ase eT aa ci srr fe nh rare ST isiooh ety Seah as eee Stee Chinese Narrative Poetry Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2021 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/chinesenarrative01 levy Chinese Narrative Poetry | The Late Han through T’ang Dynasties Dore J. Levy Duke University Press Durham and London 1988 © 1988 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper © Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Levy, Dore Jesse. Chinese narrative poetry : the late Han through T’ang dynasties / Dore J. Levy. p. cm. Bibliography: p. ISBN 0-8223-0863-0 1. Narrative poetry, Chinese—History and criticism. 2. Chinese poetry—221 B.C.—960 A.D.—History and criticism. 1. Title. PL2309.N47L48 1988 895.1'103'09—dc19 88-14712 Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: A Model for the Study of Chinese Narrative Poetry 1 1 Narrative Elements in Traditional Chinese Poetics 20 2 Setting Specific Contexts: Point of View and Description 54 3. Character Types and Character Roles 80 4 Narrative Structure: Temporal and Other Sequences 104 Epilogue 121 Appendix: Four Translations 125 Notes 151 Glossary of Chinese Characters 187 Selected Bibliography 197 Index 219 Heol” sod lovetais oft ie folee % c. (iden wont me en hie) aie vite baie weal! tutte) ehaia sie sW,' Sapanhh THE Vir real bite-cegy f vk RCO fal) fais Lari ie rari i Sete os «, aration age Ta iti ale Preface This study presents a critical model of Chinese narrative poetry from the perspective of comparative poetics. In formulating this model I have relied first on the Chinese critical tradition, then pro- posed correspondences and comparisons from European literary criticism. With these two sources in mind, I have tried to make this study of narrative poems in the shih form from the late Han through T’ang dynasties—roughly the second through ninth cen- turies—accessible to those with little or no experience of East Asian traditions, and at the same time of interest to specialists in East Asian studies. The result is not a historical account of the evolu- tion of narrative shih, but an analysis of how narrative works in these poems. Specifically, what are the characteristics of narrative expression in a poetic tradition founded on lyric rather than epic poems? While Chinese poetic criticism and the poems themselves are definitely biased toward lyrical expression, there are principles x Preface of poetic form and composition, and distinctive features of Chi- nese poetic language which lend themselves to narrative expres- sion. The challenge for poets using the shih form was as much in adapting the metrics and methods of lyrical expression to narrative composition as it was in telling a tale. The distinctions between lyrical and narrative expression, and lyrical and narrative experience in Chinese poetry, form the main subject of the Introduction. The first chapter explores theories of Chinese poetic language and traditional literary criticism with an eye to defining those aspects of language and poetics which may allow for narrative. The chapters that follow suggest categories for analyzing the nature of narrative in shih: point of view, description, characterization, and sequential structure. These categories are in- tended to be suggestive rather than diagnostic, but all have roots in the Chinese critical tradition and are not dependent on European notions of narrative forms. Any study of Chinese poetry or literary theory in a European language will inevitably garnish its material with European terms and cultural assumptions. These are foreign to the development of Chinese literature before the modern era, although they may not be irrelevant for comparative analyses. I have taken pains to em- phasize this paradoxical aspect of the enterprise in the pages that follow. An awareness of this separation should be basic to compara- tive literary studies which deal with traditions without sustained intercultural relations. The reward may be a broader insight into the nature and function of art, transcending such cultural and lin- guistic barriers. The field of narrative theory has enjoyed a bustling expan- sion in the last generation, and this is as true for Chinese as for European literature. In Chinese literary studies, however, narrative theory has focused on prose, particularly prose fiction. The rela- tion of the Chinese novel to the Chinese poetic tradition is a matter for debate; however, traditional poetics certainly have their place in the study of prose fiction. Moreover, the essential and unself- conscious incorporation of verse narrative, with meters reflecting all the lyric forms of Chinese literary history in such masterworks as The Journey to the West (Hsi-yu chi) and The Dream of the Red Cham- ber (Hung-lou meng), suggests that the narrative mode of expres- Preface xi sion in poetry made a direct contribution to the evolution of these texts. This study offers an introduction to the analysis of narrative in Chinese poetry: specifically, the literary as opposed to the folk tradition. Because of what I perceive as the characteristics of narra- tive composition, certain stylistic devices play a significant role in this analysis. Therefore, in quoting from the Chinese texts I have used my own translations, which reflect the importance of these devices. I have also attempted to preserve such features as word order, caesura, and parallelism wherever this was possible without sacrificing coherence. The four poems I discuss and quote most ex- tensively—Ts’ai Yen’s “Poem of Affliction” (“Pei-fen shih”), Po Chu- yi's “Song of Everlasting Sorrow” (“Ch’ang-hen ko”) and “Ballad of the p'1-p’a” (“P’1-p’a hsing”), and Wei Chuang’s “Song of the Lady of Ch'in” (“Ch’in-fu yin”)—appear in their entirety in the Appendix. While I have sought to capture the distinctive formal features of these poems, I have also tried to convey the affecting power of their subject matter. Lapses in either aspect are due to my own short- comings. ve4 i ifs OB Ble cppeiieds Qe Hane , Wl ty Oe boda wet eee tear ce at qh waite pure) ake Hic se ophey. ‘ ages bee Cee 1 eke f Need ’ ei aia waieta Lereas i , vp {ay § L/ir sy ' iv ppoller pebble (eee iL. wt | errnHeth cer wh ¢ @ ie-aidy Ora wW Gt the fwasrr ¢ > ~ uit. \eunownp pale Witt ie 4 FATT) Ae. eee ae ; 7 rote +5 “4 4) repent H hit eT 1a} Me tan ae i wf ey ; «hageooe ss 3 ae y' ; Tid Pte ap 4) hoO4Te ’ ali welt q { yi ry renters 7a omegy ' ' ite | j ir if . ’ f ' ea FR ? rave rad? tiny a «a J a‘> PAT. Laat «ee ee if wi vie i> SOP POR Cie ‘ erate ae ae sun), (eehbetr > (i aril eee ager mop haat. Wie {, «hd eerie : i Pudissltin¢ ol » Awee re | Sve a — i Caria Oe otha «i bhad ‘rary Ane Lane vem. de (ita: Mee >) bebe Gee) dul ey ie gee 4 niger), Pabheircrd Vidiac tarry creel aa arti i pigs r ‘ a 7. et ik is) a 4 i a) i. ’ ‘Vv 1 : Acknowledgments I would like to thank the many people who have helped me with care, knowledge, and dedication. In particular, Yu-kung Kao, Earl Miner, and Andrew H. Plaks of Princeton University constantly challenged me with their creative approaches to the study of lit- erature, their critical insight, and their intellectual rigor. Stephen Owen first suggested a study of narrative poetry to me. Kang-i Sun Chang, Richard Davis, A. C. Graham, Charles Hartman, David Lattimore, Stephanie Merrim, Yang Hsien-ch’ing, and Anthony C. Yu have been unfailing in their encouragement, not the least be- cause of the examples of excellence they have set. I owe a great debt to the members of the East Coast Chinese Poetry Group, who over several years have provided constructive discussion and moral support on many aspects of this project. am grateful to the staff of the Gest Oriental Library for their aid in gain- ing access to the great resources of that collection. My colleagues xiv Acknowledgments in comparative literature at Brown University have provided inspi- ration by treating East Asian literature as an integral part of their program, thus obliging me to present Chinese literature as a subject not of special, but of universal interest. Brown University granted me a semester’s leave, allowing me to conduct new research and extensive revisions, and also granted funds toward publication. I am grateful to the editor of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies for permission to reprint material published there, now part of my first chapter. Joanne Ferguson and the staff of the Duke University Press have been vigorous and imaginative in the handling of text and author. The calligraphy is by Hui-fen Lung, and Maggie Bick- ford delved deeply into the narrative tradition in Chinese painting to find a cover for the volume. My friends F. W. Mote and Hsiao-lan Mote have inspired my interests in China and the humanities in general, and in all my endeavors I owe them my gratitude and affection. My husband, Jim, I thank for his wisdom, humor, and uncompromising criticism of my work at every stage. To my parents, my love. They saw this project at its beginning, and happily they now see the end—of this phase. Introduction A Model for the Study of Chinese Narrative Poetry Chinese narrative poetry includes some of the most beloved and in- fluential poems in the literary tradition. From the songs of the Shih Ching (Book of Songs) to the folk ballads of the Han dynasty, from the tours de force of Po Chu-yi’s “Song of Everlasting Sorrow” and Wei Chuang’s “Song of the Lady of Ch'in” to the verse passages of The Journey to the West, poetry’s possibilities for narrative expression have made themselves felt in many genres over the entire history of Chinese literature. Their influence extends not only across generic lines, but also beyond the boundaries of China. Narrative poetry of the T’ang dynasty, for instance, had a crucial influence on the development of narrative in Japan. In chapter 25 of the Tale of Genji Prince Genji himself discusses the art of prose romances with his ward, Tamakazura, and his favorite consort, Murasaki. Throughout this work the author argues the merits and influence of Po Chi-yi’s most famous poem: a double emphasis, since the Tale of Genji itself 2 Chinese Narrative Poetry owes a debt of influence to the author of the “Song of Everlasting Sorrow.”' In the Chinese tradition narrative poems provide many provocative historical and autobiographical documents, as well as vehicles for political criticism and social commentary. In addition, narrative techniques developed in poetry have influenced Chinese fiction, where the unique blending of prose and poetic narrative arguably brings the poetics of Chinese narrative to their full fru- ition. Poetic narrative helps to mediate between two fundamental concerns of artistic endeavor in Chinese culture; namely, personal expression and social commentary. Throughout the critical tradi- tion the proper balance of expressive and didactic purpose in art is a source of debate, but seldom is one wholly forsaken in favor of the other. In a tradition founded on lyrical rather than narrative modes of expression, the blending of these two concerns in a given work of art tends to be implicit rather than explicit.? Narrative, however, allows the conflict of purpose to become explicit, both for the artist and the audience. Seen in a comparative context, Chinese narrative poetry poses many questions, the most basic being: What is the nature of that quality we call “narrative”? Strange as it may seem, there is no comparable term in Chinese criticism, at least not in the traditional works of Chinese poetics. Such terms as hsii-shih shih (narrative poetry) and ku-shih shih (story poems) are neologisms coined in response to European critical terminology.’ This is not to say that narrative characteristics or narrative as a distinct mode of expres- sion went unrecognized in China before the advent of European influence. The apparent lack of a separate generic category for nar- rative poetry is not necessarily perceived as a lack in the Chinese tradition. China’s narrative tradition, unlike that of Europe, has its literary foundations in historiography rather than in poetry, and accords to historiography the reverence which the West reserves for epic poetry as the founding model of narrative expression.* Not only does Chinese narrative poetry not derive from an “epic” model, it is not necessarily separated from other poetry on the basis of generic or formal considerations. Yet it exists as a recog- nizable category in both literary and folk traditions, and includes some of China’s most popular and enduring works. The first prob- lem for this study, therefore, is how to define, in generic terms, a Introduction 3 body of literature whose own tradition does not recognize—or bet- ter, attaches little importance to—its generic consistency. In view of this seeming contradiction it is essential that we understand as precisely as possible what “narrative” and the countervalent term “lyric” mean in traditional Chinese poetics before we consider the narrative poems themselves. It should be clear from the start that broad distinctions between “lyric” and “narrative” refer only to tendencies. “Pure” lyric and “pure” narrative are theoretical categories, but for literary analysis they must be relative, not absolute. Indeed, in Chinese literature the distinctions between lyric and narrative genres as they are known in European traditions simply do not exist. Part of the rich- ness of both the Chinese and Japanese traditions lies in the fact that lyric and narrative modes of expression interpenetrate to a far greater extent than they do in European literary traditions. Inter- preting such works in terms of a critical tradition which assumes the primacy of narrative forms and narrative poetics is a complex and often frustrating business. In The Interlingual Critic James J. Y. Liu suggests that an awareness of the fundamental differences be- tween East Asian and European aesthetics may be latent in the mind of the reader, and so the “response” to these differences, in literary criticism at least, is usually unconscious.® Unfortunately, even when conscious of the differences, critics tend to assume that the presence or absence of certain tendencies are criteria of artis- tic value. Perhaps the most striking example in this century is the enormously influential Pai-hua wen-hsiieh shih, by Hu Shih, which finds the Chinese tradition wanting by comparison with Western traditions precisely because of its bias toward lyrical expression rather than what Hu Shih regards as the more “dynamic” literary styles of the West.’ But if the impulse to ascribe value on the basis of aesthetic criteria can be set aside, the fundamental contrast the Chinese tradition offers to European models allows new insights into the qualities of both. Chinese poetic criticism focuses on lyric poetry and poetics, which make up the bulk of the classical tradition, and is founded on a profound belief in the possibility of “lyrical experience.” ® Lyri- cal experience on the part of the poet is regarded as the expression of a moment in time freed through the medium of poetry from the 4 Chinese Narrative Poetry constraints of time. On the part of the reader or participant lyrical experience is regarded as somehow incorporating the creative pro- cess of composition, as well as internalizing the moment of inspi- ration. Western criticism takes for granted that creative experience is different from interpretative experience, which is in fact the ex- perience of the reader. Chinese criticism sees them as parts of a single process because both are aspects of a universal possibility of aesthetic experience. The sense of communion with the creative experience is an essential aspect of lyrical experience in any culture, not just Chi- nese. Technical considerations may be put aside because, ideally, a participant can follow through the entire experience which inspired the original composition by reading the poem. This is actually an interpretative process, but the nature of lyrical composition is such that the process of interpretation allows the participant to re-create, or at least feel affinity with the creative experience, even if he or she would not, in fact, be capable of composing such a piece. The participant may be convinced of actually capturing the author’s ex- perience, because interpretation has intuitive as well as analytical aspects. Based on evocation of personal experiences, a reader par- ticipates in the illusion of re-creating the poet’s experience. A lyric poem may be short because it relies on the evocation of what is presumed, rightly or wrongly, to be a shared body of human experience. A narrative poem, in contrast, usually provides at least some specific background knowledge which is intended to bear upon the central experience of the poem. It is the specificity of the experience described, not the experience in general terms, which stimulates the reader’s most powerful response. The reader’s sense of the nature of participation in the experience is therefore essentially vicarious; it is a substitute for actual participation in the experience. However vivid the presentation of events, the reader is inevitably separated from them. Unlike the shared body of knowl- edge and experience which the lyric poet presumes, the specific details the poet of narrative must provide reinforce this separation. The intended response of the reader of narrative is quite dif- ferent from the intended response to lyrical experience. Narrative poetry is conceived in terms of empathy for rather than integration with the experience described in the composition. No matter how Introduction 5 sympathetic or enthralling the subject matter may seem, the reader cannot, finally, preserve the illusion of having participated in its events. Indeed, one of the major results of the choice of a narrative mode of expression is to stress the particularity of certain events, experiences, and emotions, and to preserve them in a particular context rather than free them from it. In the European traditions the formal characteristics of a poem are fundamental to a critical decision as to whether the poem is narrative or lyric in mode. With rare exceptions there are formal, generic distinctions that accompany these distinctions between modes.’ Such distinctions cannot be relied upon to distinguish be- tween narrative and lyric in the Chinese tradition. Narrative poems do tend to be of greater length, though not extraordinary by Euro- pean standards. The longest narrative shih I will discuss is a poem of 238 lines from the T’ang dynasty—almost monstrous by Chi- nese standards, but not to be compared with the epics of the West, which run to thousands of lines. While the length of narrative poems might give a clue to the reader, not all lengthy shih are nar- rative. Nor will the terms in the titles of longer ku-shih necessarily indicate the mode of expression—such terms as shih (poem), ko (song), and hsing (ballad) may appear in the titles of lyric or nar- rative poems." If genres of narrative and lyric poetry are not to be distinguished by formal features—thus, not to be distinguished generically in the Western sense of the term—we must reconsider the criteria for the identification and analysis of narrative modes of expression. At this point important questions arise regarding the relation between formal and generic considerations in narrative poetry. Are the qualities associated with narrative in fact only inherent in par- ticular formal conventions, or can they be analyzed according to characteristics which transcend the divisions between those tradi- tions that emphasize lyric and those that emphasize narrative? Of course, within a given cultural tradition certain poetic clichés de- pendent on formal features for their expression will inevitably de- velop. This is very much a function of increasing self-consciousness within a given poetic tradition, in particular of an awareness of that tradition vis-a-vis its own past. In some cases this awareness transcends immediate cultural boundaries. Vergil’s Aeneid takes its 6 Chinese Narrative Poetry character from the Latin hexameter, but not only from the possibili- ties and limitations of the meter itself. Vergil was fully aware that the Latin hexameter was created in emulation of the meter of Greek epic, and his perfecting of an essentially foreign form is an expres- sion of the desire to place his poem and his nation on an equal footing with their Greek forebears.’ Homer and Vergil, in turn, have heirs in every European language, and this common narrative heritage transcends linguistic and cultural differences. Narrative, specifically epic poetry, is the founding form of literary conscious- ness in the West. Just as the ancient interrelations of the diverse tongues of Europe can be studied from Indo-European or other roots, so can the aesthetics and development of their literary cre- ation. Much theory of narrative in comparative literature reflects this assumption, which is concretely linguistic and cultural in its origins.” It is not surprising, therefore, that many points of narra- tive theory derive from the study of literatures which are funda- mentally interdependent—which, in fact, manifest a single, broad tradition of literary aesthetics and cultural concerns. Preconcep- tions of appropriate formal and metrical qualities, even appropriate length, are good examples of such interdependence. Arguably, any comparative study of European literary materials or traditions must take into account not only a common heritage but repeated cultural contact and influence as well. But what of traditions not stemming from these same roots? Can criteria fundamental to the analysis of narrative in traditions based on narrative forms be applied to traditions based upon lyri- cal forms? A major methodological aim of this study is to examine a tradition in which the characteristics of narrative cannot be ex- plained in terms of intercultural influence, in order to reexamine the assumptions and principles of narrative theory. Narrative forms as they occur in Chinese literature offer a coherent model which stands in fundamental contrast to the material on which the bulk of current narrative theory is founded. The contrasts between the Chinese tradition and European poetic traditions are certainly rec- ognized in the West, though their implications have perhaps been explored more by artists than by critics. Poets such as Ezra Pound have exploited their impressions of Chinese poetry and poetics for their own artistic ends, to lend an exotic legitimacy to individual Introduction 7 attempts at innovation within their own tradition. While I do not in- tend to pursue a critical evaluation of such phenomena as Pound’s chinoiserie in this study, it is interesting to note that such attempts to incorporate Chinese aesthetics have tended to reaffirm the pri- macy of narrative in the West, rather than to offer a functional alternative in lyric poetics.” By discussing the conventions and aesthetics of Chinese nar- rative poetry in terms of its native critical tradition, and comparing Chinese models with models of narrative theory more current in the field of comparative literature, I hope to shed light on some of the cultural assumptions which have been incorporated as fun- damentals of narrative theory and development. This should not only allow for an increased and more informed critical exchange, but may also offer a new perspective on the tendency to assume that genre, per se, in narrative is absolute. Another significant fea- ture of such an analysis is the emphasis it places on the virtual tyranny of the founding poetics of any given tradition. The com- parison of narrative-oriented traditions with a lyric-based tradition raises the issue of innovation within tradition, and thus has impli- cations for artistic enterprise on the most general level. Histories of literary innovation deal as much with new ways to exploit existing conventions as with “new” creation; this is implicit in the fact that we are so acutely aware of artistic tradition. The creative process is like the critical process in that it involves adapting new material to a complex of inspiration and received notions of art. Recognition of the biases which underlie a tradition may lead to more flexible interpretations of traditional poetics, and hence to more universal models of literary theory. This study focuses on narrative poetry in the shih form dur- ing the period of its first growth and development in the late Han and Six Dynasties periods, and the heyday of shih during the T’ang dynasty. Strictly speaking, the narrative poems discussed here are mostly ku-shih (old-style poetry), also known as ku-t’i shih.“ The term ku-shih, used here to denote poems from as early as the sec- ond century A.D., was in fact not used until the T’ang dynasty, when it was coined to designate the contrast between these meters and the far more rigid and complex requirements of chin-t’i shih (new-style poetry) which began to develop in the seventh cen- 8 Chinese Narrative Poetry tury. The syntactic requirements of ku-shih are much less rigid than those of the three main forms of chin-t’i shih: chtieh-chii (“broken- off lines,” or quatrains), lti-shih (“regulated verse,” or octets), and the long, parallel-structured p’ai-lu (“regulated couplets,” a longer form which adheres absolutely to the syntactic structure of paral- lelism without recourse to discursive continuity and maintains a single rhyme throughout). There are also no requirements for tonal patterns in ku-shih, as there are for all the forms of chin-t’t shih. While the length of the lines was more or less fixed at five or seven characters, the comparative freedom of syntax and the variation of the rhymes in ku-shih allowed for a degree of liveliness which could enhance the presentation of certain kinds of subject matter. This feature of ku-shih suits the form more readily to narrative expression than the shorter, regulated forms or even the potentially infinitely long, but possibly tedious, sustained rhymes and parallelisms of p’ai-lii.'° Another highly regulated form that became popular in the T’ang period, p’ien-wen or p’ien-t’i wen (parallel prose), features metrically identical couplets with parallel lines, usually of four or six characters, but this usually is not considered to be a “poetic” genre. P’ien-wen allows lengthy, expository compositions on topics of philosophical, critical, or political debate. While these composi- tions may contain anecdotes which employ narrative techniques of expression, p’ien-wen is not only formally distinct from ku-shih, but also distinct in purpose, being the premier form of artistic critical writing from the T’ang through the Ch’ing dynasties." A poetic form far more closely related to ku-shih, with even greater freedom of syntax and style, is yieh-fu (originally, poems from the music bureau). The origin of this genre was said to be in 120 B.c., when Emperor Han Wu-ti (r. 149-85 B.c.) organized the Music Bureau (yiieh-fu) in the government; its purpose was to col- lect folk poetry in order to study the attitudes and opinions of the “common people” toward the state. The institution gave its name to the poems it collected and then to poems written in imitation of the folk models. During the reign of Han Wu-ti the Music Bureau was responsible for providing the court with a variety of poems and accompanying music for the enhancement of court ceremonies. To this end the bureau is supposed to have collected four types of composition: genuine, anonymous folk songs; ritual music with Introduction 9 lyrics composed at the bureau itself; texts selected from works of known authors and set to music at the bureau; and poems written by men of letters in the style of the anonymous folk ballads. As with the poems of the Shih Ching, ytieh-fu have come down to us only in literary form, and the question of their ultimate origin in folk poetry or in the Music Bureau is much debated. Whether the offi- cial bureau took such an active role in the collection or composition of poems is difficult to document, but the four basic types of ytieh- fu-style poetry do appear in poems of the Han dynasty.’” While line length in yiieh-fu may vary, there are many examples in which the line length is uniform and the style is virtually indistinguishable from that of ku-shih, except for perhaps a greater informality of lan- guage and minimal use of recondite allusions. Some of the poems termed ku-shih here might be classified by others as literary yiieh- fu. Metrically and in terms of subject matter the two genres are so closely related that it may be clearer to explain that while poems with more overt allusions to “folk” themes tend to be classified as ylieh-fu, as a literary genre the distinction between yiieh-fu and the form which came to be known as ku-shih in the T’ang dynasty is rather arbitrary.