Throughout world history, the development of poems of love has paralleled internal evolution in national civilizations.
The resulting exaltations of animal-lust to spiritual love were, indeed, among the giant steps forward of mankind. And expressing such feelings in the form of poetry was certainly another milestone in the creative arts.
The more developed a national civilization is, usually, the larger the number of love poems enriching its literary history. But that is not so for China, though its culture is among the richest and oldest in the world. Love poems, in fact, are rather rare in the full stream of classical Chinese poetry, while, at another level of emotion, poetic descriptions of fraternal friendships among males are very common. Probing into this unique phenomenon, we inevitably come upon ethical, social, and psychological differences between the Chinese and Western cultures.
Undoubtedly, one of the most decisive reasons for the scarcity of Chinese love poems resides in the ancient Chinese marriage system. As early as about 1000 B.C., young people in China were expected to marry at the command of their parents, through the intermediation of matchmakers. They were prohibited from falling in love on their own or choosing mates for themselves; indeed, a self-arranged marriage union would because for a scandal. Wedded couples were often total strangers, seeing each other for the first time on their wedding nights.
And though marriage has always implied the consummation of love to Westerners, the ancient Chinese married not for love at all, but on behalf of duty—chuan tzung chieh tai (to produce heirs and continue the family line).
For Chinese, when a couple marry, it is not a matter between man and wife only, but of a union between two families. In olden times, the wife's duty did not stop at caring for her husband; she had the burden of his entire family on her back: She had to respect the elders and take care of the young and, above all, to bear sons.
For Westerners, ideally, spiritual love comes before intimate physical relations. Indeed, the courting before marriage is still taken by many as one of the most beautiful and fascinating adventures in life. The unquenchable fires of such love are often the embers of literary creation. Dynamic passions burst into verse, and great poems are written. The outpourings express passions, indulge in pining and longing, praise the beloved, and in the event of non-reciprocation, are suffused in woe.
What a great contrast, then, with the situation of Chinese couples of old—seeing each other for the first time on the wedding night, but with no feeling for each other brought to the tryst. Living together for some time, the couple might get acquainted, and gradually feel love—but a married love so accompanied by a sense of contentment as to lack that excitement which stirs literary creation.
Chinese philosophy demands, always, that passion be guided by reason. That is why sages are traditionally regarded more highly than heroes by the Chinese. It was long considered shameful, for example, to make personal feelings about love or romantic affairs a public matter. Anyone who dared boldly to describe a personal passion, pining, longing, or fascination for a member of the opposite sex, as Western poets were doing, chanced being considered decadent and destroying the prospects for his own future.
Even when a man and woman felt deeply for each other, they would either bury the emotion in secret corners of their hearts or describe it in safe terms generally recognized in Chinese society—comparing it to the fullness of love between "brothers and sisters," "two good friends," "superior and inferior," and even "emperor and subject." Only when a beloved wife passed away was the husband free to loosen the curbs on public passion, and then only to commemorate her in heart-rending poetry, mourning for all the good qualities sorely missed after her passing.
The concept of the "ingrate" is a common theme in both Chinese and Western romantic poetry. In the male-centered society of ancient China, the ingrate was most often the male. In many classical Chinese poems, the forsaken wife often weeps over her misfortune, her feelings of loneliness burgeoning as she views spring scenes of budding vegetation and opening flowers. Or a wife whose husband has long been far away, pines through sleepless autumn nights, chilled further by the pale moonlight streaming through her window. It is a very interesting fact that the authors of such delicate poetry were, by and large, male.
Those male poets who described female sentiments so exquisitely were surely capable of expressing their own love feelings in equally impressive ways. But owing to reasons I have already mentioned, they never made their personal romantic affairs the subjects of their writings, especially romances apart from marriage. Undoubtedly, some wrote down poems of love inspired by their own ardent feelings. But each such man would have destroyed such works himself when reviewing his life's creations years after, considering the pressures of the pervading ethical code. Poets knew very well that even if they did not excise such works themselves, editors generations onward would see the writings as both worthless and lascivious, and that their overall reputations would surely suffer.
