A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems

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-jēn,” 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).

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-tzŭ. 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 Chü-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 Chü-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 Chü-i extended over the whole vast confines of China. This would, I think, be an error. Culture is essentially a metropolitan product. Chü-i was as much dépaysé 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 Yü 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.

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]

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 Shēn Yo (A.D. 441-513) first propounded the laws of tone-succession in poetry. From that time till the eighth century the Lü-shih or “strictly regulated poem” gradually evolved. But poets continued (and continue till to-day), side by side with their lü-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 lü-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 lü-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 lü-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 Lü-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.)

Lü-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 Lü-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=flat, 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.:

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

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’ü Yüan (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 Chü Yüan’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 névrosité.

“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 Yü 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. They may, in fact, be called “Love-epigrams.” They find a close parallel in the coplas of Spain, cf.:

A Han song, which I will translate quite literally, seems to be the forerunner of the Wu songs.

(2) The Taoists.—Confucius inculcated the duty of public service. Those to whom this duty was repulsive found support in Taoism, a system which denied this obligation. The third and fourth centuries A.D. witnessed a great reaction against state service. It occurred to the intellectuals of China that they would be happier growing vegetables in their gardens than place-hunting at Nanking. They embraced the theory that “by bringing himself into harmony with Nature” man can escape every evil. Thus Tao (Nature’s Way) corresponds to the Nirvana of Buddhism, and the God of Christian mysticism.

They reduced to the simplest standard their houses, apparel, and food; and discarded the load of book-learning which Confucianism imposed on its adherents.

The greatest of these recluses was T’ao Ch’ien (A.D. 365-427), twelve of whose poems will be found on p. 71, seq. Something of his philosophy may be gathered from the poem “Substance, Shadow, and Spirit” (p. 73), his own views being voiced by the last speaker. He was not an original thinker, but a great poet who reflects in an interesting way the outlook of his time.

Liang and Minor Dynasties.—This period is known as that of the “Northern and Southern Courts.” The north of China was in the hands of the Tungusie Tartars, who founded the Northern Wei dynasty—a name particularly familiar, since it is the habit of European collectors to attribute to this dynasty any sculpture which they believe to be earlier than T’ang. Little poetry was produced in the conquered provinces; the Tartar emperors, though they patronized Buddhist art, were incapable of promoting literature. But at Nanking a series of emperors ruled, most of whom distinguished themselves either in painting or poetry. The Chinese have always (and rightly) despised the literature of this period, which is “all flowers and moonlight.” A few individual writers, such as Pao Chao, stand out as exceptions. The Emperor Yüan-ti—who hacked his way to the throne by murdering all other claimants, including his own brother—is typical of the period both as a man and as a poet. A specimen of his sentimental poetry will be found on p. 90. When at last forced to abdicate, he heaped together 200,000 books and pictures; and, setting fire to them, exclaimed: “The culture of the Liang dynasty perishes with me.”

T’ang.—I have already described the technical developments of poetry during this dynasty. Form was at this time valued far above content. “Poetry,” says a critic, “should draw its materials from the Han and Wei dynasties.” With the exception of a few reformers, writers contented themselves with clothing old themes in new forms. The extent to which this is true can of course only be realized by one thoroughly familiar with the earlier poetry.

