“The jade mountain : a Chinese anthology ; being Three hundred poems of the T'ang dynasty, 617-906” (Publication, 1929)
Year
1929
Text
Hengtangtuishi. The jade mountain : a Chinese anthology ; being Three hundred poems of the T'ang dynasty, 617-906. Translated by Witter Bynner from the texts of Kiang Kang-hu [Jiang Kanghu]. (New York, N.Y. : A. A. Knopf, 1929). [Übersetzung von Tang shi san bai shou].
唐詩三百首
[Enthält] :
Bynner, Witter. Poetry and culture.
Kiang, Kang-hu. Chinese poetry.
http://www.shigeku.org/xlib/lingshidao/hanshi/tang.htm.
[Siehe Appendices] (Byn1)
唐詩三百首
[Enthält] :
Bynner, Witter. Poetry and culture.
Kiang, Kang-hu. Chinese poetry.
http://www.shigeku.org/xlib/lingshidao/hanshi/tang.htm.
[Siehe Appendices] (Byn1)
Type
Publication
Contributors (3)
Bynner, Witter
(Brooklyn, New York 1881-1968 Santa Fe) : Schriftsteller, Dichter, Übersetzer
Hengtangtuishi
(1711-1778)
Jiang, Kanghu
(Yiyang, Jianxi 1883-1954 Shanghai) : Politiker, Literaturwissenschaftler
Subjects
Literature : China : Poetry
/
Literature : Occident : United States of America
/
Periods : China : Tang (618-906)
/
References / Sources
Chronology Entries (2)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1929.1 |
The jade mountain. (1) Bynner, Witter. Poetry and culture [ID D9794]. Like most of us who have been schooled in this western world, I was afforded in my youth a study of culture flowing mainly from two sources, the Greek and the Hebrew. I had come to feel that poetic literature must contain streams from one or the other of these two sources: on the one hand the clean, objective, symmetrical, athletic beauty of the Greek; on the other hand the turgid, subiectivf, distorted, elaborated beauty of the Hebrew. Like my fellow students, I had been offered nothing of the literatures of the Far East. I am still doubtful that I could ever feel any real adherence to the ornate and entranced literature of India; but I have come by accident into as close touch with Chinese poetry as a westerner is able to come without a knowledge of the Chinese tongue. And I feel with conviction that in the matter of poetry I have begun to receive a new, finer, and deeper education than ever came to me from the Hebrew or the Greek. Centuries ago cultivated Chinese had reached the intellectual saturation which has tired the mind of the modern European. The Chinese gendeman knew the ancient folk-songs, compiled by Confucius. He knew also, all around .him, a profoundly rich civilization, a more poised and particularized sophistication than we westerners have yet attained. Through the Asian centuries everyone has written verse. In fact, from early imperial days down to these even worse disordered days of the Republic, the sense of poetry as a natural and solacing part of life has lasted among the Chinese people. Whether or not the individual may form or enjoy his poetry in metrical shape, he is constantly aware of the kinship Detween the beauty of the world and the beauty of imaginative phrase. On any Chinese mountain-climb toward a temple, rock after rock with its terse and suggestive inscription will"hear witness to this temper. So will thé street cries of the peddlers, or the names of the tea-houses, and on many hill-tops and lake-sides the casual but reverent jottings of this or that anonymous appreciator of natural beauty. When Whitman said: "To have great poets there must be great audiences too", he must have had in the back of his mind enriched generations like the Elizabethan in England or like almost any generation in China. In those great audiences each man, to the limit of his capacity and with natural ease, was a poet. There is a simple secret in these generations. It is told in a pamphlet by a venerable Chinese scholar who, until his death two years ago, was still with infinite passion adhering to the precepts of his ancestors, and with infinite patience, acceptably expressed by the way among foreigners, adhering to his conviction that foreigners impair the health of China. 'His name is Ku Hung- ming. His pamphlet, written in English, one of the five languages which he could use, is called The Spirit of the Chinese People. In it he advances, as reason for the eternal youth of the Chinesè people, the fact that the average Chihese has managed to maintain within himself the head of a man and the heart of a child. On this brief he is absorbingly interesting, explaining the continuance of Chinese culture, the only ancient culture still racially existent. My immediate concern with his brief is more special. I detect in it something that he does not specify: a reason foi the continuance of poetry as a live factor among his people and, more than that( the best reason I know of for the persistence of poetry anywhere among