deaths in the family. First an elder brother died away from home, then her only sister, followed by her mother when Gan Lirou was eighteen. She wrote many poems mourning the loss of companionship and sisterly intimacy and of maternal guidance and counsel in her journey through life. “Weeping for Elder Sister” is inscribed with memories of embroidering and writing poetry together with her sister—two activities young ladies of elite households often performed together:

C17.8

Weeping for Elder Sister

In the clear night I still remember when we chatted quietly.
2 When you were alive, I feared we would part, with little chance to be
together.
In our inner chambers, how could we know we’d be separated by death?
4 In my heart, I could only pine for your visits home.
Sisters linking verses were like the best of friends,
6 I followed my companion, at dawn or dusk we embroidered together.
Now in front of the mirror I am startled to see myself standing alone,
8 Why must I see a pair of swallows fluttering by the curtains?

[YXLG 1.20a]

Gan Lirou had feared only that she and her sister would be separated during their lives by marriage, when they would leave their natal home for their husbands’ families. This makes the untimely and eternal parting by death all the more poignant. After recalling their companionship as young girls in the inner quarters, the poem ends with the speaker gazing at her image in front of the mirror alone, without her sister. The image of paired swallows, conventionally signifying lovers, is used as a foil for the speaker’s loss of her companion.

After the three-year mourning period for her mother, Gan Lirou was married to Xu Yuelü, in a match her parents had made. Uncharacteristically for a young woman, Gan Lirou composed her own version of “Hastening the Bride’s Toilet,” a celebratory verse usually written by guests as the bride is fetched from her home. Herself the bride about to be fetched, she used this wedding poem to record her experience of this important rite of passage. As she puts on her bridal gown and headdress, she laments that her mother is no longer alive to perform the custom of tying the sash for her:³⁰

C17.9

Hastening the Bride’s Toilet

Pearl headdress and patterned robe suddenly put on my body,
In marrying, I take leave of my family and part from those I love.
The way of the daughter comes to an end, that of the wife begins,
But there is no mother to tie my sash with her own hands.

[YXLG 1.35a]

For ten years, Gan Lirou enjoyed a companionate marriage. She gave birth to two sons and two daughters. She not only was a capable and supportive wife but also served her parents-in-law in exemplary fashion and kept in touch with her father and younger brother by letters and epistolary poems. When her husband was home, the two of them also composed many linked verse together. The pentasyllabic regulated poem “Night in the Boudoir,” one of many such joint efforts by the young couple, demonstrates the romantic and poetic compatibility between them.

C17.10

Night in the Boudoir

Your lovely sentiments transmitted in ink,
2 My good friend excels in poems and songs. (Baihuang)
Fragrant tunes rise from the zithers,
4 The tinkling gems enhance the jadelike beauty. (Ruyu)
As the temple bell sounds amid hushed bamboos,
6 The moon’s reflection rises late on the curtain. (Baihuang)
You want to put all your efforts into the vocation of a thousand years,
8 Deep in the night, not yet gone to bed. (Ruyu)

[YXLG2.34b-35a]

Alternately composing couplets for the same poem, husband and wife shared many conjugal moments and signed their courtesy names (Baihuang and Ruyu, respectively) to the couplets they each composed. Her husband initiates the poem by demonstrating his appreciation of his wife’s expression of love in skillful poetic composition. Gan Lirou’s first response emphasizes their conjugal harmony and mutual pleasures by using a standard image for husband and wife, the two types of zither—qin and se. The synesthesia of the visual, aural, and olfactory senses in the line “Fragrant tunes rise from the zithers” conveys the quality of and harmony in their relationship. While her husband continues in the next couplet to bring out the nocturnal universe that is exclusively theirs, Gan Lirou ends the poem by reference to the familiar theme of their mutual dedication to his studies for the examination late into the night. This is also the valued time of their being in each other’s exclusive company after the children and elders have gone to bed.

Tragically, her husband died in his thirties while studying away from home, and Gan Lirou was left a widow to bring up her small children and care for her mother-in-law. During the three-year mourning period, she wrote many poems grieving for her husband. Many of these poems make explicit the contrast between their happiness together in the past and her solitude in the present. Cast in the emotionally expressive sao style (chap. 2), “Expressing My Feelings” melds the external desolation of a funeral wake with the young widow’s passionate grief:

C17.11

It is dusk, the room is empty, and the young widow is emotionally devastated while keeping wake by her husband’s spirit tablet with the small children. Her agitated emotional state is indicated by her movement of going out from the inside to the courtyard and then back again. In the final line, Gan Lirou alludes to the poem “The Cock Crows” in the Book of Poetry, which was interpreted as referring to a virtuous royal consort who woke up the ruler for his court audience when she heard the cock crowing at dawn.³¹ The poem has become a standard reference for a virtuous wife who attends to her husband’s affairs. The allusion emphasizes that her deceased husband can no longer heed her counsel. Her longing for him can be sought only in dreams.

After the travails of a long widowhood, Gan Lirou was finally vindicated by her younger son’s success in passing the highest examination and obtaining an official position. With all her duties fulfilled, Gan Lirou felt she had come to terms with herself. Her poems from this period reveal that she had begun to enjoy a leisurely life in old age, finding pleasure in nature’s delights, creativity in practicing the literati arts, and peace in spiritual contemplation.

C17.12

Recited at Random

In leisure, I roll out a scroll and open the window,
2 A painting in hand, I face the twilight in the breeze.
The world seems small when one takes a broad view,
4 Looking back, one recognizes the mistakes of the past and present.
Only when I practice meditation do I realize an undefiled mind,
6 Only when I copy sutras do I know there’s a crucial point in the brush.
When the myriad sounds quiet down thoughts become tranquil,
8 The moon moves pure shadows onto the screen.

[YXLG 4.27a]

The persona in “Recited at Random” expresses a philosophical attitude toward life. One’s perspectives change, depending on how one looks at phenomena. In the everyday life of old age, Buddhist practices help one to recognize worldly mistakes and purify the mind. Gan Lirou turned to spiritual practice as she grew old.

Poetry and the Pleasures of Everyday Life

Poetry as a cultural force indeed pervaded the quotidian life of literate women and men in the Ming and Qing. This is amply reflected in the large repertory of poems on the pleasures of everyday life we find in poetry collections from this period, which offer an uplifting contrast to the poems recording experiences of violence and disorder examined previously. This chapter concludes, then, with two poems by women at different ends of the life course that afford some insight into this ubiquitous dimension of Chinese poetic discourse.

C17.13

On a Summer Day: Dwelling in the Mountains

The hills are quiet, just right for hot weather,
2 Wind through the pines enters into clear dreams.
Rain colors fly across precipitous cliffs,
4 On ancient trees sob the sound of cicadas.
Stitching embroidery has been my lesson in recent years,
6 Watching clouds—sentiments beyond phenomena.
If one does not know that the dusty world is faraway,
8 In vain one will try to prove No Rebirth.

[GGZJ 1.20b]

Judged from the aesthetics of poetic craft, the pentasyllabic regulated poem “On a Summer Day: Dwelling in the Mountains,” by the young Yan Liu (seventeenth or eighteenth century), is obviously inspired by and modeled after the Buddhist-inflected “nature” poems of the Tang poet Wang Wei (701-761), but one that also embodies gendered experience. Yan Liu is learning to embroider and to write poetry, requisite skills of cultured young women of gentry families in this period. On the formal level, traces of literary practice are apparent. The poem has the required rhymes and tonal antithesis; the prescribed parallelism of the second and third couplets is largely met on the syntactic but not quite on the semantic and grammatical levels. She borrows freely from the well-known vocabulary and syntax of Wang Wei’s famous regulated verses: the sound of “wind through the pines,” “watching clouds,” “beyond phenomena,” and the verb ye (sob, choke), including inverting its syntactic position with the subject “sound of cicadas” in line 4. But the one thing that is new in this poem is the motif of embroidering and its seemingly natural place in a woman’s everyday life, which encompasses seamlessly the enjoyment of nature, the art of poetry, women’s work, and spiritual contemplation.

Similarly, in “Recited While Sick,” the Manchu woman Mengyue, a widow for most of her life, fully exploits the attributes of femininity conventionally associated with women’s illness and the spatial location of the inner quarters in her self-representation:³²

C17.14

Recited While Sick

Not aware that my fingers have turned slim, I find the dust heavy,
2 Surprised by the robe’s length, I didn’t realize that my shoulders had grown thin.
With empty mind, I quietly chew over the flavor of the Odes and History,
4 In the silent room, I frequently smell the fragrance of ink.
Since ancient times the zither strings have emitted unusual sounds,
6 So many wild phrases when I put the brush to write pure poetry.
From the flavor experienced in illness I attain true inspiration,
8 I savor slowly the hidden leisure beyond things.

[GGZX5.17a]

The effect of the emphasis on the femininity of illness in the opening couplet does not result in the image of a fragile beauty languishing in sorrow. Instead, the persona turns to “chew over” the meaning of the Book of Poetry and Classic of History, with a mind free from mundane cares in a quiet environment. Her mind/ intellect is rendered sensually as taste: she “chews” the classics, is inspired by the “flavor” of illness, and “savors . . . hidden leisure.” Her intellectual discernment rendered through the metaphor of taste almost fuses with her sense of smell and motion when she writes uninhibited poems with the fragrant ink. She claims that these “wild” lines of poetry are akin to extraordinary music on the ancient instrument, and concludes that it is through illness that she has reached “inspiration” and spiritual transcendence—the “hidden leisure beyond things.” This attitude takes her beyond a mundane experience of illness to a spiritual dimension in everyday existence. Such is the transformative power of poetry.

Grace S. Fong

NOTES

1 A comprehensive catalog is Hu Wenkai, Lidai funü zhuzuo kao (Women’s Writings Through the Ages) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985). For the database and digitized texts of ninety-six collections, see Ming-Qing Women’s Writings: A Joint Digitization Project Between McGill University and Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University (http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/mingqing).

2 The compilation of Ming shi poetry was begun in 1990: Quan Ming shi (Complete Shi Poetry of the Ming), 3 vols. to date (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990-).

3 Dorothy Ko discusses the publishing boom in this period and its effects on the reading public in her seminal work Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 29-53.

4 There is by now a substantial body of scholarship on women’s literary culture in the Ming and Qing. For an up-to-date bibliography, see Wilt Idema and Beata Grant, The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004).

5 For an overview of the major figures and their theories, see Zhang Jian, Ming Qing wenxue piping (Ming-Qing Literary Criticism) (Taipei: Guojia chubanshe, 1983), and James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).

6 Due to limitations of length, this chapter does not include poetry written by men and women during the increasing social and political instabilities caused by internal rebellions and European incursions in the nineteenth century, which augmented the tradition of poetic witnessing and personal recording.

7 On Li Mengyang’s poetic theory and practice, see Yoshikawa Kōjirō, Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 1150-1650: The Chin, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties, trans. John Timothy Wixted (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 140-149.

8 Charles Egan discusses a frontier poem, “Following the Army” (C10.11), in chapter 10.

9 Guo Qingfan, ed., “Xiaoyao you” (Free and Easy Wandering), in Zhuangzi jishi (Zhuangzi, with Collected Commentaries ) (Taipei: Qunyutang chuban gongsi, 1991), 1:6, n. 3.

10 Yuan Hongdao made this statement in describing his younger brother Zhongdao’s poetry, in “Xu Xiaoxiu shi” (Preface to Xiaoxiu’s Poetry), in Yuan Hongdao ji jianjiao (The Works of Yuan Hongdao, with Annotations and Collations) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1981), 1:184.

11 Zhu Yizun, Jingzhiju shihua (Remarks on Poetry from the Dwelling of Quiet Intent) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1998), 2:478-479.

12 Yuan Mei quanji (The Complete Works of Yuan Mei), ed. Wang Yingzhi (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1993), 1:4.

13 Anne M. Birrell, “Anti-War Ballads and Songs,” in Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 116-127.

14 See examples in the comprehensive anthology of yuefu poetry compiled by Guo Maoqian in the Song: Yuefu shiji, 4 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979). Joseph Allen focuses on the intra-textuality of the yuefu in In the Voice of Others: Chinese Music Bureau Poetry (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1992).

15 Wei Zhuang, “The Lament of the Lady of Ch’in,” trans. Robin D. S. Yates, in Sunf lower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry, ed. Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 267-281.

16 For a translation and discussion of authorship, see Hans Frankel, “Cai Yan and the Poems Attributed to Her,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 5, no. 2 (1983): 133-156.

17 The most comprehensive study of Du Fu’s life through his poetry is William Hung, Tu Fu: China’s Greatest Poet (New York: Russell and Russell, 1969).

18 On Li Yu’s drama, fiction, and prose writings, see Patrick Hanan, The Invention of Li Yu (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).

19 The meaning of this couplet is ambiguous. Li Yu seems to be suggesting that he now understands that those who are humane do not have the heart to record the violence and cruelty of war in exhaustive, graphic details.