® One feature to consider, however, is that even at their most literary, poems in the yiieh-fu style purport to be of a folk style and representative of a folk idiom in poetry.” This is not the case with the poems that are the main subject of this study. For the most part they are self-consciously literary compositions, written as much for the purpose of recording a particular experience or set of events in poetic terms as for pleasing a large popular audience. While the language and diction may be informal, they are never really of the folk idiom, and the poems may have highly complex tonal and syntactic structures, demonstrating a high degree of literary artistry.” If narrative and lyric genres cannot be distinguished clearly according to formal considerations in the Chinese tradition, what criteria can be applied to analyze their contrasting modes of ex- pression? Perhaps the first criterion to take into consideration is subject matter. Certain themes would seem especially appropriate to a narrative mode: journeys, for instance, might provide the kind of underlying structure which lends itself to narrative effects. In 10 Chinese Narrative Poetry Chinese poetry, however, the presence of narrative or lyric modes is not so much a question of the subject matter as the mode of presentation of that subject matter, which is dependent upon the artistic intent of the poet. Poems which treat similar or even iden- tical themes bear out this distinction by representing different re- sponses to their subject matter and therefore different expressive needs. In the following chapters I will compare poems which deal with similar subject matter—or poems by different authors on the same supposed event—which leave the reader with entirely differ- ent impressions, corresponding to the differences between lyrical and narrative experience outlined above. The mode of presentation is of crucial importance for the interpretation of a poem, reflecting as it does the poet’s attitude toward the subject matter and thus his or her expressive intentions. In order to clarify this method of interpretation, it might be useful to examine a pair of poems on a single theme, one writ- ten in lyric, the other in narrative mode. Not only do they deal with the same legendary event, but the second, narrative version seems to have been written in direct response to the first. The theme of “Peach Blossom Spring” originates in a composition by T’ao Ch’ien (365-427): a fisherman unwittingly stumbles upon a utopian community whose members claim descent from a group who fled the wars which preceded the founding of the Ch’in dy- nasty (221-206 B.c.).”' Though charmed by the social harmony and innocence of the place, the fisherman longs for his own home. He therefore departs for the outside world, intending to return some- day to this ideal world. When at some later time he does attempt to retrace his steps, he discovers that he is unable to find the path or the place again. T’ao Ch’ien’s “Peach Blossom Spring” includes a substantial preface as well as a poem of thirty-two five-character lines. It has been suggested that T’ao Ch’ien based his composition on a contemporary account of the secluded community, and it is not difficult to imagine the appeal that such a story would have for a man like T’ao Ch’ien, with his preference for a life of retirement, founded, according to his own literary oeuvre, on complex political ideals and standards of conduct for the talented man in the proper service of the state. Given the poet’s personal history the land of the Peach Blossom Spring would have presented a fantasy of an Introduction 11 ideal environment for men of his own caliber.” In his version of the theme, the prose preface is a narrative of the fisherman’s mar- velous journey to the village beyond the blossoming peach trees, while the poem is a personal meditation on the meaning of this un- recoverable “discovery.” The preface and poem are clearly meant to be read together, although the preface is so much admired for its style that it is often anthologized without the poem.” There is a suggestion of the particular attraction that the story holds for the poet at the very end of the preface: “A high-minded gentleman of Nan-yang named Liu Tzu-chi heard the story and happily made preparations to go there, but before he could leave he fell sick and died. Since then there has been no one interested in trying to find such a place.”** Liu Tzu-chi was said to be an eccentric recluse who refused all official appointments, spending his days wandering in the mountains in search of medicinal herbs.” T’ao Ch’ien himself left his modest official post in order to retire to the country and lead a simple life, perhaps as much to protest the modesty of the position given to a man of his talent as to escape the irritations of political office. The mention of another recluse of high principles and eccentric habits whose desire to find the land of the Peach Blossom Spring was unfulfilled suggests a strong sense of affinity between the poet and Liu Tzu-chi. T’ao Ch’ien laments that only one, “simple” person was able to find the place, and he was not able to appreciate fully his good fortune. After Liu Tzu- chi, literally, “there has been no one interested in ‘asking for the ford,’” an allusion to the enlightened man’s search for knowledge.” No one else was either sufficiently superior of mind or sufficiently unconscious of worldly things to seek or stumble upon this haven from the dusty world. This gentle irony is the substance of the poem which accompa- nies the preface. The poet mentions the fisherman and his adven- ture only in passing (line 26), concentrating instead on imagining the place in all its peace and prosperity. When the refugees of the Ch’in fled, the workings of nature aided them by hiding the traces of their path of escape (lines 5-6). Then, “by agreement” (hsiang- ming), they proceeded to set up the ideal society of the mythical harmonious anarchy so dear to the Chinese philosophical tradition. Without ambition for further knowledge, the community endures 12 Chinese Narrative Poetry without change until it is discovered (line 26). When the visitor leaves the place of his own free will, nature again obligingly covers his tracks behind him. The place is meant to exist beyond the actual experience of men. The poet, however, can imagine the place most clearly and longs in vain to find the land where his kind would be both appreciated and left to pursue the “simple life” in peace. T’ao Ch’ien gives the “historical” account of the fisherman’s journey in the preface. The poem is not a versification of the same story, but rather a reverie on the wonderful innocence he and those like him can never regain. The poem describes the place in loving detail, but the final impression is not of a place at all, but of a state of mind—the only place where people can live in harmony with nature and with themselves—and the poet, at once tantalized and frustrated by the fantasy, must be comforted by communicating his sense of loss. The T’ang poet Wang Wei (699-761) was an ardent student of the poetry of T’ao Ch’ien.” Even as a young man Wang Wei ad- mired T’ao Ch’ien’s ideals of retirement and self-containment, but in his own “Poem of Peach Blossom Spring,” written in 717, he shows a shrewd understanding of the earlier poet’s relation to this special place. Wang Wei’s version is both a reinterpretation of the original composition and a personal version of the journey, a jour- ney he takes himself. Wang Wei combines the narrative content of T’ao Ch’ien’s preface with his own response to the lyric poem in a single poetic composition: Poem of Peach Blossom Spring My fishing boat follows the current, I rejoice in the mountain spring; On both banks are peach blossoms, pressing my boat upstream. I sit and admire the blushing trees, unmindful of the distance, I come to the end of the blue stream without meeting any people. The mountain has a mouth through which I pass that starts at the bend of the hill, Introduction 13 The mountain opens on flat land extending as far as I can see— I see in the distance a place where clouds and trees are gathered, Near where I entered, a thousand houses, scattered among flowers and bamboo. Some woodcutters first ask my name, using the speech of Han times; The people who dwell here have not yet changed their clothes from the style of Ch’in! 10 The people who dwell here seem to live on the Wu-ling Stream, And as if of a realm beyond this world tend their fields and gardens. Under a bright moon and pines, their homes are at peace, When the sun rises among the clouds, cocks crow and dogs bark. Surprised to hear of a stranger, they jostle and gather together, 15 They squabble over inviting me home, they ask of my native place. At dawn the village paths are swept clear of the petals of flowers, At dusk the fishermen and woodcutters return with their nets and carts. Originally they fled the world to leave the haunts of men; I ask if they are immortals, enduring because they did not return. 20 In this enclave, who knows of the affairs of other folk? And those in the outside world see only empty clouds and the mountain. Unconscious of how hard it was to enter this spirit realm, In my earthbound heart I unceasingly long for my home village. I leave the cave without reason, cut myself off from the mountain and stream, 25 Though intending finally to leave my home and make the long journey again. 14 Chinese Narrative Poetry I rehearse with myself the paths I cross; so well known, I could not get lost— How could I know that the cliffs and gullies would now seem changed? Now I only remember that to enter the mountain’s depths A blue stream with many bends leads to a forest of clouds. 30 Spring comes, and everywhere there are peach blossom waters, But I cannot find the fairy stream; where shall I look for it?” Wang Wei uses the personal pronoun tzu (cf. line 27), which I have translated as a first-person pronoun throughout to emphasize the self-consciousness of his response to T’ao Ch’ien’s composition. When the master remarks, “Let me ask you, who are convention- bound / Can you fathom those outside the dirt and noise?” (lines 29-30), Wang Wei answers with a poem which questions T’ao Ch’ien’s reaction to the original legend and expresses his personal longing to create within himself the contentment and equilibrium imputed to the folk of the land of the Peach Blossom Spring. Wang Wei stresses his persona’s lack of purpose (line 3) which allows him to “find” the hidden land. While the inhabitants are curious about the stranger, they have escaped the outside world and have no desire to return to it (lines 19-20). However, the man who originally had no thought of escaping soon wants to return to his home (line 24). Once away, no matter how carefully he exam- ines the route, he is foiled when he attempts to retrace his steps purposefully. Nature is ever-changing, and as the seasons turn he is bewildered: “Spring comes, and everywhere there are peach blossom waters / But I cannot find the fairy stream; where shall I look for it?” (lines 31-32). The answer, of course, is “everywhere” (line 31)—if one has the imagination. And if the imagination is there, what need is there for the place? Wang Wei gently chides T’ao Ch’ien’s “desire” (yiian, “Peach Blossom Spring,” line 31), for the man who wants to find such a place will be confused by the patterns of nature and his own desire. A man truly content will see that “everywhere there are peach blossom waters” (line 31, italics mine), and he may make the journey to the “spirit realm” (line 23) whenever he likes. Introduction 15 While the themes of these two poems are explicitly linked, the different techniques of expression reveal correspondingly different attitudes. T’ao Ch’ien tells the tale first in prose, and the following poem has the air of a personal commentary on the legendary ex- perience. Wang Wei makes the story his own. Where T’ao Ch’ien reveals his emotion by explicit statements and by an admiring ref- erence to Liu Tzu-chi, Wang Wei expresses his response through action, or more important, frustration in action, when trying to retrace his “actual” steps. As narrator, he makes for himself a char- acter, that of the foolish and innocent traveler unconscious of his good fortune. Or was he simply not meant to turn his back on the world of men? T’ao Ch’ien, the genuine recluse, responds to the tale of another whom he regards as luckier than himself and leaves no doubt as to what his choice would be if he should ever find the elusive path. The country of Peach Blossom Spring and its unaffected in- habitants became an archetypal, ideal state of being, individual and social, in later poetry. These two poems actually focus on the place itself, real or imaginary. They are both in the shih form—thirty-two lines—although T’ao Ch’ien’s is in five-character lines and Wang Wei’s is in seven-character lines. The main difference is in mode of expression. Unlike the earlier work, Wang Wei’s “Poem of Peach Blossom Spring” has a narrative structure based on a sequence of actions, an explicit narrator’s voice to tell the story, and even a “protagonist”—the unwitting fisherman. T’ao Ch’ien’s poem is a glimpse of an ideal state of mind; Wang Wei follows him by taking the journey himself and recounting it as a journey. This is, of course, a conscious choice: the poet may emphasize either an internal state or external events. This choice of emphasis governs both the mode of composition and the way the composi- tion must be interpreted.*° While our ability to distinguish between lyric and narrative in poems of the same genre may appear largely intuitive, such “intuitions” are most often responses to conscious literary artistry. The contrast between T’ao Ch’ien’s and Wang Wei’s versions of the story of Peach Blossom Spring provides a paradigm for the manipulation of shih poetics to suit widely varying expres- sive purposes. In the chapters which follow I will focus on these aspects of 16 Chinese Narrative Poetry shih composition as they are adapted for narrative expression. My principles of analysis are grounded in the founding aesthetics of Chinese poetry, which emphasize and elevate lyrical experience, yet provide for the development of narrative techniques. Some of these techniques are evident in the forms of poetic composition which precede the rise of shih at the end of the Han dynasty. The Shih Ching (Book of Songs) contains poems in several forms which suggest possible techniques for sustaining a longer composition than is usually thought characteristic of lyric poetry. Stanzaic form, for instance, is frequently associated with lyrics.** When stanzas are explicitly linked in an invariable order by such devices as refrains (which may themselves be varied to comment on the subject matter as it unfolds, but still anchor the structure and unify the poem as a whole), the units of subject matter they represent may take on a temporal coherence and specificity of the kind so important to narrative.** Another device used in the Shih Ching to link stanzas in a prescribed order is that of “catenation,” the repetition of the final character or characters of one stanza as the first part of the first line of the following stanza. This device perhaps most explicitly suggests that the order in which the stanzas appear is logical and intended. Such a fixed formal sequence may also become the basis of a narrative sequence. Other kinds of repetition may be used to reinforce the organi- zation of a large body of material in a logical, sequential structure. Devices such as onomatopoeia, alliterative phrases, and “clichés” have been studied in terms of their possible origins in and relation to oral and formulaic language and composition.* Folk conventions of public performance certainly influenced the conventions of lit- erary narrative poetry, along with the ancient tradition of literary composition intended for public display of political opinions. Perhaps the most important and influential of the early poetic genres of public rhetoric is that of fu (rhyme prose or rhapsody). Poems in the fu genre reflect a concern with sequential structure and at the same time emphasize public expression of matters pe- culiar to a specific, designated context. The techniques of fu com- position may well have inspired innovative treatments of similar subject matter in the genre of shih. Early examples of narrative expression in poetry and poetic Introduction 17 criticism suggest three main criteria for distinguishing narrative in later works: point of view, characterization, and sequential struc- ture. All three contribute to the sense of vicarious experience that is essential to narrative, as opposed to the sense of integration typi- cal of lyric. Frequently they leave clear traces in the techniques of poetic composition: techniques developed for lyric require modifi- cation and innovation for the successful presentation of material in a narrative mode. Point of view—the source of a set of perceptions on the sub- ject matter of a given text—is the source of a reader’s knowledge of the narrator’s perspective in a poem. In Art and Reality the novelist Joyce Cary stresses the primacy of point of view in narrative: it is the controlling device through which the artist presents intuitions about the chosen subject matter to the audience, and it determines the reader’s access to the author’s own vision of events.* Further, the sense of a particular point of view, the poet’s or the narrator’s, not only controls the reader’s perception of a poem’s subject matter, but reinforces the specificity of the experience the poem conveys, and hence its separation from the reader’s own experience. This is one of the areas in which poets most clearly manipulate the tech- niques of shih composition to produce narrative effects. A wealth of concrete detail can be called into service to enforce the distinctness of the narrator’s point of view: definition of a particular voice or person, achieved through the use of pronouns, titles, or personal names; the use of framing devices to indicate particular speakers; the use of direct or indirect quotations; and details of time and place that help to anchor the source of these perceptions in a particular context. In each case the result is a heightened sense of sympathy, rather than integration, with the experience of the text. Techniques of characterization enforce the awareness of a con- crete point of view and a context of experience other than the reader’s own. Chinese techniques of characterization stem from the historiographical tradition and differ fundamentally from those based on the Western, epic tradition. For example, heroic arche- types in the West derive ultimately from mythology and reveal their essential qualities through their actions. In a sense, what such a hero does is more important that what he is, because what he does reveals what he is. The heroes of early Chinese historiography tend 18 Chinese Narrative Poetry to be conceived in terms of abstractions of aspects of ritual com- pleteness. Their careers exemplify particular ideals of social con- duct, which in turn define their characters. Following the Chinese propensity for emphasizing ritual rather than mythological patterns of culture, individual quality rather than action is the issue, and so quality reliably determines action.*® The techniques of charac- terization which produce well-rounded, sympathetic characters in historiographical prose are also present in the poetic tradition. The most distinctive techniques involve direct and indirect discourse to express individual personality, and the use of symbolic associations to help define individual personality. Another fundamental aspect of narrative expression is the role of sequential structures. As we shall see, the organization of events according to logical sequences led to the creation of explicit tempo- ral contexts, a necessary feature of narrative. While not all poetic sequences are based on temporal patterns of organization, the se- quential structures of narrative ku-shih usually purport to refer to specific contexts which reflect objective time, no matter how fic- tional the subject may be. (The fact that poem sequences show the tendency suggests yet another source of narrative in Chinese poetry.) Sometimes a sense of objective time is created by such mechanical means as the citation of a date in an attached preface or in the body of the composition. More sophisticated examples achieve balance between the requirements of shih poetics and the demands of narrative progression. In “Song of the Lady of Ch'in,” the poet Wei Chuang successfully organizes his units of action, or narrative “tableaux,” to correspond to such standard poetic units as quatrains and octets, creating a masterpiece of poetic technique and story-telling art which belies the assumption that shih is an essentially lyric form. A study that attempts to cover some seven hundred years, even with reference to only one form of poetic composition, cannot claim to be comprehensive. The poems in the shih form contained in the Complete T’ang Poetry (Ch’tian T'ang shih) alone number many thou- sands, and it has not been possible to analyze even a fraction of that number. My purpose here is not to examine every example of narrative tendencies in shih, but to suggest a framework for the Introduction 19 study of narrative, using other criteria than the formal or generic ones that Western criticism takes for granted. At the same time the consideration and application of Western critical terms may shed new light on the function of narrative in Chinese poetry and, by extension, in Chinese culture as a whole. Narrative Elements in Traditional Chinese Poetics Questions of the nature of narrative in the Chinese tradition—its techniques and forms of expression—are of increasing interest to scholars of Chinese literature and art, but are still defined only hazily by scholars of Chinese poetry. The three main criteria for the analysis of narrative expression as distinct from lyrical expres- sion—point of view, characterization, and sequence—are familiar from European works of narrative theory.'! The same criteria are present in traditional Chinese poetics, though they manifest them- selves very differently from their Western counterparts.* Although Chinese narrative poetry may not be formally distinct from other modes of poetic expression as developed in various genres, the earliest extant texts of Chinese poetry and poetic criticism never- theless show a clear awareness of the potential and utility of narra- tive expression. For an understanding of the functions of point of view, characterization, and sequence in traditional Chinese poetics Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 21 we must consider the characteristics of Chinese poetic language as well as the documents of literary criticism in terms of the funda- mental units of style which allow for narrative expression. The earliest extant works of Chinese literature provide the basis for the formative statements of the nature of literary art and the general nature of the Chinese poetic language. The very term that we translate as “poetry,” shih, serves as an example of some of the peculiar characteristics of Chinese critical discourse. The first documents of Chinese poetics, as they have come down to the present day, are based on the Shih Ching anthology, probably first compiled around 600 B.c., although many of its three hundred or sO poems may date from centuries earlier. The word shih has its earliest usage in three of the poems in the ya (odes or elegantiae) section of this anthology. These usages of the term shih have been interpreted to indicate the existence of a conception of “poetry” as a literary art, definable by name and recognizable by nature in its application, as early as the sixth century B.c., and this definition of poetry is common in works of criticism.’ The term is also used just as frequently to refer to that first anthology, the Shih Ching, and to the genre of poetry which is said to derive from the models of the Shih Ching. The interdependence of these uses of the term shih is readily apparent, and yet their precise relation and distinc- tions may seem baffling. Furthermore, Chinese criticism shows a tendency to define concepts either in terms of particular examples from the tradition or metaphorically, in terms of their effects. This makes the task of defining the abstractions which form the basis of Chinese critical terminology difficult in Western languages. Con- sidering that the sources of the Chinese poetic tradition are lyrical, we can see that such terminology will also inevitably reflect the problems of describing the aesthetics of a lyric tradition and lyrical quality in art generally.* Another important feature of the Chinese critical tradition which bears significantly on the development of a distinction be- tween narrative and lyric modes of expression is the emphasis on the role of intent (chih) as crucial to the understanding of a work of art. The importance of authorial intention has already been implied in the introductory discussion of T’ao Ch’ien’s and Wang Wei’s ver- sions of the legend of Peach Blossom Spring. Much of the signifi- 22 Chinese Narrative Poetry cance of Wang Wei’s poem derives from his shared interpretation of T’ao Ch’ien’s purpose in composing his preface and poem. This is only a specific instance of the importance of the perception and understanding of authorial intention. In practical terms artistic em- phasis on the perception and understanding of authorial intention is an integral aspect of Chinese literary criticism, a precept which was amply confirmed in Confucian doctrine, especially in inter- pretations of particular works of literature and statements on the nature of literary art.° The early Confucian impulse was to interpret shih in terms of their value for learning, if not precisely for their didactic content. What ultimately emerged was a bias toward politi- cal and social rhetoric, with literary language regarded as a means to various ends. The role of literature in such a system of social thought is as a medium through which one may acquire learning that may in turn stir and edify others; this is regarded as the proper end or use of learning.