In the main, T’ang confines itself to a narrow range of stock subjects. The mise-en-scène is borrowed from earlier times. If a battle-poem be written, it deals with the campaigns of the Han dynasty, not with contemporary events. The “deserted concubines” of conventional love-poetry are those of the Han Court. Innumerable poems record “Reflections on Visiting a Ruin,” or on “The Site of an Old City,” etc. The details are ingeniously varied, but the sentiments are in each case identical. Another feature is the excessive use of historical allusions. This is usually not apparent in rhymed translations, which evade such references by the substitution of generalities. Poetry became the medium not for the expression of a poet’s emotions, but for the display of his classical attainments. The great Li Po is no exception to this rule. Often where his translators would make us suppose he is expressing a fancy of his own, he is in reality skilfully utilizing some poem by T’ao Ch’ien or Hsieh Ti’ao. It is for his versification that he is admired, and with justice. He represents a reaction against the formal prosody of his immediate predecessors. It was in the irregular song-metres of his ku-shih that he excelled. In such poems as the “Ssech’uan Road,” with its wild profusion of long and short lines, its cataract of exotic verbiage, he aimed at something nearer akin to music than to poetry. Tu Fu, his contemporary, occasionally abandoned the cult of “abstract form.” Both poets lived through the most tragic period of Chinese history. In 755 the Emperor’s Turkic favourite, An Lu-shan, revolted against his master. A civil war followed, in which China lost thirty million men. The dynasty was permanently enfeebled and the Empire greatly curtailed by foreign incursions. So ended the “Golden Age” of Ming Huang. Tu Fu, stirred by the horror of massacres and conscriptions, wrote a series of poems in the old style, which Po Chü-i singles out for praise. One of them, “The Press-gang,” is familiar in Giles’s translation. Li Po, meanwhile, was writing complimentary poems on the Emperor’s “Tour in the West”—a journey which was in reality a precipitate flight from his enemies.

Sung.—In regard to content the Sung poets show even less originality than their predecessors. Their whole energy was devoted towards inventing formal restrictions. The “tz’ŭ” developed, a species of song in lines of irregular length, written in strophes, each of which must conform to a strict pattern of tones and rhymes. The content of the “tz’ŭ” is generally wholly conventional. Very few have been translated; and it is obvious that they are unsuitable for translation, since their whole merit lies in metrical dexterity. Examples by the poetess Li I-an will be found in the second edition of Judith Gautier’s “Livre de Jade.” The poetry of Su Tung-p’o, the foremost writer of the period, is in its matter almost wholly a patchwork of earlier poems. It is for the musical qualities of his verse that he is valued by his countrymen. He hardly wrote a poem which does not contain a phrase (sometimes a whole line) borrowed from Po Chü-i, for whom in his critical writings he expresses boundless admiration.

A word must be said of the Fu (descriptive prose-poems) of this time. They resemble the vers libres of modern France, using rhyme occasionally (like Georges Duhamel) as a means of “sonner, rouler, quand il faut faire donner les cuivres et la batterie.” Of this nature is the magnificent “Autumn Dirge” (Giles, “Chinese Lit.,” p. 215) by Ou-yang Hsiu, whose lyric poetry is of small interest. The subsequent periods need not much concern us. In the eighteenth century the garrulous Yüan Mei wrote his “Anecdotes of Poetry-making”—a book which, while one of the most charming in the language, probably contains more bad poetry (chiefly that of his friends) than any in the world. His own poems are modelled on Po Chü-i and Su Tung-p’o.

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This introduction is intended for the general reader. I have therefore stated my views simply and categorically, and without entering into controversies which are of interest only to a few specialists.

As an account of the development of Chinese poetry these notes are necessarily incomplete, but it is hoped that they answer some of those questions which a reader would be most likely to ask.

It is commonly asserted that poetry, when literally translated, ceases to be poetry. This is often true, and I have for that reason not attempted to translate many poems which in the original have pleased me quite as much as those I have selected. But I present the ones I have chosen in the belief that they still retain the essential characteristics of poetry.

I have aimed at literal translation, not paraphrase. It may be perfectly legitimate for a poet to borrow foreign themes or material, but this should not be called translation.

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. I have therefore tried to produce regular rhythmic effects similar to those of the original. Each character in the Chinese is represented by a stress in the English; but between the stresses unstressed syllables are of course interposed. In a few instances where the English insisted on being shorter than the Chinese, I have preferred to vary the metre of my version, rather than pad out the line with unnecessary verbiage.

I have not used rhyme because it is impossible to produce in English rhyme-effects at all similar to those of the original, where the same rhyme sometimes runs through a whole poem. Also, because the restrictions of rhyme necessarily injure either the vigour of one’s language or the literalness of one’s version. I do not, at any rate, know of any example to the contrary. What is generally known as “blank verse” is the worst medium for translating Chinese poetry, because the essence of blank verse is that it varies the position of its pauses, whereas in Chinese the stop always comes at the end of the couplet.

1. H. A. Giles, “Chinese Poetry in English Verse.” 1896. 212 pp. Combines rhyme and literalness with wonderful dexterity.