20 Hanyu da cidian (Great Dictionary of the Chinese Language), 1.1266B.

21 Hanyu da cidian, 3.138A.

22 For the Manchu troop movements and Ming loyalist resistance, see Lynn Struve, The Southern Ming, 1644-1662 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984), 75.

23 The more cohesive local resistance movement in Shaoxing was able to drive out the Qing occupation swiftly, and the Ming restoration movement established the prince of Lu as regent in Shaoxing a month or two later. Thus began the Longwu reign (1645-1646) (Struve, Southern Ming, 76).

24 Stephen Owen, “The Self’s Perfect Mirror: Poetry as Autobiography,” in The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late Han to the T’ang, ed. Shuen-fu Lin and Stephen Owen (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 71-102.

25 Maija Bell Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice: The Abandoned Woman in Early Chinese Song Lyrics (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004), 98.

26 Owen, “Self’s Perfect Mirror,” 73.

27 Gan Lirou’s autobiographical poetry writing is discussed in Grace S. Fong, Herself an Author: Gender, Writing, and Agency in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008), chap. 1.

28 For comparison with a male poet’s self-narrative in his poetry collection, see Grace S. Fong, “Inscribing a Sense of Self in Mother’s Family: Hong Liangji’s (1746-1809) Memoir and Poetry of Remembrance,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 27 (2005): 33-58. The autobiographical impulse is also strongly articulated in women’s suicide poems and their accompanying autobiographical prefaces, as discussed in Grace S. Fong, “Signifying Bodies: The Cultural Significance of Suicide Writings by Women in Ming-Qing China,” Nan Nü: Men, Women, and Gender in Early and Imperial China 3, no. 1 (2001): 105-142.

29 On the legend of Wu Gang and the moon, see Duan Chengshi (d. 863), Youyang zazu (Miscellanea from Youyang) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), 9.

30 This ritual is mentioned in “Dong shan” (Mao no. 156): “A girl is going to be married . . . / Her mother has tied the strings of her girdle” (Arthur Waley, trans., The Book of Songs [New York: Grove Press, 1978], 117).

31 “The Cock Crows” (Mao no. 96), in James Legge, trans., The Chinese Classics, vol. 4, The She King (Taipei: Wenshizhe chubanshe, 1971), 52, 150-151.

32 It is noteworthy that the Manchus, both men and women, eagerly participated in the Han Chinese culture of poetry after the conquest.

RETHINKING JUFA: TOWARD AN INTEGRATION OF RHYTHM AND SYNTAX

Rhythm and syntax are two principal issues in the study of line configuration in Chinese poetry. Rhythm primarily concerns the oral-aural dimension and syntax primarily the spatiotemporal-logical dimension in the ordering of words.

In studying line configuration, traditional Chinese scholars were preoccupied with rhythm to the neglect of syntax. Six Dynasties critics like Zhi Yu (d. 211) and Liu Xie (ca. 465-ca. 522) recognized that major genres and subgenres each have their distinctive line types. Some employ lines of fixed length (trisyllabic, tetrasyllabic, pentasyllabic, heptasyllabic, and so on), and others feature lines of irregular length. These two broad categories of poetry have been labeled qiyan shi (poetry of equal-character lines) and zayan shi (poetry of variable-character lines), respectively. These critics also held that this rich variety of line types resulted from efforts to accord poetic speech with different external musical rhythms.³ Beginning from the Song dynasty, critics became aware of internal line rhythm that arises from a fixed pattern of mandatory pauses between monosyllabic words and disyllabic words. This internal rhythm is semantic in the sense that it predetermines how characters are to be clustered to generate meaning. Consequently, it not only intensifies our experience of the sound but also contributes to the sense of poetry. A clear recognition of this crucial semantic importance did not occur until Qing times, when Liu Xizai and others began to explore the aesthetic implications of various shi rhythms.

The neglect of syntax by Chinese critics has much to do with the Chinese language itself. As a notion originating in Western linguistics, syntax denotes the spatiotemporal-logical grid in which words are arranged. Chinese is a noninflectional language, and its words are not cast into a fixed spatiotemporal-logical relationship by tense, voice, and other inflectional tags. Syntactic linkage is effected by a well-ordered, readily discernible semantic rhythm, with or without grammatical function words (xuzi). This semantic rhythm normally gives the reader ample useful hints on how to cluster words to form a meaningful sentence. Hence Chinese philology has no notion of syntax as a prescriptive spatiotemporal-logical grid of words. So it is only natural that traditional Chinese scholars would not seek to probe the inner workings of poetic vision through syntactic analysis.

The neglect of syntactic analysis is highly regrettable. Poetic vision is an intense mental experience induced by words and images cast in an extraordinary order. An examination of poetic syntax, therefore, is crucial to any attempt to illuminate the inner workings of poetic vision. Since the publication of Ma Jianzhong’s (1845- 1900) Ma shi wen tong (Mr. Ma’s Grammar) in 1898, Chinese linguists have worked assiduously to construct a syntax-based Chinese grammar. Thanks to their endeavors, we now have a good enough knowledge of Chinese syntax for investigating the linguistic foundation for ineffable poetic vision. Here, by integrating the traditional jufa studies with modern syntactic analysis, I shall outline the evolution of Chinese poetic rhythms and syntax and assess their efficacy in evoking poetic visions.⁴

TWO BASIC SYNTACTIC CONSTRUCTIONS: SUBJECT + PREDICATE AND TOPIC + COMMENT

In common as well as poetic speech, Chinese words are organized into sentences according to two competing yet complementary principles: spatiotemporal-logical and analogical-associational.

If organized according to the first principle, words exhibit a partial or complete subject + predicate construction. The subject + predicate construction consists of an agent (subject) and the agent’s state or action (predicate) that may or may not involve a recipient (object). A complete subject + predicate construction enacts or implies a temporal-causal sequence from an agent to its action and to the action’s recipient. In English and other Western languages, this construction is the primary framework for both poetic and common speech. But in Chinese, this construction is far less important or pervasive than in English. In poetry in particular, it is merely one—sometimes the lesser—of the two ways that words are organized.

It should be noted that a typical Chinese subject + predicate construction is far less restrictive than its English counterpart. Neither subject nor predicate is fixed in time and space, as they are in Western languages by inflectional tags for tense, case, number, gender, and other aspects. Thus the reader has to contextualize, with or without the aid of grammatical function words. This process of contextualization compels the Chinese reader to intensely engage with depicted realities and feel as though they were really unfolding right before his eyes. This rich poetic potential of Chinese subject + predicate construction, made possible by the absence of inflection, has not gone unnoticed by Western critics. It was singled out by two prominent American critics, Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908) and Ezra Pound (1885-1972), to support their assertions about the superiority of Chinese as a medium for poetry.⁵

The other syntactic construction is called topic + comment by scholars of Chinese language.⁶ Instead of an active agent responsible for an action or a condition, the “topic” refers to an object, a scene, or an event “passively” being observed. The “comment” refers to an implied observer’s response to the topic. As a rule, the response tells us more about the observer’s state of mind than about the topic. The absence of a predicative verb between the topic and the comment aptly underscores their relationship as noncontiguous and noncausal. The noncontiguous topic and comment are yoked together by the implied observer through analogy or association, in a moment of intense observation. The result is quite different from that of a temporal cognitive process. Topic + comment tends to reactivate the vortex of images and feelings, previously experienced by the observer, in the mind of the reader. Given its extraordinary evocative power, it is no surprise that this construction has been preferred for lyrical expression since the time of the Shijing (The Book of Poetry).

THE EVOLUTION OF CHINESE POETIC RHYTHMS AND SYNTAX

As shown in the preceding seventeen chapters, the birth of each major poetic genre or subgenre was marked by the formation of one or more distinctive semantic rhythms. The emergence of new semantic rhythms, in turn, led to a reconfiguration of both subject + predicate and topic + comment constructions. What follows is a brief outline of the most important reconfigurations of these two constructions over the millennia.

Tetrasyllabic Shi Poetry

We begin with the semantic rhythm and syntactic constructions of early tetrasyllabic shi poetry. As shown in chapter 1, the Book of Poetry is made up largely of poems composed in tetrasyllabic lines. A tetrasyllabic line almost uniformly consists of two disyllabic segments. So 2 + 2 becomes the distinctive semantic rhythm of tetrasyllabic shi poetry. Depending on the words chosen, this 2 + 2 rhythm enacts either a subject + predicate or a topic + comment construction:

In this stanza from “The Peach Tree Tender” (C1.2), lines 3 and 4 each constitute a subject + predicate construction. Line 3 introduces a complete declarative statement (“This girl is going to be married”) and line 4 a truncated one, with the subject omitted (“fit for her chamber and house”). Lines 1 and 2 each introduce a topic + comment construction. In line 1, the “peach tree” marks the topic of attention, while “yaoyao,” a reduplicative (lianmian zi), constitutes the comment on the peach tree by the perceiver. Line 2 displays the same structure even though the comment (zhuozhuo) is placed before the topic (peach flowers).

Lines 1 and 2 exhibit the distinctive features of the originative topic + comment construction in the Book of Poetry. It typically yokes together two disparate segments—an external object and an inward response—without any connective. It is also marked by a prodigious use of reduplicatives as the comment. While English reduplicatives are usually onomatopoeic (for example, “hush-hush” and “ticktock”) and sometimes conceptual as well (for example, “hanky-panky” and “helter-skelter”), reduplicatives in the Book of Poetry primarily express a perceiver’s emotional response to external phenomena by translating it into alliterative and rhyming sounds untainted by conceptualization. This emotive use of reduplicatives has had a lasting impact on Chinese poetry.

Sao Poetry

The Chuci (Lyrics of Chu) furnishes us with the first instance of a significant remolding of the topic + comment construction. The basic rhythm of early Chuci works is 3 + 2. As shown in the following excerpt, the initial trisyllabic segment is made up of a monosyllabic word and a binome and entails a minor pause (as indicated by ◦). Thus the semantic rhythm may be detailed as (1 + 2 or 2 + 1) + 2. The total number of 5, however, should not be confused with the actual character count of a line. A line of an early Chuci work contains one pause-indicating character, xi, placed in the middle (after the third word). This 3 + 2 rhythm gives rise, in most cases, to a topic + comment construction:

These opening lines of “The Lord of the Xiang River” (C2.1) are clearly topic + comment, with the trisyllabic segment as the topic and the disyllabic segment as the comment. Although line 4 seems like subject + predicate, it should also be taken as topic + comment. The long pause created by xi makes the “cassia boat” more an afterthought than the object of the verb “ride.” A comparison of these topic + comment constructions with those in the Book of Poetry reveals two important changes, which ironically seem to weaken the evocative power of the topic + comment.

The first change is the addition of an extra character to the topic. This extra character creates an imbalance between topic and comment. In all these lines, the topic expands from a simple object (as in the Book of Poetry) to a self-contained syntactic construction: a mini subject + predicate in lines l and 2 (“The lord would not come”; “Oh for whom are you lingering?”), a mini topic + comment in line 3 (“You, lovely” [yao miao, an assonant reduplicative]), and again a mini subject + predicate in line 4 (“Quickly I ride”). This expansion makes the trisyllabic segment a site of concentrated emotional expression in and of itself.

The second change is the insertion of the pause indicator xi between the topic and the comment. This pause provides a sense of closure to the topic and, in effect, reduces the ensuing comment to an afterthought. The weakening of the comment is also reflected in its shift from emotional response to pure supplemental information, as shown in line 2 (“middle isle”). As a weakened comment or simply an appendage, the disyllabic segment of a typical early Chuci line can often be omitted without impairing a line’s meaning. In “The Lord of the Xiang River,” for instance, all the lines would still be perfectly coherent without the disyllabic segments. In terms of aesthetic effect, however, these disyllabic segments are indispensable because they help to create the quick and powerful rhythm of a shaman chant and dance and amplify emotional expression.

In later Chuci works, represented by “On Encountering Trouble” (C2.3), the pause indicator xi is repositioned, as shown in the following excerpt, to the end of the first line of a couplet. This may seem an insignificant move, but it actually brings about a profound change in both rhythm and syntax.

Having from birth this inward beauty,
10 I added to it fair outward adornment:
I dressed in selinea and shady angelica,
And twined autumn orchids to make a garland.
Swiftly I sped as in fearful pursuit,
Afraid that time would race on and leave me behind.
15 In the morning I gathered the angelica on the mountains,
In the evening I plucked the sedges of the islets.
The days and months hurried on, never delaying,
Springs and autumns sped by in endless alternation.
I thought how the trees and flowers were fading and falling,
20 And feared that my Fairest’s beauty would fade too.

[CCBZ, 3-47]

As shown in the word-for-word translation, the pause indicator xi has yielded the middle position to a connective—yi (to, in order to), yu (and), zhi (of), qi (a word linking subject and predicate), yu (in), and so on. This creates a new rhythm, 3 + 1 + 2, and makes the lines genuinely hexasyllabic. This new rhythm is slower and less powerful than that of early Chuci works and seems to reflect a shift from shamanistic performance to a narrative-descriptive presentation.

