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Title: A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems

Author: Various

Translator: Arthur Waley

Release Date: March 10, 2013 [EBook #42290]

Language: English

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A HUNDRED AND SEVENTY
CHINESE POEMS

TRANSLATED BY
ARTHUR WALEY

[Illustration]

LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD.
1918




PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.




PRELIMINARY NOTE


In making this book I have tried to avoid poems which have been
translated before. A hundred and forty of those I have chosen have not
been translated by any one else. The remaining thirty odd I have
included in many cases because the previous versions were full of
mistakes; in others, because the works in which they appeared are no
longer procurable. Moreover, they are mostly in German, a language with
which my readers may not all be acquainted.

With some hesitation I have included literal versions of six poems
(three of the "Seventeen Old Poems," "Autumn Wind," "Li Fu-j? n," and "On
the Death of his Father") already skilfully rhymed by Professor Giles in
"Chinese Poetry in English Verse. " They were too typical to omit; and a
comparison of the two renderings may be of interest. Some of these
translations have appeared in the "Bulletin of the School of Oriental
Studies," in the "New Statesman," in the "Little Review" (Chicago), and
in "Poetry" (Chicago).




CONTENTS


PART I

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 3

THE METHOD OF TRANSLATION 19

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 21


CHAPTER I:

Battle 23

The Man-Wind and the Woman-Wind 24

Master T? ng-t'u 26

The Orphan 27

The Sick Wife 29

Cock-Crow Song 30

The Golden Palace 31

"Old Poem" 32

Meeting in the Road 32

Fighting South of the Castle 33

The Eastern Gate 34

Old and New 35

South of the Great Sea 35

The Other Side of the Valley 36

Oaths of Friendship 37

Burial Songs 38

Seventeen Old Poems 39-48

The Autumn Wind 48

Li Fu-j? n 49

Song of Snow-white Heads 50

To his Wife 51

Li Ling 52

Lament of Hsi-chun 53

Ch'in Chia 53

Ch'in Chia's Wife's Reply 54

Song 55


CHAPTER II:

Satire on Paying Calls in August 57

On the Death of his Father 58

The Campaign against Wu 59

The Ruins of Lo-yang 60

The Cock-fight 61

A Vision 62

The Curtain of the Wedding Bed 63

Regret 63

Taoist Song 64

A Gentle Wind 64

Woman 65

Day Dreams 66

The Scholar in the Narrow Street 66

The Desecration of the Han Tombs 67

Bearer's Song 68

The Valley Wind 69


CHAPTER III:

Poems by T'ao Ch'ien 71-79


CHAPTER IV:

Inviting Guests 81

Climbing a Mountain 81

Sailing Homeward 82

Five "Tz? -yeh" Songs 83

The Little Lady of Ch'ing-hsi 84

Plucking the Rushes 84

Ballad of the Western Island in the
North Country 84

Song 86

Song of the Men of Chin-ling 86

The Scholar Recruit 87

The Red Hills 87

Dreaming of a Dead Lady 88

The Liberator 89

Lo-yang 89

Winter Night 90

The Rejected Wife 90

People hide their Love 91

The Ferry 91

The Waters of Lung-t'ou 92

Flowers and Moonlight on the
Spring River 92

Tchirek Song 93


CHAPTER V:

Business Men 95

Tell me now 95

On Going to a Tavern 96

Stone Fish Lake 96

Civilization 97

A Protest in the Sixth Year of
Ch'ien Fu 97

On the Birth of his Son 98

The Pedlar of Spells 98

Boating in Autumn 99

The Herd-boy 99

How I sailed on the Lake till I came
to the Easter Stream 100

A Seventeenth-century Chinese Poem 100


PART II

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 105

BY PO CHU-I:

An Early Levee 115

Being on Duty all night in the
Palace and dreaming of the
Hsien-yu Temple 116

Passing T'ien-m? n Street in Ch'ang-an
and seeing a distant View of
Chung-nan Mountain 116