2. Hervey St. Denys, “Poésies des Thang.” 1862. 301 pp. The choice of poems would have been very different if the author had selected from the whole range of T’ang poetry, instead of contenting himself, except in the case of Li Po and Tu Fu, with making extracts from two late anthologies. This book, the work of a great scholar, is reliable—except in its information about Chinese prosody.

3. Judith Gautier, “Le Livre de Jade.” 1867 and 1908. It has been difficult to compare these renderings with the original, for proper names are throughout distorted or interchanged. For example, part of a poem by Po Chü-i about Yang T’ai-chēn is here given as a complete poem and ascribed to “Yan-Ta-Tchen” as author. The poet Han Yü figures as Heu-Yu; T’ao Han as Sao Nan, etc. Such mistakes are evidently due to faulty decipherment of someone else’s writing. Nevertheless, the book is far more readable than that of St. Denys, and shows a wider acquaintance with Chinese poetry on the part of whoever chose the poems. Most of the credit for this selection must certainly be given to Ting Tun-ling, the literatus whom Théophile Gautier befriended. But the credit for the beauty of these often erroneous renderings must go to Mademoiselle Gautier herself.

4. Anna von Bernhardi, in “Mitteil d. Seminar f. Orient. Sprachen,” 1912, 1915, and 1916. Two articles on T’ao Ch’ien and one on Li Po. All valuable, though not free from mistakes.

5. Zottoli, “Cursus Litteraturae Sinicae.” 1886. Chinese text with Latin translation. Vol. V deals with poetry. None of the poems is earlier than T’ang. The Latin is seldom intelligible without reference to the Chinese. Translators have obviously used Zottoli as a text. Out of eighteen Sung poems in Giles’s book, sixteen will be found in Zottoli.

6. A. Pfizmaier, two articles (1886 and 1887) on Po Chü-i in “Denkschr. d. Kais. Ak. in Wien.” So full of mistakes as to be of very little value, except in so far as they served to call the attention of the European reader to this poet.

7. L. Woitsch, “Aus den Gedichten Po Chü-i’s.” 1908. 76 pp. A prose rendering with Chinese text of about forty poems, not very well selected. The translations, though inaccurate, are a great advance on Pfizmaier.

8. E. von Zachs, “Lexicographische Beiträge.” Vols. ii and iv. Re-translation of two poems previously mistranslated by Pfizmaier.

9. S. Imbault-Huart, “La Poésie Chinoise du 14 au 19 siècle.” 1886. 93 pp.

10. S. Imbault-Huart, “Un Poète Chinois du 18 Siècle.” (Yüan Mei.) Journ. of China Branch, Royal As. Soc., N.S., vol. xix, part 2, 42 pp.

11. S. Imbault-Huart, “Poésies Modernes.” 1892. 46 pp.

12. A. Forke, “Blüthen Chinesischer Dichtung.” 1899. Rhymed versions of Li Po and pre-T’ang poems.

A fuller bibliography will be found in Cordier’s “Bibliotheca Sinica.”

Hsiang, king of Ch’u, was feasting in the Orchid-tower Palace, with Sung Yü and Ching Ch’ai to wait upon him. A gust of wind blew in and the king bared his breast to meet it, saying: “How pleasant a thing is this wind which I share with the common people.” Sung Yü answered: “This is the Great King’s wind. The common people cannot share it.” The king said: “Wind is a spirit of Heaven and Earth. It comes wide spread and does not choose between noble and base or between high and low. How can you say ‘This is the king’s wind’?” Sung answered: “I have heard it taught that in the crooked lemon-tree birds make their nests and to empty spaces winds fly. But the wind-spirit that comes to different things is not the same.” The king said: “Where is the wind born?” and Sung answered: “The wind is born in the ground. It rises in the extremities of the green p’ing-flower. It pours into the river-valleys and rages at the mouth of the pass. It follows the rolling flanks of Mount T’ai and dances beneath the pine-trees and cypresses. In gusty bouts it whirls. It rushes in fiery anger. It rumbles low with a noise like thunder, tearing down rocks and trees, smiting forests and grasses.