° The Confucian emphasis on the ends of learning would seem to place as much importance on the act of reading as on the act of writing: what matters is the successful communication of the author’s intent, and this requires a receptive audience. This pur- posive attitude toward literary criticism is evident from early state- ments on the nature of the arts in texts which express Confucian values. The Classic of History (Shu Ching), for example, attributes to Emperor Shun an admonition regarding the proper uses of poetic expression, as part of his charge to his new minister of music, the T’ai-ssu yueh: “Poetry expresses intention (inclination, determi- nation, or will) in words, songs prolong the sounds of words for chanting, and the pitch-pipes harmonize the notes. Make the eight kinds of musical sounds in accord and let them not interfere with each other, so that spirits and men may be brought into harmony.”” The “Great Preface” to the Shih Ching (Shih ta hsu), from the Mao edition of the anthology, dates from perhaps the first century A.D. and is attributed to Wei Hung.’ This enigmatic text presents a complex statement on the nature of poetic expression which has proved to be perhaps the most tenacious and influential in Chinese criticism. This preface marks the foundation of Chinese literary criticism as a form of discourse in its own right. Incorporating the late Han revivals and reforms in Confucian doctrine, it attempts to Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 23 formulate the process whereby poetry combines aesthetic quality and ethical substance. The preface reflects a background of Con- fucianism, grounded as it is in the pragmatic principle of the ne- cessity of ethical purpose in literature, and this principle is in turn grounded in a conception of the nature of literature that makes the processes of writing and reading virtually inseparable. The relation of “intent” to “poetry” is part of a spontaneous creative process which proceeds from internal, individual response to the external world: Poetry is the fulfillment of intent; what dwells in the mind is intent, what comes forth in words is poetry. Emotions move in the core of one’s being and take form in words. When speaking them does not suffice, then one sighs them or chants them; if sighing and chanting do not suffice, then one sings them; if singing them does not suffice, then unconsciously one taps them out with the hands, dances them, treads them and stamps them. Emotions come forth in sounds, and when the sounds ful- fill patterns they are called musical tones. The musical tones of an age of peace are tranquil and incline to joy; their regula- tion is harmonious. The musical tones of an age of disorder are dissonant and incline to anger; their regulation is perverted. The musical tones of a kingdom in ruins are mournful and incline to nostalgia; their people are suffering. Therefore, to keep order in success or failure, to move Heaven and Earth, to touch the feelings of ghosts and spirits, nothing can approach poetry. The former kings used these means to guide the con- duct of husband and wife, to inspire filial piety and generosity, to enrich social relations, to enhance education and culture, and to develop manners and customs.’ The significance of chih, or intent, in relation to poetry is to establish the purpose of expression; one intends, in response to the stimulation of inspiration, to express oneself in order to com- municate this emotion (ch’ing).’° With ethical purpose an under- lying assumption of poetic expression, the critic here attempts to formulate a statement on the nature of artistic inspiration (“in the mind”), the process of expression (“if one does not suffice”), and 24 Chinese Narrative Poetry the response of the audience. In order to achieve expression of inspiration the artist may call upon all his resources, verbal and physical. While expression in words must adjust to the limits of language, meaning lies under no such constraint; meaning may go beyond the literal level of the text—literally, “beyond words” (yen- wai)—and is limited only by the reader’s imagination or capacity for understanding. The concept of intent is central in the mainstream of Chinese literary criticism. This emphasis on the expressive quality of art is the basis of the Chinese lyric aesthetic." In practical terms em- phasis on the perception and understanding of authorial intent is integral to Chinese literary criticism. Again, it must be stressed that this statement from the “Great Preface” remained a crucial tenet of literary theory, and the primary statement of the significance of the relation of “intent” to artistic creation in the Chinese tradition, whatever the moral, philosophical, or political biases of the critic. Kao Yu-kung comments at length upon the formula: In its usual straightforward interpretation, this formula is close to a doctrine of didacticism: “to express through verbalization the poet’s immediate message.” Its purpose is clearly commu- nication, its direction toward the external world. However, in early Chinese history the intrinsic distrust of discursive com- munication, and the absolute importance based on inner ex- perience, prompted a subtler amplification of the same dictum, so here the word “to express” came to mean “total realization,” embracing both semantic representation and formal presenta- tion. Given this amplification in meaning, the word “intent” is no longer sufficient to encompass the object of poetic vi- sion, and it is expanded to mean an integral part of the total experience, including all mental activities and attributes, of a particular person at a particular moment. Within this frame of reference, “intent” can be identified as the “meaning” of one moment in an individual's life, while “vision” becomes the realization of this meaning in its totality.” According to the passage from the “Great Preface” quoted earlier, the poetic act implicitly has two parts: perception and expres- sion. These two parts in turn determine the relationship between Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 25 the acts of composition and reading. The act of reading implies the re-creation of the original act of perception, but the method employed by the artist to ensure this re-creation will to a large ex- tent define the mode of expression and thus the experience of the reader. Lyrical experience fosters the illusion of reproducing the act of perception exactly as it was experienced by the artist. Nar- rative experience, on the other hand, invokes a vicarious percep- tion, a sympathetic response tempered by awareness of the sepa- ration of the reader from the experience of perception. These two conventions of literary experience may also be seen as contrasting implicit and explicit expressions of meaning: implicit in fostering the illusion of precise reproduction of experience, explicit in the direct expression of particularized experience beyond the reader’s immediate context. In Chinese poetry these two kinds of literary experiences re- flect not only fundamental differences in expressive intent, but also conventions and innovations in Chinese poetic language. On the most general level lyrical experience and narrative experience re- flect the expressive tendencies of two basic conventions of syntax in Chinese poetry, as described by Kao Yu-kung and Mei Tsu-lin in “Syntax, Diction, and Imagery in T’ang Poetry.” The first conven- tion is imagistic language, which requires no specific agent or con- text and exploits discontinuous syntax to produce arresting effects of rhythm and a vivid sense of perception. The second is proposi- tional language, which implies the presence of an agent, perhaps indicated by a pronoun or other reference, and evokes action. In this case the syntax tends to a more continuous rhythm, and the presence of an agent determines the nature, intention, or result of action. The imagistic and propositional conventions of expression coexist in Chinese poetic language and can even occur in the same poem: Adopting a theory developed by Ernst Cassirer in his Language and Myth, we will propose a distinction of language into two poles, the imagistic pole and the propositional pole... . The two distinctions, imagistic/propositional and continu- ous/discontinuous, are based upon two different criteria. The first answers the question, what kind of “meaning” does a 26 Chinese Narrative Poetry verbal expression refer to and how is that meaning appre- hended? That is, whether the “meaning” is primarily percep- tual or conceptual. The second answers the question, what kind of rhythm does the syntax of that verbal expression cre- ate? In practice, however, these two distinctions are frequently related. If a line has minimal syntax, then its rhythm is likely to be discontinuous and its imagistic function correspondingly enhanced. If a proposition is to indicate the relations among its component parts, it has to have a more complicated syntactic apparatus, which at once weakens the image-making power of the individual words and gives the sentence a fullness that allows it to sustain a more continuous rhythm.” The interrelation of these conventions provides a means of understanding the interaction of the composition and reading of poetry which is at the heart of poetic experience in Chinese literary criticism. These same dynamics provide a key to the distinctions between lyric and narrative in Chinese poetry. While Kao and Mei focus on T’ang poetry in their study, the relation of imagistic and propositional conventions of language is significant in all phases of the tradition. Their tendencies affect the mode of expression not only according to the subject matter, but also according to the structure of an individual poem. The formal qualities of particular meters and genres of shih may largely determine the proportion of imagistic and propositional language. This in turn determines the nature of the impact of the poetic act and reveals its under- lying intent. Where imagistic language dominates, the lyric mode will emerge; where propositional language dominates, the narra- tive mode prevails. The nature of the Chinese poetic language pro- vides for the diversification of these modes according to authorial intent. Because of its discontinuous and objective qualities, imag- istic language promotes the reader’s sense of integration with the experience of the text. Propositional language, relying on the pres- ence of an identifiable agent, and therefore more continuous in syntax and subjective in reference, promotes the empathy charac- teristic of narrative experience. Kao and Mei suggest the association of “objective” qualities with imagistic language and discontinuous syntax (hence with lyrical tendencies), and “subjective” qualities Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 27 with propositional language and continuous syntax (hence, narra- tive tendencies). They explain these qualities in terms of “spatial” versus “temporal” axes. Imagistic language tends to objective ex- pression because it is free from temporal reference, while proposi- tional language asserts a context which implies temporal reference, and so provides a specificity which renders the expression sub- jective in quality. On first consideration it might seem as if lyrical expression should be subjective and narrative expression objective, because lyrical experience may vary according to the individual reader, while narrative experience seems far more set by the poet or speaker. From the perspective of the text and the functions of Chinese poetic language, however, the nontemporally referential, universalized expression of lyric is objective by virtue of its libera- tion from a specific context, while the grounding of narrative in a particular temporal context renders it subjective.” The presence of an agent separates the reader from the context of the experience of the poem and so allows for the development of two important features of narrative: point of view and charac- terization. While the presence of these features may not require formal, generic distinctions between lyric and narrative poems, the interaction of the imagistic and propositional conventions of lan- guage suggests a sense of awareness of these distinctions on the part of the author and provides the reader with some keys to their analysis. To go further, imagistic language emphasizes quality, while propositional language emphasizes action. Imagistic language thus relies upon the topic/comment structure in syntax, and makes ex- tensive use of stative or qualitative verbs. Propositional language re- lies upon the presence of an agent and can accommodate the use of performative verbs. Qualitative verbs tend to describe states of being which are not dependent on specific temporal or spatial con- texts for their significance. Performative verbs, on the other hand, tend to imply concrete temporal and spatial contexts, even if these contexts are not precisely defined.’® The relation between these two expressive conventions in Chi- nese poetic language is crucial to the understanding and apprecia- tion of Chinese poetry. The problem of conveying their interaction 28 Chinese Narrative Poetry is a difficult one for translators of Chinese poetry, especially lyric poetry. Given the predominance of lyrical expression, it is not sur- prising that Chinese literary aesthetics stress the imagistic rather than the active quality of language, and even in narrative litera- ture it is the “lyrical” element which is elevated in criticism.” This element is virtually impossible to reproduce in inflected languages without nonsensical effects. The sense of a phrase or sentence may well be conveyed, but the expressive qualities of the syntax are quite another matter. Translators of poetry overwhelmingly substi- tute propositional structures for phrases that in Chinese are strictly imagistic. This tendency, of course, extends beyond the realm of translation and creates serious problems for those whom James J. Y. Liu has referred to as “non-native” readers of Chinese literature.” By way of illustration, qualitative verbs provide an impor- tant component of imagistic conventions of expression in Chinese poetry. One of the most distinctive of the forms of qualitative verbs in early Chinese poetry is the disyllabic compound. According to George A. Kennedy, disyllabic compounds represent something of the essential character of Chinese language.” Some “strong” (ex- plicitly referential) words, such as the pronoun wo (I), are monosyl- labic and appear in poetry, but disyllabic compounds predominate and, in the Shih Ching, are essential to the quatrosyllabic (four- character) line which is the basis of the Shih Ching meters. Perhaps most typical of this type of compound in the Shih Ching are the “reduplicatives” (lien-mien tzu), which are difficult to translate into inflected languages but which are among the most distinctive Chi- nese conventions for establishing poetic intensity. The most famil- iar kinds of reduplicatives, “descriptives,” function as qualitative verbs that either repeat a qualitative verb, in the case of “identi- cal reduplicatives,” or link two qualitative verbs with the same or similar initials or finals in a descriptive compound—the “unidenti- cal reduplicative.” *° In “Reduplicatives in the Book of Odes,” Chou Fa-kao cites and analyzes the first two stanzas of the first poem of the Shih Ching (Mao no. 1) “to exemplify the usage of identical and unidentical reduplicatives”: 1 kuan kuan chu chiu Kuan kuan (cries) the ‘chu chiu’ bird, Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 29 tsai hé chih chou; On the islet of the river; yao t’iao shu nu, the beautiful and good girl, chun-tzu hao ch’iu. she is a good mate for the lord. 2 ts’en tz’t hsing ts’ai, Of varying length is the hsing waterplant, tso yu liu chih; to the left and right we catch it; yao t’iao shu nu, the beautiful and good girl, wu men chiu chih. waking and sleeping he wished for her.” These stanzas have been interpreted in nearly as many ways as there are translators and commentators, not least because of the reduplicative compounds they contain. James Legge leaves the first reduplicative in romanization, but suggests that it is an action, probably a cry, of the birds: Kwan-kwan go the ospreys, On the island in the river. The modest, retiring, virtuous young lady:— For our prince a good mate she.” Bernhard Karlgren also leaves the “cry” of the birds in roman- ization: “Kwan-kwan (cries) the ts’u-kiu bird, on the islet of the river; the beautiful and good girl, she is a good mate for the lord.—”* Arthur Waley anthropomorphizes the birds, putting the words of the people’s approval into their beaks: “Fair, fair,” cry the ospreys On the island in the river. Lovely is the noble lady, Fit bride for our lord. In Grammata Serica Recensa Karlgren defines this usage of the character kuan in the first line as a loan for a homophone indicating 30 Chinese Narrative Poetry a bird’s cry.” Although Karlgren always suggests meanings for re- duplicatives, in this case interpreting the reduplicative “kuan kuan” as a sound rather than some other particular feature of the bird, the basic function of a reduplicative in poetic usage is to intensify the state of existence to which it refers—in this case the nature of the birds. The figure of speech idealizes the state described: “The ospreys are as kuan as kuan could be.” In this case, while kuan may refer to the sound made by the birds, it could refer to some other feature, such as the tufts on their heads. (In the same entry Karl- gren points out that kuan may refer to the little tufts tied into the hair of small children, and indeed birds in this family of fishing hawks have crested heads.) Another thing to consider in the inter- pretation of the stanza is the fact that this poem is an epithalamion, and river islands are typical nesting sites for the species. In other words, what is evoked by the original Chinese is more than just the sound of the birds’ cries; their whole environment of courtship and mating is an image complementing the marriage and mating of the young lady and lord. This kind of imagistic language is extraordi- narily rich in evocative power and allows a very compact expression to become the basis of a complex image and interpretation. While the intensification of state described by a reduplicative does not turn this verb into a performative or active verb in Chi- nese, this, paradoxically, is what all of the translators cited above have done. Similarly, in Mao no. 3, “Chuan-erh,” the first line, “ts’a1- ts‘ai chuan erh, ” does not necessarily imply a repeated action, as Legge would have it: “I was gathering and gathering the mouse- ear.” *° It is far more likely that the word ts’ai is a loan character for a word meant to describe some characteristic of this plant, as in Waley’s version, “Thick grows the cocklebur.” ”” When considering the specifically linguistic bases of narrative expression in Chinese poetic language, it may be confusing to have to deal with translations which convert imagistic into propositional language. This difficulty is inherent in the task of translating from Chinese into an inflected language. In this process it is frequently necessary to substitute propositional for imagistic language, and therefore to give the impression of active quality in language where it did not exist in the original. Reduplicatives represent a small per- centage of the qualitative verbs used in Chinese poetry but they Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 31 provide, as it were, intensified examples of both the expressive power and the interpretative ambiguity of the imagistic language which is the basis of lyrical expression in Chinese. While tempo- ral particles, which indicate changes of status usually associated with tense or a fixed point in time, may provide a qualitative verb with a temporal reference, the first effect of such an expression in poetry will still be imagistic rather than propositional. According to Kao and Mei, this helps to explain Fenellosa’s obsession with the expressive power of individual “pictographs”: Fenellosa believed that Chinese written characters are emi- nently suitable as a medium of poetry, since one can see pic- tures in the characters. This is clearly nonsense; yet useful non- sense. What he noticed is that, unlike words in English poetry, the smallest unit in Chinese—namely, the individual charac- ter—is capable of image making. But Fenellosa assigned the wrong cause; isolative syntax, instead of pictographic writing, endows even the smallest units with the degree of autonomy they enjoy.” The performative verbs typical of propositional language tend to be affiliated with temporal or spatial references, in the sense of indicating the relation of an agent to a definable context or physi- cal space. The relation of the agent—usually but not always in the place of grammatical subject—to a predicate indicating the inten- tion, performance, or result of action determines the nature of the statement. The agent may thus suggest the presence of a point of view other than that of the reader: either that of the agent itself, or of one who relates the agent’s activity. Transitivity may also impart a structure to the statements, reflecting on the agent of the poem (I, or a third person). Considered as individual statements these cannot be said to establish a sequence; however, they may set up expectations for continuity which could allow for the establishment of a logical sequence. Suspense and the anticipation of resolution are important aspects of temporal sequence, again reflecting upon the mutual participation of poet and reader in the underlying intent of a particular composition. In the case of verbs indicating intention of action, or modal verbs, the relationship tc the agent is particularly well defined.” 32 Chinese Narrative Poetry The modal aspect of performative verbs is of great importance for narrative expression because it implies a specific agent; and the presence of such an agent is essential to point of view in narrative. This specific agent in turn provides the perspective which allows for the development of the second necessary criterion, character- ization. Modal verbs anticipate the agent’s intention to change the state of an object (which may be the agent), through the perfor- mance of some action, to a different state of existence. The poem “Chuan-erh” mentioned above provides a typical example. The first couplet is descriptive, setting the context for the introduction of the speaker-agent, represented in the second couplet by the demon- strative pronoun wo (I). The speaker longingly awaits the appear- ance of a friend or lover after a lengthy separation, and the natural setting reflects the speaker’s state of mind. The speaker hopes for a change in his or her emotional state, but the surrounding scenery remains stubbornly constant, suggesting that no gratification is im- minent. A third category of statements, one that often mediates be- tween imagistic and propositional language in poetry, should be mentioned here. This is the set of statements depending on rela- tional verbs, which are nontemporal and nonspatial in connotation and yet depend on the presence of an agent for meaning or inter- pretation. These verbs in Chinese include yu (literally, “to have,” but often in the sense of “there is,” or “there exists”) and ju (to be like, to resemble). In relational statements the state of the agent and the state of the object to which the agent is compared are semantically equivalent. The crucial distinction between relational and propositional verbs is the intention of the agent—“I” or a third person—which usually has the effect of specifying a context in time and space.*° These general statements regarding the conventions of read- ing may be said to apply to all aspects of Chinese language, but for the purposes of this study it is most important to consider how these conventions affect the development of poetry. Most obvious is their effect on lyric and narrative tendencies. Imagistic language makes possible a total lack of temporal and spatial references for lyrical expression, allowing for the fullest integration and appre- ciation of lyrical experience. Propositional language, on the other Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 33 hand, with its explicit agents and performative statements, exploits the potential for narrative by specifying the agent’s experience and enforcing the vicarious nature of the reader’s experience. Neither imagistic nor propositional language is used to the total exclusion of the other; what is in question is the relative proportion of use, the pattern of their distribution, and the intent governing the com- position. Understanding the relation of these conventions is only part of the interpretation of a complex composition. An awareness of the historical evolution of language may also add depth to the mean- ing of particular words or phrases, as their many connotations may be brought to bear on their context in a poem, thus enriching the structure of the poem’s meaning.” This evocative quality allows for extraordinarily dense effects, establishing texts which reveal their full meaning only after substantial interpretation by a reader. The latitude granted a word or phrase to partake of various syntactic, semantic, and allusive functions not only allows for a variety of uses and meanings for a word in multiple contexts, but these multi- ple connotations may also be brought to bear simultaneously upon a word or phrase in a single context. Although these multiple levels of meaning can be experienced emotionally, their complex totality may be impossible to articulate, even though its components can be articulated and analyzed in interpretation, translation, or com- mentary.” For the purposes of interpretation we can study the function of words according to their context in a given work of art. On the syntactic level, especially in poetry, usage can be very free, and our evaluation is interpretative as well as strictly grammatical. Contex- tual, syntactic, and semantic analyses all play a part in determining meaning, and the conventions of a poetic form or style may affect all three levels of analysis. The evolution of poetic expression through the T’ang dynasty tends toward a more self-consciously lyrical convention. Pronouns and other specifiers increasingly drop out, and the ratio of imag- istic to propositional usage increases and is formally underscored by the perfection of the conventions of parallelism, the lyrical trope par excellence. Since parallelism tends to equivalence and discon- tinuity rather than to the sense of progression vital to narrative, 34 Chinese Narrative Poetry the dominance of parallel over continuous sentence structures in shih reflects a preference for imagistic over propositional expres- sion and, by extension, for lyrical over narrative, or integrative over vicarious experience. From the Han through T’ang dynasties the adaptation of lyri- cal conventions to the requirements of narrative was an increas- ingly complex process, offering the most severe challenges to the poets of narrative. The structure of such compositions had to con- form to the formal requirements of the poetic genre represented, and manipulate the technical features of that genre to establish the logical sequence essential to the vicarious experience of events in narrative. With this in mind we may recognize that the most easily perceived and important aspect of narrative poetry in a tradition based on narrative, namely, temporal sequence, is simply not of primary concern in the Chinese tradition. Nevertheless, Chinese poets did construct sequences of various kinds, and some of these poetic sequences produce effects very similar to what European lit- erary criticism calls “narrative.” The ambivalence of Chinese poetic criticism toward drawing generic distinctions based on the kind of poetic sequence may suggest that traditional Chinese poetics are not simply inimical to narrative expression, as is often assumed. Rather, this tendency in the critical tradition underlines a funda- mental distinction in attitude between traditions of narrative-based and lyric-based poetics as regards what constitutes proper material for poetic sequence. In order to explore the concept of sequencing in Chinese poetry, we may again turn to some of the earliest surviv- ing texts of poetics, and the sources of some of the basic concepts in Chinese critical theory. Here the focus will be on the critical principle of fu, known from its inclusion among the “six principles” (liu-yi) of the “Great Preface” of the Shih Ching. There has been a tendency in poetic criticism, in China and in the West, to isolate one or another of Wei Hung’s six principles as the basis of poetic expression and to study it in isolation. Chen Shih-hsiang follows just such a procedure, focusing upon the principle of hsing (motif), and describing it as “the essence of the Songs’ generic character.” * Although I will con- centrate here on the principle of fu, it should be kept in mind that studying any one of these principles in isolation from the others Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 35 “doth murder to dissect.” My own conclusions regarding the na- ture of the principle fu are the result of returning to this group of concepts and trying to achieve some understanding of why these six terms are regularly mentioned together, their interrelation ap- parently taken for granted. Critics have tended to focus on the relation of the principle fu with the genre of the same name with an eye to explaining the development of the genre alone. What seems not to have been rec- ognized is that an examination of the poetic principle fu in terms of its relation to the genre fu, and to other poetic genres as sug- gested by the relevant criticism, may shed light on Chinese atti- tudes toward poetic sequence, especially methods of sequencing which are not necessarily dependent upon temporal progression. The inquiry may be extended to the construction of temporal se- quences as well, for temporal sequence does occur in Chinese poetry and is an important aspect of poetic structure even if it is not regarded as the universal basis of narrative. While most critics approaching the problem of fu would cite its inclusion among the six principles found in Wei Hung’s “Great Preface,” there seems to be no consensus as to what fu is. The authority most frequently quoted is Pan Ku, from his preface to his “Two Capitals Fu” (“Liang tu fu’): “Someone has said, ‘Fu have their origin in the ancient Songs.’”