The Letter 117

Rejoicing at the Arrival of Ch'? n
Hsiung 118

Golden Bells 119

Remembering Golden Bells 120

Illness 120

The Dragon of the Black Pool 121

The Grain-tribute 123

The People of Tao-chou 123

The Old Harp 125

The Harper of Chao 125

The Flower Market 126

The Prisoner 127

The Chancellor's Gravel-drive 131

The Man who Dreamed of Fairies 132

Magic 134

The Two Red Towers 135

The Charcoal-seller 137

The Politician 138

The Old Man with the Broken Arm 139

Kept waiting in the Boat at Chiu-k'ou
Ten Days by an adverse Wind 142

On Board Ship: Reading Yuan Ch? n's
Poems 142

Arriving at Hsun-yang 143

Madly Singing in the Mountains 144

Releasing a migrant "Yen" (wild Goose) 145

To a Portrait Painter who desired him
to sit 146

Separation 147

Having climbed to the topmost Peak of
the Incense-burner Mountain 148

Eating Bamboo-shoots 149

The Red Cockatoo 149

After Lunch 150

Alarm at first entering the Yang-tze
Gorges 150

On being removed from Hsun-yang and
sent to Chung-chou 151

Planting Flowers on the Eastern
Embankment 152

Children 153

Pruning Trees 154

Being visited by a Friend during
Illness 155

On the way to Hangchow: Anchored on
the River at Night 155

Stopping the Night at Jung-yang 156

The Silver Spoon 156

The Hat given to the Poet by Li Chien 157

The Big Rug 157

After getting Drunk, becoming Sober in
the Night 158

Realizing the Futility of Life 158

Rising Late and Playing with A-ts'ui,
aged Two 159

On a Box containing his own Works 160

On being Sixty 161

Climbing the Terrace of Kuan-yin and
looking at the City 162

Climbing the Ling Ying Terrace and
looking North 162

Going to the Mountains with a little
Dancing Girl, aged Fifteen 163

Dreaming of Yuan Ch? n 163

A Dream of Mountaineering 164

Ease 165

On hearing someone sing a Poem by
Yuan Ch? n 165

The Philosophers 166

Taoism and Buddhism 167

Last Poem 168




PART I




INTRODUCTION


PRINCIPAL CHINESE DYNASTIES

Han, 206 B. C. --A. D. 220.
Wei, 220-264.
Chin, 265-419.
(Northern Wei, ruled over the North of China, 386-532. )
Liang, 502-556.
Sui, 589-618.
T'ang, 618-905.
Sung, 960-1278.
Yuan (Mongols), 1260-1341.
Ming, 1368-1640.
Ch'ing (Manchus), 1644-1912.


THE LIMITATIONS OF CHINESE LITERATURE

Those who wish to assure themselves that they will lose nothing by
ignoring Chinese literature, often ask the question: "Have the Chinese a
Homer, an Aeschylus, a Shakespeare or Tolstoy? " The answer must be that
China has no epic and no dramatic literature of importance. The novel
exists and has merits, but never became the instrument of great writers.

Her philosophic literature knows no mean between the traditionalism of
Confucius and the nihilism of Chuang-tz? . In mind, as in body, the
Chinese were for the most part torpid mainlanders. Their thoughts set
out on no strange quests and adventures, just as their ships discovered
no new continents. To most Europeans the momentary flash of Athenian
questioning will seem worth more than all the centuries of Chinese
assent.

Yet we must recognize that for thousands of years the Chinese maintained
a level of rationality and tolerance that the West might well envy. They
had no Index, no Inquisition, no Holy Wars. Superstition has indeed
played its part among them; but it has never, as in Europe, been
perpetually dominant. It follows from the limitations of Chinese thought
that the literature of the country should excel in reflection rather
than in speculation. That this is particularly true of its poetry will
be gauged from the present volume. In the poems of Po Chu-i no close
reasoning or philosophic subtlety will be discovered; but a power of
candid reflection and self-analysis which has not been rivalled in the
West.

Turning from thought to emotion, the most conspicuous feature of
European poetry is its pre-occupation with love. This is apparent not
only in actual "love-poems," but in all poetry where the personality of
the writer is in any way obtruded. The poet tends to exhibit himself in
a _romantic_ light; in fact, to recommend himself as a lover.

The Chinese poet has a tendency different but analogous. He recommends
himself not as a lover, but as a friend. He poses as a person of
infinite leisure (which is what we should most like our friends to
possess) and free from worldly ambitions (which constitute the greatest
bars to friendship). He would have us think of him as a boon companion,
a great drinker of wine, who will not disgrace a social gathering by
quitting it sober.

To the European poet the relation between man and woman is a thing of
supreme importance and mystery. To the Chinese, it is something
commonplace, obvious--a need of the body, not a satisfaction of the
_emotions_. These he reserves entirely for friendship.

Accordingly we find that while our poets tend to lay stress on
physical courage and other qualities which normal women admire,
Po Chu-i is not ashamed to write such a poem as "Alarm at entering
the Gorges. " Our poets imagine themselves very much as Art has portrayed
them--bare-headed and wild-eyed, with shirts unbuttoned at the neck as
though they feared that a seizure of emotion might at any minute
suffocate them. The Chinese poet introduces himself as a timid recluse,
"Reading the Book of Changes at the Northern Window," playing chess with
a Taoist priest, or practising caligraphy with an occasional visitor.
If "With a Portrait of the Author" had been the rule in the Chinese
book-market, it is in such occupations as these that he would be shown;
a neat and tranquil figure compared with our lurid frontispieces.

It has been the habit of Europe to idealize love at the expense of
friendship and so to place too heavy a burden on the relation of man and
woman. The Chinese erred in the opposite direction, regarding their
wives and concubines simply as instruments of procreation. For sympathy
and intellectual companionship they looked only to their friends. But
these friends were bound by no such tie as held women to their masters;
sooner or later they drifted away to frontier campaigns, remote
governorships, or country retirement. It would not be an exaggeration to
say that half the poems in the Chinese language are poems of parting or
separation.