“But at last abating, it spreads abroad, seeks empty places and crosses the threshold of rooms. And so growing gentler and clearer, it changes and is dispersed and dies.

“It is this cool clear Man-Wind that, freeing itself, falls and rises till it climbs the high walls of the Castle and enters the gardens of the Inner Palace. It bends the flowers and leaves with its breath. It wanders among the osmanthus and pepper-trees. It lingers over the fretted face of the pond, to steal the soul of the hibiscus. It touches the willow leaves and scatters the fragrant herbs. Then it pauses in the courtyard and turning to the North goes up to the Jade Hall, shakes the hanging curtains and lightly passes into the inner room.

“And so it becomes the Great King’s wind.

“Now such a wind is fresh and sweet to breathe and its gentle murmuring cures the diseases of men, blows away the stupor of wine, sharpens sight and hearing and refreshes the body. This is what is called the Great King’s wind.”

The king said: “You have well described it. Now tell me of the common people’s wind.” Sung said: “The common people’s wind rises from narrow lanes and streets, carrying clouds of dust. Rushing to empty spaces it attacks the gateway, scatters the dust-heap, sends the cinders flying, pokes among foul and rotting things, till at last it enters the tiled windows and reaches the rooms of the cottage. Now this wind is heavy and turgid, oppressing man’s heart. It brings fever to his body, ulcers to his lips and dimness to his eyes. It shakes him with coughing; it kills him before his time.

“Such is the Woman-wind of the common people.”

The following is a sample of Sung Yü’s prose:

One day when the Chamberlain, master Tēng-t’u, was in attendance at the Palace he warned the King against Sung Yü, saying: “Yü is a man of handsome features and calm bearing and his tongue is prompt with subtle sentences. Moreover, his character is licentious. I would submit that your Majesty is ill-advised in allowing him to follow you into the Queen’s apartments.” The King repeated Tēng-t’u’s words to Sung Yü. Yü replied: “My beauty of face and calmness of bearing were given me by Heaven. Subtlety of speech I learnt from my teachers. As for my character, I deny that it is licentious.” The King said: “Can you substantiate your statement that you are not licentious? If you cannot, you must leave the Court.” Sung Yü said: “Of all the women in the world, the most beautiful are the women of the land of Ch’u. And in all the land of Ch’u there are none like the women of my own village. And in my village there are none that can be compared with the girl next door.

“The girl next door would be too tall if an inch were added to her height, and too short if an inch were taken away. Another grain of powder would make her too pale; another touch of rouge would make her too red. Her eyebrows are like the plumage of the kingfisher, her flesh is like snow. Her waist is like a roll of new silk, her teeth are like little shells. A single one of her smiles would perturb the whole city of Yang and derange the suburb of Hsia-ts’ai.[3] For three years this lady has been climbing the garden wall and peeping at me, yet I have never succumbed.

“How different is the behaviour of master Tēng-t’u! His wife has a wooly head and misshapen ears; projecting teeth irregularly set; a crook in her back and a halt in her gait. Moreover, she has running sores in front and behind.

“Yet Tēng-t’u fell in love with her and caused her to bear him five children.

“I would have your Majesty consider which of us is the debauchee.”

Sung Yü was not dismissed from court.

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SUBSTANCE, SHADOW, AND SPIRIT

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BLAMING SONS
(AN APOLOGY FOR HIS OWN DRUNKENNESS)

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MOVING HOUSE

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RETURNING TO THE FIELDS

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READING THE BOOK OF HILLS AND SEAS

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FLOOD

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NEW CORN

By Pao Chao

Po Chü-i was born at T’ai-yüan in Shansi. Most of his childhood was spent at Jung-yang in Honan. His father was a second-class Assistant Department Magistrate. He tells us that his family was poor and often in difficulties.

He seems to have settled permanently at Ch’ang-an in 801. This town, lying near the north-west frontier, was the political capital of the Empire. In its situation it somewhat resembled Madrid. Lo-yang, the Eastern city, owing to its milder climate and more accessible position, became, like Seville in Spain, a kind of social capital.