** This statement, however, refers to the poetic genre of fu rather than to the poetic principle. While the idea that the genre evolved from the principle is generally ac- cepted, the tradition provides no systematic explanation of how this occurred.* Starting with the commentary of Mao Heng (sec- ond century B.c.), critics applied the six principles to categorize and analyze the poems of the Shih Ching; and they applied the term fu to poems which bear no generic resemblance to poems of the fu genre. This apparent but persistent anomaly provides a starting point for a new examination of the meaning of fu and its role in the evolution of Chinese literary genres.*° While there might seem to be no relation between the shorter, often stanzaic poems of the Shih Ching and the highly complex, sus- tained compositions of the fu genre, in Chinese critical terminology both may be linked by the principle of fu, which I suggest should be translated as “enumeration.” This term was first suggested in 36 Chinese Narrative Poetry David Hawkes’s study, “The Quest of the Goddess,” although in that context it is used to describe characteristics of the genre and has no reference to the principle: “In the first place, the fu [genre] is not truly descriptive any more than it is truly narrative. The genre would never have been exposed to the attacks of moralists if it were merely descriptive. The ancient, no doubt highly dubious deriva- tion of ‘fu’ from a word meaning ‘spread,’ ‘unfold’ comes quite close to our word ‘enumerate’ and is still serviceable to the extent that it can warn us away from definitions like ‘narrative’ and ‘de- scriptive.’ ”*” There are many nonliterary meanings of the word fu based on “counting” or “allotting”: for example, “to give,” “to bestow,” “to pay out,” or “to pay or levy taxes.” ** The etymology suggested here is in response to the need for a satisfactory translation of the term fu as a poetic principle: one that would be general enough to apply to the many uses of the term, and to evoke both what the term seems to represent in Chinese critical theory and the technical implications of fu as a principle of poetic composition. Most definitions and translations of the term reflect the confu- sion between the principle and the genre. However, it is interesting to note that attempts to define the principle fu as distinct from the genre fu lead almost immediately to the term narrative in Western languages, although that term is not necessarily or obviously ap- plicable to the material being discussed. In fact, this translation tends to be used when the term for the principle appears in isola- tion, and so the problem of its application to specific works does not really arise. The definition/translation offered by Georges Mar- goulies in Evolution de la prose artistique chinoise reflects the confusion of the two terms: “La traduction la plus exacte du terme fou serait: exposé, narration ou description poétique.” * James Legge, who in- cludes translations of the commentaries of Chu Hsi with his trans- lations of the poems of the Shih Ching, uses the term “narrative” for the principle fu.*? When David R. Knechtges comments upon Pan Ku’s famous line in his notes on the “Two Capitals Rhapsody,” he accepts the same term: According to the Rites of Zhou, a work that purports to be a description of the Zhou Dynasty administrative system (com- Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 37 piled no earlier than the Warring States period) fu as [sic] one of the liu shih (“six song techniques”) taught by the Grand Music Master to blind singers (Zhou li 6.13a). The “Mao Pref- ace” to the Classic of Songs (see Wen Hstian 45.214) also refers to fu as one of the liu yi (“six principles”) of the Songs. Ban Gu was probably basing himself on one or both of these sources in associating the literary genre fu with the Songs tradition. Strictly speaking, the Rites of Zhou and “Mao Preface” notion of fu is not generic. It is rather a term for a rhetorical mode or a recitation technique that involves direct narration.” The term “narrations” is suggested by Chen Shih-hsiang.” Chen applies it to pieces of expository statement, whether descrip- tive or narrative. His intention is to affirm K’ung Ying-ta’s obser- vation that, of the six principles, fu is a term of “poetic technique” (shih chih suo yung), or perhaps more appropriately, “application,” as opposed to a term of “poetic form” (shih chih ch’eng hsing) or “substance.” * In his commentary on the Shih Ching K’ung Ying-ta analyzes the six principles and concludes that feng, ya, and sung are terms distinguishing types of subject matter, while fu, pi, and hsing are methods of presentation or composition—“modes of expres- sion” according to James J. Y. Liu.4 C. H. Wang follows Chen Shih- hsiang, but uses the term “narrative display.” * In “Metaphor and Chinese Poetry,” Pauline Yu avoids the temptation to link fu with narrative, mentioning the term as “description” or “exposition,” and later as “direct description.” She remarks that “even though the Great Preface lists it first, fu (‘description’ or ‘exposition’) gener- ally proved to be of lesser interest than bi (‘comparison’ or ‘simile’) and xing (‘association’ or ‘motif’),” and her interest is likewise in the last two principles.* It should be kept in mind that while there are important formal differences corresponding to the differences in subject matter of feng, ya, and sung, it is theoretically possible for all three technical principles to be present in a single composition, and commentators do occasionally ascribe all three principles to a single poem.” To my mind the rendering “enumeration” better evokes the meaning of fu, and allows us to consider its implications for nar- rative poetics without committing it to the concept of “narrative,” 38 Chinese Narrative Poetry with its Europocentric connotations. It also better allows us to cross over generic boundaries in its application, a need clearly indicated in the applications of the term in Chinese criticism, and to recon- sider its precise relation to its sibling terms, pi and hsing. For usage in criticism, these three principles, which suggest techniques or processes of composition, should not be confused with the poetic structures or conventions that are the results of these techniques. Nor, obviously, should these terms be considered to connote any qualitative judgment in themselves. The principle of fu, or enumeration, denotes the techniques whereby certain structures, in this case poetic sequences, may be achieved. A simple, necessary condition for establishing a sequence is that three or more elements must be present. Furthermore, the order of these elements is not arbitrary, but set in the text to pro- duce a certain effect, whether of meter, rhyme, or sense. This second necessary condition distinguishes a poetic sequence from a series, for in a series the elements may be reordered without detri- ment to the integrity of the text. It should be noted that the nature or content of the elements may vary from one sequence to another, and with them the nature of the sequence itself. The principle is thus able to encompass such apparently diverse structures as a list of animals or plants, an expository statement as to the elements of a given situation, a parade of historical figures and their actions or attributes, and a chronology of events leading to an individual crisis. This point is vital to the application of the principle of enu- meration in narrative sequence and will be discussed more fully below. The principles of pi and hsing may be related to the principle of enumeration by considering the kind of poetic conventions with which they are associated. According to Karlgren, the basic mean- ing of pi is “to compare,” with the connotation of a comparison of two elements of similar, if not precisely equal, ontological status. This helps to explain why pi has been translated as “simile.” In practical terms pi is applied when there are two elements to be compared with one another within a given poetic unit, such as a couplet or stanza, and both elements for comparison are explicitly juxtaposed in the text itself.” In the Shih Ching, pi usually occurs when a stanza presents a two-part image. One element is often Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 39 taken from nature to be compared with another element, usually describing the emotional state of the poet or speaker. In Mao no. 63, “Yu hu,” the state of a solitary fox is juxtaposed to the state of a solitary speaker (probably female) musing upon the pitiful figure of a poorly clad man. This has been interpreted as comparing the solitary state of a fox cautiously seeking a mate to the situation of a young woman who for some reason must choose her own husband without help.’ In Mao no. 124, “Ko sheng,” the first two stanzas juxtapose a dreary landscape rampant with weeds to the lament of a new widow.” The principle of hsing has been treated as the most exalted, perhaps because it seems to be the most difficult to define or gen- eralize. In his preface to the Shih p’in Chung Jung (fl. 502-19) lists hsing ahead of pi and fu, and describes it as conveying meaning beyond the literal level of the text: “When the text is finished, but the meaning resonates [literally, has more to it], that is hsing.”° Karlgren lists “lift, raise; rise; prosper” among the meanings of the graph, and suggests that originally it depicted a sail held by four hands.* Chen Shih-hsiang states that the central part of the graph is a tray rather than a sail or boat, and suggests that this configu- ration—hands all around lifting a tray of ritual offerings—is meant to evoke the kind of spontaneous response that the application of hsing in poetry should elicit from an audience.™ In poetry hsing is certainly evocative, and this is reflected by translations such as “allusive” (Legge), “association” (Yu), or “motif” (Chen).°° I would suggest that the unifying characteristic of hsing as it is used in lit- erary criticism is that it is an element of a poem which evokes associations beyond the immediate context of the poem and invites the reader to bring these associations to bear upon the matter of the text. As such, it may occur only once, or it may be repeated, as in a refrain. Hsing may occur as an ejaculation or hortatory locution (“Look at those recesses in the banks of the K’e / With their green bamboos, so fresh and luxuriant!” [Mao no. 55, “Ch’i ao,” lines 1- 2]), a vivid image meant to focus the imagination to be receptive to the “comments” which follow (“There are the branches of the sparrowgourd,” [Mao no. 60, “Wan lan,” line 1]), or a refrain meant to unify the preceding material of the text (“How is it, how is it / That he forgets me so very much?” [Mao no. 132, “Ch’en feng,” lines 40 Chinese Narrative Poetry 5-6, 11-12, 17-18]).°° Whatever its precise form or function, hsing as it occurs in poetry consists of a unified, apparently self-referential figure of speech that draws upon material beyond the literal level of the text for appreciation of its full significance. Following the order of these three technical principles from the “Great Preface,” fu organizes and integrates three or more units, pi coordinates two units, and hsing manipulates a single, self-referen- tial unit to evoke certain responses and produce certain poetic effects. The utility of this analysis is that it allows us to apply these canonical terms as broadly as they in fact are applied in the Chinese tradition of literary criticism and textual exegesis. It also allows us to appreciate, from a foreign tradition, the assumption of the vital interrelation of these three principles in Chinese poetics. We may now turn with more assurance to the principle of fu as enumeration and its relevance to the development of narrative poetry. Enumeration includes the idea of counting or organizing units in order, and its usage in literary criticism relates it to the organization of such units as stanzas (in the case of the Shih Ching), descriptive catalogues (as in fu), or even units of action suggestive of temporal sequence. The term may be applied to compositions in which units of imagery or action are organized in a logical progres- sion—one of the foundations of narrative expression. The principle fu does not define a poetic genre, “narrative,” but a technique of composition which involves the enumeration of units of subject matter. The mode of expression in a given composition is deter- mined by the nature or content of these units. In poems attempting narrative modes of expression, these units of subject matter may contain actions, and the enumeration of these units forms the kind of logical, sequential structure of events which is associated with narrative. It is probably this characteristic of “enumeration” which led to the assumption that the critical principle of fu was the origin of the poetic genre fu, although by the time the critical principle was isolated and being debated the genre had reached its height of achievement as the sanctioned form of public poetic display at the Han court.’ The fu genre, however, displays only some of the possible kinds of enumeration; many other kinds may be found in the Shih Ching. It has been asserted that the use of refrains, special Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 41 descriptive phrases and grammatical constructions, and alliterative phrases reflects the influence of oral composition.** Whether this is indeed the case, what should be noted here is that all these devices are treated as units to be enumerated. The genre fu may be said to comprise the techniques of organizing subject matter in a poetic composition through enumeration. Thus, the formal features of the genre fu are not the only mani- festations of the principle, although they are arguably the means whereby the principle achieved its greatest expressive success. One aspect of the works of the genre shared by works categorized by the principle is an assertive rhetoric intended for public display. This intention of public expression is vital to the development of narrative in shih and other genres. Furthermore, the passion for detail and description—concrete or general—characteristic of the genre fu is at least as important as temporal sequence in Chinese narrative, and may also be a component of the poetic principle in the eyes of Chinese critics. Let us consider how enumeration is applied in K’ung Ying-ta’s, and later in Chu Hsi’s commentaries to the Shih Ching. According to K’ung Ying-ta, the principle as it appears in the Shih Ching seems to be reinforced strongly by stanzaic composition. The stanzas in a given poem may function as units in their own right, to be placed in sequence by enumeration. In this K’ung follows the suggestions of Cheng Hsuan, who justifies the order of stanzas as set by Mao but does not always identify his ordering principle with fu. The poems designated fu by K’ung are usually three or more stanzas in length. Of those poems so designated which contain fewer than three stanzas, he occasionally comments that they may be sequels of the poems which precede them in the anthology, as in the case of Mao no. 67, “Chiin-tzu yang yang,” which is described as the sequel of Mao no. 66, “Chiin-tzu yu yi.” Chu Hsi follows K’ung Ying-ta precisely, but while K’ung sets his categories according to the technical observations of Cheng Hstian, Chu Hsi’s justifications for the assignment of the principle fu suggest that he may have confused the principle of enumeration with one of its frequent re- sults; namely, a more particularized composition tending to specific rather than general expressions of emotion.” This characteristic is also suggestive of narrative and, considering the enormous influ- 42 Chinese Narrative Poetry ence of Chu Hsi’s edition of the Shih Ching, perhaps accounts for the persistent confusion of the principle of enumeration with nar- rative in the minds of (particularly European) critics. Among the most consistent examples of the principle fu are poems written in stanzas about legendary or historical topics which either relate some story vital to the explanation of social conven- tions or codes of behavior, or glorify heroic figures from the past. Poems such as Mao no. 243, “Hsia Wu,” and Mao no. 244, “Wen wang yu sheng,” use repetition of lines to carry the subject mat- ter forward. “Hsia Wu” links six four-line stanzas by the process of catenation, represented here by repeating the last line of one stanza as the first line of the next. The lines are sometimes iden- tical (stanza 1, line 4, and stanza 2, line 1: “The King was their worthy successor in his capital”; stanza 5, line 4, and stanza 6, line 1: “They will receive the blessing of Heaven”); and sometimes only one character is repeated (stanza 4, line 4, and stanza 5, line 1: “He brilliantly continued the doings [of his fathers] / Brilliantly! and his posterity . . .”).°! The effect is still to enforce the relationship of the stanzas in the logical sequential order of the subject matter. The fact that the middle stanzas are not absolutely consistent does not really undermine the pattern established in the first two stanzas. It is clear that the subject matter as presented was intended to follow this order, setting the exemplary King Wu in his proper context as the heir of legitimate rulers and the father of other legitimate rulers. The sequence does not focus explicitly on the actions of the ruler, but rather on the results of actions which have become facts of the accepted social order: in stanza 1 the king comes to power; in stanza 2 he tries to win over the population; in stanza 3 he wins over the population; in stanza 4 he consolidates his power with his increased popularity; in stanza 5 the people are reconciled to the new order; in stanza 6 the people contemplate the secure future of the now established order. The concern of the poem is not with the actions of King Wu himself, but with the process of transfer from martial to civil authority in a new political order. This is a logi- cal sequence whose causal links are historically dependent upon temporal sequence for their significance, but whose ultimate sig- nificance transcends the historical context of the foundation of the Chou kingdom. Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 43 “Wen wang yu sheng” also uses a repeated line to link its eight five-line stanzas but, rather than using catenated lines, these stan- zas are linked by a refrain “Wen wang cheng tsai” (“A sovereign true was King Wen!”). The refrain itself is identified by Chu Hsi as hsing, though not until the last stanza. In this poem the refrain functions to define the stanzas and enforce their sequence. It is not simply repeated: the last two characters, cheng tsai, are consistent, but the first two characters change according to the subject mat- ter of the stanza. The first four stanzas focus on King Wen, who is either referred to by name (stanzas 1 and 2), or styled “royal prince” (wang hou, stanzas 3 and 4). Stanza 5 switches back to the deeds of King Wen’s predecessor, King Wu, who is referred to as the “Great King” (huang wang, stanza 5) or by name (stanzas 6 and 7). The compositional sequence, whose movement is chronologi- cally backward, culminates with the establishment of a sequence in fact, a structure for the orderly transfer of power from father to son which will ensure the security of the people. There are more elabo- rate examples of fu as an applied principle in the Shih Ching but, whatever the kind of enumeration involved, all seem intended to build a sequence which will culminate in a particular interpretative conclusion. The applications of the principle of enumeration thus vary ac- cording to form and subject matter in the poems from the Shih Ching, but how do these uses bear upon the workings of the princi- ple fu in the genre of that name? The earliest examples, by anyone’s reckoning, occur in the Ch’u Tz’u, an anthology which in its present form dates from the second century A.D., but whose contents may date from as early as the eleventh century B.c. These poems, from the catechism of “T’ien wen” to the itineraria on which the genre is supposed to be based, employ a variety of sequencing techniques.® David Hawkes, in “The Quest of the Goddess,” has termed poems such as the “Li sao” and the “Chiu ko” (“Nine Songs”) itineraria be- cause of their subject matter. It is said that these poems are based on the magical flight of the spirit of a shaman to a union with a corresponding deity.“* Hawkes observes that the influence of Ch’u itineraria was crucial to the development of fu, but he does not con- sider the type of sequence underlying the structure of the poems to be narrative: “If we apply the term ‘narrative’ to the itineraria, its ab- 44 Chinese Narrative Poetry surd inappropriateness is at once apparent. . . . The reason why the term ‘narrative’ is so immediately unacceptable is that the develop- ment in these poems is conceived of as a spatial sequence. In the ritual circuit whose object is the accumulation of magic power, the actual passage between one power-nucleus and the next, though indispensible, is not of intrinsic interest.” © The poet’s reflection of this process is the enumeration of sig- nificant places or visions, not the experience of seeking or achiev- ing them. Itineraria, then, are not primarily concerned with tem- poral patterns of organization. While the structure of poems such as the “Li sao” may not be strictly temporal, there is still a distinct sense of progression as the poet-shaman describes his exploration of the cosmos. Nor is this progress unsystematic. In most itineraria it can be argued that the ritual sequence overwhelms any other kind, but it may also be argued that the primacy of the ritual is supported by techniques which render the ritual sequence more understandable to the layman, and these techniques may include temporal and descriptive elements which influence the poetics of the composition. This variety is acknowledged by Chinese critics in their cate- gorization of fu according to subject matter, starting with the Wen Hsiian of the early sixth century and continuing at least to the Yi- ting li-tai fu-hui (published in 1706).% In the preface to the Wen Hsiian, Hsiao T’ung (501-531) draws distinctions on the basis of subject matter between the descriptive fu of Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju (179- 117 B.c.), Yang Hsiung (43 B.c.—A.D. 18), and Chang Heng (79- 138), and the lament, termed “sao,” of Ch’t Yuan, who inspired so many later poets to emulate him in poetry, if not biography. The first nineteen chiian of the Wen Hstian are poems in the fu genre, containing fifty-six examples, but sao make up only two chiian (32-33), containing seventeen examples, all of them perhaps more familiar from their inclusion in the Ch’u Tzu. The designation fu is further divided into fifteen categories, which Knechtges calls “sub-genres,” based on subject matter rather than formal features.” These categories were accepted with only minor changes by later compilers, for instance by Ou-yang Hsiin in the Yi wen lei-chii, and so on to the Yii-ting li-tai fu-hut. The critical material on the genre fu and theories of its evo- Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 45 lution reflect the tenacity of these categories. But in spite of the tremendous range of topics, fu seem to fall into two main cate- gories, which for convenience I will call “descriptive” and “per- sonal.” Although the Chinese terms for these categories vary, there is a clear awareness of difference in kind and even in origin. The most common pair of terms is ta fu and hsiao fu; ta (major) referring to the long, cataloguelike, descriptive type, and hsiao (minor) refer- ring to the expressive, “personal” type.® Ta fu are in fact usually longer, but some sort of qualitative judgment also seems to be im- plied by the term. Hsiao fu, because they are fewer and shorter, tend to be regarded as somehow outside the mainstream of fu com- position. Other pairs of terms which describe the same division are shih-lei fu (fu on specific things) and yen-ch’ing fu (fu that express the emotions); and ching-fu (fu on capital cities) as opposed to hsiao-fu (minor fu, or fu on lesser matters). Again, “fu on specific things” or “fu on capital cities” tend to include descriptive fu, while “fu that express the emotions” or “fu on lesser matters” tend to deal with personal themes.” When we consider specific examples of the genre fu, the appli- cation of the principle fu as enumeration should become clear. It is evident not only in those fu whose purpose seems to be descriptive, but also in fu which seem to attempt a more personal, individual- ized expression. In the first type, “descriptive” fu, the emphasis is on a place or object; the description will reveal the object’s quali- ties as an exemplar. The fu of Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju are of this type. The second type, “personal” fu, attempt to make explicit a poet’s internal feelings of conflict, often through description, sometimes with a strong sense of temporal context or even progression. Chia Yi's (c. 200-168 B.c.) “Owl fu” (“Fu-niao fu’) is an example of this type and is often cited as the first example of the type after the “Li sao.””