cultured races. Music may be the most intimate of the arts, I am not sure. Except for simple melodies, music is beyond the reach of anv individual who is not a technician. Painting and sculpture are obviously arts expressing themselves in single given objects, which, although they may be copied and so circulated, are for the most part accessible only to the privileged dr to those who make pilgrimages. Poetry more than any other of the arts may be carried about by a man either in his own remembering heart or else in compact and easily available printed form. It belongs to anyone. It is of all the arts the closest to a man; and it will so continue to be, in spite of the apparent shocks given it by the noises of mddern cdmmerce and science and jazz. It has been a common occurrence in China that poets, even the best of them, devote their earlier years to some form or public service. Century after century, Chinese poems reflect this deep devotion of their authors to the good of the State — their unwavering allegiance to righteousness, even when it meant demotin or exile or death. In modern western times there have been periods when poetry has seemed to be a candle-lit and thin-blooded occupation. I venture to surmise that poetry written in that sort of atmosphere grows with time less and less valid, less and less noticed. As a matter of fact, the outstanding English poets have been acutely concerned with the happiness of their fellow men and have given themselves warmly to public causes in which they believed. Similarly present-day poets in America, with amazingly few exceptions, have clustered to the defence of noble souls at bay like Eugene Debs, or have been quick to protest against doubtful justice, as in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. This sort of zeal may not result in poetry of a high order immediately connected with the specific cause; but there is no question that but for this bravery, this heat on behalf of man's better nature, there would not be in the hearts of the poets so fine a crucible for their more-personal alchemies. Let me say a more general word than Dr, Kiang's as to the characteristic method of the best Chinese poetry I am not referring to the technical means by which a Chinese poet makes his words balanced and melodious. The discovery which has largely undone my previous convictions as to the way of writing poetry has rather to do with use of substance than with turns of expression. Mencius said long ago, in reference to the Odes collected by Confucius: "Those who explain the Odes must not insist on one term so as to do violence to a sentence, nor on a sentence so as to do violence to the general scope. They must try with their thoughts to meet that Scope, and then they will apprehend it." In the poetry of the west we are accustomed to let our appreciative minds accept with joy this or that passage in a poem — to prefer the occasional glitter of a jewel to the straight light of the sun. The Chinese poet seldom lets any portion of what he is saying unbalance the entirety. Moreover, with the exception of a particular tlass of writing — adulatory verse written for the court — Chinese poetry rarely trespasses beyond the bounds of actuality. Whereas western poets will take actualities as points of departure for exaggeration or fantasy, or else as shadows of contrast against dreams of unreality, the great Chinese poets accept the world exactly as they find it in all its terms, and with profound simplicity find therein sufficient solace. Even in phraseology they seldom talk about one thing in terms of another, but are able enough and sure enough as artists to make the ultimately exact terms become the beautiful terms. If a metaphor is used, it is a metaphor directly relating to the theme, not something borrowed from the ends of the earth. The metaphor must be concurrent with the action or flow of the poem; not merely superinduced, but an integral part of both the scene and the emotion. Wordsworth, of our poets, comes closest to the Chinese; but their poetry cleaves evpn nearer to nature than his. They perform the miracle of identifying the wonder of beauty with common sense. Rather, they prove that the simplest common sense, the most salutary, and the most nearly universal, is the sense of the beauty of nature, quickened and yet sobered by the wistful warmth of human friendship. For our taste, used as we are to the operatic in poetry, the substance of Chinese poems seems often mild or even trivial; but if we will be honest with ourselves and with our appreciation of what is lastingly important, we shall find these very same poems to be momentous details in the immense patience of beauty. They are the heart of an intimate letter. They bring the