Soon afterwards he met Yüan Chēn, then aged twenty-two, who was destined to play so important a part in his life. Five years later, during a temporary absence from the city, he addressed to Yüan the following poem:

Of Yüan’s appearance at this time we may guess something from a picture which still survives in copy; it shows him, a youthful and elegant figure, visiting his cousin Ts’ui Ying-ying, who was a lady-in-waiting at Court.[45] At this period of his life Po made friends with difficulty, not being, as he tells us, “a master of such accomplishments as caligraphy, painting, chess or gambling, which tend to bring men together in pleasurable intercourse.” Two older men, T’ang Ch’ü and Tēng Fang, liked his poetry and showed him much kindness; another, the politician K’ung T’an, won his admiration on public grounds. But all three died soon after he got to know them. Later he made three friends with whom he maintained a lifelong intimacy: the poet Liu Yū-hsi (called Mēng-tē), and the two officials Li Chien and Ts’ui Hsuan-liang. In 805 Yüan Chēn was banished for provocative behaviour towards a high official. The T’ang History relates the episode as follows: “Yüan was staying the night at the Fu-shui Inn; just as he was preparing to go to sleep in the Main Hall, the court-official Li Shih-yüan also arrived. Yüan Chēn should have offered to withdraw from the Hall. He did not do so and a scuffle ensued. Yüan, locked out of the building, took off his shoes and stole round to the back, hoping to find another way in. Liu followed with a whip and struck him across the face.”

The separation was a heavy blow to Po Chü-i. In a poem called “Climbing Alone to the Lo-yu Gardens” he says:

In 804 on the death of his father, and again in 811 on the death of his mother, he spent periods of retirement on the Wei river near Ch’ang-an. It was during the second of these periods that he wrote the long poem (260 lines) called “Visiting the Wu-chēn Temple.” Soon after his return to Ch’ang-an, which took place in the winter of 814, he fell into official disfavour. In two long memorials entitled “On Stopping the War,” he had criticized the handling of a campaign against an unimportant tribe of Tartars, which he considered had been unduly prolonged. In a series of poems he had satirized the rapacity of minor officials and called attention to the intolerable sufferings of the masses.

His enemies soon found an opportunity of silencing him. In 814 the Prime Minister, Wu Yüan-hēng, was assassinated in broad daylight by an agent of the revolutionary leader Wu Yüan-chi. Po, in a memorial to the Throne, pointed out the urgency of remedying the prevailing discontent. He held at this time the post of assistant secretary to the Princes’ tutor. He should not have criticized the Prime Minister (for being murdered!) until the official Censors had spoken, for he held a Palace appointment which did not carry with it the right of censorship.

His opponents also raked up another charge. His mother had met her death by falling into a well while looking at flowers. Chü-i had written two poems entitled “In Praise of Flowers” and “The New Well.” It was claimed that by choosing such subjects he had infringed the laws of Filial Piety.

He was banished to Kiukiang (then called Hsün-yang) with the rank of Sub-Prefect. After three years he was given the Governorship of Chung-chou, a remote place in Ssech’uan. On the way up the Yangtze he met Yüan Chēn after three years of separation. They spent a few days together at I-ch’ang, exploring the rock-caves of the neighbourhood.

Chung-chou is noted for its “many flowers and exotic trees,” which were a constant delight to its new Governor. In the winter of 819 he was recalled to the capital and became a second-class Assistant Secretary. About this time Yüan Chēn also returned to the city.

In 821 the Emperor Mou Tsung came to the throne. His arbitrary mis-government soon caused a fresh rising in the north-west. Chü-i remonstrated in a series of memorials and was again removed from the capital—this time to be Governor of the important town of Hangchow. Yüan now held a judicial post at Ningpo and the two were occasionally able to meet.

In 824 his Governorship expired and he lived (with the nominal rank of Imperial Tutor) at the village of Li-tao-li, near Lo-yang. It was here that he took into his household two girls, Fan-su and Man-tzŭ, whose singing and dancing enlivened his retreat. He also brought with him from Hangchow a famous “Indian rock,” and two cranes of the celebrated “Hua-t’ing” breed. Other amenities of his life at this time were a recipe for making sweet wine, the gift of Ch’ēn Hao-hsien; a harp-melody taught him by Ts’ui Hsuan-liang; and a song called “Autumn Thoughts,” brought by the concubine of a visitor from Ssech’uan.