° Whether metaphorically or actually, the poet attempts to recapture or articulate the elements of an experience in a highly personalized fashion, still using the technique of enumeration as the basis for structuring the sequence. There are several possible levels of enumeration in the “Owl fu.” The first is the standard, three-part structure of the poem as a whole, which consists of the owl's introduction (lines 1-11), the main body of philosophical dis- course (lines 12-49), and the conclusion (lines 50-54). The main 46 Chinese Narrative Poetry body of the poem is further subdivided into three sections which reveal a logical sequence of persuasion as the poet attempts to com- fort himself by putting his plight—in his eyes, he has fallen victim to slander and has been exiled unjustly—into some kind of per- spective. The first section deals with the greatest level of generality, stating the nature of the cosmos and the relation of men to it (lines 12-21). The second asserts that these tides of fortune are part of an organic and impersonal process (lines 22-29); and the third per- spective uses examples of the vanity of striving to exploit causality (lines 30-49). Within each subsection are further instances of enu- meration, such as the list of historical figures who preceded Chia Yi in misfortune (lines 18-21) or the pageant of the foibles of human nature (lines 34-45). The presence of these divergent strains of expression—de- scriptive and personal—is not surprising when we consider the two main theories of the origin and development of fu as a genre. The first theory is based on the origin of fu from the lyric sources of the Shih Ching, following the leads of Pan Ku and Hsiao T’ung. The Ch’ing critic Ch’eng T’ing-tso gives a history of the genre based on this assumption in his essay “Sao fu lun.” Ch’eng T’ing-tso posits that sao and fu developed with the inspiration of the poems of the Shih Ching, which allowed the poet Ch’t Yuan to apply the six principles to his own source of inspiration. He regards sao and fu as subdivisions of a single genre, called sao-fu, or simply fu, after the poetic principle of enumeration which distinguishes the poetic form. This theory of development, first advanced in the “Biblio- graphical Treatise” (“Yi wen chih”) in the Han Shu, attempts to ex- plain the shift from a sao type of personal expression of emotion (corresponding to the concerns of “personal” fu) to a fu type of self-conscious, public poetry (“descriptive” fu). Ch’eng writes: The act of composing the “Li sao” was truly a product of the life and time of Ch’t Yuan. In the compositions of later times which were written in the style of sao, could even Sung Yu, who, carrying on the style of enterprise he received from Ch’t Yuan, composed the Chiu P’ien . . . be compared to him? How could others compare to him? They did not have the experi- ence of his life and time; they could not possibly achieve his Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 47 heights merely through force of effort. In examining fu, we find that its foundation is entirely different from that of sao... . They are as clearly delineated as household ranking and social class. The Commentary (by Mao, Shih Ching no. 50, cited in the Han Shu, 30.1755-56) says, “If you wish to ascend to great heights and are able to compose fu, you will be able to become a great minister.” Cheng K’ang-ch’eng (Cheng Hsutan) says, “Fu are a form of display which lay in order matters of govern- ment and education, beauty and evil of the present time.” The subject matter used by the masters of fu ranged from the royal court to ancestral temples in outlying districts, from mountains and rivers to the grasses and trees; there was nothing they did not set forth in writing. Therefore the authors, certainly such a one as Ch’ang-ch’ing (Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju) embraced all of the universe and considered all men and phenomena. There are some who have the inspiration from the mountains and rivers within themselves, but who do not realize or express it, and so the degree of difficulty of fu is as great as of shih or sao.”! In contrast to the theory of the lyrical origins of the genre, Knechtges traces the development of fu as epideictic rhetoric from the tradition of “persuasions” (shui).” This is a very ancient form of prose in China; in fact, much extant early artistic prose is some form of persuasion, suggesting a thematic as much as a generic distinction. These works, composed with a view to public presen- tation, placed great emphasis on persuasive rhetoric. Perhaps the most famous example is Mei Sheng’s “Seven Stimuli” (“Ch7 fa’), said to have been composed for the admonition of the prince of Wu. It is a masterwork of the use of rhetoric as a vehicle for con- veying personal opinion into the public domain. On the surface the purpose of the poem is to entertain Mei Sheng’s ailing and apa- thetic prince. When the piece is examined rhetorically, however, it becomes apparent that the seductive emphasis on the pursuit of sensual pleasures is an important part of the theme of persuasion. The illness of the prince cannot be cured with physic alone; it must be “persuaded to depart” (“shui ch’ti”). This recalls the techniques of summoning spirits in “Chao Hun” of the Ch’u Tz’u, except here the process is reversed. Instead of calling back the prince’s wan- 48 Chinese Narrative Poetry dering spirit, Mei Sheng banishes the evil influences which are weighing on the spirit in its proper home. Again, the technique of enumeration produces a sequence which proceeds cumulatively rather than strictly temporally, and yet the given order of the sub- ject matter cannot be revised without a radical change in the effect of the persuasion.” Mei Sheng’s prosody and techniques of persuasion influenced many later writers of fu, especially those associated with the cen- tral court. Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, in his “Tzu-hsii fu” and “Fu on the Shang-lin Park,” described magnificent hunts in sumptuous sur- roundings in order to criticize unnecessary extravagance. The con- cerned statesman could use fu to describe an object, a place, or a person in such a way as to evoke the desired response from his prince, fulfilling both his political responsibilities and his artistic aspirations in the best Confucian tradition. Whatever the ultimate origin of fu as a poetic genre, these two theories of the source of fu poetics seem to reflect not so much on the evolution of the form itself as on the distinction drawn between what came to be its two main categories of subject matter. The “expressive” or “personal” tendencies exemplified by Ch’ Yuan and his heirs would seem to ally themselves with “personal” fu, while the tradition of persuasions would seem closer to “descrip- tive” fu, the manifestation of “word magic” at its best. Neither type, of course, turns away from the intention of public display. Personal fu, such as Chia Yi's “Owl fu,” were usually written as first-person monologues and were probably intended as self-justification, to be “overheard” or given into sympathetic hands when public chan- nels of appeal were closed. Descriptive fu, on the other hand, were ostensibly written for the moral and political edification of their audience, but were conceived in terms of the public context and lack the self-referential element of personal fu. During the Six Dynasties period a sense of the appropriate- ness of fu to public display seems more than ever to have directed the construction of sequences in long works of the genre. Indeed, among works of this period the distinctions between descriptive and personal fu are as dependent on the treatment of subject mat- ter as they are on differences of form or in the nature of the subject matter itself. While structurally there may seem no great difference Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 49 between Yu Hsin’s (513-581) “Lament for the South” (“Ai Chiang- nan fu’) and many other fu about the same region of China that are classified under “geography” (ti-li) in anthologies, in the minds of editors their treatment of subject matter makes them absolutely discrete. It is not just the technical aspects of meter, rhyme, and so forth that determine the distinctions between descriptive and per- sonal fu, but also the perceived intentions of the author of a given composition. While the basic technique of enumeration in fu may remain fairly consistent, the content of the units to be enumerated and the underlying purpose of the organization of sequences is crucial for an understanding of the piece in relation to the tradition of its subject matter and to the genre itself.” In the case of “The Lament for the South,” not only does Ch’en Yuan-lung place it in his anthology’s wai-chi (outer collection) with the other personal fu, he goes so far as to place it in his first cate- gory, yen-chih (to speak of one’s true self).” This is partly because Yu Hsin makes extensive use of sao meters and frequently alludes to the “Li sao,” thus allying himself with the very beginning of the tradition of personal expression in fu. But by placing the poem in this most significant category, first in the wai-chi, Ch’en indicates that in his mind the expressive purpose and force of the poem goes beyond the particular events of Yu Hsin’s life to be linked with the very essence of poetic expression, yen-chih, according to the tradition of Shih Ching criticism.” Again, it is necessary to make some distinctions between the techniques of poetic expression and their effects on the reader. “The Lament for the South” is explic- itly autobiographical. While its graphic account of the destruction of the Liang dynasty (502-556) from within and without could be analyzed as merely descriptive of a most unhappy chain of events, the sure knowledge of the author’s historical context, enforced by details of his own experience related in his own voice determines the interpretative stance of the reader. The intricacy of the poem’s structure of meaning on every level—metrical references, poetic and historical allusions, figures of speech peculiar to the fu tradition in general and the sixth century in particular—is staggering, and allows us to appreciate and apply the complexity of enumeration to the larger tradition.” For the purposes of this study the poem’s underlying sequen- 50 Chinese Narrative Poetry tial structure is most important. Yu Hsin gives three accounts of his plight in “The Lament for the South,” comprising three dif- ferent perspectives on his temporal context and the sequence of events. The preface gives a condensed version of the material of the poem proper without suspense, from the point of view of one who knows the results of the actions involved. Yu Hsin provides specific literary and historical contexts for his work and compares himself to other statesmen who fell into evil times and transcended their personal failures with works of art—Ch’t Yuan and Ssu-ma Chiien® In the second “account” Yu Hsin provides his genealogy (lines 1—40), and by its intricacy suggests his intention to record his own experiences in great detail. There are compelling reasons for the length of this genealogy, which is forty times as long as its model from the “Li sao.”” The sequence of his ancestry is enforced by chronology on the literal level of the text and by rhyme and meter on the poetic level, but there is a new level of significance. While a genealogy is bound to culminate in a particular generation or individual, Yu Hsin adds the irony that, in his family’s seventh generation of service to the imperial court, he will in fact end this sequence with his death. The chronological sequence of the rest of the poem is thus overlaid with two layers of foreboding, which influence the remainder of the poem even in the first reading. Yu Hsin deliberately manipulates temporal references and sequence to enhance his poem’s tapestry of meaning, to bind events to his unique experience, and to give that experience significance in the stream of history. The third account, the bulk of the poem (lines 41-520), at- tempts to reproduce the whole of YU Hsin’s world in words. He begins with his early career, taking his place in the Yu family genealogy and making the transition between his background and his own life and times (lines 41-84). He then shifts to the state’s unpreparedness for rebellion (lines 85-110) and the omens of disas- ter for the Liang’s founder, Emperor Wu (Liang Wu-ti, r. 502-549). The omen of “Seeing a man with streaming hair at Yi-ch’uan / One knew that within the century there would be barbarians there” (lines 109-10),*° provides the transition to the menace of the bar- barian Hou Ching (d. 552), the first of the serious external threats Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 51 to the state (lines 111-40). Lines 141-230 describe the siege of the Liang capital Chien-k’ang (Nan-ching), Hou Ching’s triumph, and the miserable death of Emperor Wu. Yu Hsin makes it clear that, in his eyes, the victory of Hou Ching was due as much to the inter- necine struggles of Emperor Wu’s potential successors as to any alien force: Chin and Cheng refused to help; Lu and Wei were not in harmony. They struggled to move the gate of heaven, Fought to turn the axis of the earth.” In line 231 the poet suddenly reappears in his own person, fleeing to the court of the emperor’s seventh son, Hsiao Yi, later Emperor Ytian (Liang Yuan-ti, r. 552-554). This flight up the Yang- tze to Chiang-ling makes Yu Hsin’s experience seem like a night- mare version of the story of the Peach Blossom Spring, speeding away from one fallen ideal to another, each doomed in its turn, and driving his boat up a stream hedged by rebels and fire instead of beckoning peach trees (lines 231-52). Lines 253-86 describe his new post under Hsiao Yi, but the death of his father (lines 275-82) erases his hopes for success in his lifetime, and he determines to avoid holding office to honor his father’s memory (lines 283-86). The poem then turns again to the war, detailing the Liang cam- paign against Hou Ching and the recapture of Chien-k’ang (lines 287-312), and then setting the triumph against the dreadful losses of the rebellion (lines 313-48). The final fall of the Liang comes swiftly afterward (lines 349-460). Line 349 speaks of “the Restoring Emperor,” but hopes that the restoration will last under Emperor Yuan are immediately dashed: Though he restored the ancient institutions of the Governor of the Capital And brought back the customs of the Cheng-shih period, Sunk in suspicion, he followed only his own desires; Concealing his faults, he prided himself on his accomplishments.” Emperor Yuan’s actions result in the ruin of his people, and the Liang dynasty is finally destroyed at its secondary capital of 52 Chinese Narrative Poetry Chiang-ling (lines 415-24). Yu Hsin surfaces in the midst of the turmoil, sent by the emperor as an ambassador to the court of the Western Wei (lines 409-10). His mission of pacification is of course unsuccessful, and he helplessly watches the ruin of his people as they are led into captivity in the north (lines 435-60). The last sec- tion, lines 461-520, focuses again on the author alone, lamenting his exile and his shame in surviving to tell his tale. Yu Hsin thus uses his own career as a frame for the larger tale of the fortunes of the Liang. The interweaving of individual voice with more general historical description is a technique also used extensively in narrative shih, and it suggests that authors of autobiographical poems found this doubled sequencing an effec- tive means of grounding personal experience in an unmistakable temporal context. Certainly there is a strong awareness of the effi- cacy of temporal sequence in creating a powerful context “to speak of one’s true self.” In terms of general application in Chinese poetics the principle of enumeration is extremely pervasive. It can be seen as comprising the basis of all poetic structures which involve a logical and con- sidered ordering of elements; in short, the sequences which under- lie the textual integrity of any self-conscious work of literary art. Enumeration allows for sequences made up of units of any kind: from phrases and compounds ordered according to set patterns of tonal values and rhyme, to the ordering of elements in a catalogue, to the poems in a unified poetic sequence or events in a narra- tive poem. In the Chinese tradition the principle of enumeration ignores generic distinctions and spans a wide range of expressive purposes, including, but by no means confined to, the desire for narrative modes of expression. In terms of the development of poetic narrative, this discus- sion of fu suggests two important features. First is the poet’s use of his own voice to describe a specific experience or object which in some way reflects on or reveals an important personal or indi- vidual experience. This seems to be a definitive characteristic of personal fu. The second feature is a more general manifestation of the critical principle of fu as enumeration, namely, poetic sequence. The sequences presented in fu are not necessarily temporal ones; there are sequences of objects, of perceptions or observations, of Narrative Elements in Chinese Poetics 53 results of a single action or condition, and finally even of actions themselves. While these sequences may not build up a sense of narrative suspense dependent on a causal relation of events, they do build tension and anticipate some resolution, either in a publicly oriented moral pronouncement or in a sudden focus on an indi- vidual poet striving for recognition. This is especially pertinent to the development of narrative, which deals with particular rather than general experience. The individual experience may of course be relevant to a general context, but the emphasis in the work of art is on an experience which is, for the reader, essentially vicarious. While the poetic principle fu provides a basis for the construction of sequences, the genre provides a reconciliation of two aspects of poetic expression vital to the narrative poet: the impulse to reveal the private self and the desire to captivate an audience. 2 Setting Specific Contexts Point of View and Description In narrative poetry, as in fiction, point of view determines the reader’s access to the artist’s intuition and interpretation of events.’ Just as physical description particularizes the context of experience, point of view particularizes the experience itself. Together, point of view and description allow the poet to control the reader’s response to the circumstances recounted in the text. The point of view of the narrator or primary speaker in a poem reflects the expressive intent of the poet, who may or may not be identified with that speaker. In addition to the narrator, other speakers may introduce “their” in- dividual points of view, which in turn complicate and enhance the reader’s interpretation of events. The greater the reader’s aware- ness of differing points of view, the greater the chance of realizing a coherent interpretation of events through their various perspec- tives.’ The apparent merging of poetic voice and identity with the Point of View and Description 55 reader’s voice and identity is an important aspect of lyrical experi- ence in Chinese poetry. In a lyric poem the point of view of the poet is the same as that of the speaker, which in turn, if the illusion of integration with lyrical experience is achieved, is assumed by the reader. This point of view is inclusive and objective; that is to say, it allows the reader to assume the full experience of the poem as his or her own, and communicates emotion in a potentially universal mode, rather than emphasizing the specific context of the poet’s experience. Northrop Frye speaks of the lyrical “radical of presen- tation,” which allows for transcendence of specific context*—a fea- ture of the objectivity of lyric conveyed so well by the dominance of imagistic language in Chinese poetry. Narrative poetry may present many points of view, none of which is meant to merge with that of the reader. The narrative point of view is exclusive and subjective. Insofar as specificity of point of view does not encourage integration of reader and speaker, the reader remains separated from the point of view of the narrator. The separation of the speaker from the reader in a lyric poem is in- herently ambiguous, while in a narrative poem point of view delib- erately reveals perspectives beyond the context of the reader. The reader may be affected primarily by the point of view of the narra- tor, or by those of other participants in the events of the poem. In contrast to lyric poetry, each speaker and/or participant in a work of narrative poetry may assert an individual identity. The ultimate aim of these complex patterns of narrative presentation is to enable the reader to synthesize material presented by multiple points of view from the unique perspective of a particular reader outside of the text itself. This is not to say that lyrical expression does not convey a sense of the individual personality of the author. One of the clichés of Chinese literature and criticism is that the character of an author may be understood from his writing; in fact, this evocative quality is the natural outgrowth of the author’s intent (chih). The informed reader may therefore experience something of the personality of the author, as well as something of the experience which inspired the poem, through the act of reading.’ This interpretative tendency permeates both artistic creation and scholarly or critical analysis in Chinese literature. The expression of intent (chih) gives plausible 56 Chinese Narrative Poetry authenticity to the experiential interpretation of a poem and forms the core of experience for the informed reader. In artistic creation awareness of this purposive undercurrent affects the author’s pre- sentation, because appreciation of intent is a consummately critical experience, a mutual exchange between poet and reader relying upon the vitality of this interpretative convention for fulfillment. If a poet’s original intent in composing is to reveal the self as well as to convey a particular experience, it requires a sophisticated reader to extract both the experience as presented in the poem and the intent underlying the expression. In lyrical experience the reader may achieve the illusion of integration with the intent of the poet through the act of reading, and takes this on, if only momentarily, as if it were part of his or her own personality and consciousness. In the case of an informed reader this provokes a realization that this response—the illusion of integration with the experience of the poem—is in fact inspired by the impression of the poet’s own per- sonality and consciousness, thus promoting a sense of insight into the actual experience of the poet as an individual.® While this convention of reading is taken for granted in the study of Chinese lyrics, it applies to other modes as well. We will find, however, that in poems which introduce particular points of view, the task of fully realizing the author’s intent is not left to the resources of the reader alone. It is not difficult to see this quali- fication of the convention in the study of the fu genre, especially personal fu. As we have seen, by particularizing experience with details of specific context—temporal and otherwise—the poet of personal fu eschews reliance on the conventions of lyrical reading in favor of a blunter but perhaps more forceful instrument. Poets such as Chia Yi might well doubt that an informed reader of the “Owl fu” would exercise such critical acumen as actually to come to the aid of the poet in distress, without particulars of the poet’s immediate plight. Narrative poetry goes even further, explicitly invoking these critical conventions by emphasizing subjective experience. Let us consider, by way of example, a poem by Han Yu (768-824), written on his way into exile after the political fiasco engendered by his memorial on the bone of the Buddha. “The Officer at Lung River” (“Lung shih”) is in the form of a dialogue between the disgraced Point of View and Description 57 poet-statesman and an articulate security officer at the Lung River in Kuang-tung.’ Because of the exigencies of his situation (in T’ang times, exile to pestilential Ch’ao-chou was tantamount to a death sentence), it is literally a matter of life and death for Han Yu to con- vey his intent to a sympathetic audience, preferably to the emperor himself. While he might have relied upon the critical convention of extrapolating a poet’s underlying intent from a lyric poem to convince his audience, Han Yu has used a more explicit mode of expression to ensure communication of his urgent message. With understandable consciousness of his relation to such poets as Chia Yi, he balances particularizing details of his predicament and more conventional landscape description to convey his inner state. While the poet and the officer are firmly located in space and time, the physical context at first seems subordinate to the increasing emo- tional wildness of the environment. Far as it may be from Ch’ang- an to the head of the Lung River, it is just the beginning of the end of the earth for Han Yu, who is on his way to the southern edge of the empire. The officer obliges Han Yu’s inquiries with a fearsome description of the place, but this is a generalized, terri- fying landscape, a fitting image of the harshness of exile for the devoted Confucian statesman. The officer’s intimations as to why Han Yu has been exiled fill the poet with shame, and as a result he is enlightened not to the misery and waste of his exile, but to the great bounty of the emperor, whom Han Yu in his intransi- gence has so inadequately appreciated. “The Officer at Lung River” is not so much a narrative of the poet’s experiences and emotions in exile as it is a “memorial” to the emperor, acknowledging the poet’s shortcomings and expressing his undying (and by virtue of the circumstances, intensified) respect and loyalty.® The poet’s intent, then, is unambiguously political, which allies this poem strongly with the tradition of personal fu. The poetry of Tu Fu also contains outstanding examples of this use of a more particularized mode of expression to convey political intent; such monumental poems as “From the Capital to Feng-hsien: Five Hun- dred Words Chanting My Feelings” (“Tzu ching fu Feng hsien hsien yung-huai wu-pai tzu”) and “Journey North” (“Pei cheng”) both tell of travel through the empire that details the progress of the An Lu- shan Rebellion, with its devastating effects on the land and people, 58 Chinese Narrative Poetry and the despairing attempts of the disillusioned poet to progress— physically, professionally, emotionally, and morally—in this envi- ronment. The sense of spatial progression and the strong personal voice recall the expressivism of personal fu in the more densely evocative form of five-character ku-shih.’