true, the beautiful, the everlasting, into simple, easy touch with the human, the homely, and the immediate. And I predict that future western poets will go to school with the masters of the T'ang Dynasty, as well as with the masters of the golden age of Greece, or with the Hebrew prophets, or with the English dramatists or romanticists — to learn how best may be expressed, for themselves and others, that passionate patience which is the core of life. It is not necessary that culture bring about the death of poetry, as it did in the Rome of Virgil. The cynics are wrong who see in our future no place for an art which belongs, they say, to the childhood of- the race. The head of a man and the heart of a child working together as in the Chinese have made possible with one race and may make possible with any race, even in the thick of thf most intricate culture, the continuance of the purest poetry. Because of the absence of tenses, of personal pronouns and of connectives generally, the translator of Chinese poetry, like the Chinese reader himself, has considerable leeway as to interpretation. If even in English, so much more definite a language, there may be varying interpretations of a given poem, it is no wonder that critics and annotators have differed as to the meaning of poems in Chinese. There have been frequent instances in this volume where Dr. Kiang and I have discussed several possible meanings of a poem and have chosen for translation into the more definite language the meaning we preferred. With his sanction I have decided that for readers in English it is better to eliminate or use only seldom the names of places and persons not highly important to the sense of a poem: to use 'southern' or 'eastern' for instance, instead of regional names unfamiliar in the Occident; to indicate the person meant when the poem, according to Chinese custom, employs the name and attributes of some other similar well-known person, and to embody in the English text something of the significance which would be conveyed to any Chinese reader, but not to western readers, by historical or literary allusions. At the risk of criticism, I have made certain reasonable compromises. I have used the sometimes inaccurate term 'Tartar' instead of 'Hun', or 'barbarian', the term 'China' instead of 'Han', the term 'Turkestan' when it roughly corresponded to the ancient term. There are many other approximations which have seemed advisable. Once in a while, for good reason, I have cnanged a title. And there are occasional unimportant omissions. I have omitted, for instance, - the 'ninth-born' or 'eleventh- born', frequently added in the original to names of persons, and meaning the ninth or eleventh child in a family. Whenever possible, I have avoided phraseology which, natural and familiar in Chinese, would be exotic or quaint in English; I have hoped rather to accent in these T'ang masterpieces the human and universal qualities by which they have endured. |
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| 2 | 1929.2 |
The jade mountain. (2) Kiang, Kang-hu [Jiang, Kanghu]. Chinese poetry [ID D9794]. Poems of the Early Period Chinese poetry began with our written history about 5500 years ago. The oldest poems now extant were written by the Emperor Yao (2357 B.C.); and one of them was adopted as the Chinese national song in the beginning of the Republic, because Yao was in reality a life president of the most ancient republic in the world, and this poem expresses the republican spirit. Shun and Yü, the other two sagacious presidents, left with us also some poems. Their works, together with other verses by following emperors and statesmen, mav be found in our classics and official histories. In the Chou Dynasty (1122-256.B.C.) poetry became more important, not only to individual and social life, but also to the government. Emperors used to travel over all the feudal states and to collect the most popular and typical poems or songs. The collection being then examined by the official historians and musicians, public opinion and the welfare of the people jn the respective states would thus be ascertained and attested. In the ceremonies of sacrifice, inter-state convention, official banquet, and school and military exercises, various poems were sung and harmonized with music Poetry in this period was not a special literary task for scholars, but a means of expression common to both sexes of all classes. The Classical Poems One of the five Confucian classics is the Boo\ of Poetry. It is a selection of poems of the Chou Dynasty, classified under different types. This selection was made by Confucius out of the governmental collections of many states. It contains three hundred and eleven poems, all of high standard, both