Poetry has always played an important part in Chinese life. A poem may be used to illustrate a painting. Another appears on a tea box or a rice bowl. A third is carved on the bark of a tree in the garden. Poems ornament imperial palaces as well as rustic dwellings; they are placed in the mouths of emperors and on the lips of courtesans; they animate the banquets of men of letters and enliven the meetings of friends. In other words, they have their part to play in all the circumstances of life: birth, marriage, parting, reunion, and death.
From the dawn of Chinese history, there have been poems. Sometimes poetry seems to be the very voice of the people. Thus (I great number of poems in the Book of Verses (Shih King), which is the first anthology of poems, dating from the 5th century B.C., describe the actions of daily life, sing the praises of seasonal occupations, and sometimes criticize bad administrators.
Much later, under the Tang (618-907), poetry became even more remarkable because of its three great representatives: Li Po, Tu Fu, and Po Chu-yi. Poetry was included in the civil service examination and was an essential part of education. All men of letters were poets. They considered poetry an elegant pastime in which they could display their verbal virtuosity. They gathered together regularly to compose poems on given subjects, or to echo one another's poems by using the same meters and rhymes. We can say that these habits are preserved and will last as long as Chinese culture itself.
To what is this preponderant place of poetry in Chinese social life attributable? In my opinion, it reflects both the temperament of the Chinese people and the characteristics of the Chinese language.
Sensitive, delicate, refined, artistic, and little inclined toward logic, the Chinese people of ancient times were naturally disposed to poetic creation. This tendency found perpetual nourishment in their love of nature and desire to harmonize with it, a wish that the Taoists pushed to extremity.
As for the classical Chinese language, its conciseness and pictorial character provide all the elements required for poetic expression: imagery, symmetry, and compression. Furthermore, its monosyllabic character facilitates the meter. After all, it is easier to count the Chinese characters than the syllables of English words. Thus the Chinese language is a perfect language for poetry.
Cosmic Themes
Classical Chinese poetry bears no resemblance to any other poetry in the world. Consequently, it cannot be judged by Western standards of either content or form. Let us try to point out its principal traits.
Above all, Chinese classical poetry is cosmic. That is to say, nature is the principal concern of the Chinese poet. But contrary to Western romantic poets for whom nature is a refuge or a pretext for singing their own praises, the Chinese poet seeks only to communicate spiritually with nature, to forget his own personality in order to be integrated in the cosmos. The following poem is a typical example.
I built my house among the humans, Yet the sounds of horses or cars bother me not.
"How could it be so?" I am asked.
"For a distant heart, every place is a retreat."
I pluck chrysanthemums under the east hedge,
Peaceful the South Hill appears to me.
In the eve, nice is the mountain air,
One by one, birds return therefrom.
Therein lies the meaning of life.
Veritable but ineffable.
Chinese poetry is doubly visual. Not only does the Chinese poet love the juxtaposition of images but thanks to the graphic character of the Chinese language, he presents those same images directly to the eye.
Chinese poetry is at once emotional and reserved. Suggestive, moderate, and tender, the Chinese muse willingly flees passion, torment, imprecations, and incantations. A forlorn wife murmurs her complaints without cry of anger. Such a poem as "The Murderer's Wine" cannot come from the brush of a Chinese poet.
Stripped of Detail
Chinese poetry is concrete. Closely attached to daily life, it is nearly always limited to the sentimental or social aspects of life, or to scenery. Almost always it excludes the intellectual and the metaphysical.
Chinese poetry is impressionist. It is stripped of all unessential details of description and burdens of confused thought in order to bring to light the dominant idea. The Chinese poet, contrary to the Parnassians, is not a painter of reality but the interpreter of a state of mind.
Chinese poetry is symbolistic. The Chinese poet does not wish to hurt people's feelings. That is why he expresses himself by means of symbols instead of telling ruthless truth. Here, for instance, is a forlorn wife who compares herself to a fan abandoned by its owner when autumn comes:
I tore this silk of the State of Ch'i,
As white and pure as frost and snow.
I cut it to make a fan,
A fan as round as the moon.
It is held close to you,
From its movement comes a light breeze.
But it fears the coming of autumn,
Whose cold wind will blow away the heat.
Relegated then to the bottom of a chest, It will soon lose the favor of its master.