Readers of these translations may imagine that the culture represented
by Po Chu-i extended over the whole vast confines of China. This would,
I think, be an error. Culture is essentially a metropolitan product.
Chu-i was as much _depayse_ at a provincial town as Charles Lamb would
have been at Botany Bay. But the system of Chinese bureaucracy tended
constantly to break up the literary coteries which formed at the
capitals, and to drive the members out of the little corner of Shensi
and Honan which to them was "home. "

It was chiefly economic necessity which forced the poets of China into
the meshes of bureaucracy--backed by the Confucian insistence on public
service. To such as were landowners there remained the alternative of
agricultural life, arduous and isolated.

The poet, then, usually passed through three stages of existence. In the
first we find him with his friends at the capital, drinking, writing,
and discussing: burdened by his office probably about as much as Pepys
was burdened by his duties at the Admiralty. Next, having failed to
curry favour with the Court, he is exiled to some provincial post,
perhaps a thousand miles from anyone he cares to talk to. Finally,
having scraped together enough money to buy husbands for his daughters,
he retires to a small estate, collecting round him the remnants of those
with whom he had shared the "feasts and frolics of old days. "

I have spoken hitherto only of poets. But the poetess occupies a place
of considerable importance in the first four centuries of our era,
though the classical period (T'ang and Sung) produced no great woman
writer. Her theme varies little; she is almost always a "rejected wife,"
cast adrift by her lord or sent back to her home. Probably her father
would be unable to buy her another husband and there was no place for
unmarried women in the Chinese social system. The moment, then, which
produced such poems was one of supreme tragedy in a woman's life.

Love-poetry addressed by a man to a woman ceases after the Han dynasty;
but a conventional type of love-poem, in which the poet (of either sex)
speaks in the person of a deserted wife or concubine, continues to be
popular. The theme appears to be almost an obsession with the T'ang and
Sung poets. In a vague way, such poems were felt to be allegorical. Just
as in the Confucian interpretation of the love-poems in the Odes (see
below) the woman typifies the Minister, and the lover the Prince, so in
those classical poems the poet in a veiled way laments the thwarting of
his own public ambitions. Such tortuous expression of emotion did not
lead to good poetry.

The "figures of speech," devices such as metaphor, simile, and play on
words, are used by the Chinese with much more restraint than by us.
"Metaphorical epithets" are occasionally to be met with; waves, for
example, might perhaps be called "angry. " But in general the adjective
does not bear the heavy burden which our poets have laid upon it. The
Chinese would call the sky "blue," "gray," or "cloudy," according to
circumstances; but never "triumphant" or "terror-scourged. "

The long Homeric simile, introduced for its own sake or to vary the
monotony of narrative, is unknown to Chinese poetry. Shorter similes are
sometimes found, as when the half-Chinese poet Altun compares the sky
over the Mongolian steppe with the "walls of a tent"; but nothing could
be found analogous to Mr. T. S. Eliot's comparison of the sky to a
"patient etherized on a table. " Except in popular poetry, puns are rare;
but there are several characters which, owing to the wideness of their
import, are used in a way almost equivalent to play on words.

Classical allusion, always the vice of Chinese poetry, finally destroyed
it altogether. In the later periods (from the fourteenth century
onwards) the use of elegant synonyms also prevailed. I have before me a
"gradus" of the kind which the later poet used as an aid to composition.
The moon should be called the "Silver Dish," "Frozen Wheel," or "Golden
Ring. " Allusions may in this connection be made to Yu Liang, who rode to
heaven on the crescent moon; to the hermit T'ang, who controlled the
genius of the New Moon, and kept him in his house as a candle--or to any
other of some thirty stories which are given. The sun may be called "The
Lantern-Dragon," the "Crow in Flight," the "White Colt," etc.

Such were the artificialities of later Chinese poetry.


TECHNIQUE

Certain elements are found, but in varying degree, in all human speech.
It is difficult to conceive of a language in which rhyme, stress-accent,
and tone-accent would not to some extent occur. In all languages some
vowel-sounds are shorter than others and, in certain cases, two
consecutive words begin with the same sound. Other such characteristics
could be enumerated, but for the purposes of poetry it is these elements
which man has principally exploited.

English poetry has used chiefly rhyme, stress, and alliteration. It is
doubtful if tone has ever played a part; a conscious use has
sporadically been made of quantity. Poetry naturally utilizes the most
marked and definite characteristics of the language in which it is
written. Such characteristics are used consciously by the poet; but less
important elements also play their part, often only in a negative way.
Thus the Japanese actually avoid rhyme; the Greeks did not exploit it,
but seem to have tolerated it when it occurred accidentally.

The expedients consciously used by the Chinese before the sixth century
were rhyme and length of line. A third element, inherent in the
language, was not exploited before that date, but must always have been
a factor in instinctive considerations of euphony. This element was
"tone. "

Chinese prosody distinguishes between two tones, a "flat" and a
"deflected. " In the first the syllable is enunciated in a level manner:
the voice neither rises nor sinks. In the second, it (1) rises, (2)
sinks, (3) is abruptly arrested. These varieties make up the Four Tones
of Classical Chinese. [1]

[1] Not to be confused with the Four Tones of the Mandarin dialect, in
which the old names are used to describe quite different enunciations.