as literature and as music. Since the loss of the Confucian Book of Music during the period of the Great Destruction (221-211 B.C.) the musical significance of this classic can hardly be traced, but its literary value remains and the distinction of the classical poems, which can never bf duplicated. Poems Since the Han Dynasty The classical poems were usually composed of lines of four characters, or words, with every other line rhymed. Lines were allowed, however, of more or fewer words. Under the reign of the Emperor Wu (140-87 B.C.) of the Western Han Dynasty new types of poetry were introduoed; and the five-character and seven-character poems became popular and have dominated ever since. The Emperor himself invented the latter; while Li Ling and Su Wu, two of his statesmen-generals, wrote their verses in the former type. The number of characters of each line was uniform; no irregular line might occur. These two types were afterwards named the 'ancient' or 'unruled' poems. Nearly all poems before the T'ang Dynasty were in this form. The Emperor Wu introduced also the Po Liang style, which is a seven-character poem with every line rhyming in the last word. Po Liang was the name of a pavilion in the Emperor's garden where, while he banqueted his literary attendants, each wrote one line to complete a long poem. This has been a favourite game among Chinese poets. The Poems of the T'ang Dynasty As many a dynasty in Chinese history is marked by some phase of success representing the thought and life of that period, the T'ang Dynasty is commonly recognized as the golden age of poetry. Beginning with the founder of the dynasty, down to the last ruler, almost every one of the emperors was a great lover and patron of poetry, and many were poets themselves. A special tribute should be paid to the Empress Wu Chao or the 'Woman Empero' (684-704), through whose influence poetry became a requisite in examinations for degrees and an important course leading to official promotion. This made every official as well as every scholar a poet. The poems required in the examination, after long years of gradual development, followed a formula, and many regulations were established. Not only must the length of a line be limited to a certain number of characters, usually five or seven, but also the length of a poem was limited to a certain number of lines, usually four or eight or twelve. The maintenance of rhymes, the parallelism of characters, and the balance of tones were other rules considered essential. This is called the 'modern' or 'ruled' poetry. In the Ch'ing or Manchu Dynasty the examination poem was standardized as a five-character-line ooem of sixteen lines with every other, line rhymed. This 'eight-rhyme' poem was accompanied by the famous 'eight-legged' literature (a form of literature divided into eight sections) as a guiding light tor entrance into mandarin life. The above-mentioned rules of poetry applied first only to examination poems. But afterwards they became a common exercise with 'modern' or 'ruled' poems in general. Chinese poetry since the T'ang Dynasty has followed practically only two forms, the 'modern' or 'ruled' form and the 'ancient' or 'unruled' form. A poet usually writes both. The 'eight-rhyme' poem, however, was practised tor official examinations only. The progress of T'ang poetry may be viewed through a division into four periods, as distinguished by different styles and a differing spirit. There were, of course, exceptional works, especially at the transient points, and it is difficult to draw an exact boundary-line between any two periods. The first period is approximately from A.D. 620 to 700, the second from 700 to 780, the third from 780 to 850, and the fourth from 850 to 900. The second period, corresponding to the summer season. of the year, is regarded as the most celebrated epoch. Its representative figures are Li Po (705-762), the genie of poetry; Tu Fu, (712-720), the sage of poetry; Wang Wei (699-759) and Meng Hao-jan (689-740), the two hermit-poets, and Ts'en Ts'an (given degree, 744) and Wei Ying-wu (about 740-830), the two magistrate-poets. The first period is represei ted by Chang Yiieh (667-730) and Chang Chiu-ling (673-740), two premiers, and by Sung Chih-wcn (died 710) and Tu Shen-yen (between the seventh and the eighth centuries); the third, by Yuan Chen (779-832) and Po Chii-yi (772-846), two cabinet ministers, and by Han Yii (768-824) and Liu Tsung- yüan (773-819) two master literati more famous for their prose writing than for their verse; and the fourth, by Wen T'ing-yün (ninth century) and Li Shang-yin (813-858), the founders of the Hsi K'un school, and by Hsü Hun (given degree, 832) and Yao He (A.D. 9th century). All these poets had their