Chinese poetry is concise. Chinese poems usually are short, often composed of only four lines. But in spite of brevity, a quatrain should contain three essential values: harmony of tone, evocative images, and a state of mind. Often the first three verses are the prelude to a striking finale that invites an imaginative flight to infinity. An original poet may omit all detail and retain the one suggestion that renders all else meaningless. As in a Sung painting, where a single stroke may evoke the perspective of a landscape, a single verse may reveal all the emotions of the author. This poem, "In Front of a Mirror", describes a lady whose youth is fading away.
Little by little I feel the impuissance of make-up.
Who pities a beauty that withers?
Only the image in my mirror Joins me in tears.
Three Influences
Chinese poetry is profoundly marked by the three principal currents of Oriental thought: Confucian morality, Taoist mysticism, and Buddhist annihilism.
To Confucius, who teaches rites and good manners, who encourages moderation, who exalts humanism, social harmony, and civic virtues, who distinguished between good and evil and the superior man and the ordinary man, Chinese poetry owes its practical, utilitarian, reasonable, moralizing, and social character.
To Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, who preaches non-action, teaches a calm and detached attitude toward life and its vanity fair, and who invites us to return to nature, we attribute the transcendental and mystic character of Chinese lyric poetry, its constant concern to contrast the vain and ephemeral character of all temporal things with the permanence of infinite nature.
To Buddhism, life is but sufferings: the suffering of birth, that of old age, of sickness, of death. Human beings are mere victims: victims of envy, of anger, of passion, of glory. Earthly pleasures are fugitive; sounds, colors, perfumes, and tastes fill this world of ours with illusions. Consequently it is necessary to kill desire, which is the source of all suffering, in order to gain Nirvana, which is the extinction of life and the act of rebirth.
This poem, "In the Manner of Antiquity", shows the Confucian influence:
The moon falls into muddy water, Its beams remain pure.
The solitary pine near a winding path, Loses not its straightness.
The superior man encounters hardships, His heart remains calm.
And a second poem, "Prelude to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms", reveals the impact of Taoism:
Whirling and rolling, the water of the Great River flows to the east,
Its waves have washed away all the heroes of yore.
Triumph is as vain as defeat.
Green hills have not changed,
How many times has the sun reddened the western sky?
A white-haired old man, I fish or pick firewood on the river bank,
Autumn moon and spring wind are familiar to me.
In front of a jar of rich wine, joyously I assemble my friends,
What abundance of events of the past and present
Comes to our laughter and speech!
Finally, the brief "Reply to a Friend" reflects the peace of Buddhism:
The pine tree lives to a thousand years, The hibiscus flower lasts but a single day.
Both go to nothingness,
Why do we boast of our years and months?
P'eng Tzu distinguishes his death from ours,
Yet his is the same.
Better learn not to appear,
Not to appear is not to disappear.
The last and the most important aspect about Chinese poetry to be considered here is Ching Chieh, which I shall translate as the poetic world. When Chinese critics talk of poetry, they never fail to speak of Ching Chieh, which might also be called "atmosphere" or "universe". The atmosphere can be light or heavy; the universe can be familiar, strange or unknown.
A poet is motivated to write by an experience, be it an event, a sentiment, an idea or a scene. He does not, however, simply write these things down on paper as they are and put them into a fixed form. Rather, he expresses them in a style more beautiful, more concentrated, more imaginative, more powerful, and with greater imagery. In finding the right words, sounds, and images, the poet transforms experience into something new, or even unknown, and a poetic world is said to be perfect when it is considered "lofty and remote". By lofty we mean that the poetic world is so exquisite and elevated that it is hard to reach in normal experience. By remote we mean that the poetic world is so distant as to be unfamiliar. In other words, this lofty, remote poetic world can be identified with the "unknown" eagerly sought by modern Western poets.
The Poetic World
In order to explain the poetic world in a more concrete manner, I shall quote a passage from a charming allegory written by a famous Chin poet, Tao Yuan-ming (365-427 A.D.) entitled "The Peach Flower Fountain". It tells how a fisherman poled a boat along a stream bank, how he forgot the distance, and how he arrived suddenly at a point where the river was bordered on both sides with peach trees in bloom. It continues:
"There the grass was fresh and fine, fallen petals scattered about in abundance. Astonished, the fisherman continued to push ahead, eager to know how far the peach grove extended.