The "deflected" tones are distinctly more emphatic, and so have a faint
analogy to our stressed syllables. They are also, in an even more remote
way, analogous to the long vowels of Latin prosody. A line ending with a
"level" has consequently to some extent the effect of a "feminine
ending. " Certain causes, which I need not specify here, led to an
increasing importance of "tone" in the Chinese language from the fifth
century onwards. It was natural that this change should be reflected in
Chinese prosody. A certain Sh? n Yo (A. D. 441-513) first propounded the
laws of tone-succession in poetry. From that time till the eighth
century the _Lu-shih_ or "strictly regulated poem" gradually evolved.
But poets continued (and continue till to-day), side by side with their
_lu-shih_, to write in the old metre which disregards tone, calling such
poems _Ku shih_, "old poems. " Previous European statements about
Chinese prosody should be accepted with great caution. Writers have
attempted to define the _lu-shih_ with far too great precision.

The Chinese themselves are apt to forget that T'ang poets seldom obeyed
the laws designed in later school-books as essential to classical
poetry; or, if they notice that a verse by Li Po does not conform, they
stigmatize it as "irregular and not to be imitated. "

The reader will infer that the distinction between "old poems" and
irregular _lu-shih_ is often arbitrary. This is certainly the case; I
have found the same poem classified differently in different native
books. But it is possible to enumerate certain characteristics which
distinguish the two kinds of verse. I will attempt to do so; but not
till I have discussed _rhyme_, the other main element in Chinese
prosody. It would be equally difficult to define accurately the
difference between the couplets of Pope and those of William Morris. But
it would not be impossible, by pointing out certain qualities of each,
to enable a reader to distinguish between the two styles.

_Rhyme. _--Most Chinese syllables ended with a vowel or nasal sound. The
Chinese rhyme was in reality a vowel assonance. Words in different
consonants rhymed so long as the vowel-sound was exactly the same. Thus
_ywet_, "moon," rhymed with _sek_, "beauty. " During the classical period
these consonant endings were gradually weakening, and to-day, except in
the south, they are wholly lost. It is possible that from very early
times final consonants were lightly pronounced.

The rhymes used in _lu-shih_ were standardized in the eighth century,
and some of them were no longer rhymes to the ear in the Mandarin
dialect. To be counted as a rhyme, two words must have exactly the same
vowel-sound. Some of the distinctions then made are no longer audible
to-day; the sub-divisions therefore seem arbitrary. Absolute homophony
is also counted as rhyme, as in French. It is as though we should make
_made_ rhyme with _maid_.

I will now attempt to distinguish between _Ku-shih_ (old style) and
_Lu-shih_ (new style).

_Ku-shih (Old Style). _

(_a_) According to the investigations of Chu Hua, an eighteenth century
critic, only thirty-four rhymes were used. They were, indeed, assonances
of the roughest kind.

(_b_) "Deflected" words are used for rhyming as freely as "flat" words.

(_c_) Tone-arrangement. The tones were disregarded. (Lines can be found
in pre-T'ang poems in which five deflected tones occur in succession, an
arrangement which would have been painful to the ear of a T'ang writer
and would probably have been avoided by classical poets even when using
the old style. )

_Lu-shih (New Style). _

(_a_) The rhymes used are the "106" of modern dictionaries (not those of
the Odes, as Giles states). Rhymes in the flat tone are preferred. In a
quatrain the lines which do not rhyme must end on the opposite tone to
that of the rhyme. This law is absolute in _Lu-shih_ and a tendency in
this direction is found even in _Ku-shih_.

(_b_) There is a tendency to antithetical arrangement of tones in the
two lines of a couplet, especially in the last part of the lines.

(_c_) A tendency for the tones to go in _pairs_, _e. g. _ (A lat, B deflected): AA BBA or ABB AA, rather than in _threes_. Three like tones
only come together when divided by a "cesura," _e. g. _, the line BB / AAA
would be avoided, but not the line BBAA / ABB.

(_d_) Verbal parallelism in the couplet, _e. g. _:

After long illness one first realizes that seeking medicines is
a mistake;
In one's decaying years one begins to repent that one's study of
books was deferred.

This device, used with some discretion in T'ang, becomes an irritating
trick in the hands of the Sung poets.


THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF CHINESE POETRY

_The Odes. _--From the songs current in his day Confucius (551-479 B. C. )
chose about three hundred which he regarded as suitable texts for his
ethical and social teaching. Many of them are eulogies of good rulers or
criticisms of bad ones. Out of the three hundred and five still extant
only about thirty are likely to interest the modern reader. Of these
half deal with war and half with love. Many translations exist, the best
being those of Legge in English and of Couvreur in French. There is
still room for an English translation displaying more sensitivity to
word-rhythm than that of Legge. It should not, I think, include more
than fifty poems. But the Odes are essentially _lyric_ poetry, and their
beauty lies in effects which cannot be reproduced in English. For that
reason I have excluded them from this book; nor shall I discuss them
further here, for full information will be found in the works of Legge
or Couvreur.