works published in a considerable number of volumes. Secondary poets in the T'ang Dynasty were legion. Poems after the T'ang Dynasty Since the T'ang Dynasty, poetry has become even more popular. Its requirement as one of the subjects in the governmental examinations has continued, for a thousand years, to the end of the last century, through all changes of dynasty. Many great poets have arisen during this time. Su Shih (1036-1101), Huang T'ing-chien (1050-1110), Ou-yang Hsiu (1007-1072) and Lu Yu (1125- 1209), of the Sung Dynasty, are names as celebrated as those great names of the second period of the T'ang Dynasty. But people still honour the works of the T'ang poets as the model for ever-coming generations, though many of more varied literary taste prefer the Sung works. Chao Meng-fu (1254-1322) of the Yüan Dynasty and Yuan Hao-wen (1190-1258) of the Kin Dynasty were the shining stars of that dark age. Many poets of the Ming Dynasty, such as Liu Chi (1311-1375), Sung Lien (1310-1381), Li Tung-yang (1447-1516), and Ho Ching-ming (1483-1521) were very famous. Still greater poets lived in the Ch'ing Dynasty. Ch'ien Ch'ien-yi (1581-1664), Wu Wei-yeh (1699I-1671), Wang Shih-cheng (1526-1593), Chao Yi (1727-1814), Chiang Shih-ch'üan (1725-1784), Yuan Mei (1715-1797), Huang Ching-jen (1749-1783), and Chang Wen-t'ao (1764—1814) are some of the immortals. Their works are by no means inferior to those in the previous dynasties. Literature differs from science. It changes according to times and conditions, but shows, on the whole, neither rapid improvement nor gradual betterment. Later writings might appear to be more expressive and therefore more inspiring, but the dignity and beauty of ancient works are inextinguishable and even unapproached. This is especially true of poetry and of the T'ang poems, for the reason that during those three hundred years the thinking capacity and the working energy of all excellent citizens in the Empire were encouraged and induced to this single subject. Neither before nor after has there been such an age for poetry. Selections of the T'ang Poems Hundreds of collections and selections of T'ang poems have been published during the succeeding dynasties. Two compiled in the Ch’ing Dynasty are considered the best. One is the Complete Collection of T'ang Poems and the other is the Three Hundred T'ang Poems. These two have no similarity in nature and in purpose. The first is an imperial edition aiming to include every line of existing T'ang poetry: which amounts to 48,900 poems by 2,200 poets in 900 volumes. The second is but a small text-hook for elementary students, giving only 311 better-known works by 77 of the better-known writers, the same number of poems as in the Confucian Classic of Poetry. This selection was made by an anonymous editor who signed himself 'Heng T'ang T'uei Shih' or 'A Retired Scholar at the Lotus Pool', first published in the reign of the Emperor Ch'ien Lung (1735-1795). The title of this selection was based upon a common saying: 'By reading thoroughly three hundred T'ang poems, one will write verse without learning. ' In the preface the compiler assures us that 'this is but a family reader for children: but it will hold good until our hair is white'. This statement, as years have passed, has proved true. The collection has always stood in China as the most popular volume of poetry, tar poets and for the mass of the people alike. Even illiterates are familiar with the title of the book and with lines from it. Other selections may he of a higher standard and please scholars better, but none can compare with this in extensive circulation and accessible influence. The anthology in Chinese is in two volumes. The first contains all 'ancient' or 'unruled' poems, and the second all 'modern' or 'ruled' poems. The former is again divided into two parts of five-character lines and seven-character lines, the latter into four parts: (i) eight five-character lines, (2) eight seven-character lines, (3) four five-character lines, and (4) four seven-character lines. In learning Chinese poems the order is always reversed. The shorter line of fewer characters should come first. We have, however, re¬arranged the volume in English, according to poets rather than to poetic technique, the poets following one another in the alpha- Detical order of their surnames. (The surname in Chinese comes first.) Under each poet we have kept the following order of poems: 1. Modern poems of four five-character lines. 2. Modern poems of four Seven-character lines. 3. Modern poems of eight five-character lines. 4. Modern poems of eight seven-character lines. 5. Ancient poems of five-character lines. 