A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems. Various Authors
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"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.:
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 sensitively 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 névrosté.
"The Battle," his one thoroughly intelligible poem, has hitherto been only very imperfectly translated. A literal version will be found on page 39.
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 [pages 76 and 77] 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.:
El candil se està apagando.
La alcuza no tiene aceite —
No te digo que te vayas, . . .
No te digo que te quedes.
The brazier is going out.
The lamp has no more oil —
I do not tell you to go, . . .
I do not tell you to stay.
A Han song, which I will translate quite literally, seems to be the forerunner of the Wu songs.
On two sides of river, wedding made:
Time comes; no boat.
Lusting heart loses hope
Not seeing what-it-desires.
[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 page 103, seq. Something of his philosophy may be gathered from the poem "Substance, Shadow, and Spirit" [page 106], 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