_Elegies of the Land of Ch'u. _--We come next to Ch'u Yuan (third century
B.
n 49

Song of Snow-white Heads 50

To his Wife 51

Li Ling 52

Lament of Hsi-chun 53

Ch'in Chia 53

Ch'in Chia's Wife's Reply 54

Song 55


CHAPTER II:

Satire on Paying Calls in August 57

On the Death of his Father 58

The Campaign against Wu 59

The Ruins of Lo-yang 60

The Cock-fight 61

A Vision 62

The Curtain of the Wedding Bed 63

Regret 63

Taoist Song 64

A Gentle Wind 64

Woman 65

Day Dreams 66

The Scholar in the Narrow Street 66

The Desecration of the Han Tombs 67

Bearer's Song 68

The Valley Wind 69


CHAPTER III:

Poems by T'ao Ch'ien 71-79


CHAPTER IV:

Inviting Guests 81

Climbing a Mountain 81

Sailing Homeward 82

Five "Tz? -yeh" Songs 83

The Little Lady of Ch'ing-hsi 84

Plucking the Rushes 84

Ballad of the Western Island in the
North Country 84

Song 86

Song of the Men of Chin-ling 86

The Scholar Recruit 87

The Red Hills 87

Dreaming of a Dead Lady 88

The Liberator 89

Lo-yang 89

Winter Night 90

The Rejected Wife 90

People hide their Love 91

The Ferry 91

The Waters of Lung-t'ou 92

Flowers and Moonlight on the
Spring River 92

Tchirek Song 93


CHAPTER V:

Business Men 95

Tell me now 95

On Going to a Tavern 96

Stone Fish Lake 96

Civilization 97

A Protest in the Sixth Year of
Ch'ien Fu 97

On the Birth of his Son 98

The Pedlar of Spells 98

Boating in Autumn 99

The Herd-boy 99

How I sailed on the Lake till I came
to the Easter Stream 100

A Seventeenth-century Chinese Poem 100


PART II

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 105

BY PO CHU-I:

An Early Levee 115

Being on Duty all night in the
Palace and dreaming of the
Hsien-yu Temple 116

Passing T'ien-m? n Street in Ch'ang-an
and seeing a distant View of
Chung-nan Mountain 116

The Letter 117

Rejoicing at the Arrival of Ch'? n
Hsiung 118

Golden Bells 119

Remembering Golden Bells 120

Illness 120

The Dragon of the Black Pool 121

The Grain-tribute 123

The People of Tao-chou 123

The Old Harp 125

The Harper of Chao 125

The Flower Market 126

The Prisoner 127

The Chancellor's Gravel-drive 131

The Man who Dreamed of Fairies 132

Magic 134

The Two Red Towers 135

The Charcoal-seller 137

The Politician 138

The Old Man with the Broken Arm 139

Kept waiting in the Boat at Chiu-k'ou
Ten Days by an adverse Wind 142

On Board Ship: Reading Yuan Ch? n's
Poems 142

Arriving at Hsun-yang 143

Madly Singing in the Mountains 144

Releasing a migrant "Yen" (wild Goose) 145

To a Portrait Painter who desired him
to sit 146

Separation 147

Having climbed to the topmost Peak of
the Incense-burner Mountain 148

Eating Bamboo-shoots 149

The Red Cockatoo 149

After Lunch 150

Alarm at first entering the Yang-tze
Gorges 150

On being removed from Hsun-yang and
sent to Chung-chou 151

Planting Flowers on the Eastern
Embankment 152

Children 153

Pruning Trees 154

Being visited by a Friend during
Illness 155

On the way to Hangchow: Anchored on
the River at Night 155

Stopping the Night at Jung-yang 156

The Silver Spoon 156

The Hat given to the Poet by Li Chien 157

The Big Rug 157

After getting Drunk, becoming Sober in
the Night 158

Realizing the Futility of Life 158

Rising Late and Playing with A-ts'ui,
aged Two 159

On a Box containing his own Works 160

On being Sixty 161

Climbing the Terrace of Kuan-yin and
looking at the City 162

Climbing the Ling Ying Terrace and
looking North 162

Going to the Mountains with a little
Dancing Girl, aged Fifteen 163

Dreaming of Yuan Ch? n 163

A Dream of Mountaineering 164

Ease 165

On hearing someone sing a Poem by
Yuan Ch? n 165

The Philosophers 166

Taoism and Buddhism 167

Last Poem 168




PART I




INTRODUCTION


PRINCIPAL CHINESE DYNASTIES

Han, 206 B. C. --A. D. 220.
Wei, 220-264.
Chin, 265-419.
(Northern Wei, ruled over the North of China, 386-532. )
Liang, 502-556.
Sui, 589-618.
T'ang, 618-905.
Sung, 960-1278.
Yuan (Mongols), 1260-1341.
Ming, 1368-1640.
Ch'ing (Manchus), 1644-1912.