6. Ancient poems of seven-character lines. Various Poetic Regulations and Forms There are more strict regulations in writing poems in Chinese than in any other language. This is because Chinese is the only living, language governed by the following rules: First, it is made of individual hierographic characters; second, each character or word is monosyllabic; and third, each character has its fixed tone. Hence certain very important regulations in Chinese poetry are little considered or even unknown to the poetry of other languages. For instance, the avoidance of using a word twice, the parallelism pf words of the same nature and the balancing of words of different tones, all need special preliminary explanation. The first of these regulations is possible only in Chinese poetry. We find many long poems with hundreds or even thousands of characters, and not a single one repeated, as in the form of p'ai-lü or 'arranged rule'. The second means that all the characters of one line should parallel as parts of speech those of the next line; thus noun with noun, adjective with adjective, verb with verb, etc. Even in the same parts of speech, nouns designating animals should be parallel, adjectives of colour, numbers, etc. The third means that all the characters of a line should balance, in the opposite group of tones, those of the next line. There are five tones in the Chinese written language. The first is called the upper even tone; the second, the lower even tone; the third, the upper tone; the fourth, the departing tone; and the fifth, the entering tone. The first two are in one group, named 'even tones', and the last three are in the other group and named 'uneven tones'. Thus, if any character in a line is of the even group, the character which balances with it in the next line should be of the uneven group, and vice versa. These strict regulations, though, very important to 'modern' or 'ruled' poems, do not apply to 'ancient' or 'unruled' poems. The ancient form' is very liberal. There are but two regulations for it—namely, a limit to the number of characters in each line, five or seven; and rhyme on the last character of every other line. The seven-character 'ancient' poem gives even more leeway. It may have irregular lines of more or fewer characters, and every line may rhyme as in the Po Liang style. There are also, as in English, perfect rhymes and allowable rhymes. The perfect rhymes are standardized by an Imperial Rhyming Dictionary. In this dictionary all characters are arranged, first according to the five tones, and then to different rhymes. The two even tones have 30 rhymes; the third, 29; the fourth, 30; and the fifth, a very short sound, only 17. These rhymes are so grouped, following the old classical pronunciation, that some rhyming words may seem to the modern ear discordant. The allowable rhymes include words that rhymed before the standard was made. The 'modern' poem must observe perfect rhymes; the 'ancient' poem is permitted allowable rhymes. Again, the former should use only one rhyme pf the even tones; the latter may use many different rhymes of different tones in one poem. The 'modern' poem has also its fixed pattern of tones. There are four patterns for the five-character poems and four for the seven-character poems. The signs used in the following charts are commonly adopted in Chinese pcetry: —indicates an even tone; indicates an uneven tone; indicates that the character should be of an even tone; but that an uneven is permitted; indicates the reverse; indicates the rhyme. The first group of a 'ruled poem' is named the 'rising pair'; the second, the 'receiving pair'; the third, the 'turning pair'; and the fourth, the 'concluding pair'. This exampie shows us that in writing a 'modern' or 'ruled' poem many essential regulations are involved. They may be summed up in six rules: 1. Limitation of lines (four or eight, though the p'ai-lü or 'arranged rule' poem may have as many lines as the writer likes). 2. Limitation of characters in each line (five or seven). 3. Observation of the tone pattern (the five-character four-line poems in old times did not ohserve this rule stricdy). 4. Parallelism of the nature of words in each couplet (though the first and the last couplets may be exempted). 5. Selection of a single rhyme from the even tones and rhyming the last characters of alternate lines (the second, the fourth, the sixth, ana the eighth lines; sometimes the first line also). The five-character four-line poems in the old days, however, were allowed rhymes from the uneven tones. 