? Similarly, because of his specificity, Han Yu's “Officer at Lung River” moves away from “pure” lyricism: the experience is not integrative. Han Yu shapes his journey into exile as a journey into self-knowledge, but main- tains the distance between himself and his audience. We can see that as soon as the motive for expression becomes more important than the expression itself, lyrical experience will be compromised. Although specificity in and of itself does not transform “lyric” into “narrative,” it may well work against the integrative tendencies of lyric. The choice of a narrative mode suggests that when it is urgent to convey particular intent to a broad enough audience, or the right audience, the poet may not be prepared to rely upon the critical convention of realizing an artist’s personal experience through the act of reading. According to the Chinese critical conventions discussed above, the illusion of integration with poetic experience does not imply that lyric lacks point of view, or that the voice of the poet actually merges with that of the reader. Personal voice is conveyed to the reader by an implicit point of view, one that is meant to be identi- fied, ultimately, with the poet. In the case of narrative poetry the point or points of view are made explicit. It is a feature of lyric that the point of view of the poet and the point of view of the speaker of the poem are meant to be the same; in narrative there can be no such assumption."’ Indeed, the multiple points of view which narrative brings to bear may produce a sense of dislocation. Events treated in narrative poetry are to some degree separated in time and space from the narrator, from the poet, and certainly from the reader. The reader is aware of these separations or distances; however, on the level of interpretation all points of view—poet’s, narrator’s, reader’s—may be brought to bear simultaneously upon the events in a narrative. These points of view may be contempo- raneous with the events of the text, or they may be quite distant in time and space. While the resulting complexity requires an adjust- Point of View and Description 59 ment on the part of both poet and reader, it is a crucial factor in the interpretative richness of narrative." Although the explicitness of point of view in Chinese narrative poetry is a function of Chinese poetic language generally, the tech- niques whereby point of view is made explicit involve two basic methods: the explicit identification of speakers and the use of de- scription to set subjective rather than objective contexts.’ The most obvious indicators of the presence of particular speakers are per- sonal pronouns, personal names, or epithets, which I will call “per- sonal references.” Such particularizing terms are far less evident in lyric poetry. When these more blatant identifying features are absent, description may serve to indicate particular points of view. The use of specific detail helps to shape a reader’s perception of subject matter through points of view other than the poet’s. The success of the narrative mode of expression depends on stimulating audience response to a world outside its immediate context. Chi- nese narrative poetry may contain a substantial proportion of pas- sages which seem to be purely descriptive in content, but clearly set particular rather than general contexts when they are considered in terms of their position in the poem as a whole. Depending upon the structure of the poem, the context of a descriptive passage will allow the interlude to refer to and reflect upon a specific rather than a general situation, thus converting the essentially “objective” mode of description to the needs of narrative. This is vital to narrative expression in the Chinese tradition because it allows the technique of description, which exploits the properties of imagistic language to the fullest, to be turned to the subjective purposes of narrative. Let us first consider the matter of the explicit identification of speakers, or personal references. While some pronouns, such as wu (I), yu (I), or fu (he), may indicate precise personal references, pronouns frequently are discarded in favor of proper names, epi- thets, or “titles’—the “king” (wang), the “bride” (chia-nu), the “old wife” (lao-fu), and so on, terms which may substitute for proper names and have the force of pronouns. Pronouns may themselves be ambiguous in identifying the speaker or subject of a narrative; for instance, as mentioned in the note to my translation of Wang Wei’s “Poem of Peach Blossom Spring,” it is unclear whether the 60 Chinese Narrative Poetry narrator is using the first person or third person. The word tzu in line 27 (“I rehearse with myself the paths I cross”) may also be read “he rehearses with himself,” as in Pauline Yu’s translation.’ Tzu is reflexive but does not in itself indicate the person involved. For the purposes of identifying point of view, however, the use of tzu as either “I” or “he” indicates the explicit presence of a narrator and/ or actor who enforces the reader’s separation from the events in the poem. Whether that narrator may be identified with the pro- tagonist of the poem is not essential to the narrative, although for the reader a precise identification might suggest variations in the style of the experience. The impact of the use of the pronoun tzu is to single out a particular actor whose experience is intended to be evocative rather than integrative. The presence of straightforward personal references is a dis- tinctive feature of the poems of the Shih Ching, and of yiieh-fu as well. They convey an impression of specificity, even if upon careful examination the more discursive diction of such poems still rests upon a very generalized context. In the “Ballad of the Orphan” (“Ku-er hsing,” A.D. 100-2002), a yiieh-fu poem with lines of uneven length and no refrain, repetition of the speaker’s or protagonist’s “title,” ku-er (orphan), emphasizes the particularity of the speaker and prepares the reader for a lament: “Whether born an orphan / Or to become an orphan/ This fate is one of lonely suffering!” “ The orphan’s misfortunes seem to come in pairs, and the rhythm of the couplets shows his tasks and miseries taking him back and forth, back and forth, from hard labor to hard words. While the process of his demoralization is detailed by a specific personal voice, the con- text of his expression is still very generalized. Again, it is possible to interpret this poem as either a first- or third-person statement. The ballad “Southeast Fly the Peacocks” (“K’ung-ch’ueh tung-nan fet”), a yueh-fu with consistent pentasyllabic lines, is much more explicit. A complex, third-person narrative, it contains a good deal of dialogue between identified speakers within a frame controlled by an omniscient narrator.’ We have also seen that poets of personal fu often use first- person pronouns to identify a speaker. Their literary progenitor, Ch’u Yuan, set the example in the “Li sao,” which most insistently identifies the poet with the speaker of the poem. The entire “Li sao” Point of View and Description 61 is written in the first person, not casually, as an assumed persona, but constantly enforced by the use of personal pronouns: I will no longer care that no one understands me, As long as I can keep the sweet fragrance of my mind... Enough! There are no true men in the state: no one to understand me. Why should I cleave to the city of my birth? Since none is worthy to work with in making good government I will go and join P’eng Hsien in the place where he abides.’° Ch’u Yuan created an archetype of the rejected courtier for countless generations of poets and statesmen, and would-be poets and statesmen, to emulate in their poetry if not in their lives. Chia Yi’s “Owl fu” and Yt Hsin’s “Lament for the South” both show the overt influence of Ch’ti Yuan’s model. Such personal references are characteristic of the tradition of personal fu and suggest a strong influence on the development of techniques for presenting point of view in narrative shih. Description, the second major technique for indicating specific contexts in Chinese narrative poetry, is often used in conjunction with narrative frames. In Chinese poetry description relies on con- ventions of poetic language that are generally associated more with lyrical than with narrative expression. The narrative frame provides a concrete location in time and space for the experience in a poem. This invokes the reader’s sense of separation from the context of the experience, while adapting description to the needs of narrative ex- pression by virtue of its context within the frame. Framing devices present particular points of view which set the contexts of telling, separating what follows from what has gone before, yet maintain- ing explicitly delineated relations of structure and subject matter among the parts. As we will see in the analysis of specific poems, particularly the “Ballad of the p’i-p’a,” frames are an overt mani- festation of the methods developed by narrative poets to adapt the objective mode of description to the subjective needs of narrative. There are many styles of literary frames, with a broad range of functions. Some, like prose prefaces, appear in all prosaic and poetic genres throughout Chinese literary history. Others may be 62 Chinese Narrative Poetry particular to a certain genre. Framing is a structural rather than syntactic feature and, in the case of narrative shih, owes much to both yiieh-fu and personal fu. The framing devices in shih of the Han through T’ang dynasties take many forms. They may be poetic and integrated into the main body of the text, as in “Poem of Affliction” (“Pei-fen shih”), by Ts’ai Yen (discussed in chapter 3). In this poem Ts’ai Yen sketches the precise historical context of the beginning of her adventures in a few terse lines, focusing the larger context of the fall of the Han upon her personal tragedy. Framing devices may be prosaic and separated from the poetic text, as with Po Cht-yi’s prose preface to the “Ballad of the p’i-p’a.” Frames may also form an integral part of the poem, giving the narrator a first-person voice to introduce his own tale. The T’ang poet Shen Ch’tian-ch’i (c. 650— 713) couches his wistful reminiscence of his fall from political favor in the form of a letter to his family in “Response to a Troll: A Letter to My Family” (“Ta chih-mei tai-shu chi chia-jen”). The frame sets the context of the narrator’s speech by describing how, in his exile, he met a troll who inquired just how he came to be in that wild, for- saken place; while the main body of the poem consists of the poet’s frank recital of his travails.” Framing devices may be expository, with an omniscient narrator using the third person. Shih Ch’ung (249-300) uses this approach in his prose preface, then changes to first person in the body of his poem, “Song of Wang Ming-chtin” (“Wang Ming-chiin tz’u”), in which the unlucky consort of a Han emperor relates the misfortunes attendant on her refusal to bribe the court painter to enhance her portrait. Believing the evidence of the homely portrait, the emperor gives Wang Ming-chiin to a Tatar chieftain as part of a treaty settlement, and the lady dies in exile. A frame may present a speaker claiming direct participation in the events to be narrated, as Po Chu-yi does in “Ballad of the p'i-p’a,” or relating events of distant times and places, as he does in “Song of Everlasting Sorrow.” Framing devices at once set the con- text of the experience of the poem and free the poet to explore that experience from any point of view, in any role. However they are used, framing devices serve to maneuver the reader into a position of direct observation of the experience of the poem as determined by the point of view of the narrator. The advantage of the frame is that by incorporating description into a framed passage with a spe- Point of View and Description 63 cific temporal context, a poet may adapt the expressive potential of imagistic language to the subjective mode of narrative without less- ening the intrinsic, objective force of the description. This enforces the sense of vicarious experience typical of narrative and fosters a sense of participation, not so much in the events themselves as in the creation of their memory. The device of the frame integrated directly into the text is famil- iar to us from the tradition of personal fu, which includes prosaic and poetic frames integrated into the tripartite structure frequently seen in Han fu: introduction (hsii), main body, and summation (luan). The centrality of an individual point of view typical of these fu is reinforced by the use of a frame to set a specific context for a personal statement. Chia Yi’s “Owl fu” combines the functions of frame and introduction in a completely integrated verse composi- tion. The frame provides the context for the poet’s “dialogue” with the foreboding owl by precise date and even time of day (lines 1— 11). The main body of the poem, presented as indirect quotation of what the owl would have said if it could speak, is the poet’s self- justifying lament. The summation reveals the true purpose of the frame, for the owl has disappeared and the poet directly presents his own thoughts. Ts’ao Chih’s (192-232) “Lo-shen fu” has a double frame. The first frame consists of a prose preface that sets the context of the poem’s composition, rather than the experience described in the poem. The poetic introduction, with its prose excursion into the driver’s speech imploring his master to describe the goddess (lines 1-28), also functions as a frame for the experience described in the main body of the poem; namely, the noble poet’s fantasy of personal delight and spiritual attainment. Ts’ao Chih closes his frame with an image of his reaction to his own powers of imagination: mounted on horseback, yet hesitating on the riverbank, he seems unable to accept the dissolution of his fantasy." Yu Hsin’s “Lament for the South,” discussed in chapter 1, pro- vides another example of this kind of double, self-referential frame. Yu Hsin’s prose preface gives a condensed version of the destruc- tion of the Liang dynasty from a historical perspective, while his poetic introduction (lines 1-40) functions as a frame personalizing the subject matter of the text. The prose frame thus injects a note of 64 Chinese Narrative Poetry foreboding which pervades the poetry. The frame is again closed in the summation, focusing on the poet alone, speaking in his own voice. The nature of the narrative frame makes it extremely flexible and adaptable as a structuring technique. Some writers may employ several frames in one composition or combine several functions in a single frame. One of the most striking examples of complex frame technique in shih is also, perhaps, the most famous “private” musical entertainment in Chinese poetry. I am referring, of course, to Po Chi-yi’s “Ballad of the p’i-p’a,” written in 816 while the poet was in exile in Hstin-yang.”” This poem has two main frames in the first-person voice of the poet-narrator, the first a prose preface attached to the poem, the second integrated into the body of the poem. Furthermore, within the body proper there is a digression meant to be from the point of view of the musician. In spite of the intricacy of the frame structure, these multiple points of view are explicitly refracted through the mind of the narrator. Even the musician’s tale is given as indirect discourse rather than quoting her own speech. In this Po Chti-yi follows the models of personal fu like Chia Yi’s “Owl fu” and Ts’ao Chih’s “Lo-shen fu’”—and, incidentally, perhaps, introduces the same note of fantasy to the experience.”° In the prose preface the poet provides a synopsis of the events, set in their precise temporal and spatial context. The preface explains the reason for the poet’s susceptibility to the ex- perience: “I became a provincial official and was sent out two years ago. I had been tranquil and at peace with myself, but, affected by the words of this person (the musician), this evening I finally began to feel what it meant to be degraded and banished.” ”! While the catalyst of the event is a dear though anonymous friend, from whom Po Cht-yi is taking a sorrowful leave, the central experi- ence of the poem lies in the profound and unexpected sympathy between the disgraced politician and the forlorn singing-girl. The strong attraction of their two natures lies in the fact that both are artists, lonely and unappreciated in the backwaters below the Yang- tze River. Their disappointments are narrated in simple terms; and, indeed, their situations are actually by no means unusual. What- ever the musician’s degree of talent, what makes her unique is the chance meeting between herself and Po Chii-yi. In the context of Point of View and Description 65 his poem her talent is appreciated as truly exceptional. Po Chu-yi sets her beyond the stock types of aging courtesans, and under her hands even familiar music is magic with fresh emotion. The narrator, who in this case is explicitly identified with the poet, assumes the controlling point of view from the first line to the last. Po Chu-yi manipulates the imagery of landscape and music to reflect his own emotional state. Moreover, the other possible points of view in the poem, those of the departing guest and of the musi- cian, support the centrality of the poet. The prose preface sets out the particularity of the experience, down to precise location, date, and time of day. The first six lines of the poem provide an atmo- spheric setting, describing a melancholy autumn landscape with friends parting on a riverbank. “Suddenly” (line 7) another pres- ence makes itself felt, through the sensuous artifact which is the musician’s identity. The introduction of the musician completely changes the nature of the experience and the original purpose of the poem. Instead of composing a farewell poem to honor his de- parting friend, Po Chii-yi composes the poem which we in fact read, and which in turn describes the circumstances of its own composition. Rather than concentrating on the emotions of friend- ship, the focus turns to the affinity between the two artists in the practice of their art. The introduction of the music which had been so conspicu- ously lacking to the occasion changes the gentlemen’s plans: “I forgot all about going home, and my friend did not set out’ (line 8). The “Ballad of the p’1-p’a” is in three parts, with each part com- prising a tableau of the poet’s consciousness of the significance of the encounter, and each part entailing a shift in point of view. The first part (lines 1-38) is the frame for the musician’s tale, in which the poet describes the night, the musician’s appearance, and her first performance for the company. The astounding personality of the music and the nature of the performance seems to obviate the need for any physical description of the lady herself: She turned the pegs and plucked the strings for several notes, Even before they became a song, they began to reveal her emotion. 66 Chinese Narrative Poetry With every string she pressed or released, each note was full of memories, As if to complain that throughout her life she had never fulfilled her desires .. . The large strings drummed with a noise like the rush of rain, The small strings whispered as if they told a secret, Drumming and whispering mingled in her playing Like big pearls and small pearls pouring into a dish of jade. There was the call of a hidden oriole, rolling out from under the flowers, And the muffled sob of a flowing spring as its water poured down the bank. The water of the spring seemed cold, as if the strings were freezing, Their freezing kept the spring from flowing; the sound gradually choked to a halt. The music ceased in deep melancholy, then hidden griefs came forth, Those moments of silence were more powerful than those with sounds of music. A silver pitcher suddenly broke, the liquid burst out, Armored cavalry rushed forth with the ringing of blades and spears, At the end of the piece she paused with her plectrum, then struck right across the heart; All four strings gave one sound like the tearing of silk. (lines 15-18, 23-36) There is no indication of specific person or particular context in these passages. Taken out of the context of the “Ballad of the p'i-p'a,” we have an extraordinary musical event as evocative and timeless as the themes of farewell, banishment, and personal fail- ure themselves. It is the placement of these descriptive passages in the particularizing context of the narrative poem that makes them appear to function as sources of detail unique to a unique occasion. Read in this manner the passages serve as individuating descrip- tion of the unnamed musician and, furthermore, also illuminate the emotional state of the poet at this particular time. Point of View and Description 67 In the second part (lines 39-62) the lady sets down her instru- ment, lifts her (undescribed) face to the audience, and tells her life story. It is significant that, while the poet clearly introduces another point of view here, he does not do so by direct discourse. Instead, he narrates her story without the use of quotation, which directs attention as much to his strong response to the tale as to the woman as an individual. The musician’s history is not unusual in itself, although Po Cht-yi infuses it with odd, small details: As she grew older, she made a match, to be a merchant’s wife. The merchant valued his profits, and made light of being separated from her— Last month he went out to Fu-liang to buy tea. (lines 56-58) While the figure of the preoccupied husband ignoring the languish- ing wife is conventional, the homely detail of his errand is not and lends verisimilitude to the recital. In a sense the tale as “told” con- tains no personal detail which had not already been revealed in the musical passage quoted above. Since the poet so carefully retains control over the point of view of presentation, however, the fact that the music so perfectly mirrors his state of mind comes as no surprise. The narrator explicitly reveals this in the third tableau in his own voice, by direct quotation, and the revelation of the musi- cian’s complementary experience serves to enhance the narrator’s remarks on his sorrows. In the final tableau (lines 63-88) the poet frankly centers on his own emotions. Instead of detailing his feelings, he “quotes” his own speech to the lady, his own tale of banishment and dis- illusionment. The poet implies that the lady’s skill has uncovered a hidden self-knowledge; the music has finally brought the reality of his exile home to his consciousness. The delight of having such entertainment at hand awakens him to his deprivations, not just of the intellectual delights of the capital, but of emotional communi- cation as well: “In spring on the river are flowery mornings, in autumn are moonlit nights, 68 Chinese Narrative Poetry But any time I go to fetch wine, I must always drink alone. Oh, I’m not without ‘mountain songs’ and ‘village pipes,’ But they do sound uncouth and shrill, and grate on my ears. This evening, when I heard the voice of your p’1-p‘a, It was like hearing immortals’ music, and my ears became clear again. Don’t refuse me! Sit down for a while and play another song, And I will in return compose a ‘Ballad of the p’i-p’a’ for you. (lines 75-80) Hearing her p’i-p’a, the poet has joined the tradition of those who instinctively appreciate the personal worth of another, chih-chi, chih-jen, or most appropriately here, “chih-yin”—“one who under- stands the nature of the music”; that is, one who recognizes and acknowledges a deep affinity with another through artistic, par- ticularly musical expression.” The poet acknowledges this bond by speaking of the similarity of their plights: “We are both lost wan- derers at the ends of the earth; Meeting here, what need have we to have known each other before?” (lines 65—66). In order to make the bond complete the poet must respond in kind, with his own art of poetry. He writes for the lady a song to commemorate the occasion, one that will set her apart forever from other singing-girls. Although Po Chii-yi’s stated intention is to record an extraordi- nary personal experience, there are several possible interpretations of just what this record is meant to represent. On one level “Ballad of the p’i-p’a” is an artifact—a song written by a famous poet for an obscure entertainer. On another level it represents the life of the poet in exile. The story of the lady’s past life leads to her meet- ing and spiritual communion with the poet, both in terms of their actual meeting and the description of this revelation in the poem. The poet’s realization of their affinity and its significance points to the emotional center of the poem. Finally, “Ballad of the p’i-p’a” is a narrative of the creation of the poem itself. The interest of the narrative depends less on action than on the characterization of the musician achieved by the description of her music, her “speech,” which with the emotional interplay between the two artists leads us to an understanding of the poet’s intent. These levels of experi- Point of View and Description 69 ence are controlled by the relation of particularizing frames. The ultimate effect of the narrator’s point of view is to reveal that com- munion with the musician—or the departing guest—is secondary to the poet’s revelation of “what it meant to be degraded and ban- ished.” The guest, the landscape, and the musician’s exquisite per- formance and sad story are manipulated by the narrator to reveal his insight about his own state. The first narrative frame sets the context of a conventional parting poem, but the body of the poem shifts the emotional focus from the one who is free to leave Hstin- yang to the ones who must stay on there. The poet implies that the intensity of the musical experience makes them forget their original purpose. By the end of the poem the departing guest who started it all has simply dropped out of the text. The poet finds a fellow in exile who brings home its meaning to him; but this insight brings him a feeling of utter forlornness: Of those among the company, who wept most of all? I, sub-prefect of Chiang-chou; I soaked my blue sleeve through. (lines 87-88) Po Chi-yi’s autobiographical poem uses framing devices to assert the poet’s authority as narrator, and description to empha- size his perception of the situation and how the audience should receive it.** All the poems discussed above present points of view in the first person. However, this kind of explicit, individual point of view is not just a property of first-person, autobiographical poems like the “Ballad of the p’i-p’a.” Third-person narratives may also employ framing devices in order to incorporate description into a larger narrative, and even to manipulate various points of view in a style which evokes the tradition of the storyteller’s performance. Such a presentation combines the sense of vicarious experience of events with a perspective mediated by the explicit point of view of an omniscient narrator. The framing devices of omniscient narrators are perhaps most familiar from yiieh-fu and the literary works inspired by them. Yiieh- fu often have a performative, or perhaps more accurately, mock- performative context. The most obvious manifestations of this type of yiieh-fu are the omniscient narrators who use the third person, 70 Chinese Narrative Poetry as in “Southeast Fly the Peacocks.”