THE LIMITATIONS OF CHINESE LITERATURE

Those who wish to assure themselves that they will lose nothing by
ignoring Chinese literature, often ask the question: "Have the Chinese a
Homer, an Aeschylus, a Shakespeare or Tolstoy? " The answer must be that
China has no epic and no dramatic literature of importance. The novel
exists and has merits, but never became the instrument of great writers.

Her philosophic literature knows no mean between the traditionalism of
Confucius and the nihilism of Chuang-tz? . In mind, as in body, the
Chinese were for the most part torpid mainlanders. Their thoughts set
out on no strange quests and adventures, just as their ships discovered
no new continents. To most Europeans the momentary flash of Athenian
questioning will seem worth more than all the centuries of Chinese
assent.

Yet we must recognize that for thousands of years the Chinese maintained
a level of rationality and tolerance that the West might well envy. They
had no Index, no Inquisition, no Holy Wars. Superstition has indeed
played its part among them; but it has never, as in Europe, been
perpetually dominant. It follows from the limitations of Chinese thought
that the literature of the country should excel in reflection rather
than in speculation. That this is particularly true of its poetry will
be gauged from the present volume. In the poems of Po Chu-i no close
reasoning or philosophic subtlety will be discovered; but a power of
candid reflection and self-analysis which has not been rivalled in the
West.

Turning from thought to emotion, the most conspicuous feature of
European poetry is its pre-occupation with love. This is apparent not
only in actual "love-poems," but in all poetry where the personality of
the writer is in any way obtruded. The poet tends to exhibit himself in
a _romantic_ light; in fact, to recommend himself as a lover.

The Chinese poet has a tendency different but analogous. He recommends
himself not as a lover, but as a friend. He poses as a person of
infinite leisure (which is what we should most like our friends to
possess) and free from worldly ambitions (which constitute the greatest
bars to friendship). He would have us think of him as a boon companion,
a great drinker of wine, who will not disgrace a social gathering by
quitting it sober.

To the European poet the relation between man and woman is a thing of
supreme importance and mystery. To the Chinese, it is something
commonplace, obvious--a need of the body, not a satisfaction of the
_emotions_. These he reserves entirely for friendship.

Accordingly we find that while our poets tend to lay stress on
physical courage and other qualities which normal women admire,
Po Chu-i is not ashamed to write such a poem as "Alarm at entering
the Gorges. " Our poets imagine themselves very much as Art has portrayed
them--bare-headed and wild-eyed, with shirts unbuttoned at the neck as
though they feared that a seizure of emotion might at any minute
suffocate them. The Chinese poet introduces himself as a timid recluse,
"Reading the Book of Changes at the Northern Window," playing chess with
a Taoist priest, or practising caligraphy with an occasional visitor.
If "With a Portrait of the Author" had been the rule in the Chinese
book-market, it is in such occupations as these that he would be shown;
a neat and tranquil figure compared with our lurid frontispieces.

It has been the habit of Europe to idealize love at the expense of
friendship and so to place too heavy a burden on the relation of man and
woman. The Chinese erred in the opposite direction, regarding their
wives and concubines simply as instruments of procreation. For sympathy
and intellectual companionship they looked only to their friends. But
these friends were bound by no such tie as held women to their masters;
sooner or later they drifted away to frontier campaigns, remote
governorships, or country retirement. It would not be an exaggeration to
say that half the poems in the Chinese language are poems of parting or
separation.

Readers of these translations may imagine that the culture represented
by Po Chu-i extended over the whole vast confines of China. This would,
I think, be an error. Culture is essentially a metropolitan product.
Chu-i was as much _depayse_ at a provincial town as Charles Lamb would
have been at Botany Bay. But the system of Chinese bureaucracy tended
constantly to break up the literary coteries which formed at the
capitals, and to drive the members out of the little corner of Shensi
and Honan which to them was "home. "

It was chiefly economic necessity which forced the poets of China into
the meshes of bureaucracy--backed by the Confucian insistence on public
service. To such as were landowners there remained the alternative of
agricultural life, arduous and isolated.

The poet, then, usually passed through three stages of existence. In the
first we find him with his friends at the capital, drinking, writing,
and discussing: burdened by his office probably about as much as Pepys
was burdened by his duties at the Admiralty. Next, having failed to
curry favour with the Court, he is exiled to some provincial post,
perhaps a thousand miles from anyone he cares to talk to. Finally,
having scraped together enough money to buy husbands for his daughters,
he retires to a small estate, collecting round him the remnants of those
with whom he had shared the "feasts and frolics of old days. "

I have spoken hitherto only of poets. But the poetess occupies a place
of considerable importance in the first four centuries of our era,
though the classical period (T'ang and Sung) produced no great woman
writer. Her theme varies little; she is almost always a "rejected wife,"
cast adrift by her lord or sent back to her home. Probably her father
would be unable to buy her another husband and there was no place for
unmarried women in the Chinese social system. The moment, then, which
produced such poems was one of supreme tragedy in a woman's life.