The substitution of syntactic connectives for xi brings about a dramatic change of syntax. As noted earlier, xi produces a long pause and effectively breaks a line into two distinct parts (a trisyllabic topic and a disyllabic comment). By contrast, these syntactic connectives combine the trisyllabic and disyllabic segments into one uninterrupted line. If a xi-separated line is by default a topic + comment construction, such a connective-linked line is almost invariably a subject + predicate construction. A notable exception is where an extended noun phrase takes up an entire line (line 1).

The syntactic role of the disyllabic segment is determined by the connective that precedes it. As shown in the excerpt, the connective zhi, roughly equivalent to “ ’s” in English, introduces the disyllabic segment as the object of a transitive verb (lines 15-16 and 19-20). The connective qi normally introduces the disyllabic segment as the main verb while making the preceding trisyllabic segment the subject (lines 17-18). The connective yi, equivalent to “in order to” in English, almost always introduces an auxiliary clause of purpose (lines 10 and 12). The list of connectives used in Chuci lines is quite short, and they tend to recur very frequently in a long poem like “On Encountering Trouble.” While these connectives each help to form a particular kind of subject + predicate, they share one feature: they produce strictly linear one-directional sentences and do not allow an inversion of the subject + predicate order. This undoubtedly contributes to the building of a forward momentum highly desirable for an extended narration or description. It is perhaps for this reason that these sao-style lines are heavily used not only in the Chuci but also in the fu poetry of later times.

Fu Poetry

The fu genre features two dominant rhythms, 2 + 2 and 3 + 1 + 2, inherited from the Book of Poetry and Lyrics of Chu, respectively. The preponderance of these two rhythms in the Han fu corpus should not surprise us, as the rise of the fu genre has been widely attributed to the influence of those two ancient collections. Some fu works, like “Fu on the Imperial Park” (C3.1), by Sima Xiangru (179-117 B.C.E.), extensively use the 2 + 2 Shijing rhythm along with a secondary Chuci rhythm of 3 + 1 + 2. Other Han fu works feature a parallel use of these two rhythms. These poems seem entitled to the appellation of “four and six” given to “parallel prose” (pianwen), a prose characterized by alternating tetrasyllabic and hexasyllabic lines. In fact, they are often called parallel fu because of their likeness to parallel prose. There is nothing particularly innovative about Han fu writers’ employment of the 2 + 2 and 3 + 1 + 2 rhythms. A noteworthy change is the tendency to use a long succession of 2 + 2 lines to enumerate objects and things and then depict their conditions or actions. In “Fu on the Imperial Park,” for instance, we see again and again an exuberant catalog of splendid objects and things (lines 96-100, 202-208, and so on), followed by an equally exhaustive description of their appearance and motions (lines 101-107, 209-218, and so on).

Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry

Pentasyllabic shi poetry ushers in a 2 + 3 rhythm seldom consciously employed before the Later Han. Once firmly established, this new rhythm quickly gained popularity and became the core rhythm for all major shi subgenres developed since the Later Han. Having already given a technical analysis of this rhythm in chapter 5, I shall examine here how it enabled Six Dynasties and Tang poets to remold both subject + predicate and topic + comment constructions. Let us begin with a famous couplet from “Climbing the Lakeside Tower” (C6.7), by Xie Lingyun (385-433):

The 2 + 3 rhythm of this couplet may seem at first sight an insignificant reversal of the 3 + 2 Chuci rhythm. In reality, the significance of this transposition cannot be overstated. After the middle-positioned xi (or any other connective) is eliminated and the trisyllabic segment swaps position with the disyllabic segment, the top-heavy imbalance of the 3 + 2 Chuci rhythm is corrected. What arises is a balanced, dynamic rhythm of 2 + 1 + 2 or, alternatively, 2 + 2 + 1. In this new rhythm, the odd 1 is no longer confined to the trisyllabic segment (as in the Chuci 3 + 2 line) and, in fact, becomes the pivot for the entire line, engaging its two segments in a dynamic interplay.

The rhythm of Xie Lingyun’s couplet is 2 + 1 + 2. The initial 2 and ending 2 are noun binomes in both lines, and the odd 1 is a verb in both. Seeing this succession of noun + verb + noun, we, conditioned by our habitual manner of reading, almost automatically read the couplet as subject + predicate with two direct objects: “Pond banks giving birth to spring grass, / Garden willows change into the singing birds.” Our sense of logic, however, immediately makes us realize that the two verbs depict the poet’s imaginative perception rather than real phenomena of nature.

This leads us to see a genuine topic + comment construction underlying what we may call a pseudo subject + predicate. “Pond banks” and “spring grass,” and “garden willows” and “singing birds” are the twin topics. The verbs, “grow” and “change,” placed between them are the comments. The two comments reveal the poet’s perceptual illusion resulting from a dramatic condensation of time in his reverie-like perception. Condensing months of gradual seasonal changes (the grass’s growth and the birds’ return) into a startling moment of change, Xie Lingyun entertains the illusion of the pond banks giving birth to green grass and the garden willows changing into singing birds. As we reexperience Xie Lingyun’s imaginative transformation of physical realities, we cannot but share the poet’s sense of delight and wonder at the sudden advent of spring. Moreover, this montage of disparate images—barren pond banks with green grass, (implied) leafless willow gardens with singing birds—brings forth a cosmic vision, one characterized by perpetual growth and change. Indeed, the comments “grow” and “change” are none other than the twin cardinal cosmic principles expounded in the Book of Changes: “To grow and grow is called the Changes” and “[The alternation of] one yin and one yang is called the Dao.”⁷

Xie Lingyun’s construction of this famous couplet presages how Tang poets, especially the High Tang masters, would exploit the expressive potential of the 2 + 3 rhythm in pentasyllabic poetry. Like Xie Lingyun, they would spare no effort to utilize syntactic ambiguities to conflate a pseudo subject + predicate and a genuine topic + comment. They focus, too, on exploiting what is often called the verse eye—an animating and often logically impossible verb that engenders, as in Xie Lingyun’s couplet, an enchanting perceptual illusion.

Tang regulated verse presents us with topic + comment constructions of varying degrees of complexity. Du Fu’s poem “The Jiang and Han Rivers” (C8.2) features a relatively simple topic + comment construction in which the topic (disyllabic segment) is a noun binome depicting a broad scene and the comment (trisyllabic segment) is a mini subject + predicate depicting the poet’s physical and emotional conditions. As I have already discussed the aesthetic effect of this construction in that poem in chapter 8, let me consider a complex twin topic + comment construction, in which both the topic and the comment are mini subject + predicate constructions:

In this famous couplet from Du Fu’s “Spring Scene” (C8.1), each line contains two subjects: an implied subject (who “feels time” and “hates separation”) in the initial disyllabic segment and an explicit nonhuman subject (that “sheds tears” and “startles heart”) in the ensuing trisyllabic segment. As I have explained in chapter 8, the omission of the first subject gives rise to a syntactic ambiguity that allows for four different readings of the couplet (see pp. 165-167). This couplet also invites a fifth reading as a complex topic + comment:

Feeling time—flowers shed tears,
Hating separation—a bird startles the heart.

This reading is contingent on a deliberately prolonged pause (as indicated by the dashes) that breaks the spatiotemporal-logical link between the disyllabic and trisyllabic segments. When so separated, the disyllabic segments (“feeling time” and “hating separation”) become the topics being contemplated by the poet; and the trisyllabic segments (“flowers shed tears” and “a bird startles the heart”) become the poet’s comments on his own emotional state. These comments may be taken as flashes of mental images in the poet’s mind that reveal his otherwise indescribable feelings. Indeed, they enable us to reexperience the montage-like leaps of his mind during his intense self-reflection.

Heptasyllabic Shi Poetry

“Upper 4 and lower 3” (shang si xia san) is the phrase frequently used by traditional Chinese critics to characterize the rhythm of heptasyllabic poetry. In traditional Chinese writing, words are arranged vertically from top to bottom and lines from right to left on a page. So “upper 4” denotes the initial tetrasyllabic segment and “lower 3” the ensuing trisyllabic segment. Together the two segments form a 4 + 3 rhythm. To many modern critics, however, 2 + 2 + 3 is a preferable description of this rhythm because it better reveals heptasyllabic poetry’s inherent bond with, if not genesis in, pentasyllabic poetry, whose rhythm is 2 + 3. Wang Li, for example, considers a heptasyllabic line as essentially a two-character extension of a pentasyllabic line. So he classifies heptasyllabic lines into seven major types, according to the parts of speech and positioning of the two additional characters.⁸

In my view, the 4 + 3 and 2 + 2 + 3 rhythms are not one and the same, as commonly believed, but represent two distinct rhythms of heptasyllabic poetry. As I shall demonstrate in the following, they co-arise with different kinds of syntax and produce very different aesthetic effects.

The 2 + 2 + 3 rhythm consists of a core 2 + 3 rhythm plus an auxiliary 2. Of the first four characters, which two are to be considered auxiliary could sometimes be a rather arbitrary decision. Yet a simple rule seems to work well in most cases: the auxiliary 2 should be the two characters that could be taken out with the least impact on a line’s meaning. Applying this rule, we can easily identify the auxiliary 2 in each line of the following poem by Li Shangyin (813-858):

C18.1

Sui Palace

Purple Spring’s palace halls lay locked in the twilight mist;
2 He wished to make the Overgrown City a home of emperors.
The jade seal: if it had not somehow become the Sun-horn’s,
4 Brocade sails, then, would have reached heaven’s end.
To this day the rotten grass is without fireflies’ flash,
6 From antiquity lie the drooping willows, with the sunset crows.
Beneath the earth, if he would run into the Latter Lord of Chen,
8 How could it be fitting to ask about “Rear Courtyard Flowers”?

[QTS 16:539.6161; also translated and discussed under C9.6]

The auxiliary 2, as shown by the parentheses, appears at the beginning or in the middle of a line, giving rise to two distinct patterns: (2) + 2 + 3 and 2 + (2) + 3. Without the auxiliary 2, this poem would be essentially a jumble of descriptive fragments relating to the Sui emperor Yang (Yang Guang, 569-618). With the auxiliary 2, the poet manages to construct two mutually intertwined frameworks of contrast—between past and present and between reality and imagination—within which all the fragments coalesce into a whole.

Now let us see how the auxiliary 2 brings about this magical transformation. In the first couplet, the auxiliary 2 is made up of a noun and a modal phrase. In line 1, “Purple Spring,” a river in the Chang’an area, makes it clear that the palace in an abandoned state (“lay locked in the twilight mist’) is the official Sui Palace in the capital city of Chang’an. In line 2, the modal phrase “wished to make” reveals the reason for the abandoned state of that palace: Emperor Yang “wished to make the Overgrown City a home of emperors.” “Overgrown City” refers to Guangling, present-day Yangzhou on the Yangtze; “home of emperors” is a reference to the resort palace built in the Overgrown City for his excursions to the Yangtze region. Thanks to the auxiliary 2, the poet turns the otherwise objective depiction of the two palaces into an indictment against Emperor Yang. His extravagance knew no end: the grand capital palace was not enough for him, and he had others built for him far away from the capital. His abandonment of the capital palace in favor of his resort palace attested to his wanton neglect of state affairs.

In the second couplet, the auxiliary 2 features a pair of conjunctions that knit two lines into a complex subject + predicate. The first conjunction, “if . . . not [for certain reasons],” introduces a past subjunctive conditional clause: “The jade seal: if it had not somehow become the Sun-horn’s.” In traditional Chinese physiognomy, “sun-horn” denotes the hornlike protrusion on the forehead of someone who is or is destined to be an emperor. Here “Sun-horn” specifically refers to Li Shimin (Emperor Taizong of the Tang, 600-649), who overthrew the Sui and founded the Tang dynasty. The second conjunction, “ought to be,” helps to construct a past subjunctive result clause: “Brocade sails, then, would have reached heaven’s end.” “Brocade sails” refers to the huge pleasure boat used by Emperor Yang in his excursions to the Yangtze region. While the conditional clause tells of Emperor Yang’s dethronement by Li Shimin, the result clause reveals its cause—his inordinate pursuit of pleasure. This complex subject + predicate also invites a different reading, with Emperor Yang as the speaker. In that case, we would imagine that in the underworld (anticipating the last couplet) Emperor Yang was ruefully saying that if he had not lost his empire to Li Shimin, his pleasure boat would have reached to heaven’s end. Whether read in the voice of the poet or that of Emperor Yang, these two lines unmistakably deliver a scathing mockery of the debauchery and extreme folly of this dethroned emperor.