"He then discovered that the peach trees ended where the water began, at the foot of a hill. There he beheld what seemed to be a cave with light streaming therefrom. He then pushed his boat through the narrow entrance and was shortly ushered into a new world. There he beheld fine houses, rich fields, luxuriant mulberry trees and bamboo groves. Highways of traffic ran in all directions, crowing cocks and barking dogs were heard around. The dress of the people passing along or working in the fields was of a strange cut ... "
Poetic Weaknesses
I quoted the above passage to show that a poet must know how to create something like this marvelous landscape, the Peach Blossom Fountain, beautiful and mysterious, which attracts the reader. This landscape is composed not only of visible trees and flowers but also of meandering streams and winding paths which lead us to a world of hidden beauty and splendor.
But I must avow that Chinese poetry also has its weaknesses and deficiencies. Chinese poetry is always limited to time-honored themes and the Chinese poet seeks erudition more than originality. In China, the dictionary of rhymes is not only a book wherein to look for words to rhyme with but also a veritable encyclopedia of ready-made expressions which all poets have the right to borrow. Consequently this poetry can appear monotonous and impersonal to Westerners, and I still remember that a French friend of mine made this remark about Chinese poetry: "Very often, Chinese poems are not poetic but excellent in intention." There is some verity in what he said, but as I have pointed out before, we should not judge Chinese poetry by Western standards.
In order to appreciate Chinese poetry, it is necessary to read between the lines, or, as a Chinese saying goes, to listen to the sounds beyond the lyre. As an example, I shall try to analyze a short poem entitled "Farewell in the Mountains".
I accompanied him to the mountain.
As the day is dying, I close my wooden gate.
When next year spring grass turns green again,
Will my noble friend then return?
This quatrain, though simple and brief, contains four essential points:
The first line, "I accompanied him to the mountain", gives us an idea of space that is being extended as the friend goes farther and farther away. This idea is expressed in the mountain that separates the two friends.
The second line indicates a lapse of time since departure of the friend and implies that long days of solitude will follow.
The third line points up the serene, immutable character of nature, while the fourth line is a question: Can the poet be as sure of the return of his friend as of seeing the grass again next year? People never know what is in store for them. This uncertainty as to one's fate increases the sorrow of separation.
Parallel Forms
Of course, Chinese poetry comprises forms other than the quatrain. Another current form is the eight-line poem. In the eight-line form, the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth lines are of parallel construction.
If I try to define parallelism, or antithetical couplet, I shall say that it consists of constructing two lines in such a way that the characters in each line are identical in number and that they should respond to each other in ideas, tones, and grammatical roles. Ideas may be analogous or opposed. Flat tones should respond to sharp tones. The grammatical role of each character or term should be the same. For instance, here is an antithetical couplet:
Green, green grows the grass by the river,
Thick, thick stand the willows in the garden.
I would like to point to the parallelism of ideas, grammatical roles, and tones.
The two lines, extracted from an ancient poem by an anonymous poet, are identical in idea since both serve to depict the luxuriance of vegetation in spring.
From the grammatical point of view, we shall not fail to notice that "green, green" and "thick, thick" are two responding adjectives; "grows" and "stand" are two responding verbs; "grass" and "willows" are two responding nouns; "by" and "in" are two responding prepositions; and "river" and "garden" are two responding nouns.
As for parallelism of tones, I shall draw the reader's attention to two auditory qualities of the Chinese language: its monosyllabic character and its possession of four fixed tones: p'ing sheng (flat tone), shang sheng (mounting tone), ch'u sheng (parting tone), and ju sheng (entering tone). For metrical purposes, the first of these tones is called flat while the other three are called sharp tones. In versification, sharps and flats have their fixed positions in a line. In a parallel construction a flat tone should be opposed by a sharp tone.
Having epitomized the main characteristics of classical Chinese poetry, I should point out that this traditional art form underwent a revolution during the Literary Movement of May 4, 1919, which was aimed at emancipation of the classical language. As a matter of fact, this 4,000-year-old poetry, which attained its highest peak of glory under the Tang, had become little by little an immutable literary form and a mere exercise for men of letters. Toward the end of the Empire, that is, at the beginning of this century, Western thinking was introduced into China through translations of foreign authors. The Chinese poet, inspired by his Occidental colleagues, then tried to go beyond the limits of a traditional poetry that was incapable of renovating its expressions. The new poetry, written in the spoken language, is not concerned with rhyme, meter or tone and has been strongly influenced by Western free verse in content as well as in form, and above all in syntax. If the literary revolution has deprived classical Chinese poetry of certain characteristics, it has made up for this by a considerable enrichment of the inspiration to be found in Chinese poetry.