In that context, Yuan Chen (779-831 A.D.), a poet of the Tang Dynasty, is clearly a rare exception. When young, he fell in love with a pretty courtesan, but eventually left her to marry a lady of noble birth as a result of social and family pressures. (Indeed, it is said that the famous novel, Romance of the West Chamber, is actually Yuan's own love story...with a quite imaginary happy ending).
All through his life, Yuan felt great sorrow for his beloved mistress and over his own heartless departure from her. And as the years went by, he poured out more than a hundred poetic writings passionately recalling their tragic romance.
His courage in doing so was tremendous. And he was, indeed, excoriated by many critics for being lascivious, some even calling for criminal punishment. But his love poems have managed to sift around the disapproving critics generation after generation, and have arrived intact for the eyes of modern readers.
Aside from Yuan Chen's personal contributions, love poems had their prime during two specific periods over the thousands of years of Chinese literary history:
The first such period is around 1200 B.C., before ethical codes were officially promulgated and, indeed, when the Chinese people still partially followed the primitive lifestyle. In the Book of Odes, there are many lively poems describing the simple joys of young men and women courting in the open fields of rural China.
Yueh Fu, a collection of folk songs and poems which appears much later, during the Han and early Tang Dynasties, presents a number of love poems by anonymous authors, an example of the second prime period for poems of love, which now sprang up most luxuriantly.
Then, only shortly afterwards, poetry became a patent for the formally learned, and love was walled off from literary themes as being indecent.
To Westerners, close contact among male friends is often suspect of involving homosexual relations. This has not been the case in China.
An old Chinese saying declares: "A man's brother is like one of his limbs, and his wife is his clothing. The clothes can be changed when torn, but a limb, once cutoff, can never be replaced." Obvious in that is the ancient Chinese exaltation of fraternal love, even above the love between man and wife. In consonance, strong affections among males was considered to be noble. A Chinese male of old would share everything he owned with his close friends, and even sacrifice his life for them.
Numerous classical Chinese poetic works were composed by poets in writing to their male friends; the friends, in reply, would employ the same rhyme sequence. Oddly enough, given the fraternal circumstances, such Chinese poets would often compare themselves or their friends to female beauties. And the poignant yearning, pining, and affection so frequently appearing in Western love poems is also a common theme in such classical Chinese poetry, but the emotion is dedicated to fraternal affections.
Those unfamiliar with Chinese tradition inevitably take such expressions as homosexually inspired. But there was in them, definitely, no sexual implication at all. Considering the sublime position of fraternal love in ancient Chinese society, no matter how strongly a man expressed his affection for male friends, he would never be taken as "decadent, with no promise for the future." On the contrary, he would be praised by all as a stalwart, faithful friend.
Both marriage practices and relations between the sexes have changed drastically with our country's strides through the 20th Century. Young people no longer depend on their parents and matchmakers to arrange their marriages, but are free to fall in love and choose their own mates. Romantic attachment before marriage is not only permitted, but taken as a common phenomenon.
And since writing love poems is a most romantic way of courting, it might also be expected that the 20th Century would be the third prime period in the history of Chinese love poems. But the contrary is true, instead. Changes in lifestyle and technological facilities for immediate communication have stifled such poetry.
When a man is filled with passionate feelings for his beloved, he has only to pick up the phone and tell her so in plain words. In the bookstores spoiled along the avenues, fancy cards for every emotional occasion are easily obtained, with words most suitable for any particular purpose printed neatly inside. All there is left to do is fill in the names and date. With such convenient ways of expressing one's feelings, who bothers anymore to rack his brain to compose a love poem.
A famous modern poet once mused: "Even now, I am under considerable pressure as regards the writing of love poems. As a middle-aged, married man, I could never publish a love poem without giving rise to conjecture—Who am I talking about? Am I unfaithful to my wife? And so on. To avoid trouble, often enough, I simply exclude personal love themes from the subject matter for my poems."
And young, single poets are in no better position. Those indulging in love poetry are still regarded by our society as "decadent, with no promise for the future;" the centuries-old traditional ethical codes still haunt modern Chinese in the late 20th Century.
In the pragmatic world of today, the ties between people have become fewer and fewer, and the selfless emotion of true love is, often times, abandoned under a premise of greater personal interests. A man will hardly share everything he owns with his friends, male or female, not to mention sacrificing his life for them.
It is not only the continued existence of love poems that is in question, but of love itself.