In the third couplet, the auxiliary 2 rounds out the subject + predicate by supplying adverbials of time. The two adverbials are intended to link past and present. In line 5, “to this day” links the present dearth of fireflies to a tale of the past: Emperor Yang ordered that all fireflies be caught to light lanterns for his nighttime pleasure trips. Conversely, “from antiquity” in line 6 traces the present sight of old willow trees back to the time when they were planted along the Grand Canal by order of Emperor Yang. It also reminds us of the story that Emperor Yang renamed his favorite tree, willow, as “Yang willow” after his own surname. What now remains of these once-glorious trees are inauspicious crows perched in them. Thanks to the two adverbials, this couplet yields a double vision of present desolation (old trees, crows, and sunset) and bygone imperial extravagance (nighttime excursion and pleasure boats on the willow-flanked canal). By juxtaposing these two worlds, the poet amplifies his mockery of the emperor’s foolish, self-destructive pursuit of pleasure.

In the last couplet, the auxiliary 2 once again combines two lines into a complex subject + predicate. In line 7, “if he would run into” ushers in yet another subjunctive clause, “Beneath the earth, if he would run into the Latter Lord Chen,” while “how could it be fitting” turns line 8 into a rhetorical question. This subjunctive clause, like that in the second couplet, leads us into the realm of imagination. The imagined meeting between the two emperors is an ingenious play of irony. Lord Chen, notorious for his debauchery, was the last emperor of the Chen dynasty. The new companion he might meet in the underworld is none other than Emperor Yang, who defeated and overthrew his empire. Here the reader may fancy seeing Lord Chen gleefully saying to himself upon this meeting: “My conqueror now lost his empire for exactly the same sins that had led to my own downfall.” This play of irony continues in the next line: “How could it be fitting to ask about ‘Rear Courtyard Flowers’?” “Rear Courtyard Flowers,” a song composed by Lord Chen, is a well-established symbol for extravagance and debauchery. By raising this rhetorical question, the poet means to say that Emperor Yang, upon meeting Lord Chen, would nonetheless consult him on matters of corporeal gratification. This, then, shows that Emperor Yang was totally oblivious to the irony of his fate and completely beyond repentance. Even though in life he could not sail his pleasure boat to “heaven’s end,” he was obviously determined to do so in the underworld. With this poignant rhetorical question, the poet brings his ridicule of Emperor Yang to a climax.

Our reading of “Sui Palace” shows that the auxiliary 2 is anything but auxiliary as far as the entire poem is concerned. Although it is ancillary to the literal sense of an individual line, the auxiliary 2 is of pivotal importance in the construction of complex subject + predicate sentences in the poem. Without the help of these sentences, Li Shangyin could not have moved so smoothly between past and present, between reality and fiction, and, in the process, blended narration and commentary into an enchanting vision of history.

In my view, the other heptasyllabic rhythm, 4 + 3, should be reserved solely for describing lines in which the tetrasyllabic segment is self-cohesive and detachable from the trisyllabic segment. This line configuration strikes us as an expanded version of the 3 (+ xi) + 2 lines of early Chuci works. Indeed, it, too, produces a top-heavy dynamic in both sound and sense. The combination of two self-cohesive segments necessitates a relatively longer pause in between than the one that exists between 2 + 2 and 3. Certainly this pause is not as long as that created by the pause indicator xi in a Chuci line. Yet it seems sufficient to produce a similar impact on the syntax: breaking the line into an initial main and an ensuing supplementary part. The following poem, composed almost entirely of 4 + 3 lines, displays this bipartite syntax:

C18.2

Crossing the Sea of Loneliness

All the hardships I’ve encountered—they began with one classic;
2 Shields and dagger-axes have grown few and far between—four cycles of stars.
Rivers and mountains are shattered—bits of fluff blown in the wind;
4 My life drifts and swirls—patches of duckweed beaten by the rain.
Along the Bank of Fears I told of fears,
6 On the Sea of Loneliness I sighed over loneliness.
Whose life, ever since antiquity, is without death?
8 Let my loyal heart shine on the bamboo tablets!

[QSS 68:3598.43025]

This poem was written by Wen Tianxiang (1236-1283), a Song loyalist who bravely fought against the Mongols and died a martyr’s death. The poem begins with an unusual series of four topic + comment lines. As shown by the dashes, the two parts of lines 1-4 are not spatiotemporally or logically linked and must be understood in terms of topics and comments. Moving down the tetrasyllabic column, we see the changing topics of the poet’s deepening reflection: his career path, his recent military action, the country’s present condition, and his present condition. As the topics move from past to present, the poet’s comments (the trisyllabic column) become more and more emotionally charged. The first comment, “they began with one classic,” is largely explanatory. It tells us that his career began with his study of the Confucian classics. The other three comments enact a montage-like leap to a concrete image. In line 2, “four cycles of stars” primarily denotes the span of four years during which Wen Tianxiang ceaselessly waged battles against the Mongols despite the vanishing of military resistance across the country. It also carries a spatial connotation—the starlit sky above the deserted battlegrounds. In line 3, “bits of fluff blown in the wind” turns the topic, the country’s destruction, into a heartrending image. The weighty “rivers and mountains” (a metaphor for the country) are now turned into soft, weightless “bits of fluff” irretrievably blown away. In line 4, “patches of duckweed beaten by the rain” works in the same fashion; it changes the topic, the rise and fall of the poet, into a pathetic image of a rootless, constantly battered plant.

The second half of the poem exhibits a change to subject + predicate constructions. The tetrasyllabic and trisyllabic segments of all four lines are merged to form declarative statements. Lines 5-7 are simple subject + predicate lines, but the last line is a complex twin subject + predicate. In lines 5 and 6, the tetrasyllabic segments are extended adverbials of place, while the trisyllabic segments are the core subject (implied) + predicate. When an adverbial is extended from two (as in pentasyllabic poetry) to four words, it becomes the focus of a line. This foregrounding of adverbials works perfectly at this juncture of the poem. The “Bank of Fears,” on the Gan River in the southern province of Jiangxi, is a place Wen Tianxiang passed through in 1277 in a hasty retreat after losing a battle to the Mongols. So the poet is not speaking about the present but reminiscing about his recent telling of fear in that place named Fears. The next adverbial, however, brings the time frame to the present. The “Sea of Loneliness” is none other than the bay Wen Tianxiang was crossing when writing the poem two years later. Once again, the emotive import of a place-name amazingly coincides with what the poet was feeling in that place. Being escorted back to northern China by the Mongols as a trophy of their complete conquest of China, the poet felt the extreme pain of humiliation and loneliness. The ending couplet marks a dramatic turning in the poet’s mood. The sublimation of his sorrow into heroic defiance is achieved through an impassioned contemplation on life’s meaning. Line 7 advances the premise, “Whose life, ever since antiquity, is without death?” and line 8 presents the conclusion: “Let my loyal heart shine on the bamboo tablets [history books]!” Ever since the poet’s death, this couplet has become probably the best-known Chinese motto for heroic action and sacrifice. To this day, Wen Tianxiang is remembered and admired by millions of Chinese for this great couplet as well as for his heroic action.

My analysis of the two heptasyllabic poems reveals an inherent relationship between the two heptasyllabic rhythms and certain syntactic constructions. The 2 + 2 + 3 rhythm usually co-arises with a single but fully developed subject + predicate, often complete with adverbials of time or place. This rhythm is not particularly conducive to and, in fact, not frequently used for the construction of a topic + comment line. For instance, there is none in Li Shangyin’s “Sui Palace.” Conversely, the 4 + 3 rhythm often goes with a complex twin subject + predicate. Only when the tetrasyllabic segment is an extended adverbial or nominal phrase do we see a simple subject + predicate in 4 + 3 lines. Thanks to the long pause between its tetrasyllabic and trisyllabic segments, a 4 + 3 line also readily lends itself to the topic + comment construction. As just shown, half of Wen Tianxiang’s “Crossing the Sea of Loneliness” is made up of topic + comment lines.

Ci Poetry

The dominance of the shi rhythms (2 + 3, 2 + 2 + 3, and 4 + 3) remained unchallenged until the rise of ci poetry during the Late Tang and the Song. Unlike the sao, fu, and shi genres, ci poetry does not exhibit an overall uniform semantic rhythm. Each of the roughly four hundred major ci tunes has its own fixed combination of lines (mostly irregular) and employs a unique set of semantic rhythms. This absence of uniformity enabled ci poets to be far more innovative than practitioners of other genres in the use of semantic rhythms. Of the many new features of ci rhythms, two are most noteworthy: the ingenious use of existent shi rhythms and the creation of radically new ones.

The most ingenious use of shi rhythms was the creation of a multiline syntactic construction scarcely used in earlier poetic genres. Lines 4-7 from “To the Tune ‘Crows Call at Night’” (C12.1), by Li Yu (937-978), are a good example of this novel construction:

4 Cut, it doesn’t break,
Tidied, a mess again—
6 [This] is separation grief.
[This] is altogether a different kind of flavor in the heart.

[QTWDC 4.450]

These four lines employ shi rhythms: the trisyllabic 1 + 2 in the first three lines and the heptasyllabic 4 + 3, with an additional disyllabic segment, in the fourth line. Although each line is a mini subject + predicate, none functions independently. Instead, the lines work together to form an extended subject + predicate construction. The first two lines constitute the subject, while the next two are its twin predicates. This subject + predicate relationship is clearly underscored by the verb “is” (shi) in lines 6 and 7. Interestingly, the word shi in line 6 can also be glossed as the demonstrative pronoun “this,” thus instead presenting us with a multiline topic + comment construction. In this reading, the first two lines are the topic; the third line, the comment; and the fourth line, a further amplification of the comment.

The breakup of a long sentence into multiple lines is often similar to enjambment in Western poetry. Like enjambment, a multiline subject + predicate or topic + comment construction attempts to subvert the established alignment between line and completion of a syntactic construction. Often, especially where “leading words” (lingzi) are employed, a line ends abruptly in the middle of a sentence in order to achieve a special effect (for instance, “Meditation on the Past at Red Cliff” [C13.3], lines 3 and 13). The two multiline constructions represent a revolutionary break from poetic tradition. All earlier poetic genres and subgenres, including the irregular-line yuefu, almost uniformly feature end-stopped lines. Typically, an end-stopped line is paired with another to form a couplet—a larger unit with a stronger sense of closure. A multiplication of couplets, in turn, brings an entire poem to completion. While these principles of line formation are faithfully observed in shi, sao, and fu poetry, they are anything but sacred in ci poetry. In availing themselves of typical shi lines (trisyllabic, tetrasyllabic, pentasyllabic, and/or heptasyllabic), ci poets often did what Li Yu did in “To the Tune ‘Crows Call at Night’”—breaking away from the habit of coupling and composing sentences that extend over three or more lines.

Apart from their use of existent shi lines, ci poets created two new line types: the monosyllabic and the disyllabic.⁹ Obviously, the scarcity of monosyllabic and disyllabic lines in earlier genres has much to do with the entrenched practice of making each line a complete subject + predicate or topic + comment construction. Monosyllabic and disyllabic lines are simply too short for either. Once ci poets had freed themselves from this practice, it was only natural for them to make prodigious use of monosyllabic and disyllabic lines, placing them in the pivotal position of a poem.

C18.3

To the Tune “Sixteen-Character Song”

Heaven—
don’t let the moon shine upon the sojourner!
Where is the loved one?
[Under] the shadow of the cassia tree, alone watching the moon goddess.

[QSC 2:1030]

This short poem, by Cai Shen (1088-1156), exhibits a radically lopsided topic + comment construction. The monosyllabic line “Heaven” constitutes the topic, the pivotal point of the entire poem. The remainder is, in effect, a series of amplifying comments by the implied observer. First, he addresses heaven, asking it to prevent the “round toad,” a Chinese mythical metaphor for the moon, from shining on him, the lonesome sojourner. This apostrophe is followed by his brief monologue: “Where is the loved one? / Under the shadow of the cassia tree [another mythical metaphor for the moon], alone watching the moon goddess.” There seems to be a deliberate ambiguity with regard to who is (are) watching the moon goddess: the subject could be “I,” “she,” or “we each.” Calculatedly lopsided, this topic + comment construction produces a maximum effect of novelty and amplification.

A doubling or tripling of monosyllabic or disyllabic segments is often used to increase the intensity of emotional expression. Consider, for instance, these powerful opening lines of the famous poem “To the Tune ‘One Beat Followed by Another, a Long Tune’” (C13.4), by Li Qingzhao (1084-1151):

The poem begins with a doubling of reduplicatives with long vowels—xu xu, mi mi (line 1) and leng leng, qing qing (line 2)—immediately followed by a tripling of reduplicatives in line 3 (qi qi, can can, qi qi). This creates an unprecedentedly prolonged rhythm of 2 + 2; 2 + 2 / 2 + 2 + 2 or simply 2 +2 +2 +2 +2 +2 + 2. This drawn-out rhythm effectively translates the poet’s unending sorrow and yearning into an intense aural experience. The tripling of reduplicatives in line 3 is particularly noteworthy. Such a tripling of reduplicatives, and, for that matter, any semantic or syntactic unit, was rarely seen in earlier poetry. A sudden, prodigious use of it in ci poetry seems to have been calculated to challenge the doubling tendency prominent in all earlier poetic genres.