In 825 he became Governor of Soochow. Here at the age of fifty-three he enjoyed a kind of second youth, much more sociable than that of thirty years before; we find him endlessly picnicking and feasting. But after two years illness obliged him to retire.

He next held various posts at the capital, but again fell ill, and in 829 settled at Lo-yang as Governor of the Province of Honan. Here his first son, A-ts’ui, was born, but died in the following year.

In 831 Yüan Chēn also died.

Henceforth, though for thirteen years he continued to hold nominal posts, he lived a life of retirement. In 832 he repaired an unoccupied part of the Hsiang-shan monastery at Lung-mēn,[46] a few miles south of Lo-yang, and lived there, calling himself the Hermit of Hsiang-shan. Once he invited to dinner eight other elderly and retired officials; the occasion was recorded in a picture entitled “The Nine Old Men at Hsiang-shan.” There is no evidence that his association with them was otherwise than transient, though legend (see “Mémoires Concernant les Chinois” and Giles, Biographical Dictionary) has invested the incident with an undue importance. He amused himself at this time by writing a description of his daily life which would be more interesting if it were not so closely modelled on a famous memoir by T’ao Ch’ien. In the winter of 839 he was attacked by paralysis and lost the use of his left leg. After many months in bed he was again able to visit his garden, carried by Ju-man, a favourite monk.

In 842 Liu Yü-hsi, the last survivor of the four friends, and a constant visitor at the monastery, “went to wander with Yüan Chēn in Hades.” The monk Ju-man also died.

The remaining years of Po’s life were spent in collecting and arranging his Complete Works. Copies were presented to the principal monasteries (the “Public Libraries” of the period) in the towns with which he had been connected. He died in 846, leaving instructions that his funeral should be without pomp and that he should be buried not in the family tomb at Hsia-kuei, but by Ju-man’s side in the Hsiang-shan Monastery. He desired that a posthumous title should not be awarded.

The most striking characteristic of Po Chü-i’s poetry is its verbal simplicity. There is a story that he was in the habit of reading his poems to an old peasant woman and altering any expression which she could not understand. The poems of his contemporaries were mere elegant diversions which enabled the scholar to display his erudition, or the literary juggler his dexterity. Po expounded his theory of poetry in a letter to Yüan Chēn. Like Confucius, he regarded art solely as a method of conveying instruction. He is not the only great artist who has advanced this untenable theory. He accordingly valued his didactic poems far above his other work; but it is obvious that much of his best poetry conveys no moral whatever. He admits, indeed, that among his “miscellaneous stanzas” many were inspired by some momentary sensation or passing event. “A single laugh or a single sigh were rapidly translated into verse.”

The didactic poems or “satires” belong to the period before his first banishment. “When the tyrants and favourites heard my Songs of Ch’in, they looked at one another and changed countenance,” he boasts. Satire, in the European sense, implies wit; but Po’s satires are as lacking in true wit as they are unquestionably full of true poetry. We must regard them simply as moral tales in verse.

In the conventional lyric poetry of his predecessors he finds little to admire. Among the earlier poems of the T’ang dynasty he selects for praise the series by Ch’ēn Tzŭ-ang, which includes “Business Men.” In Li Po and Tu Fu he finds a deficiency of “fēng” and “ya.” The two terms are borrowed from the Preface to the Odes. “Fēng” means “criticism of one’s rulers”; “ya,” “moral guidance to the masses.”

“The skill,” he says in the same letter, “which Tu Fu shows in threading on to his lü-shih a ramification of allusions ancient and modern could not be surpassed; in this he is even superior to Li Po. But, if we take the ‘Press-gang’ and verses like that stanza:

what a small part of his whole work it represents!”

Content, in short, he valued far above form: and it was part of his theory, though certainly not of his practice, that this content ought to be definitely moral. He aimed at raising poetry from the triviality into which it had sunk and restoring it to its proper intellectual level. It is an irony that he should be chiefly known to posterity, in China, Japan, and the West, as the author of the “Everlasting Wrong.”[47] He set little store by the poem himself, and, though a certain political moral might be read into it, its appeal is clearly romantic.

