Chinese poetry

“ Such actions are seen, but Chinese would be a poor language and Chinese poetry but a narrow art, could they not go on to represent also what is unseen. The best poetry deals not only with natural images but with lofty thoughts, spiritual suggestions and obscure relations. The greater part of natural truth is hidden in processes too minute for vision and in harmonies too large, in vibrations, cohesions and in affinities. The Chinese compass these also, and with great power and beauty.
You will ask, how could the Chinese have built up a great intellectual fabric from mere picture writing? ”

“ He is perhaps the most Chinese of the poets dealt with, and certainly one of the most philosophical. By his subtly simple method of treatment, lofty themes are clothed in the bright raiment of poetry. If through the red pine woods, or amid the torrent of peach-blossom rushing down the valley, some mortal beauty strays, she is but a symbol, a lure that leads us by way of the particular into the universal. Whatever senses we possess may be used as means of escape from the prison of personality into the boundless freedom of the spiritual world. ”

“ The mass of Chinese poetry is so vast, that it is hopeless for the general reader to do much more than familiarise himself with the best specimens of the greatest poets. It is interesting to note that all the more extensive anthologies include a considerable number of poems by women, some of quite a high order.
Two years ago, an eminent scientist at Cambridge said to me, "Have the Chinese anything in the nature of poetry in their language?" In reply to this, I told him of a question once put to me by a friendly Mandarin in China: "Have you foreigners got books in your honourable country?" ”

“ Poetry must render what is said, not what is merely meant. Abstract meaning gives little vividness, and fullness of imagination gives all. Chinese poetry demands that we abandon our narrow grammatical categories, that we follow the original text with a wealth of concrete verbs.
But this is only the beginning of the matter. So far we have exhibited the Chinese characters and the Chinese sentence chiefly as vivid shorthand pictures of actions and processes in nature. These embody true poetry as far as they go. ”

“ The above are only two metres out of many, but enough perhaps to give to any one who will read them with a pause or quasi-caesura, as marked by ° in each specimen, a fair idea of the rhythmic lilt of Chinese poetry. To the trained ear, the effect is most pleasing; and when this scansion, so to speak, is united with rhyme and choice diction, the result is a vehicle for verse, artificial no doubt, and elaborate, but admirably adapted to the genius of the Chinese language. ”

“ The chief moods of the Chinese poet are a pure delight in the varying phenomena of nature, and a boundless sympathy with the woes and sufferings of humanity. Erotic poetry is not absent, but it is not a feature proportionate in extent to the great body of Chinese verse; it is always restrained, and never lapses from a high level of purity and decorum. In his love for hill and stream which he peoples with genii, and for tree and flower which he endows with sentient souls, the Chinese poet is perhaps seen at his very best ”

“ And to all poets coming after, these two lovers have been types of romantic and mystic love between man and woman. Through them the symbols of the mandarin duck and drake, the one-winged birds, the tree whose boughs are interwoven, are revealed. They are the earthly counterparts of the heavenly lovers, the Cow-herd and the Spinning-maid in the constellations of Lyra and Aquila. To them Chinese poetry owes some of its finest inspirations, and at least two of its greatest singers, Tu Fu and Li Po. ”

“ It is admirable in a Briton with a good purpose to learn Chinese, but it would not be a proof of fine intellect in him to taste Chinese poetry in the original more than he tastes the poetry of his own tongue. ”

“ The highest conventional refinement, of a certain kind, is apparent in all that belongs to the Chinese. The inviolability of custom has not made their life heavy, but shaped it to the utmost adroitness for their own purposes. We are now somewhat familiar with their literature, and we see pervading it a poetry subtle and aromatic, like the odors of their appropriate beverage. Like that, too, it is all domestic,—never wild. The social genius, fluttering on the wings of compliment, pervades every thing Chinese. ”

“ The Chinese have been idealists, and experimenters in the making of great principles; their history opens a world of lofty aim and achievement, parallel to that of the ancient Mediterranean peoples. We need their best ideals to supplement our own—ideals enshrined in their art, in their literature and in the tragedies of their lives.
We have already seen proof of the vitality and practical value of oriental painting for ourselves and as a key to the eastern soul. It may be worth while to approach their literature, the intensest part of it, their poetry, even in an imperfect manner. ”

“ The great difference between the smooth and harsh tones, which are variable in different stanzas of Chinese poetry, some of which can be scarcely, if at all, enunciated in singing, renders it almost impossible to sing Chinese poetry with Western music, and a tune which was adapted to one stanza would not be appropriate for the next, though agreeing with it in the number and metrical arrangement of its syllables. ”

“ Above all, considering imagery to be the soul of poetry, I have avoided either adding images of my own or suppressing those of the original.
Any literal translation of Chinese poetry is bound to be to some extent rhythmical, for the rhythm of the original obtrudes itself. Translating literally, without thinking about the metre of the version, one finds that about two lines out of three have a very definite swing similar to that of the Chinese lines. The remaining lines are just too short or too long, a circumstance very irritating to the reader, whose ear expects the rhythm to continue. ”

“ Each word seems to slip naturally into its place; and so far from having been introduced by violence for the ends of prosody, it appears to be the very best word that could have been chosen, even had there been no trammels of any kind, so effectually is the art of the poet concealed by art. From the long string of names which have shed lustre upon this glorious age of Chinese poetry, it may suffice for the present purpose to mention the following, all of the very first rank. ”