Qu Poetry

The Yuan sanqu corpus has about 160 established tunes, of which 50 or so are frequently used. Many of these tunes display semantic rhythms similar to those of short ci poems (xiaoling). It seems no coincidence that all stand-alone sanqu tunes (as opposed to those in a song suite [santao]) are called xiaoling as well. Working with similar semantic rhythms, sanqu poets nevertheless created new syntactic constructions of their own. The following two examples show how two radically different topic + comment constructions were fashioned out of the same tune.

C18.4

To the Tune “Sky-Clear Sand” [yuediao key]: Autumn Thoughts

Withered vines, old trees, crows at dusk,
2 A small bridge, flowing water, people’s homes,
An ancient road, the west wind, a lean horse.
4 The evening sun goes down in the west.
One heartbroken man at the end of the earth.

[QYSQ 1:242]

As shown by the word-for-word translation, this poem by Ma Zhiyuan (1250?-1323?) bears much formal resemblance to the excerpt of Li Qingzhao’s poem “To the Tune ‘One Beat Followed by Another, a Long Tune’” (C13.4). It also makes an extensive use of tripling. Lines 1-3 constitute a tripling of hexasyllabic lines, and each line, in turn, a tripling of binomes. Thus we have a string of ten binomes (nine in lines 1-3 plus one in line 4). This produces an even more prolonged rhythm of 2 + 2 + 2 . . . than in Li Qingzhao’s poem. The aesthetic effect, however, is just the opposite. In Li Qingzhao’s poem, all the disyllabic segments are emotionally charged reduplicatives. Their rapid succession hastens the tempo and enhances the intensity of emotional expression. In Ma Zhiyuan’s poem, however, all of the ten binomes are nouns for objects or scenes. Placed in succession, they suggest slowly shifting views of a traveler on the move. First, he catches sight of “withered vines” along the ancient path. Following the vines upward, he sees an old tree and the crow perched in it. Next, a “small bridge” comes into his view, with the brook meandering and leading his gaze to the village homes afar. Finally, the village is left behind, and the ancient path appears again—a “lean horse” and traveler trudge into the sunset. All these images, static or devoid of forceful motion, suggest the slow pace of a grueling journey and the traveler’s sense of weariness. The flitting appearance of a pleasant village scene serves only to set off the unending desolation and sorrow faced by the traveler. In terms of syntax, the ten binomes constitute multiple topics of observation, while the final line is the speaker’s comment on all these topics. This top-heavy topic + comment strikes us as the reverse of what we saw in Cai Shen’s “To the Tune ‘Sixteen-Character Song.’” Whereas Cai Shen’s poem begins with one topic followed by multiple lines of comments, Ma Zhiyuan’s poem consists of ten topics placed in succession and only one line of comment at its end.

Out of the same tune, “Sky-Clear Sand,” Qiao Ji (1280-1345) fashioned an even more innovative topic + comment construction, one in which the comment has imperceptibly merged with the topic:

C18.5

To the Tune “Sky-Clear Sand” [yuediao key]: Of This Occasion

Comparing “Of This Occasion” with “Autumn Thoughts,” we note two prominent differences in the handling of disyllabic segments. First, Qiao Ji’s poem is entirely made of disyllabic segments, while Ma Zhiyuan’s poem has two trisyllabic segments (3 + 3 beat) in the last line. The makeup of the disyllabic segments is also markedly different. Whereas the ten disyllabic segments in Ma Zhiyuan’s poem are all noun binomes, all fourteen disyllabic segments in this poem are reduplicatives.

These fourteen reduplicatives are of a kind rarely used in earlier poetry but quite frequently used by Qiao Ji and some other sanqu poets. Originally employed as comment in the originative Shijing topic + comment construction, reduplicatives were continually reinvented over the millennia as a prized means of emotional expression. In Li Qingzhao’s “To the Tune ‘One Beat Followed by Another, a Long Tune,’” all the reduplicatives are produced from established verbal and adjectival binomes. The making of such reduplicatives betrays a process opposite to the evolution of Shijing reduplicatives. Many, if not all, of the Shijing reduplicatives can be regarded as unmediated, “preconceptual” responses to external stimuli, and only over time did some of them become conceptualized as established adjectives or adverbs. By contrast, the making of new reduplicatives by Li Qingzhao speaks to a process of “deconceptualization”—that is, taking a binome apart and turning its two characters into reduplicatives to create a succession of rhythmic and emotionally expressive sounds. For instance, xumi (search for) becomes xu xu mi mi, and lengqing (cold and lonely) becomes leng leng qing qing.

With Qiao Ji, this process of deconceptualization became even more radical. To him, seemingly no part of speech was off-limits to deconstruction and deconceptualization. In “Of This Occasion,” he turns all the words—monosyllabic words (“oriole” and “person”), binomes (“delicate, tender”), adjectives (“vivid”), and nouns (“flower” and “willow”)—into reduplicatives. If the radical reduplication in this poem is undone, we can perceive a series of four topic + comment constructions:

Orioles and swallows—the spring,
Flowers and willow—vivid.
Things—graceful,
Delicate, tender.
Perfect—the person

The topics are two common objects of observation in Chinese poetry: the flora and fauna of springtime and a beautiful woman. Like earlier poets, Qiao Ji presented the two in juxtaposition for the best effect of mutual illumination. The blending of nature’s luster and a beauty’s radiance makes each ever more enchanting. The comments are fairly commonplace adjectives. Here Qiao Ji could have deconceptualized and turned these adjectives into reduplicatives, as Li Qingzhao did, while leaving the topics in their regular nominal form. The poem would then have assumed the form of the originative Shijing topic + comment. But this is not what Qiao Ji chose to do. To achieve a dramatic novel effect, he turned every single word, whether originally the topic or the comment, into a reduplicative. As the topics, too, become emotionally charged reduplicatives, they practically merge with the comments into one. Thus each word captures not only what the poet saw but also his delighted response to it. The extraordinary syntax of this poem shows how far the topic + comment construction evolved from its originative Shijing form.

In this brief chapter, I have been able to depict the evolution of Chinese poetic syntax and poetic vision in only the broadest strokes. The five major genres feature a much broader array of subject + predicate and topic + comment constructions than what has been presented here. An exhaustive investigation of the two syntactic constructions and their efficacy for embodying poetic vision must be left to a future book-length study. Nonetheless, I hope that this broad outline has provided enough to stimulate a meaningful discussion on this important topic.

Zong-qi Cai

NOTES

1 Zhong Rong, Shipin jizhu (Collected Annotations of the “Grading of Poets”), ed. Cao Xu (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1994), 36-39.

2 Liu Xizai, Yi gai (Essentials of the Arts) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1978), 69-71.

3 Consider, for instance, the distinction between yuefu or yuefu-style poetry (chaps. 4 and 11) and ci poetry (chaps. 12-14).

4 Yu-kung Kao was the first scholar to explore the possibility of analyzing Chinese poetry in terms of its use of these two syntactic constructions, in Zhongguo meidian yu wenxue yanjiu lunji (Studies of Chinese Aesthetics and Literature) (Taipei: Taiwan National University Press, 2004), especially 165-208.

5 Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, ed. Ezra Pound (San Francisco: City Lights, 1936).

6 Yuen Ren Chao, A Grammar of Spoken Chinese (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 69-72.

7 Xici zhuan (Commentary on the Appended Phrases), A4, A5, in Zhouyi yinde (A Concordance to “Yi ching” ), Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, supplement no. 10 (Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1973), 40.

8 Wang Li, Hanyu shilü xue (Chinese Prosody) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin jiaoyu chubanshe, 1979), 234-352.

9 Although a monosyllabic or disyllabic line appears occasionally in an irregular-line yuefu, sao, or fu poem, it is usually just an exclamatory utterance or a conjunction that has no substantive meaning in itself (for instance, “Fu on the Imperial Park” [C3.1], lines 74 and 79; “Song of the East Gate” [C4.5], line 19).

NOTES

This transcription is based on the Early Middle Chinese system of pronunciation, as given in the Qieyun 355

(literally, cutting rhymes), an important Chinese dictionary of 601, arranged according to rhyme, which indicates pronunciations in some detail. The transcription is philologically accurate in that it represents all the distinctions known from the Qièyùn and other Middle Chinese sources. Designed with nonspecialists in mind, it uses only the letters and symbols of the English keyboard. However, there were more sounds in Middle Chinese than we have letters, so some sounds are represented by two, three, or even four letters. Also, Middle Chinese had some sounds that modern English does not, and vice versa (as with any two languages). In order to represent Middle Chinese pronunciation, some arbitrary conventions are necessary. The following are the main ones (described more fully in William H. Baxter, A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology [Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1992], 27-85).

—William H. Baxter

1 The clusters ae and ea represent single vowel sounds probably like the a and e in “bat” and “bet,” respectively.

2 The letter o represents a sound probably like the short u in “tug” (not like the usual English o).

3 The letter r after a consonant indicates that it is pronounced with retroflexion—that is, with the tip of the tongue turned back to touch the hard palate. English does not use such sounds, but they are found in many other languages, including modern Mandarin (written zh, ch, and sh in pinyin). In the Middle Chinese transcriptions, the letter h after a consonant indicates that it is aspirated (that is, pronounced with an audible puff of breath after it). So a combination like tsrhrepresents a ch-like consonant that is retroflex (as indicated by the -r-) and aspirated (as indicated by the -h-)—more or less like the Mandarin sound written ch in pinyin romanization.

4 The letter x at the beginning of a word represents a sound like the German ch in “Bach.”

5 The apostrophe at the beginning of a word represents a glottal stop, the catch in the throat that some Cockney speakers use instead of t in words like “bottle.” In the phonetic notation used by linguists, it is written as [ 357

]. For most purposes, it can be ignored.

6 The letter y at the beginning of a word represents an ordinary y sound, but the combinations sy and zy represent, respectively, sounds like sh and zh (the sounds between the vowels in “pressure” and “pleasure,” respectively). Similarly, tsy represents a ch sound (without aspiration; if it is aspirated, it is written tsyh [for example, chi 358

tsyhek]). When a y sound appears after the initial consonant or at the end of the syllable, it is written as j (as is customary in linguistics).

ABBREVIATIONS OF PRIMARY TEXTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology was generously funded by the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and the Research Board of the University of Illinois.

In addition to acknowledging the financial support of these institutions, I wish to express my gratitude to my colleagues, my students, and the staff at the University of Illinois. In particular, I wish to thank Professor George T. Yu, former director of the center, for his valuable guidance and support. My special thanks also go to my friends Leon Chai and Cara Ryan for their illuminating comments on some parts of the manuscript, to Jerome Packard and Chilin Shih for their advice on issues of linguistics and sound recording, to Li Tonglu, Li Liyu, and Cui Jie for producing the sound recording, and again to Cui Jie for her meticulous editorial assistance. I would like to thank Professor William H. Baxter of the University of Michigan and Professor David Branner of the University of Maryland for providing advice and assistance with the phonetic transcriptions of entering-tone characters. The project has also benefited from the valuable participation and support of Professor Dore J. Levy of Brown University, Professor John Timothy Wixted of Arizona State University, and other outside scholars at its different stages.

The contributors to this volume wish to thank three anonymous readers for their insightful comments and suggestions. We are deeply indebted to Jennifer Crewe, associate director and editorial director of Columbia University Press, for her enthusiastic support and professional guidance. We are also very grateful to Irene Pavitt for overseeing the production process and to Mike Ashby for his meticulous copyediting.

Finally, I owe the deepest debt of gratitude to my wife, Jing Liao, for encouraging me to continue the project despite our extreme difficulties in the months before the conference, and to my daughter, Serena, for countless evenings and weekends devoted to the project instead of her.

Chapter 2 includes excerpts from “On Encountering Trouble,” in The Songs of the South: An Anthology of Ancient Chinese Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets, ed. and trans. David Hawkes (New York: Penguin, 1985). Chapters 5, 12, and 13 contain material from Zong-qi Cai, The Matrix of Lyric Transformation: Poetic Modes and Self-Presentation in Early Chinese Pentasyllabic Poetry (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1996); Maija Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice: The Abandoned Woman in Early Chinese Song Lyrics (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004); and Xinda Lian, The Wild and Arrogant: Expression of Self in Xin Qiji’s Song Lyrics (New York: Lang, 1999), respectively. We are grateful to the editors and publishers for their permission to reprint from those works.

CONTRIBUTORS

Robert Ashmore is associate professor of classical Chinese literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his M.A. from Beijing University in 1992 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1997. His interests include lyric poetry, musical performance, and classical scholarship from the third through twelfth centuries. He is the author of The Transport of Reading: Text and Understanding in the World of Tao Qian (365-427) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, forthcoming).