His other poem of sentiment, the “Lute Girl,”[48] accords even less with his stated principles. With these he ranks his Lü-shih; and it should here be noted that all the satires and long poems are in the old style of versification, while his lighter poems are in the strict, modern form. With his satires he classes his “reflective” poems, such as “Singing in the Mountains,” “On being removed from Hsün-yang,” “Pruning Trees,” etc. These are all in the old style.

No poet in the world can ever have enjoyed greater contemporary popularity than Po. His poems were “on the mouths of kings, princes, concubines, ladies, plough-boys, and grooms.” They were inscribed “on the walls of village-schools, temples, and ships-cabins.” “A certain Captain Kao Hsia-yü was courting a dancing-girl. ‘You must not think I am an ordinary dancing-girl,’ she said to him, ‘I can recite Master Po’s “Everlasting Wrong.”’ And she put up her price.”

But this popularity was confined to the long, romantic poems and the Lü-shih. “The world,” writes Po to Yüan Chēn, “values highest just those of my poems which I most despise. Of contemporaries you alone have understood my satires and reflective poems. A hundred, a thousand years hence perhaps some one will come who will understand them as you have done.”

The popularity of his lighter poems lasted till the Ming dynasty, when a wave of pedantry swept over China. At that period his poetry was considered vulgar, because it was not erudite; and prosaic, because it was not rhetorical.

Although they valued form far above content, not even the Ming critics can accuse him of slovenly writing. His versification is admitted by them to be “correct.”

Caring, indeed, more for matter than for manner, he used with facility and precision the technical instruments which were at his disposal. Many of the later anthologies omit his name altogether, but he has always had isolated admirers. Yüan Mei imitates him constantly, and Chao I (died 1814) writes: “Those who accuse him of being vulgar and prosaic know nothing of poetry.”

Even during his lifetime his reputation had reached Japan, and great writers like Michizane were not ashamed to borrow from him. He is still held in high repute there, is the subject of a Nō Play and has even become a kind of Shintō deity. It is significant that the only copy of his works in the British Museum is a seventeenth-century Japanese edition.

It is usual to close a biographical notice with an attempt to describe the “character” of one’s subject. But I hold myself absolved from such a task; for the sixty poems which follow will enable the reader to perform it for himself.

Preface:—After I parted with Yüan Chēn, I suddenly dreamt one night that I saw him. When I awoke, I found that a letter from him had just arrived and, enclosed in it, a poem on the paulovnia flower.

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Lao-tzŭ

Chuang-tzŭ, the Monist

THE END

CHISWICK PRESS: PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

The half-title page has been removed from the text.

The following printed errata have been incorporated into the text:

The following additional errors have been corrected:

• p. v “Fu jēn” changed to “Fu-jēn”
• p. v “Chicago)” changed to “(Chicago)”
• p. 21 “Two articles of” changed to “Two articles on”
• p. 23 ““Li Sao,” changed to ““Li Sao,””
• p. 26 “next door” changed to “next door.”
• p. 33 “the night.” changed to “the night.””
• p. 56 “again.” changed to “again.””
• p. 62 “Hsien-mēn” changed to “Hsien-mēn[23]”
• p. 106 “as he tells us” changed to “as he tells us,”
• p. 118 “wrote your letter” changed to “wrote your letter.”
• p. 131 “Yin and Yang.”” changed to “Yin and Yang.”[61]”

The following are used inconsistently in the text:

• forename and fore-name
• fourscore and four-score
• goodbye and good-bye
• hairpins and hair-pins
• Hangchow and Hang-chow
• Hsüan-liang and Hsuan-liang
• lifetime and life-time
• roadside and road-side
• siècle and Siècle
• Yangtze and Yang-tze

Some lines have been left as printed, with no end punctuation:

• p. 49 “mid-stream white waves rise”
• p. 78 “over the story of King Chou”
• p. 121 ““medium’s” advice”
• p. 122 “The wind stirs and sighs”
• p. 156 “which was difficult”
• p. 160 “them thrown away”
• p. 167 “disciple of Fairies”

Other possible errors have been left as printed:

• p. 117 “And threw you my clothes”
• p. 143 (note) “Giles, 2526”
• p. 141 “village of Hsin-fēng?”