Love-poetry addressed by a man to a woman ceases after the Han dynasty;
but a conventional type of love-poem, in which the poet (of either sex)
speaks in the person of a deserted wife or concubine, continues to be
popular. The theme appears to be almost an obsession with the T'ang and
Sung poets. In a vague way, such poems were felt to be allegorical. Just
as in the Confucian interpretation of the love-poems in the Odes (see
below) the woman typifies the Minister, and the lover the Prince, so in
those classical poems the poet in a veiled way laments the thwarting of
his own public ambitions. Such tortuous expression of emotion did not
lead to good poetry.

The "figures of speech," devices such as metaphor, simile, and play on
words, are used by the Chinese with much more restraint than by us.
"Metaphorical epithets" are occasionally to be met with; waves, for
example, might perhaps be called "angry. " But in general the adjective
does not bear the heavy burden which our poets have laid upon it. The
Chinese would call the sky "blue," "gray," or "cloudy," according to
circumstances; but never "triumphant" or "terror-scourged. "

The long Homeric simile, introduced for its own sake or to vary the
monotony of narrative, is unknown to Chinese poetry. Shorter similes are
sometimes found, as when the half-Chinese poet Altun compares the sky
over the Mongolian steppe with the "walls of a tent"; but nothing could
be found analogous to Mr. T. S. Eliot's comparison of the sky to a
"patient etherized on a table. " Except in popular poetry, puns are rare;
but there are several characters which, owing to the wideness of their
import, are used in a way almost equivalent to play on words.

Classical allusion, always the vice of Chinese poetry, finally destroyed
it altogether. In the later periods (from the fourteenth century
onwards) the use of elegant synonyms also prevailed. I have before me a
"gradus" of the kind which the later poet used as an aid to composition.
The moon should be called the "Silver Dish," "Frozen Wheel," or "Golden
Ring. " Allusions may in this connection be made to Yu Liang, who rode to
heaven on the crescent moon; to the hermit T'ang, who controlled the
genius of the New Moon, and kept him in his house as a candle--or to any
other of some thirty stories which are given. The sun may be called "The
Lantern-Dragon," the "Crow in Flight," the "White Colt," etc.

Such were the artificialities of later Chinese poetry.


TECHNIQUE

Certain elements are found, but in varying degree, in all human speech.
It is difficult to conceive of a language in which rhyme, stress-accent,
and tone-accent would not to some extent occur. In all languages some
vowel-sounds are shorter than others and, in certain cases, two
consecutive words begin with the same sound. Other such characteristics
could be enumerated, but for the purposes of poetry it is these elements
which man has principally exploited.

English poetry has used chiefly rhyme, stress, and alliteration. It is
doubtful if tone has ever played a part; a conscious use has
sporadically been made of quantity. Poetry naturally utilizes the most
marked and definite characteristics of the language in which it is
written. Such characteristics are used consciously by the poet; but less
important elements also play their part, often only in a negative way.
Thus the Japanese actually avoid rhyme; the Greeks did not exploit it,
but seem to have tolerated it when it occurred accidentally.

The expedients consciously used by the Chinese before the sixth century
were rhyme and length of line. A third element, inherent in the
language, was not exploited before that date, but must always have been
a factor in instinctive considerations of euphony. This element was
"tone. "

Chinese prosody distinguishes between two tones, a "flat" and a
"deflected. " In the first the syllable is enunciated in a level manner:
the voice neither rises nor sinks. In the second, it (1) rises, (2)
sinks, (3) is abruptly arrested. These varieties make up the Four Tones
of Classical Chinese. [1]

[1] Not to be confused with the Four Tones of the Mandarin dialect, in
which the old names are used to describe quite different enunciations.

The "deflected" tones are distinctly more emphatic, and so have a faint
analogy to our stressed syllables. They are also, in an even more remote
way, analogous to the long vowels of Latin prosody. A line ending with a
"level" has consequently to some extent the effect of a "feminine
ending. " Certain causes, which I need not specify here, led to an
increasing importance of "tone" in the Chinese language from the fifth
century onwards. It was natural that this change should be reflected in
Chinese prosody. A certain Sh? n Yo (A. D. 441-513) first propounded the
laws of tone-succession in poetry. From that time till the eighth
century the _Lu-shih_ or "strictly regulated poem" gradually evolved.
But poets continued (and continue till to-day), side by side with their
_lu-shih_, to write in the old metre which disregards tone, calling such
poems _Ku shih_, "old poems. " Previous European statements about
Chinese prosody should be accepted with great caution. Writers have
attempted to define the _lu-shih_ with far too great precision.

The Chinese themselves are apt to forget that T'ang poets seldom obeyed
the laws designed in later school-books as essential to classical
poetry; or, if they notice that a verse by Li Po does not conform, they
stigmatize it as "irregular and not to be imitated. "

The reader will infer that the distinction between "old poems" and
irregular _lu-shih_ is often arbitrary. This is certainly the case; I
have found the same poem classified differently in different native
books. But it is possible to enumerate certain characteristics which
distinguish the two kinds of verse. I will attempt to do so; but not
till I have discussed _rhyme_, the other main element in Chinese
prosody. It would be equally difficult to define accurately the
difference between the couplets of Pope and those of William Morris. But
it would not be impossible, by pointing out certain qualities of each,
to enable a reader to distinguish between the two styles.