Zong-qi Cai is professor of Chinese and comparative literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Matrix of Lyric Transformation: Poetic Modes and Self-Presentation in Early Chinese Pentasyllabic Poetry (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1996) and Configurations of Comparative Poetics: Three Perspectives on Western and Chinese Literary Criticism (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002). He also edited A Chinese Literary Mind: Culture, Creativity, and Rhetoric in Wenxin dialong (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001) and Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004).

Charles Egan is associate professor of Chinese language and literature at San Francisco State University, where he also directs the Chinese program. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1992 and has taught at Stanford University and Connecticut College. He has published articles on yuefu, jueju, oral poetry, and Chinese art, as well as numerous translations.

Ronald Egan teaches Chinese literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research is on Song dynasty poetry, aesthetics, and literati culture. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and has taught at Harvard University and Wellesley College. He served for a period as the executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. His publications include The Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu (1007- 72) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), and The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, forthcoming). He is also the translator of a volume of selected essays by Qian Zhongshu: Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters by Qian Zhongshu (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).

Grace S. Fong is associate professor and chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at McGill University. Her research interests encompass classical Chinese poetry and poetics and the intersection of gender, subjectivity, and writing in late imperial and Republican China. She is the author of Wu Wenying and the Art of Southern Song Ci Poetry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987) and Herself an Author: Gender, Writing, and Agency in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008); coeditor of Beyond Tradition and Modernity: Gender, Genre, and Cosmopolitanism in Late Qing China (Leiden: Brill, 2004); and project editor of Ming- Qing Women’s Writings: A Joint Digitization Project Between McGill University and Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University (http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/mingqing/).

David R. Knechtges is professor of Chinese literature at the University of Washington. He is the author of Two Studies on the Han Fu (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), The Han Rhapsody: A Study of the Fu of Yang Hsiung (53 B.C.-A.D. 18) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), The Han shu Biography of Yang Xiong (53 B.C.-A.D. 18) (Tempe: Arizona State University, 1982), and Court Culture and Literature in Early China (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). He is the translator of Xiao Tong, Wenxuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, vol. 1, Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), vol. 2, Rhapsodies on Sacrifices, Hunting, Travel, Sightseeing, Palaces and Halls, Rivers and Seas (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), and vol. 3, Rhapsodies on Natural Phenomena, Birds and Animals, Aspirations and Feelings, Sorrowful Laments, Literature, Music, and Passions (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); editor and cotranslator of Gong Kechang, Studies on the Han Fu (New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 1997); and coeditor (with Paul W. Kroll) of Studies in Early Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History: In Honor of Richard B. Mather and Donald Holzman (Provo, Utah: T’ang Studies Society, 2003) and (with Eugene Vance) of Rhetoric and the Discourses of Power in Court Culture: China, Europe, and Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005).

Xinda Lian received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and is currently associate professor of Chinese at Denison University. He is the author of The Wild and Arrogant: Expression of Self in Xin Qiji’s Song Lyrics (New York: Lang, 1999) and a variety of articles on Chinese literature.

Shuen-fu Lin is professor of Chinese literature at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K’uei and Southern Sung Tz’u Poetry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978) and The Pursuit of Utopias (in Chinese) (Taichung: Tunghai University Press, 2003). He is also coeditor (with Stephen Owen) of The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late Han to the T’ang (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986) and cotranslator (with Larry J. Schulz) of Tung Yüeh, The Tower of Myriad Mirrors: A Supplement to Journey to the West, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2000).

William H. Nienhauser Jr. is Halls-Bascom Professor for Classical Chinese Literature at the University of Wisconsin. In 1979, he helped found Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) and is still its editor. Among his numerous books and articles are The Grand Scribe’s Records, vols. 1, 2, 5, 7 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, 2002, 2006) and The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, 2 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986, 1998).

Maija Bell Samei is an independent scholar who teaches part-time at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her Ph.D. in Chinese literature from the University of Michigan and is the author of Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice: The Abandoned Woman in Early Chinese Song Lyrics (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004).

Jui-lung Su is associate professor of Chinese literature at the National University of Singapore. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1994 and has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the National University of Singapore. His research is on Chinese fu and Six Dynasties literature. He is the editor of New Views of Han, Wei, and Six Dynasties Literature in the Twenty-first Century: A Festschrift in Honor of Professor David R. Knechtges on His Sixtieth Birthday (Taipei: Wenjin, 2003) and author of A Study of Bao Zhao’s Literature (Bao Zhao shiwen yanjiu ) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2006).

Wendy Swartz is assistant professor of Chinese Literature at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2003. Her research interests are premodern Chinese poetry, especially Six Dynasties to Tang, and traditional and modern literary theory and criticism. She has published on Tao Qian (Tao Yuanming) and is currently completing her book Reclusion, Personality, and Poetry: Tao Yuanming’s Reception in the Chinese Literary Tradition.

Xiaofei Tian is professor of Chinese literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. She is the author of Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture: The Record of a Dusty Table (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005) and Beacon Fire and Shooting Star: The Literary Culture of the Liang (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Asia Center Press, 2007). Her recent Chinese-language publications include a book on the sixteenth-century novel The Plum in the Golden Vase (2003), an annotated translation of Sappho’s poetry (2004), and a book on the literature and culture of Moorish Spain (2006). She has also published a number of English and Chinese articles and book reviews in the areas of early medieval Chinese literature, late imperial Chinese fiction and drama, and modern Chinese literature. She is currently working on an English-language book on visualization and its changing cultural contexts in classical Chinese literature.

Paula Varsano is associate professor of Chinese literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in classical poetry and poetics of the Six Dynasties and the Tang, with particular interest in literature and subjectivity, the evolution of spatial representation in poetry, the history and poetics of traditional literary criticism, and the theory and practice of translation. She is the author of Tracking the Banished Immortal: The Poetry of Li Bo and Its Critical Reception (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003) and is currently at work on a book tentatively titled Coming to Our Senses: Locating the Subject in Traditional Chinese Literary Writing.

Fusheng Wu is associate professor in the Department of Languages and Literature at the University of Utah. He is the author of The Poetics of Decadence: Chinese Poetry of the Southern Dynasties and Late Tang Period (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988) and Written at Imperial Command: Panegyric Poetry in Early Medieval China (Albany: State University of New York Press, forthcoming), as well as of many articles on Chinese literature and comparative literature. He has also published many translations of literary and scholarly works. He is the cotranslator of Songs of My Heart: The Chinese Lyric Poetry of Ruan Ji (London: Wellsweep, 1988) and the bilingual edition of The Poems of Ruan Ji (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2006).

GLOSSARY-INDEX

A Jiao

(wife of Emperor Wu of the Han)

Among the Flowers Collection. See Huajian ji

An Lushan

(rebel general [703-757])

An Lushan Rebellion (755-763)

Analects. See Lunyu

Annotated Edition of “The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons.” See Wenxin diaolong zhu

Anthology of Refined Literature. See Wen xuan

ao lü

(skewed regulated verse)

Bai Juyi

(772-846); ancient-style poems by

Bai Pu

(1226-after 1306), song poems by

Ban Gu

(32-92)

Ban Jieyu

(Western Han dynasty)

Bao Yun

(376?-449)

Bao Zhao

(414-466)

“Bei zheng” 797

(Northern Expedition; Du Fu)

“Beifen shi” 1041

(Poem of Lament and Indignation; attributed Cai Yan)

Beishi

(History of the Northern Dynasties; Li Yanshou)

(comparison)

Bian He

(ca. sixth century B.C.E.)

“Biao you mei” 1045

(Falling Plums [Mao no. 20])

bieji

(poetry or prose collection)

“Bingche xing” 1047

(Ballad of Army Carts; Du Fu)

Biographies of Various Ladies. See Lienü zhuan

bi-xing

(compare and evoke)

Book of Changes. See Yijing

Book of Plum Trees. See Meipu

Book of Poetry, The. See Shijing

Book of the Way and Its Power. See Dao de jing

Bowu zhi

(A Comprehensive Account of Things; Zhang Hua)

(display)

buyi

(man in linen [ordinary] clothes)

Cai Shen

(1088-1156), short song poem by

Cai Yan

(176?-early third century)

Cai Yong

(132-192)

Canliao

(1043-ca. 1116)

Cao Cao

(155-220)

“Cao chong” 648

(Insects in the Grass [Mao no. 14])

Cao Pi

(187-226)

Cao Zhi

(192-232)

chang duan ju 1002

(long and short lines)

changdiao ci 1002

(long song lyric),

Chen Ling Gong 359

(Duke Ling of Chen [r. 613-599 B.C.E.])

Chen Ping

(d. 178 B.C.E.)

Chen Xun

(1870-1942)

Chen Yang

(twelfth century)

Chen Zi’ang 359

(661-702), ancient-style poems by

Chen Zilong 359

(1608-1647)

cheng

(to continue; to elaborate)

chenzi

(extrametrical syllables)

Chu Guangxi 1067

(fl. 726)

Chu Huai Wang 395

(King Huai [d. 296 B.C.E.])

“Chu ju”

(The Carts Come Out [Mao no. 168])

chuanqi

(Tang short stories)

Chuci

(Lyrics of Chu); and heptasyllabic shi poetry; rhythm and syntax of

Chuci buzhu 395

(Further Annotated Edition of the “Chuci”; Wang Yi and Hong Xingzu)

Chuci xuan 395

(Selections from the “Chuci”; Ma Maoyuan)

Chuci zhangju 395

(Commentary Edition of Chuci; Wang Yi)

(song lyric); compared with song poem; long; rhythm and syntax of; short

“Ci lun”

(A Critique of the Song Lyric; Li Qingzhao)

ci yan qing 383

(ci gives voice to emotion)

Classic of History. See Shangshu

Collected Annotations of the “Grading of Poets.” See Shipin jizhu

Collected Commentaries of “Lisao.” See Lisao zuanyi

Collected Commentaries on “Liezi.” See Liezi jishi

Collected Works of Tao Yuanming. See Tao Yuanming ji

Collection of Musical Pieces. See Yue zhang ji

Collection of Yuefu Poetry. See Yuefu shiji

Commentary Edition of Chuci. See Chuci zhangju

Commentary on the Appended Phrases. See Xici zhuan

Complementary Annotations to the “History of the Han Dynasty.” See Han shu buzhu

Complete Shi Poetry of the Ming. See Quan Ming shi

Complete Shi Poetry of the Song. See Quan Song shi

Complete Shi Poetry of the Tang. See Quan Tang shi

Comprehensive Account of Things, A. See Bowu zhi

Concordance to “Yi ching,” A. See Zhouyi yinde

“Cong jun xing” 638

(Song of Serving in the Army)

“Critique of the Song Lyric, A.” See “Ci lun”

“Da qu”

(Grand Songs [poetry classification])

“Da ya”

(Greater Elegantiae)

“Dafeng ge” 480

(Song of the Great Wind; Han Gaozu)

dafu

(large fu)

Dai Shulun 760

(732-789)

danbo

(placid and plain)

Dao de jing 500

(Book of the Way and Its Power)

“Deng lou fu” 1079

(Fu on Climbing the Tower; Wang Can)

“Dengtuzi haose fu” 1079

(Fu on Master Dengtu, the Lecher)

(Northern Di [minority tribe])

“Di du”

(The Russet Pear [Mao no. 119])

diantie cheng jin 1084

(touching iron and transforming it into gold)

diao

(musical key)

didao

(way of earth)

diezi

(reduplicative binome)

Ding Fubao 1086

(1874-1952)

“Dong shan” 910

(East Mountain [Mao no. 156])

Draft from the Pavilion for Chanting About Snow. See Yongxuelou gao

Drunken Words in the Garden of Art. See Yiyuan zhiyan

Du Fu

(712-770); heptasyllabic quatrains by; heptasyllabic regulated verse by; influence of, in Ming-Qing poetry; pentasyllabic regulated verse by

“Du jiangyun sanfan” 1089

(Three Shifts of the Mode of “River-Crossing Clouds”)

Du Mu

(803-852), heptasyllabic quatrains by

Duan Chengshi 1092

(d. 863)

“Duan ge xing” 1062

(Short Song; Cao Cao)

duanju

(broken lines)

“Duanxiao nao ge” 1062

(Songs for Short Panpipe and Nao Bell)

duiju

(parallel couplet)

E Huang

(legendary wife of Shun and daughter of Yao)

Eight Sketches of the Literary World. See Saotan balüe

Essentials of the Arts. See Yi gai

Fan Chengda 1098

(1126-1193); heptasyllabic quatrains by

Fan Kuai

(d. 189 B.C.E.)