“ Brevity is indeed the soul of a Chinese poem, which is valued not so much for what it says as for what it suggests. As in painting, so in poetry suggestion is the end and aim of the artist, who in each case may be styled an impressionist. The ideal length is twelve lines, and this is the limit set to candidates at the great public examinations at the present day, the Chinese holding that if a poet cannot say within such compass what he has to say it may very well be left unsaid. ”

“ But we must have due regard for them, for they only miss greatness by a little, and remind us of the faint threnodies that stir in the throats of bird musicians upon the dawn.
— * Giles, `Chinese Literature', p. 130. —
The Poets of the T`ang Dynasty
At last the golden age of Chinese poetry is at hand. Call the roll of these three hundred eventful years, and all the great masters of song will answer you. This is an age of professional poets, whom emperors and statesmen delight to honour. With the Chinese, verse-making has always been a second nature. ”

“ This characteristic, common to most Chinese poetry, is carried to an extreme point in the fifty-nine Old Style poems with which the works begin. Not only do they bristle with the names of historical personages, but almost every phrase is borrowed from some classic. One is tempted to quarrel with Wang An-shih’s statement that people liked the poems because they were easy to enjoy. No modern could understand them without pages of commentary to each poem. But Chinese poetry, with a few exceptions, has been written on this principle [5] since the Han dynasty ”

“ In reading Chinese poetry, it is important to keep these similes in mind, as the poets constantly employ them; evil counsellors, for instance, are often referred to as "clouds which obscure the sun."
The Son of Heaven was assisted in the government of the country by a large body of officials, drawn from all classes of the people. How these officials were chosen, and what were their functions, will be stated presently. At the moment, we must take a cursory glance at Chinese history, since it is an ever-present subject of allusion in poetry. ”

“ It is one of the accomplishments which no man of education would be found lacking. Colonel Cheng-Ki-Tong, in his delightful book `The Chinese Painted by Themselves', says: "Poetry has been in China, as in Greece, the language of the gods. It was poetry that inculcated laws and maxims; it was by the harmony of its lines that traditions were handed down at a time when memory had to supply the place of writing; and it was the first language of wisdom and of inspiration." ”

“ It is quite true that there are no epic poems in Chinese literature. This form of poetry has not been introduced in China, but I differ with your statement, Sir, that Chinese poetry lacks imagination. (Applause.) I could give you many instances to the contrary, though not from memory. The last speaker’s remark that the present China is different from what China is in Chinese poetry may be true, but I may well retort that the England as represented in Shakespeare is very different from the England of to-day. ”

“ It is in this power of suggestion that the Chinese poets excel. Asked to differentiate between European and Chinese poetry, some critics would perhaps insist upon their particular colour sense, instancing the curious fact that where we see blue to them it often appears green, and vice versa, or the tone theories that make their poems so difficult to understand; in fact, a learned treatise would be written on these lines, to prove that the Chinese poets were not human beings as we understand humanity at all. ”

“ Yet the translations that have already appeared in foreign languages are but a trifle compared with the wealth of poetry that still remains unknown to Europe; and Chinese poetry, like that of all other languages, loses half its beauty when clothed in the words of an alien382 tongue. A Chinese gentleman's education is not regarded as complete if he cannot clothe his ideas in graceful verse ”

“ The poetry which is representative of the period between the death of Confucius and the 2nd century B.C. is a thing apart. There is nothing like it in the whole range of Chinese literature. It illumines many a native pronouncement on the poetic art, the drift of which would otherwise remain obscure. For poetry has been defined by the Chinese as “emotion expressed in words,” a definition perhaps not more inadequate than Wordsworth’s “impassioned expression.” ”

“ In this poem, "Biting east wind" is a metaphor for traditional Chinese view about women. This view breaks his first marriage. "Glorious book" is another metaphor for his ambition of unifying China. But he doesn't seem to be successful in either of them (marriage and career) . He also uses antithesis, which is very popular in Chinese poetry. It matches both sound and sense in two poetic lines, like "a chest of sorrow" pairing "years of separation" and "paramount promise" pairing "glorious book". The sounds are perfectly matching each other in Chinese. ”

“ In the written language there are so many synonymous characters differing in pronunciation and tone, that there is little difficulty in adapting them to the strict rules of Chinese poetry. In the spoken language, however, the number, tones, and arrangement of words in a sentence, is so inflexible, that it is almost impossible to compose poetic measures in the spoken language. The popular songs of the empire, and hymns composed for Christian worship, are only approximations to the style of the spoken language, and, consequently, are but partially intelligible to the common people. ”

“ The Chinese poet starts talking in the most ordinary language and voices the most ordinary things, and his poetry seems to happen suddenly out of the commonplace as if it were some beautiful action happening in the routine of actual life. ”

“ In Chinese poetry there is an apparent absence of passion which is due to the same practice of under-statement. They consider that a wise man should always remain calm, and though they have their passionate moments (being in fact a very excitable race) , they do not wish to perpetuate them in art, because they think ill of them. Our romantic movement, which led people to like vehemence, has, so far as I know, no analogue in their literature. ”

“ The tones cause what I may call a psychological change in the time-length of these monosyllables, which change not only makes true rhythm possible, but allows marked varieties of the basic beat.
One of the chief differences between poetry and prose is that poetry must have a more evident pattern. The pattern of Chinese poetry is formed out of three elements: line, rhyme, and tone. ”

“ The written language governs the style of poetry. The most ancient Chinese poetry was irregular, composed of an even number of lines, consisting of a nearly uniform number of monosyllabic words in a line, subject to rules of rhyme and alliteration ”