6. Avoidance of using a character twice unless deliberately repeated for effect. Thus we see the great difficulty in writing a 'modern' poem. But poets have always believed that the 'modern' poem, though difficult to learn, is easy to write, while the 'ancient' poem, though easy to learn, is very difficult to write well. Besides, the 'modern' poem is constructed in a very convenient length. It enables the poet to finish his whole work while his thought is still fresh and inspiring; and, if necessary, he can express it in a series, either connected or separated. We find, ever since the T'ang Dynasty, most of the poets writing most of their poems in the 'modern' forms. Chinese Poetry in General All the above statements treat only poems which are in Chinese called shih. This word is too narrow to correspond to the English word 'poetry', which is more like the Chinese word 'yün-wen' or rhythmic literature, and yet 'yün-wen' has a broader content, for includes also drama. There are, however, many other kinds of yün-wen besides shih, not only drama, but poetry in general. I will give a brief explanation of each; my idea being that the works we present in this volume, though the most common type of Chinese poetry, are but one of many types. In the later part of the Chou Dynasty two new types of poetry were originated; one is the ch'u-ts'u, by Ch'ü Yuan (fourth century, B.C.), and the other fu, by Hsün K'uang (fourth century B.C.). They are both, though rhymed, called rhythmic prose, and have been much practised ever since. The latter is more popular and used to be a subject in the official examinations. Since the Han Dynasty, the yüeh-fu, or poem 'written for music', has been introduced into literature. We have a few examples in this volume in different forms. Because we do not sing them with their old music, which has vanished, they have practically lost their original quality, though still distinguished by title and style. Another type of poetry, named ts'ü, was formulated in the second period of the T'ang Dynasty, but was not commonly practised until the last, or fourth, period. The Sung Dynasty is the golden age of the ts'u poems and Li Ch'ing-chao and Chu Shu-cheng, two woman poets, are the most famous specialists. This form is composed of-lines irregular, but according to fixed patterns. There are hundreds of patterns, each regulated as to the number of characters, group of tones, etc. In the same dynasty the ch'ü, or dramatic song, the t'an-ts'u, or string song, and the ku-shu, or drum tale, were also brought into existence. The next dynasty, the Yuan or Mongol Dynasty, is known as the golden age of these forms of literature. Professional story-tellers or readers are found everywhere singing them with string instruments or drums. Besides these, the ch'uan-ch'i, or classical play, the chiao-pen, or common play, and the hsiao-tiao, or folk-song, are all very popular. There are numberless Chinese poems written in the revolving order, to be read back and forth. The most amazing poerns in human history are the Huei-wen-t'ü or the revolving chart, by Lady Su Huei, of the Chin Dynasty (265-419), and the Ch'ien-tzu-wen, or thousand-character literature, by Chou Hsing-ssu, (fifth century A.D.) The former is composed of eight hundred characters, originally woven in five colors on a piece of silk, being a love-poem written and sent to her husband, General Tou T'ap, who was then guarding the northern boundary against the Tartar invasion. The characters can be read from different ends in different directions and so form numerous poems. Four hundred have already been found, some short and some very long. It is believed that there are still more undiscovered. The latter, made of a thousand different characters was a collection of stone inscriptions left by the master calligrapher, Wang Hsi-chih. They had been but loose characters in no order and with no connexion, but were arranged and rhymed as a perfect poem by Chou Hsing-ssu. The same thousand characters have been made into poems by ten or more authors; and these marvels in the poetical world can never be dreamed of by people who speak language other than Chinese! All these various forms under various names are not shih in the Chinese sense, but are poetry in the English sense. Each of them possesses its own footing in the common ground of Chinese poetry. To make any remarks bn Chinese poetry at large, or to draw any conclusions from it, one must take into consideration not only the shih, but all the various forms. I sometimes hear foreigners, as well as young Chinese students, blaming Chinese poems as being too stiff or confined. They do not realize that some forms of Chinese poetry are even freer than English free verse. They also criticize the Chinese for having no long poems, as other races have, ignoring the fact that many fu poems are thousands of lines long, with tens of thousands of characters, and that many rhythmic historical tales fill ten or more volumes, each volume rollowing a single rhyme. |