Fan Tai

(355-428)

Fan Wenlan 1098

(1893-1969)

feng

(airs)

“Feng ru song” 389

(The Wind Comes Through the Pines)

Feng Yansi 826

(903-960), short song poem by

Fenollosa, Ernest (1853-1908)

Fictions from Five Dynasties. See Wuchao xiaoshuo

Former Seven Masters. See Qian Qi Zi

(display),

(genre; rhapsody)

(style; exposition)

“Fu in Response to Zhen’s Epiphany.” See “Gan Zhen fu”

“Fu on Climbing the Tower.” See “Deng lou fu”

“Fu on Master Dengtu, the Lecher.” See “Dengtuzi haose fu”

“Fu on the Luo River Goddess.” See “Luo shen fu”

“Fu on the Ruined City.” See “Wu cheng fu”

Fu Yi

(d. ca. 90)

fugu

(return to the ancients)

Fuxi

(demigod)

“Fuyun fu” 1112

(A Poetic Exposition on the Floating Clouds; Lu Ji)

Further Annotated Edition of the “Chuci.” See Chuci buzhu

Gan Lirou

(1743-1819): ancient-style poem by; heptasyllabic quatrain by; heptasyllabic regulated verse by; pentasyllabic quatrain by; pentasyllabic regulated verse by

“Gan Zhen fu” 861

(Fu in Response to Zhen’s Epiphany; Cao Zhi)

Gao Bing

(1350-1423)

Gao Buying 721

(1875-1940)

Gaoxian

(fl. ninth century)

Gaozong (

)

(r. 1127-1163)

“Ge lei”

(Kudzu Vine and Bean Creeper [Mao no. 71])

Genghis Khan 724

(ca. 1167-1227)

Gong’an pai 418

(Gong’an school)

gongti shi 518

(palace-style poetry)

gu jiao hengchui qu 1122

(songs accompanied by drum, horn, and transverse flute)

Guan Hanqing 894

(ca. 1220-ca. 1307); song poem by

Guan Yunshi 1127

(1286-1324), song poem by

“Guchui qu ci” 1122

(Lyrics for Drum and Pipe Songs)

gufu

(ancient-style fu)

Guifeng Zongmi 931

(780-841)

gujue

(ancient jueju)

guo feng

(airs of the states)

Guo Maoqian 1130

(twelfth century)

Guo Pu

(276-324)

Guo Shaoyu 1130

(1893-1984)

Guo Ziyi

(697-781)

gushi

. See guti shi

“Gushi shijiushou” 750

(Nineteen Old Poems): lyrical mode of, compared with yuefu’s narrative; structure of, 109-113; texture of; theme of

guti shi

(gushi

) (ancient-style poetry)

Han Aidi

(Emperor Ai [r. 6-1 B.C.E.])

Han Feizi

(The Work of Master Han Fei)

Han Gaozu

(Liu Bang

; Emperor Gaozu of the Han [r. 206-194 B.C.E.])

Han Shou

(Jin dynasty)

Han shu

(History of the Han Dynasty; Ban Gu)

Han shu buzhu 684

(Complementary Annotations to the “History of the Han Dynasty”; Wang Xianqian)

Han Tuozhou 1134

(1151-1207)

Han Wudi

(Emperor Wu of the Han [r. 140-87 B.C.E.])

Han Yu

(788-824)

Han Yuandi 684

(r. 48-33 B.C.E.)

Han Yuefu

. See Yuefu

Han yuefu

. See yuefu

haofang

(heroic abandon)

(to conclude; to enclose)

He Xun

(d. 518)

He Zhizhang 1144

(659-744)

History of the Han Dynasty. See Han shu

History of the Liu Song Dynasty. See Song shu

History of the Northern Dynasties. See Beishi

History of the Southern Dynasties. See Nanshi

History of the Sui Dynasty. See Sui shu

Hong Xingzu 1145

(1090-1155)

“Hong yan” 1146

(Wild Geese [Mao no. 181])

Hou Jing

(d. 552)

Hu Yinglin 704

(1551-1602)

Hu Zhiyu

(1227-1293)

huaigu

(meditation on the past)

Huainan Wang 1153

(Liu An

; prince of Huainan [179-122 B.C.E.])

Huainanzi

(The Work of Huainanzi)

Huajian ji 909

(Among the Flowers Collection); tradition of

huan tou

(change in meter, rhyme, setting, or mood in ci poetry)

Huang Chao Rebellion 1156

(875-884)

Hui Shi

(fl. 334-322 B.C.E.)

Huiyuan

(334-416)

Huizong (

)

(Emperor Hui of the Song [r. 1100-1125])

“Hun yi”

(Meaning of Marriage [chapter in Li ji])

incremental repetition

(trace)

Ji jiu pian 1162

(Primer for Quickly Learning Chinese Characters; Shi You)

Jiang Kui

(ca. 1155-1221), long song poem on objects by

Jiang Yan

(444-505)

“Jiangdu chun” 1166

(Spring in the Crimson City; Wu Wenying)

Jiangnan Wu sheng 966

(Wu songs of the Jiangnan region)

Jiangsu

(province in eastern China)

“Jiaosi ge” 1168

(Songs for the Suburban Sacrifices)

“Jiaren”

(Beautiful Lady; Du Fu)

jie

(stanza)

jiedui

(borrowed parallelism)

“Jiming”

(Cocks Crow)

Jin Changxu 716

(fl. 713-742), pentasyllabic quatrain by

“Jin lü yi” 716

(The Garment Embroidered with Gold Thread)

jing

(essence)

jing

(natural scene)

jing

(scene), 126

Jing Chu xisheng 542

(western songs of Jing and Chu)

jing wai zhi jing 1148

(scene beyond scenes)

Jinglü yixiang 363

(Differentiated Manifestations of Sutras and Laws)

Jingzhiju shihua 1178

(Remarks on Poetry from the Dwelling of Quiet Intent; Zhu Yizun)

jinshi

(scholar who passed the highest imperial examination),

jinti shi

(recent-style poetry)

“Jiuge”

(Nine Songs)

ju jue yi bujue 840

(lines that end but meaning that does not end)

ju li

(beauty of the large)

jueju

(cut-off lines or quatrain)

jufa

(rules of sentences)

junzi

(lord)

Jurchen

juyan

(verse eye). See shiyan

Khublai Khan 1181

(d. 1294)

kua shi

(exaggerated ornamentation)

(literally, principle; way of life)

Li Bai

(701-762); ancient-style poems by; pentasyllabic quatrains by; pentasyllabic regulated verse by

Li He

(791-817), ancient-style poem by

Li ji

(Record of Rituals)

Li Mengyang 718

(1475-1531), heptasyllabic regulated verse by

Li Qi

(commentator on the Han shu)

Li Qingzhao 718

(1084-1151); long song poem by

Li Shangyin 718

(813-858); heptasyllabic quatrain by; heptasyllabic regulated verse by

Li Shimin

(Emperor Taizong of the Tang 814

[600-649])

Li Yannian 718

(d. 87 B.C.E.)

Li Yanshou 718

(seventh century)

Li Yu

(937-978); short song poems by

Li Yu

(1611-1680), ancient-style poem by

Li Yuan

(Emperor Gaozu of the Tang 814

[r. 618-626])

Liang

Liang Wudi 921

(Emperor Wu of the Liang [r. 502-549])

lianju

(linked verse)

lianmian zi 1194

(reduplicative binome)

lianzhu

(linking pearls)

Lidai shihua xubian 1197

(Poetry Talks of Successive Dynasties: A Sequel)

Lienü zhuan 1199

(Biographies of Various Ladies; Qiu Hu)

Liezi

Liezi jishi 1199

(Collected Commentaries on “Liezi”)

Lin Bu

(Lin Hejing 509

[967-1028]); heptasyllabic regulated verse by

lingzi

(leading words)

Lisao zuanyi 412

(Collected Commentaries of “Lisao”; You Guoen)

Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, The. See Wenxin diaolong

“Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, The,” Annotated and Explicated. See Wenxin diaolong zhu shi

Liu An

(prince of Huainan [179-122 B.C.E.])

Liu Chen

(legendary character, said to have encountered fairy maidens on Mount Tiantai and fallen in love with them in 72 C.E.)

Liu Wu

(prince of Liang [d. 144 B.C.E.])

Liu Xie

(ca. 465-ca. 522)

Liu Xizai

(1813-1881)

Liu Yong

(987-1053); long song poem by

Liu Zhen

(d. 598)

liushui dui 620

(running-water parallelism)

Lu Ji

(261-303)

Lu Qinli

(1911-1973)

“Lu xiao”

(Tall Is the Southernwood [Mao no. 173])

Lu You

(1125-1209), heptasyllabic quatrain by; heptasyllabic regulated verse by

luan

(envoi; coda)

lüfu

(regulated fu)

Lunyu

(Analects; Confucius)

Luo Genze

(1900-1960)

“Luo shen fu” 1214

(Fu on the Luo River Goddess; Cao Zhi)

Luofu

(prominent figure in Han yuefu)

lüshi

(regulated verse); heptasyllabic, 181; pentasyllabic; as quatrain

Lyrics of Chu. See Chuci

Ma Jianzhong 407

(1845-1900)

Ma Maoyuan 407

(1918-1989)

Ma shi wen tong 407

(Mr. Ma’s Grammar; Ma Jianzhong)

Ma Zhiyuan 407

(1250?-1323?), song poems by

manci

(long song lyric)

Mei Gao

(fl. ca. 140 B.C.E.)

Mei Sheng

(d. ca. 140 B.C.E.)

Mei Yaochen 875

(1002-1069), ancient-style poems by

“Meipi xing” 1222

(Song of Lake Meipi)

Meipu

(Book of Plum Trees; Fan Chengda)

Meng Kang

(ca. 180-260)

Mengzi

(ca. 372-ca. 289 B.C.E.)

Miluo Jiang 1225

(Miluo River)

Miscellanea from Youyang. See Youyang zazu

Miscellaneous Notes on the Western Capital. See Xijing zaji

“Monograph on Music.” See “Yueshu”

Mr. Ma’s Grammar. See Ma shi wen tong

Mu zhai Records of Learning, The. See Mu zhai you xue ji

Mu zhai you xue ji 1091

(The Mu zhai Records of Learning; Qian Qianyi)

“[Nangonglü] Gewei” 1227

(To the Tune “Gewei” [nanlü key])

“[Nangonglü] Liangzhou” 1227

(To the Tune “Liangzhou” [nanlü key])

Nanshi

(History of the Southern Dynasties)

New Songs of the Jade Terrace. See Yutai xinyong

Nong Yu

(legendary princess who rode to heaven on a phoenix)

Northern Di. See Di

Nü Ying

(legendary wife of Shun)

Ögödei Khan (d. 1241)

Ouyang Xiu 1236

(1007-1072), short song poem by

pai ta zhi ru 1238

(burst open the door and went straight in)

pailü

(extended regulated verse)

Pan Yue

(247-300)

pengpai

(surging and swelling)

pianfu

(parallel-style fu)

pianwen

(parallel prose)

pingdan

(placid and plain)

Pleasures of Tang Poetry. See Tang shi kuai

“Poetic Exposition on the Floating Clouds, A.” See “Fuyun fu”

poetic series

Poetry Talks of Successive Dynasties: A Sequel. See Lidai shihua xubian Pound, Ezra (1885-1972)

Primer for Quickly Learning Chinese Characters. See Ji jiu pian

pu (puchen) 1245

(

) (to display)

(breath)

(connective)

(to begin; to arise)

“Qi ai”

(Seven Sorrows; Wang Can)

Qi shi

(Seven Beginnings)

Qian Qi Zi 575

(one of the Former Seven Masters [1475-1531])

Qian Qianyi 1247

(1582-1664)

Qiao Ji

(1280-1345), ; song poems by

qiaogou xingsi 1250

(artful structure and descriptive similitude)

qijue

. See qiyan jueju

qilü

. See qiyan lüshi

“Qin fu yin” 1252

(The Lament of the Lady of Qin; Wei Zhuang)

Qin Shi Huang 1252

(r. 221-215 B.C.E.)

qing

(emotion)

qing jing jiao rong 872

(fusion of feeling and scene)

Qingxiang Wang 1256

(King Qingxiang [r. 298-263 B.C.E.])

Qinzong (

)

(Emperor Qinzong of the Song [r. 1125-1126])

qiwen

(extraordinary writing)

qiyan

(equal-character line)

qiyan jueju 843

(qijue

) (heptasyllabic quatrain)

qiyan lüshi 326

(qilü

) (heptasyllabic regulated verse)

qiyan shi

(poetry of equal-character lines)

(finale passage)

(song poem)

Qu Yuan

(340?-278 B.C.E.); “The Lady of the Xiang River” (attributed); “The Lord of the Xiang River” (attributed); “On Encountering Trouble,”

Quan Ming shi 708

(Complete Shi Poetry of the Ming)

Quan Song shi 708

(Complete Shi Poetry of the Song)

Quan Tang shi 708

(Complete Shi Poetry of the Tang)

Record of Rituals. See Li ji

Records of the Grand Scribe. See Shiji

Remarks on Lyrics in the Human World. See Renjian cihua

Remarks on Poetry from the Dwelling of Quiet Intent. See Jingzhiju shihua

Renjian cihua 668

(Remarks on Lyrics in the Human World; Wang Guowie)

Rong-Di

(Rong and Di barbarians)

“Ru Pengli hu ko” 1103

(Entering Pengli Lake; Xie Lingyun)

Ruan Ji

(210-263)

Ruan Zhao

(legendary character, said to have encountered fairy maidens on Mount Tiantai and fallen in love with them in 72 C.E.)