_Rhyme. _--Most Chinese syllables ended with a vowel or nasal sound. The
Chinese rhyme was in reality a vowel assonance. Words in different
consonants rhymed so long as the vowel-sound was exactly the same. Thus
_ywet_, "moon," rhymed with _sek_, "beauty. " During the classical period
these consonant endings were gradually weakening, and to-day, except in
the south, they are wholly lost. It is possible that from very early
times final consonants were lightly pronounced.

The rhymes used in _lu-shih_ were standardized in the eighth century,
and some of them were no longer rhymes to the ear in the Mandarin
dialect. To be counted as a rhyme, two words must have exactly the same
vowel-sound. Some of the distinctions then made are no longer audible
to-day; the sub-divisions therefore seem arbitrary. Absolute homophony
is also counted as rhyme, as in French. It is as though we should make
_made_ rhyme with _maid_.

I will now attempt to distinguish between _Ku-shih_ (old style) and
_Lu-shih_ (new style).

_Ku-shih (Old Style). _

(_a_) According to the investigations of Chu Hua, an eighteenth century
critic, only thirty-four rhymes were used. They were, indeed, assonances
of the roughest kind.

(_b_) "Deflected" words are used for rhyming as freely as "flat" words.

(_c_) Tone-arrangement. The tones were disregarded. (Lines can be found
in pre-T'ang poems in which five deflected tones occur in succession, an
arrangement which would have been painful to the ear of a T'ang writer
and would probably have been avoided by classical poets even when using
the old style. )

_Lu-shih (New Style). _

(_a_) The rhymes used are the "106" of modern dictionaries (not those of
the Odes, as Giles states). Rhymes in the flat tone are preferred. In a
quatrain the lines which do not rhyme must end on the opposite tone to
that of the rhyme. This law is absolute in _Lu-shih_ and a tendency in
this direction is found even in _Ku-shih_.

(_b_) There is a tendency to antithetical arrangement of tones in the
two lines of a couplet, especially in the last part of the lines.

(_c_) A tendency for the tones to go in _pairs_, _e. g. _ (A lat, B deflected): AA BBA or ABB AA, rather than in _threes_. Three like tones
only come together when divided by a "cesura," _e. g. _, the line BB / AAA
would be avoided, but not the line BBAA / ABB.

(_d_) Verbal parallelism in the couplet, _e. g. _:

After long illness one first realizes that seeking medicines is
a mistake;
In one's decaying years one begins to repent that one's study of
books was deferred.

This device, used with some discretion in T'ang, becomes an irritating
trick in the hands of the Sung poets.


THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF CHINESE POETRY

_The Odes. _--From the songs current in his day Confucius (551-479 B. C. )
chose about three hundred which he regarded as suitable texts for his
ethical and social teaching. Many of them are eulogies of good rulers or
criticisms of bad ones. Out of the three hundred and five still extant
only about thirty are likely to interest the modern reader. Of these
half deal with war and half with love. Many translations exist, the best
being those of Legge in English and of Couvreur in French. There is
still room for an English translation displaying more sensitivity to
word-rhythm than that of Legge. It should not, I think, include more
than fifty poems. But the Odes are essentially _lyric_ poetry, and their
beauty lies in effects which cannot be reproduced in English. For that
reason I have excluded them from this book; nor shall I discuss them
further here, for full information will be found in the works of Legge
or Couvreur.

_Elegies of the Land of Ch'u. _--We come next to Ch'u Yuan (third century
B. C. ) whose famous poem "Li Sao," or "Falling into Trouble," has also
been translated by Legge. It deals, under a love-allegory, with the
relation between the writer and his king. In this poem, sex and politics
are curiously interwoven, as we need not doubt they were in Chu Yuan's
own mind. He affords a striking example of the way in which abnormal
mentality imposes itself. We find his followers unsuccessfully
attempting to use the same imagery and rhapsodical verbiage, not
realizing that these were, as De Goncourt would say, the product of
their master's _propre nevrosite_.

"The Battle," his one thoroughly intelligible poem, has hitherto been
only very imperfectly translated. A literal version will be found on p.
23.

His nephew Sung Yu was no servile imitator. In addition to "elegies" in
the style of the Li Sao, he was the author of many "Fu" or descriptive
prose-poems, unrhymed but more or less metrical.

_The Han Dynasty. _--Most of the Han poems in this book were intended to
be sung. Many of them are from the official song-book of the dynasty and
are known as Yo Fu or Music Bureau poems, as distinct from _shih_, which
were recited. Ch'in Chia's poem and his wife's reply (p. 54) are both
_shih_; but all the rest might, I think, be counted as songs.

The Han dynasty is rich in Fu (descriptions), but none of them could be
adequately translated. They are written in an elaborate and florid style
which recalls Apuleius or Lyly.

_The Chin Dynasty. _

(1) _Popular Songs_ (Songs of Wu). The popular songs referred to the Wu
(Soochow) district and attributed to the fourth century may many of
them have been current at a much earlier date. They are slight in
content and deal with only one topic.