“Ruihe xian” 715

(The Immortal of the Auspicious Crane)

rusheng

(entering tone)

“San bie”

(Three Separations; Du Fu)

“San li”

(Three Officers; Du Fu)

sanqu

(song poems)

“Sanshu mei” 630

(Three Beautiful Women)

santao

(song suite)

sao

(poetic genre)

Saotan balüe 413

(Eight Sketches of the Literary World; Wang Kaisu)

Selections from the “Chuci.” See Chuci xuan

Sequel to the Poetry Talks of the Tang, A. See Xu Tang shihua

shamanism

shan ge

(mountain songs)

shang si xia san 508

(upper 4 and lower 3, a rhythm of heptasyllabic shi poetry)

Shanglin Yuan 508

(Shanglin Park)

Shangshu

(Classic of History)

“Shao nan” 1277

(Nan-Type Songs from the States Set Up by the Duke of Shao [section of the Shijing])

Shaoxing

(present-day city)

shen

(spirit)

Shen Deqian 795

(1673-1769)

Shen Yue

(441-513)

shenqi

(inspired air)

shenyun

(spirit and resonance)

shi

(poetic genre)

Shi ge

(Rules of Poetry; Wang Changling)

shi yan zhi 362

(poetry expresses intent)

Shi You

(fl. 48-33 B.C.E.)

shihua

(remarks on poetry)

Shiji

(Records of the Grand Scribe; Sima Qian)

Shijing

(The Book of Poetry)

feng (airs) in: Mao no. 2; Mao no. 6; Mao no. 10; Mao no. 13; Mao no. 15; Mao no. 21; Mao no. 22; Mao no. 42; Mao no. 76; Mao no. 144

ya (odes) in: Mao no. 228; Mao no. 237; Mao no. 278

Shipin jizhu 362

(Collected Annotations of the “Grading of Poets”; Zhong Rong)

shisheng

(poet-sage)

shixian

(poet-immortal)

shiyan

(juyan

) (verse eye)

shizhong you hua 332

(in his poems, there are paintings [said of Wang Wei])

shizi

(content words)

shou

(head)

Shouyang

(daughter of Song Wudi)

Shun

(Chonghua

; sage-king)

Shusun Tong 1075

(fl. 205-188 B.C.E.)

Sima Qian

(145-86? B.C.E.)

Sima Xiangru 612

(179-117 B.C.E.); “Fu on the Imperial Park,”

song

(laude; hymn)

Song shu

(History of the Liu Song Dynasty; Shen Yue)

Song Wudi

(Emperor Wu of the Liu Song [r. 420-423])

Song Yu

(fl. third century B.C.E.)

Su Shi

(Su Zizhan 714

or Su Dongpo 714

[1037-1101]); ancient-style poems by; long song poem by

Sui shu

(History of the Sui Dynasty; Wei Zheng)

“Suochuang han” 1287

(The Carved Lattice Window Is Cold)

Suzhou

taimei

(moss plum)

taiyuan

(Grand Unity)

Tang shi kuai 814

(Pleasures of Tang Poetry; Huang Zhouxing)

Tangshan Furen 814

(Lady Tangshan [ca. 206 B.C.E.])

Tao Qian

(Tao Yuanming 764

[365?-427]); pentasyllabic shi poems by

“Tao Yuanming ji xu” 764

(Preface to The Collected Works of Tao Yuanming; Xiao Tong)

“Ti Yuanming ‘Yinjiu shi’ hou” 1293

(On Yuanming’s “Poems on Drinking Wine”; Su Shi)

tian ci

(filling in the words)

“Tian wen” 394

(Questions for Heaven; Qu Yuan)

tiandao

(way of heaven)

Tiantai

(famous mountain)

Tiantai school 394

“Treatise on Literature Divided by Genre.” See “Wenzhang liubie lun”

Wang Anshi 741

(Jinggong

[1021-1086]), heptasyllabic quatrains by

Wang Can

(177-217)

Wang Changling 741

(698-ca. 756); heptasyllabic quatrains by Wang Duanshu 741

(1621-ca. 1706), ancient-style poem by

Wang Guowei 741

(1877-1927)

Wang Heqing 741

(fl. 1246), song poem by

Wang Jian

(ca. 767-830)

Wang Kaisu 741

(Qing dynasty)

Wang Li

(1900-1986)

Wang Rong

(468-494), pentasyllabic quatrain by

wang shi

(royal chamber)

Wang Shizhen 741

(1526-1590)

Wang Shizhen 741

(1634-1711), heptasyllabic quatrain by

Wang Siren 741

(1575-1646)

Wang Wei

(701?-761); pentasyllabic quatrains by; pentasyllabic regulated verse by

Wang Xianqian 741

(1842-1918)

Wang Yao

(1914-1989)

Wang Yi

(fl. 114-119)

Wang Zhaojun 741

(concubine of Han Yuandi)

Wang Zhihuan 741

(688-742), pentasyllabic quatrain by

wanyue

(delicate and restrained)

wei

(tail)

Wei Zheng

(580-643)

Wei Zhuang 782

(ca. 836-910); short song poem by

weiwai zhi wei 1310

(flavor beyond flavor)

Wen Tianxiang 406

(1236-1283), heptasyllabic regulated verse by

Wen Tingyun 1312

(813?-870), short song poem by

Wen Wang ( 392

)

(King Wen of the Zhou)

Wen xuan

(Anthology of Refined Literature; Xiao Tong)

Wen Yiduo

(1899-1946)

Wenhui (taizi) 406

(Crown Prince Wenhui [458-493])

wenren hua 406

(literatified)

Wenxin diaolong 406

(The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons; Liu Xie)

Wenxin diaolong zhu 406

(Annotated Edition of “The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons”; Fan Wenlan)

Wenxin diaolong zhu shi 406

(“The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons,” Annotated and Explicated; Liu Xie)

“Wenzhang liubie lun” 406

(Treatise on Literature Divided by Genre; Zhi Yu)

western Songs of Jing and Chu. See Jing Chu xisheng

(self)

Work of Huainanzi, The. See Huainanzi

(object)

(shaman)

“Wu cheng fu” 1319

(Fu on the Ruined City; Bao Zhao)

Wu songs of the Jiangnan region. See Jiangnan Wu sheng

Wu Weiye

(1609-1672)

Wu Wenying 544

(ca. 1200-1260), long song poem on objects by

wu wo zhi jing 589

(selfless state)

wu yi zi yan yuan 589

(not a word verbalizes complaint)

Wu Zetian

(empress [r. 690-705])

Wuchao xiaoshuo 634

(Fictions from Five Dynasties)

wujue

. See wuyan jueju

Wuxing

(president-day name for Huzhou 1264

in Song times)

wuyan jueju 634

(wujue

) (pentasyllabic quatrain)

wuyan lüshi 634

(pentasyllabic regulated verse)

wuyan shi

(pentasyllabic poetry)

wuyin

(wuyun

) (Five Skandhas)

wuyue

(five sacred mountains)

wuyun

. See wuyin

“Xi qiuhua” 1324

(Lamenting Autumn’s Glory)

“Xia quan” 617

(Falling Stream)

Xiahou Kuan 373

(fl. 193 B.C.E.)

xiang wai zhi xiang 550

(the image beyond images)

xiangcao meiren 1327

(fragrant grasses and fair one)

“Xianghe ge ci” 484

(Lyrics for Accompanied Songs [poetry classification])

Xiao Gang

(Liang Jianwendi 921

; Emperor Jianwen of the Liang [503-551]), pentasyllabic shi poems by

Xiao Tong

(501-531)

Xiao Yi

(Liang Yuandi 921

; Emperor Yuan of the Liang [r. 552-554])

Xiaohong

(Little Scarlet)

xiaoling

(short ci poem)

xiaoling

(single song poem, a sanqu form)

xiaozhong jianda 748

(to see big within small)

Xici zhuan 1331

(Commentary on the Appended Phrases)

Xie Huilian 778

(397-433)

Xie Lingyun 778

(

) (duke of Kangle [385-433]); pentasyllabic shi poems by

Xie Tiao

(464-499); pentasyllabic shi poems by

Xie Wuyi

(1068-1112)

Xijing zaji 1175

(Miscellaneous Notes on the Western Capital)

Xikun ti

(Xikun style)

xin

(mind)

Xin Qiji

(1140-1207); long song poems by

xin yuefu

(new Music Bureau poetry)

xing

(affective image)

“Xing lu”

(Treading Frost [Mao no. 17])

xingling

(natural sensibility)

xingsi

(verisimilitude)

xinhai

(the year 1191)

Xiongnu

“Xiuzhu pian” 1237

(Tapering Bamboo; Chen Zi’ang)

“Xizhai xing ma” 1175

(Riding in the Western Residence; Xiao Gang)

Xu Tang shihua 1198

(A Sequel to the Poetry Talks of the Tang)

“Xu Xiaoxiu shi” 1343

(Preface to Xiaoxiu’s Poetry; Yuan Hongdao)

xuanxue

(abstruse learning)

xuanyan shi 1344

(abstruse poetry)

Xuanzong ( 814

)

(Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang [r. 712-756])

xunhuan wangfu 1345

(moving in a cycle; going and returning)

xuzi

(empty words)

(odes; elegantiae)

yan

(prelude)

Yan Liu

(seventeenth or eighteenth century), pentasyllabic regulated verse by

Yan Shigu

(583-645)

Yan Shu

(991-1055), short song poem by

yan wai zhi yi 947

(meaning beyond the words)

“Yan’er mei” 1180

(Charming Eyes; Huizong)

Yang Aiai

(courtesan in Hangzhou, mentioned in a twelfth-century text, who was befriended at West Lake by a young man from Nanjing named Zhang Cheng)

Yang Defeng 852

(Huyin xiansheng 1264

[fl. 1080])

Yang Deyi

(fl. 143 B.C.E.)

Yang Guang 852

(Emperor Yang of the Sui 755

[r. 605-617])

Yang Jian

(Sui Wendi 755

; Emperor Wen of the Sui [r. 581-604])

Yang Xiong 489

(53 B.C.E.-18 C.E.)

Yang Zhu

(fl. third century B.C.E.)

yanyue

(banquet music)

“Yehe hua” 1360

(Magnolia Pumila)

(idea)

(in order to)

Yi gai

(Essentials of the Arts; Liu Xizai)

“Yi jiuyou” 1362

(Remembering Old Journeys)

yi wo guan wu 446

(objects are seen through the perspective of the self)

yi wu guan wu 446

(objects are seen through the perspective of objects)

yi zhong zhi jing 571

(scene within the mind)

yichang santan 732

(one note, three echoes)

“Yihu zhu” 732

(A Bushel of Pearls; Li Yu)

Yijing

(Book of Changes)

yijing

(idea-scape)

yimin

(people who lived under a former dynasty)

“Yin ma chang cheng ku xing” 1368

(Song of Letting Horses Drink at the Long Wall Spring)

Ying Bu

(Qing Bu

[d. 196 B.C.E.])

yixiang

(idea-image)

Yiyuan zhiyan 1361

(Drunken Words in the Garden of Art; Wang Shizhen)

Yongming period 717

(483-493)

yongshi

(reflections on history)

yongwu

(poems on things)

yongwu ci

(song lyrics on things)

yongwu fu

(rhapsodies on things)

yongwu shi 350

(poetry on things)

Yongxuelou gao 1372

( Drafts from the Pavilion for Chanting About Snow; Gan Lirou)

“You bi”

(The Robust Horse [Mao no. 298])

You Guoen

(1899-1978)

you jing ru qing 1375

(entering the emotion through the scene)

you wo zhi jing 582

(state in which the self is present)

youxian

(transcendental roaming)

Youyang zazu 1376

(Miscellanea from Youyang; Duan Chengshi)

youzi

(wanderer)

(in), 384

Yu Xin

(513-581); pentasyllabic shi poems by

Yuan Hongdao 792

(1568-1610); heptasyllabic regulated verse by

Yuan Mei

(1716-1798), pentasyllabic quatrain by

Yuan Zhen

(779-831)

Yuan Zhongdao 792

(1560-1600)

Yuan Zongdao 792

(1570-1626)

Yue zhang ji 477

(Collection of Musical Pieces; Liu Yong)

Yuefu

(Music Bureau)

yuefu

(Music Bureau poetry); and ci poetry; compared with the “Nineteen Old Poems,”; elements of, in Li Bai’s poetry; and Han popular songs; and Han ritual hymns, ; as source for Tang pentasyllabic quatrains

Yuefu shiji 477