™* Here the narrator sets up the frame with an emblem of the plight of the unhappy lovers, a pea- cock hesitating in its flight because it misses its mate. The burden of the tale is then left to dialogue, with the narrator occasionally stepping in to describe a flood of tears or other external manifes- tations of turbulent inner states. After the suicide of Lan-chih and her husband the narrative provides a reconciliation of sorts: the lovers are buried in the same grave, the trees around them entwine their branches, and faithfully mated pairs of birds make their nests there. In the last couplet the narrator steps out of the frame, directly addresses the reader, and enjoins all to heed the moral of the tale, suggesting, at least here, that the considerations of the romance outweigh the couple’s “unfilial” defiance of their families’ wishes. One explanation for this frame structure is the assumption of performative context; that is, that yiieh-fu were originally intended for oral performance.” The “singer” would have the double task of narrating and of impersonating a cast of characters, which would vary the performance and encourage the audience’s sense of in- volvement. Whether “Southeast Fly the Peacocks” and poems like it were in fact composed in performance, the technique is defi- nitely suited to creating a varied narrative. The narrator must fill in details of nonverbal actions, but the fact that the different characters speak for themselves gives a sense of several individual personali- ties and several points of view. These are all ultimately unified by the omniscient voice of the narrator, who closes the frame with an appropriate moral, bringing down the curtain, as it were, on his performance. These framing techniques were emulated by writers of shih in their third-person narratives. The effects of this kind of narrator’s point of view are perhaps nowhere better demonstrated than in Po Cht-yi’s most famous poem, the “Song of Everlasting Sorrow” (“Ch’ang-hen ko,” 808).° The framing techniques used in this third- person narrative shih evoke the performative context of ytieh-fu, but with a difference. A performative context may have the effect of suggesting to the reader a participation in the experience of hearing a recitation. However, the experience of “hearing” the recitation is deemphasized in a poem like “Song of Everlasting Sorrow.” Here, Point of View and Description 71 the function of the frame is similar to the function of a frame in personal fu: even the context of establishing the frame is separated from the reader’s experience. The poet in the role of narrator as- sumes overt control over all aspects of the reader’s experience, even of “hearing,” and can dislodge the reader from the role of integra- tion into a more active, if more removed role in the experience of the text. Writing in a time of peace fifty years after the An Lu-shan Re- bellion, Po Chti-yi created a world which centers on the doomed love of Emperor Hstian-tsung (684-762, r. 715-55) for his “para- mount” concubine, the notorious Yang Kuei-fei (718-756).” The story is drawn from the T’ang’s most urgent political crisis; how- ever, though a lesson may certainly be taken from the downfall of the emperor who brought the T’ang to its zenith of cultural achievement and prosperity, the poem definitely subordinates the consequences of his folly for the empire at large to the sorrow and ruin he brings upon himself. The narrator elevates the theme of passionate, even eternal love to the position of chief importance. To enforce this point of view Po Chi-yi brings all his descriptive gifts to bear on those aspects of the affair which emphasize the per- sonal tragedy of the actors: the luscious beauty of Yang Kuei-fei, as a woman and later as an immortal; the impotence of the aging emperor in the face of his mutinous troops; his terrible loneliness after the death of his love. While poets living under the reign of the Emperor Hstan-tsung, notably Tu Fu (712-770), lamented and indirectly reproached the emperor for the ravages brought by the rebellion to the general population, Po Chii-yi draws from the same events a legend of transcendent romance.” “Song of Everlasting Sorrow” transforms the story of the emperor and his favorite con- cubine from the most foolhardy intrigue of the century to one of the greatest love stories of China, in spite of the fact that the emperor was sixty years old when he first beheld the languid and fascinat- ing Yang Kuei-fei. Po Chi-yi is able to create a compelling sense of the pathos of the fall of a great ruler into old age, despair, and, above all, loneliness. The descriptive passages and their placement in the poem, however, do intimate the consequences of the actions of the lovers 72 Chinese Narrative Poetry for the empire at large, even while providing a sympathetic per- spective on their romance. In this sense the descriptive passages enhance the suspense which makes the tale so compelling. For in- stance, the narrator invokes in lavish detail the renewal of the old emperor in this romance, creating an “ideal” world waiting to be shattered: Her clouds of hair, her lovely face, her swaying, gold-shod steps, Within hibiscus canopies they passed their spring nights in warmth. The spring nights seemed very short, the sun would rise high; But from that time His Majesty would not attend the early court. They took their pleasure at feasts and entertainments without pause, The spring came, and passed on as night followed night. There were three thousand other beauties in the women’s palace; For him, all their three thousand charms were combined in one body. In the golden room, her toilette complete, she seductively attended him all night, In the jade tower, the feasting finished, she harmonized with spring delights. Her sisters and brothers were all given rank and titles; To the dismay of many, her glory reflected on her family, And so throughout the empire the hearts of mothers and fathers Did not value the birth of a boy, but valued that of a girl. In the upper stories of Li Palace, piercing the blue sky, Fairy music wafted on the wind, to be heard everywhere, Slow-paced songs and languorous dances were played by strings and flutes: Though he gaze all day, His Majesty could not gaze on her enough. Then the war-drums from Yu-yang came, shaking the earth, Point of View and Description 73 Abruptly breaking off the songs of the “Rainbow Skirt” and the “Robe of Feathers.” (lines 13-32) The court and empire of the T’ang are bathed in the rosy glow of the emperor’s delight in one woman. But this ambiance of sen- sual delight hints that all is not well. The proper order of the em- pire is inverted by the centrality of Yang Kuei-fei: with the inner court now his entire realm, the emperor no longer meets his early court or tends to the affairs of state. Night is turned into day, spring never ends, titles and political power are bestowed against the meritocratic principles so sacred to the empire. Even the common people invert their perspective, wishing for lucky girls to make a man in his autumn years feel springtime come again, rather than for boys to carry on their family lines. Then, in only two lines (31- 32), the illusion dissolves: the sound of war drums stops the gentler music of the emperor's fantasy world. After the death of the concubine and the emperor’s return from exile, the sense of the passage of time returns with a vengeance: In the spring wind the peaches and plums blossomed with the days, In the autumn rains the wu-t’ung trees shed their leaves in season. The West Palace and the Southern Enclosure were full of autumn grasses, Falling leaves covered the stairs with red, and were not swept away. The attendants of the Pear Garden, had newly whitened hair, The Pepper House eunuchs’ young eyebrows began to show their age. Fireflies flew in the evening halls; he thought quietly of her, The wick in his lonely lamp burnt out, and yet he would not sleep. Slowly, slowly, the bells and drums began each long night, Brighter, brighter the Milky Way, urging the sky to dawn. The roof-tile mandarin ducks were cold, the frost was bright and thick, 74 Chinese Narrative Poetry His kingfisher-feather covers were cold, for who was to be with him? His thoughts were on the distance between life and death, year after year without end, But her spirit would not return, or come to enter his dreams. (lines 61-74) Every aspect of the emperor's surroundings reflects his own sense of loss and his awakened awareness of his helpless old age. The dream of love dissolved, he is appalled by the realities of aging, ruin, and decay, and finds that no sleep can return him to the pre- cious dream. His inverted world of pleasure has been reinverted, and the pain and passage of time is excruciating as his environment reminds him of the past and reproaches him with it. The two descriptive passages quoted above are absorbing in themselves, but in terms of the narrative as a whole they provide more than images of unconditional enjoyment and cold and lonely old age. Each reflects on the context of its presentation in the narra- tive. The description of the world of pleasure is not concrete; with a pleasing progression of conventional hyperboles, the poet lures the reader into the fantasy of the romance. At the same time, however, the passage creates tension, and the expectation of the end of the idyll grows as each pleasure is detailed. The chilled world of the bereaved emperor similarly anticipates some kind of resolution, in this case the tenuous communication between the spirit of the lady and her lover through the medium of a Taoist adept. In both cases the narrator manipulates the sympathies of the reader through the use of description. The passages provide an intimate perspective which enhances the story of the lovers and ab- solves them from the consequences of their actions except as they affect their own lives. For the narrator this is tragedy enough, as he speaks in his own voice for the final comment: “Heaven endures, earth’s span is long, but sometime both will end / This sorrow everlasting will go on forever” (lines 119-20). While the emperor’s actions cannot be condoned, the poet carefully refrains from actu- ally condemning him, even if the empire is turned upside down by his inverted sense of priorities. The narrator’s point of view causes the events to be seen from the perspective of the doomed lovers Point of View and Description 75 rather than in the larger context of historical events. Po Chi-yi cre- ates in the context of the poem a world in which the lovers ironically bring about their own ruin, and this world effectively substitutes for the empire in a dark and unsentimental period of Chinese his- tory. Po Chu-yi’s participation as narrator in this text evokes the style of yieh-fu narrators but, again, he does not relinquish the con- trol of his point of view to any other speaker in the context of the poem. The third-person narrator plunges straight into the romance and only emerges explicitly in the final couplet, to lament the sad fate of the emperor and his lady and point to the artifact he has cre- ated to ensure that his interpretation of their story will bring them immortality. I have concentrated my analysis on Po Chii-yi’s two classic nar- ratives to show that a single poet can easily adopt more than one approach to the manipulation of description for narrative expres- sion. These poems are praised at least as much for passages such as the ones quoted above as for any plot or story. Yet the essen- tially vicarious nature of the experience for the reader stands, and is reexperienced with each reading. Set in a temporally or spatially specific context, description invokes the particularity so important to narrative experience and: reveals the areas of emphasis in the mind of the poet. Framing and description strengthen the effectiveness of a controlling point of view, either by reflecting directly on its source or by presenting details of subject matter that enhance the narrator’s interpretation of events. In short, framing and description as manipulated by the narrator help to maneuver the reader into a position to see and understand what the narrator sees and understands, without the illusion of integration. These features, however, do not in themselves define narra- tive as compared to lyric modes. Potentially ambiguous techniques, including point of view, are sometimes used deliberately to encour- age a sense of personal participation in events, while at the same time indicating the reader’s separation from the events of the text in the contemporary context. In poems of this type explicit points of view may seem to set specific contexts, but if a temporal or a detailed physical setting is not firmly established, the poetic expres- 76 Chinese Narrative Poetry sion may detach from an apparently specific context and impart instead a universal one. This is frequently the case with poetry that conveys political criticism. The technique of universalizing point of view combines with the tradition of allusion in shih to create extremely forceful documents of protest. By invoking through allusion a vision of the past which is based on the poet’s present, the universalizing point of view conveys the impact of the specific context while at the same time preserving, however tenuously, the poet’s margin of safety from charges of subversion and lése-majesté.” Tu Fu, for instance, was inspired by the devastation caused by the An Lu-shan Rebel- lion to compose many critical poems and protest ballads. In “La- ment at the Riverside” (“Ai Chiang-t’ou”’), written in 757 (soon after Yang Kuei-fei met her death), Tu Fu meditates on the utter desola- tion of the imperial city in the grip of rebellion. Although the poet is standing in the ruins of the T’ang imperial park, he deliberately sets the carefree scenes of former times in the reign of Han Ch’eng- ti (r. 32-7 B.c.) and compares the life and death of “the first lady of the Chao-yang Palace” (line 7) to the former splendor of Ch’ang-an and its present ruin. While the poet seems to relate the separation of the lovers (“The one who has gone and the one who remains cannot exchange their tidings,” line 16), he may also be referring to his own separation from the court he wishes to serve and to that court’s exile from its proper place in the capital. The poem creates a chilling impression of a land disrupted by war without ever ex- plicitly stating the poem’s reference to the An Lu-shan Rebellion. Tu Fu provides a speaker with a controlling point of view, yet the ambiguity of the context of the experience makes the mode of ex- pression finally more objective than subjective, transcending the particular context in favor of a universalized vision of the disaster of civil war.*° Even when a point of view is specified, the context of its iden- tification can defy particularity and so make the mode of expres- sion ambiguous. Tu Fu’s series of six poems, “Three Conscripting Officers” (“San li”) and “Three Partings” (“San pieh”), written in 759, presents six different points of view on the themes of the hor- rors of war and the sorrows of parting, which combine to describe poignantly a time when all partings seem to foreshadow useless Point of View and Description 77 deaths. The poems are not linked by a temporal sequence, or even a specified context; however, as a group the poems implicitly rep- resent all members of society affected by the An Lu-shan Rebel- lion. In “The Conscripting Officer at Shih-hao” (“Shih-hao li”) the poet actually participates as an eyewitness observer of events and presents the actors explicitly, even to the point of quoting their speech: I heard the old woman go forward and speak to him, “My three sons were in the garrison at Yeh. One son sent a letter which arrived here: Two sons have just been killed in the fighting, The survivor still for the time being hangs on to his own life, But the dead ones are already gone for good .. .” (lines 7-12)* While the poet does not identify himself by the use of a per- sonal pronoun, he presents the confrontation between the officer and the old woman, whom he refers to as “the wife” (fu) and who refers to herself as “the old woman” (lao fu), from his point of view as witness to the incident. What he overhears is an eloquent protest from the old woman, who confronts the conscripting officer directly to protect her husband. The bitterness of her losses pours out—two sons gone, no hope for the third, a grandson at the breast not likely to survive if the mother is taken to serve the troops. She ironically offers her services to the men of the garrison, and it seems that this offer is accepted, for when the traveler resumes his journey in the morning only the old man is left in the house, “alone” (tu, line 24). The “Three Partings” consist of monologues spoken by three victims of the war around them: a new bride, an old man, and an orphan, who has returned from military service to find his family gone and his village destroyed. The poet is not present as an im- plied observer or questioner. In “The Parting of the New Bride” (“Hsin-hun pieh”), the bride’s situation is full of contradictions based on the systematic disappointment of all her expectations of mar- riage: For a maiden to marry a soldier Is worse than being cast away by the roadside! 78 Chinese Narrative Poetry I put up my hair and became a “wife,” But the marriage bed has not been warmed . . . I sigh to be the daughter of a poor family; A long time I spent making these silk clothes, Silk clothes which I will never wear again, And for your sake I must wash off my cosmetics. I look up and see birds by the hundred flying, Large ones and small, yet they always fly in pairs. Human affairs are mostly at cross-purposes; With you I share our eternal longing for each other. (lines 3-6, 25-32)? The paradoxes of the young woman’s position seem bound to have tragic consequences. Married and abandoned, but not repu- diated, the bride cannot return to her own family, but with the marriage unconsummated she cannot yet present herself to her husband’s household. The poignancy of her isolation is empha- sized as she addresses her absent husband directly (lines 9, 17, 19, 32). Her only concrete experience of marriage is her longing for her departed husband, and all the trappings of joyful domesticity must be set aside in favor of an untimely widowhood. In the final quatrain she laments that the human world is out of joint with the natural world, which seems to mock her isolation. There is a great temptation to interpret “Three Conscripting Officers” and “Three Partings” together, although they are not linked by the kinds of temporal and syntactic elements that usually define poem sequences (see chapter 4). These poems are linked by a universalized context of adversity, joining the people portrayed in them in a universal human family in a world at war. Though the poems might seem to be linked by complementary family relation- ships, the “implied” relationships are in fact the reader’s intuitive impression of the connections between these laments. All of these people are affected by the same forces, which overwhelm their per- sonal individuality. Tu Fu underlines the pathos of the perversion of social values in times of war, especially when the victims, such as the old woman and the young bride, speak out, deploring and yet accepting their fates. The presentation of the depredations of war from the six points of view in the series ultimately has the effect of emphasizing their sameness rather than their diversity. Point of View and Description 79 In terms of the role of point of view, “Lament at the River- side,” “Three Conscripting Officers,” and “Three Partings” seem to partake of both lyrical and narrative tendencies as discussed in this chapter. Tu Fu exercises his controlling point of view to create a sense of disjunction between the reader and the events, encour- aging the reader to sympathize with the situations described in the poems. At the same time the precise context of the events is delib- erately ambiguous. There is no detailed description or precise his- torical reference to anchor the events in a context clearly removed from the contemporary one. The reader is drawn into a sense of indirect participation, rather like the observer in “The Conscripting Officer at Shih-hao.” While the points of view invoking this ambiguity may be quite explicit, a sense of particular contexts and individual personalities of the speakers or participants is conspicuously lacking. For this the complementary techniques of framing and description must provide particularizing detail that illuminates the individuality of these contexts and personalities; namely, details of character. These poems by Tu Fu demonstrate how the universalization of point of view reduces the sense of specific context conveyed by the poem, causing the devices of framing and description to inspire integra- tion with the experience of the text, rather than separation from it. The intent of the poet is to inspire horror of a particular war, but the restrictions and conventions governing political protest in literature obliged him to express this intent in objective rather than subjective terms. Description in the subjective mode is the basis of characterization, and in the chapter that follows we will see how this feature is relevant not just to the evocation and creation of personalities, but to the creation of narrative contexts in their own right. 3 Character Types and Character Roles Characterization in Chinese narrative poetry depends on the tech- niques that make points of view explicit in a text and that give these points of view individual identity. Furthermore, once the vicarious nature of the experience is established, the interpretative conven- tion of understanding a poet’s personality through a poem may be applied to the development of a sense of the individuality of the various speakers and/or actors in a text. In other words, when a narrator explicitly exercises a controlling point of view, the reader quite naturally relates the experiences described in the text to that narrator, speaker, or actor, rather than directly to the personality of the poet. This mode of characterization, relying primarily on direct discourse and description, is a logical outgrowth of the particular- izing tendencies of point of view discussed in chapter 2. Indeed, it may be considered an extension of these tendencies to their logical culmination. This is perfectly consistent with the general emphasis in Chi- Character Types and Character Roles 81 nese narrative on revealing the essential quality of a hero or heroine rather than portraying such figures in a process of growth.’ Chi- nese techniques of characterization also reflect the differences in approach to the representation of human reality in narrative from the expectations of European traditions. The basic distinctions in approach have been described in terms of “types” and “individu- als” as characters. “Types” are seen as formed more in the mold of exemplar, while “individuals” are more mimetic.* Chinese princi- ples of characterization have been described as emphasizing type over individuality, thus denigrating the Chinese tradition. Andrew H. Plaks points out that, at least in the case of prose fiction, “the whole question of individuals and types, of course, is generally raised with the purpose of leveling at the Chinese narrative texts the accusation of failing to present fully rounded individuals.”? In his discussion of characterization Plaks develops the notion that the concepts of “unique individual” and “stereotype” are not mutually exclusive; indeed, it is the interplay between individuality and rec- ognizable type in a given role that creates a character in narrative.’ While prose fiction may present more complex characters, if only because of the far greater length of the narratives involved, the techniques of characterization in narrative poetry reflect these same principles, even in the more compressed form of shih. The concomi- tant abridgment of character development in the text, however, does not emphasize type to the exclusion of individuality, or vice versa. Rather, techniques of characterization in narrative poetry ex- ploit the tension between these two aspects of the perception and presentation of character to compensate for the relative brevity of the narrative. The properties of Chinese poetic language that form the idioms of narrative shih determine the nature of characteriza- tion and character development both in terms of the conventions of reading and the conception of character in narrative. The shift from a lyrical persona, with ultimate reference to the poet, to a narrator not necessarily identified with the poet is an essential feature of characterization here. Recognition of the nature and importance of archetypes in narrative poetry allows us to appreciate how the tech- niques employed affect our perceptions of character, and even to apply these principles to the more complex characters of extended prose narrative.° 82 Chinese Narrative Poetry A narrative archetype in poetry may be considered in terms of two complementary parts: an individual with distinctive traits who comes to represent a particular character “type” (often, in fact, identified as the original individual, by the same name), and the events and experiences with which that figure is associated—the character “role.”® A germinal archetype combines both type and role, but these need not occur together in later uses. In the case of the adaptation of a particular character type, like Ch’U Yuan or the courageous warrior maiden Mu-lan, who disguised herself as a man in order to save her father from military service,’ the composi- tion usually undertakes to retell the original story with the original character, though there may be some topical modifications, as in a T’ang adaptation of the type of the Han poet Ts’ai Yen. In the case of character roles, individuals are defined in terms of their ex- perience, as the unnamed fisherman who remonstrated with the despondent Ch’t: Yuan on the banks of the Mi-lo River,’ or the fisherman who blundered into the land of Peach Blossom Spring. These roles may be adapted to new individuals in order to enhance their topical significance, while still alluding to the original arche- type. In the autobiographical “Ballad of the p’i-p’a,” for instance, Po Chu-yi styles for himself, or at least for his narrator, the role of the insightful Chung Tzu-ch’i, while the p’7-p’a musician stands in the role of the lutenist Po Ya. Po Chii-yi revitalizes the generalized role of chih-chi by reassociating it with thoroughly up-to-date music and applying the role to his position as artist and government official in exile.’ The life of an archetypal character in the evolution of narra- tive shih can be demonstrated by a selection of poems based on the story of the late Han poet, Ts’ai Yen (late second—early third cen- tury), also known as Ts’ai Wen-chi. The historical Ts’ai Yen was the daughter of the eminent poet and statesman Ts’ai Yung (133-192), who died in prison after his associate, the frontier general Tung Cho (d. 192), rebelled against the central government. After the deaths of her father and her first husband, Ts’ai Yen was caught in the upheavals of the Tung Cho Rebellion; in 192 she was cap- tured by a raiding party of barbarian mercenaries, who carried her off to become the wife of a chieftain of the Southern Hsiung-nu. When this chieftain died she was married again, to his son by a Character Types and Character Roles 83 previous marriage. Ts’ai Yen bore her husbands-in-exile two sons and lived among the Hsiung-nu until about 206, when she was ransomed by Ts’ao Ts’ao (155-220), who had finally succeeded in establishing control over the floundering Han court. Ts’ai Yen was escorted back to China, but was forced to leave her children be- hind with the nomads. When she returned to the court Ts’ao Ts’ao gave her a fourth husband, the statesman Tung Ssu. Although her clan, of which Ts’ai Yen found herself to be the sole survivor, had been restored to its official status by Ts’ao Ts’ao, the lady was ostra- cized at court because of her family connections and her multiple marriages, considered shameful by the Chinese aristocracy. This was not the end of her troubles, as recorded in her biog- raphy in the Hou Han Shu, “Biography of the Wife of Tung Ssu” (“Tung Ssu chi chuan’”).! Eventually Tung Ssu offended Ts’ao Ts’ao and was condemned to death. His wife, fully aware of her noto- riety, challenged Ts’ao Ts’ao’s decree before the court and asked him if he would provide her with yet a fifth husband. Tung Ssu was spared. Ts’ai Yen’s identification as “the wife of Tung Ssu” in her official biography would seem to suggest that this incident defined the historical figure for later generations, but in fact the power of the lady’s plea for her husband rested on the known facts of her long exile and political victimization. The biography, com- piled between 424 and 445, includes the poem in five-character-line shih meter on which the narrative archetype was based, “Poem of Affliction” (“Pei-fen shih”). A second poem, of the same title and subject matter but written in sao meter is also included, but it never enjoyed the popularity of the poem in shih meter. There is much debate over the authenticity of Ts’ai Yen’s authorship, but there is no doubt that this poem is the first presen- tation of one of the most powerful archetypes of exile, political up- heaval, and personal alienation in Chinese narrative poetry.’ More- over, the techniques of characterization employed by the author of “Poem of Affliction” are typical of narrative shih from the time of its composition until at least the end of the T’ang dynasty. For the purposes of this discussion of characterization, the final iden- tity of the author of the poem is not crucial. The author certainly intended the work to function as an “autobiographical” narrative, identifying a particular context and set of experiences which be- 84 Chinese Narrative Poetry came inextricably identified with the historical figure of Ts’ai Yen. “Poem of Affliction” is all in the first-person voice of the lady nar- rating her experiences as she was captured by barbarians, lived in exile among the nomads of the northwest, and finally returned to her home. The narrator represents Ts’ai Yen herself, and the lament is one of the longest five-character shih in which the narrative is sus- tained throughout by a single voice. The style of narration follows a typical pattern for characters in narrative shih; namely, the narra- tor focuses on the unique qualities of a particular experience more than on her own participation in that experience.’ The events are related in chronological order and, like Po Chii-yi’s “Ballad of the p'i-p’a,” from the point of view of the poet looking back on an ex- perience of which she is the center, if not precisely the catalyst. The narrator’s point of view is therefore affected by her hindsight on the significance of this experience as a whole, and, given the per- suasive power of the narrator’s voice, the hindsight in turn shapes and reinforces the reader’s sense of the veracity of the experience.” Like the personal fu evoked by comparable experiences of exile and alienation, “Poem of Affliction” may be divided into three main sections, each corresponding physically and emotionally to a dis- tinct stage in Ts’ai Yen’s experience. The first part (lines 1-40) gives the background of the mercenary raid in which the lady is cap- tured, first presenting the matter of central political importance, the fact that a trusted general raised his hand against his emperor: In the later phases of the Han, when it lost hold of its power, Tung Cho rebelled against the abiding principles of Heaven: He had a perverted ambition to usurp his ruler’s place, But first he murdered all the worthy men and the wise and noble lords. He forced a migration to the old imperial capital, He got control of his lord and exploited him to make himself strong. (lines 1-6) 4 Tung Cho upsets the equilibrium of the empire by seizing the emperor, and the resulting demoralization and terror make it im- possible for the Chinese troops loyal to the Han to resist the mer- cenaries of the Hu and Chiang tribes employed by the rebels (line Character Types and Character Roles 85 12), who take this opportunity to pillage the countryside. Ts’ai Yen is captured during such a raid: They surrounded the cities as if they were hunters in the fields, And where they struck, there wasn’t a thing left alive. They killed people wherever they turned until no one was left, Corpses and dry bones propped each other up. On their horses’ sides they suspended the heads of the men, Behind them on their horses’ backs they carried off the women. (lines 13-18) If all were well in the empire these “hunters in the fields” would be the kind celebrated in the great hunt fu, which embody the court image of the Han. As it is, all of the known and sup- posedly invincible patterns of order have been disrupted. The de- scription of the prisoners’ march out of China (lines 19-40) re- flects the lady’s sense of total deracination, terror, and exhaustion. Her past life is violently obscured: “I gazed back into the dark and blurry distance” (line 21). The mass confusion of the captives mirrors the narrator’s inner hysteria in such an alien context. The Hsiung-nu warriors are portrayed as brutal and easily moved to violence, embodying the worst fears of an aristocratic Chinese in a foreign and uncouth environment: Although those they had captured numbered tens of thousands, We were not allowed to camp or meet together. There were times when we might be near our next of kin, But though we wished to speak, we dared not say a word. If they felt displeased at the least little thing They’d bark out, “Kill the captives! Anyone who holds back his blade Will not be left alive.” How could we even wish to go on living? We could not endure their cursing; Sometimes they would just pick up and start beating us 86 Chinese Narrative Poetry So bitterness and pain were mixed as the blows came down. By day we wailed and cried as we trudged along, By night we grieved and groaned as we sat down. If we wished to die, we were unable to manage it; If we wished to live, we were hardly able to do that, either. (lines 23-38) In the second section (lines 41-80) Ts’ai Yen shifts the imagery of her mental state from the mass of suffering captives to the cold and threatening landscape of her new home. She is literally devas- tated when confronted by the “frontier wastes”: The frontier wastes are not at all like China, The customs have little righteousness or order. Everywhere there is plenty of frost and snow And the nomads’ wind begins to blow in spring and summer. Whipping up, the wind whistled through my clothes, Wailing, it entered my ears... (lines 41-46) Once settled in the nomadic way of life, Ts‘ai Yen’s emotional life focuses on longing for home and hoping for news from China. Her perspective on the world has become inverted because of her location in exile: “When a traveler came from the outside world / I always felt happy to hear of it” (lines 49-50, italics mine). The use of the word “outside” (wai) is ironic because in her own terms it is she who is “outside” among the barbarians, while the travelers she so eagerly awaits have come from “inside,” from China. It is not until Ts’ai Yen finally is ransomed that she offers any details of her personal life among the nomads. Though she longed for home, the lady in exile did establish strong domestic ties within her strange environment, and these ties change the happiness of her release to a tragedy of separation: Unexpectedly, my wishes for help were finally granted, An envoy from my family came to take me home. But though I was able to have myself released, When I returned, I still had to abandon my sons. There were natural ties which bound our hearts together, Character Types and Character Roles 87 I brooded that I would be parted from them, without hope of meeting again. In life or death we would always be separated, And I could not bear to take my leave of them. My children came forward and hung around my neck, Crying, “Mother, where are you going? They say you have to go away, But how will we ever be reunited? Mother, you have always been so loving, so indulgent, How can you now be so unkind to us? We have not yet grown to manhood, How could you not look back and long for us?” To see them this way crushed my very vitals, Distressed as I was, I became as one demented. Wailing and crying, hands clutching, caressing, As I was about to go, I turned back yet again. (lines 53-72) The pathos of the scene and the lady’s anguish are strength- ened by the direct quotation—the only passage that can be so in- terpreted in the poem—of her sons’ entreaties (lines 62-68). The children reveal new facets of Ts’ai Yen’s character. She is repre- sented by them as a tender and loving mother, with a genuine attachment for her nomad family which clearly transcends any cul- tural barrier. This scene destroys any sense of relief at Ts’ai Yen’s redemption. She is a woman without any free or happy choices, with no prospects for fulfillment. As she departs, her surroundings now reflect this new awareness: everyone weeps and wails, and even the horses hesitate to leave the nomad camp behind (lines 73-80). In the third section (lines 81-108) Ts’ai Yen’s thoughts on her return are filled with her children, paralleling her brooding on her own parents while adjusting to life in the lands of the nomads (lines 47-48): Go, Go! My lingering ties were cut. Marching fast, as days rolled by we were farther and farther away; 88 Chinese Narrative Poetry With the vastness of three thousand li between us, When would I again meet with those I loved? (lines 81-84) When she returns to her old home she discovers a wilderness of desolation even more chilling than the frontier. Here the barren landscape again reflects the narrator’s emotional state, facing the cruelest blow she has yet endured: When I arrived, my family was all gone; Again I was without even a distant relative. The city walls had become a mountain forest, The courtyards and pavilions sprouted brambles, There were white bones of who knows whom In all directions with no one to cover them up; I went outside the gates, but not a human sound— Just the wolves howling and yelping; Desolate, I faced my orphan shadow; Grief and anger swelled in my entrails. (lines 87-96) While she continues to live, she regards her life as a burden, only maintained out of her sense of consideration for those who have acted kindly toward her (lines 99-100) and her new husband (lines 103-4). The extirpation of her clan and home village, how- ever, suggests that at least in her own eyes she is a woman without a future precisely because her past has been destroyed. Her life seems all bitter paradox, all actions and consequences leading to shame and grief, but not death: My homeless life completes my suffering; My constant fear is to be cast off again. How long can one person’s life endure? I shall harbor my grief to the very end of my days! (lines 105-8) In historical terms Ts’ai Yen was an unfortunate victim of war and politics. From the point of view of the narrator of “Poem of Affliction” she is a person whose life is full of dilemmas whose outcome inevitably is determined by outside forces over which she Character Types and Character Roles 89 has no control. Her role in all the choices concerning her fate is passive. This is reflected by the emphasis on the consequences of the “choices” made for the lady rather than the choices themselves, and by her emphasis on her inner state rather than her actions. Because Ts’ai Yen’s role is passive, the interest in her character is in her responses to her situation and emotional conflicts. Moments of indecision or inability to act are due to her inability to recon- cile herself to the inevitable, or perhaps more correctly, to her utter helplessness. One of the strongest emotions conveyed is her frus- tration with the impersonality of the forces, however violent, which cause her displacement, alienation, and grief. While the narrator’s many explicit statements of her misery may seem melodramatic, in the light of her complete frustration and emotional isolation they find some justification. Her fear when she falls into the hands of the barbarian rebels, her psychological and physical estrangement in a foreign land, and her love for her children and frantic despair over their enforced separation all evoke a sympathetic response, not only to her plight but to her as an in- dividual. Ts’ai Yen’s final return to China, to be faced with a scene even grimmer than the northwestern wastelands, is especially pa- thetic because the confrontation with the desolation of her home is a final blow to her spirit. From this supposedly autobiographical narrative emerges a powerful character who commands personal respect. Although Ts’ai Yen’s endurance of the events detailed in the poem is passive, it finds active expression in the personal nar- rative itself. The fact that her individuality survives all her suffering reveals a gritty dignity and even defiance which effectively estab- lishes a new archetype for a situation which at the time of writing was itself new—the fall of a great dynasty. The narrative archetype of Ts’ai Yen has endured in several forms and through many transformations. Some of these have taken on lives of their own which may seem at first glance quite removed from the late Han original. The poem sequence attributed to Ts’ai Yen herself, “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute” (“Hu-chia shih-pa p’ai’), is at least as influential in the transmission of Ts’ai Yen’s archetype as “Poem of Affliction.”* The transmission of the Ts’ai Yen type—that is, the individual identified as Ts’ai Yen herself, 90 Chinese Narrative Poetry as distinct from the set of experiences and responses originally associated with her—was profoundly affected in the T’ang dynasty by a new version of the “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute,” by Liu Shang (fl. 770-73).’° On the other hand, Ts’ai Yen’s character role—the experiences originally associated with her life that could be adapted without direct reference to the historical figure of Ts’ai Yen—was preserved in narrative poems about other exiles, notably the Han noblewoman Wang Chao-chiin (first century B.c.) and the unnamed lady from the capital city in Wei Chuang’s “Song of the Lady of Ch’in.” Let us first turn to the transformation of the character type, that is the figure of Ts’ai Yen herself, that took place in the hands of Liu Shang. Liu Shang was active in a period known to liter- ary historians as the mid-T’ang, roughly 766-835, a period which also includes the work of some of the most popular and influential writers in Chinese literature, such as Po Chti-yi and Han Yu.” The pervasive influence of the mid-T’ang on later artistic creation has rather obscured the fact that poems such as Liu Shang’s are anoma- lies in the T’ang as a whole. The distinctive themes of mid-T’ang narrative poetry seem to be in part responses to the shock of the An Lu-shan Rebellion and its aftermath, and perhaps to a lesser degree to the weight of the brilliance of the poetry and culture of the High T’ang, particularly under the reign of Emperor Hsuan- tsung (r. 715-55). The trends most apparent in Liu Shang’s work are the rise in emphasis on explicit didactic purpose in poetry and poetic criticism and, more important for our understanding of the evolution of the narrative archetype of Ts’ai Yen, the focus in didac- tic purpose on revising history, a tendency conspicuously lacking in the Chinese tradition in general. Liu Shang’s “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute” is perhaps the most influential of the mid-T’ang’s sudden flurry of “new” versions of old topics, now reworked to soften the impact of their grim subject matter. Liu Shang followed this sentimental aesthetic in his version of Ts’ai Yen’s story, and in doing so erased the central moral and historical issues of his model. Liu Shang’s sequence follows the events as presented in “Poem of Affliction” and the original sequence quite faithfully until the final poem: Character Types and Character Roles 91 When I returned to my old home, I met with my kinfolk; The fields and gardens were gone half wild, but the spring grass was bright green. Bright candles again were burning from among the rubble and ashes, In the cold spring I washed again, a jade piece sunk in mud; As I put on my headcloth and comb, I felt how good our rituals are— Once I plucked my silk-stringed, t’ung-wood lute, I could have died content. Since I went out through the passes, it has been twelve years: My sorrows are all set down in these “Songs of a Nomad Flute.” (poem 18) Compare this bland finale with the earlier description of Ts’ai Yen’s return to her home village. In “Poem of Affliction” any joy of returning from exile is undercut by the fact that the lady’s children were left in the steppe and her home, upon her return, has literally been transformed into a howling desert. Liu Shang’s treatment of the story indicates a willingness not only to avoid painful subject matter in art but even to subvert events and personalities to “in- spirational” ends. The emotional endurance and essential identity of the narrator of “Poem of Affliction” and the original “Eighteen Songs” has been sacrificed. In those poems Ts’ai Yen embodied the sensitive individual denied control over her own fate through violence, the crisis of the Chinese in exile with cultural superiority no longer taken for granted, and the emotional trauma of witness- ing a hitherto “invincible” political system come down like a house of cards. Liu Shang’s Lady Wen-chi has become merely a help- less female whose terror and hardship are soothed by an apparent restoration of everything deprived her while she was in exile. Liu Shang’s smug affirmation of the power of Chinese culture trans- formed the late Han type of Ts’ai Yen, and at this point in its literary evolution the figure of Ts’ai Yen as an individual (the character type) was decisively separated from the issues and events which inspired the original poems. Liu Shang’s version, with its happy ending, was the inspira- 92 Chinese Narrative Poetry tion for many later poets, and also became the subject and even the text for a number of paintings, particularly narrative handscrolls.” The Sung poet and statesman Wang An-shih (1021-86) wrote a poem sequence entitled “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute” in which the figure of Ts’ai Yen corresponds to the type as presented by Liu Shang rather than to the tougher-minded original.” The happy ending of the story and the refurbished type of the protago- nist gained new significance under the first emperor of the South- ern Sung, Kao-tsung (r. 1127-61). Before his consolidation of the Southern Sung, Kao-tsung himself had been a hostage of the Chin Tatars, along with his wives, his father (the emperor Hui-tsung [r. 1101—26]), and his brother, Ch’in-tsung (r. 1126). Kao-tsung was the only one of these to return to China. When Kao-tsung’s mother was finally returned to China in 1142, the endurance of the happy ending was ensured in the tradition, in painting and poetry.”° The grimmer archetype of Ts’ai Yen established in “Poem of Affliction” survived in the character role, which was adapted to the cases of other women either to give depth to historical figures such as the Han noblewoman Wang Chao-chun, or to address con- temporary issues, particularly the impact of political instability and war on innocent civilians—or at least innocent aristocratic civilians. While the background of the historical Wang Chao-chitin is quite different from Ts’ai Yen’s, two crucial similarities encouraged poets to borrow from Ts’ai Yen’s imagery and characterization to achieve the desired effects. Like Ts’ai Yen, Wang Chao-chtin was forced to marty a barbarian chieftain and live among the nomads far from her homeland; and Wang Chao-chun was also a helpless and circum- stantial victim of a diplomatic crisis, though not a victim of war and the kind of violence associated with Ts’ai Yen. Within these broad correspondences the details of Wang Chao-chtin’s background and experience make her a distinctive character. Wang Chao-chun (also known as Wang Ming-chtin) was an obscure concubine of the em- peror Han Yuan-ti (r. 48-32 B.c.). The legend states that the ladies of his household were so numerous that the emperor commis- sioned a painter to make portraits of all of them so that he might better allocate his attentions among them. The painter deliberately painted an unflattering portrait of Wang Chao-chtin because she refused to bribe him to improve on her beauty. When the chief Character Types and Character Roles 93 of the Hsiung-nu requested a royal bride from China as part of a pacification treaty, the emperor selected her because of the homely portrait. The lady was then discovered to be, of course, the loveli- est of the concubines, but while the emperor regretted his choice he was obliged to stick by his bargain. Like Ts’ai Yen, whose reputation as a literary archetype rests on two crises in her life—her experiences in exile and her chal- lenge to Ts’ao Ts’ao’s condemnation of Tung Ssu—which tend to be treated as independent of one another, the reputation of Wang Chao-chun rests on either the lady’s defiance of the portrait painter and the emperor’s poignant realization of lost romance or on the tragedy of the Chinese lady languishing, however luxuriously, in barbarian captivity.”1 The Chin courtier and wealthy racketeer Shih Ch’ung (249-300) concentrated on the theme of exile—the sense of isolation, estrangement, and despair of the Chinese aristocrat— in his narrative poem “Song of Wang Ming-chiin.”” Shih Ch’ung ignored the romantic possibilities of the circumstances under which the lady was chosen, and even the incident of the painter, in favor of the calamity of her fate, her helplessness, and her total alienation from her new environment. In his prose preface he also outlines the circumstances under which such a narrative would have been written, and in describing them explains his own source of inspi- ration: When the Hsiung-nu were flourishing, they asked the Chinese emperor Han Yuan-ti for a bride. In the Inner Palace there was a girl of good family called Ming-chiin, and she was given to them in marriage in order to cement the treaty. On a previous occasion, when a woman had been given to the Wu-sun tribe, a p'i-p’a musician accompanied her on horseback, playing music in order to alleviate her feelings of homesickness. When they sent Ming-chun into exile, this must [also] have been the case, for she composed a song full of sounds of sadness. I have subsequently composed one like it.” Shih Ch’ung’s Wang Ming-chtin evokes the role of Ts’ai Yen in events and emotions, with some modifications because she is an unwilling bride given by treaty rather than snatched by force during a rebellion. Wang Ming-chiin’s fright, alienation, and frus- 94 Chinese Narrative Poetry tration about the value of her life of shame remind us of Ts’ai Yen’s emotions in exile: My misery wounded me to the very vitals, My tears soaked my vermilion tassels .. . I could never feel at home with folk of such different kind, No matter how much honor I had, for me there was no glory in it (lines 7-8, 13-14) Several images in this poem echo those associated with Ts’ai Yen. The drawn-out farewells, down to the horses’ apparent sym- pathy with Wang Chao-chtin’s reluctance to leave China (lines 3- 6) remind us of Ts’ai Yen’s departure from the steppe, when she was taking leave of her children (“Poem of Affliction,” lines 73-80). Overwhelmed by terror and strangeness, neither lady can decide whether death is preferable to life among the nomads (“Song of Wang Ming-chiin,” lines 17-20; “Poem of Affliction,” lines 37-38; “Eighteen Songs,” poem 2). Wang Chao-chtin watches the flight of the wild geese in order to tell the passing of the seasons and imagines communication with home, as Ts’ai Yen does in poem 9 of “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute.” In contrast to Ts’ai Yen, the story of Wang Chao-chtn ends, geographically, in exile—she is said to have committed suicide when she was told after her hus- band’s death that she would be married to her husband's son, an ordeal which Ts’ai Yen survived. Wang Chao-chun’s lament ends with her longing for death and her desire to leave her special tale for later readers: It is hardly worth the time to rejoice for the morning flower, It would be sweeter to be among the autumn grasses. I tell this tale for people of later generations: Married in an alien land, my feelings are bitter indeed! (lines 27-30) The main interest of Shih Ch’ung’s poem is the reaction of a refined Chinese to the strange, harsh, and hostile land and society of the nomads. As first-person narrator, the lady bewails her dis- placement and sense of apathy in a position of great honor among the Hsiung-nu: “They received me in a vast tent / And granted Character Types and Character Roles 95 me the title of ‘Yen-chih’” (lines 11-12). The role resembles Ts’ai Yen’s because of the geography and the place of the lady in nomad society, but the type is different because of the circumstances from which they came into exile. While Ts’ai Yen certainly felt a deep sense of personal shame over her experience, her emotions are more afflicted by the violence she has witnessed and endured. Wang Chao-chin is a victim not of violence but of calculated and impersonal politics. While her new home is dreadfully crude by her standards, she is not physically threatened, and while she is separated from her home and family, they are not destroyed. Ts’ai Yen’s endurance of grief transcends her personal resentment in a lament for the destruction of the whole Han order. In contrast, Wang Chao-chiin as an exile is an isolated case, and so seems ulti- mately self-centered. The imagery of exile and the expressions of loneliness and alienation are very similar in “Poem of Affliction,” “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute,” and “Song of Wang Ming- chtin,” but the narrative presentation makes it clear that their char- acters are not similar at all. The configuration of events and the women’s verbal responses to them are closely related, but because of the context from which they have come to these circumstances, the underlying motivation of the characters is revealed as different and distinctive. Seen in their entirety, the particularity of the cir- cumstances helps to generate a sense of the individuality of these two figures in exile. The comparison of the character of Ts’ai Yen as she appears in “Poem of Affliction” and Liu Shang’s “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute,” and Shih Ch’ung’s Wang Ming-chiin illustrates the essential features of characterization in Chinese narrative poetry. Consid- ering the relative brevity of the poems, these characters and the distinctions among them stand out with surprising clarity. Chinese techniques of characterization rely heavily on symbolic attributes which become attached to certain types (Ts’ai Yen’s grief upon leaving behind her nomad children, for instance), imagery which is associated with some crucial aspect of a character’s role (ad- justing to a barbarian “husband,” telling the passage of time by watching the migrations of the wild geese on the steppe), and direct discourse. These devices are well known from historiogra- phy, where all characters’ actions have predetermined outcomes or 96 Chinese Narrative Poetry consequences.” Narrative archetypes in poetry are also subject to this kind of determinism, and while narrative poetry may be less discursive than historiography, it displays the same techniques in its own idiom. Because the narrative is so compressed in shih, the character- ization must be more evocative—it must do as much, if not more, with less. The character is tersely but vividly sketched, relying on the reader’s sense of empathy and knowledge of literary convention for understanding. But because of the concentrated significance of the elements which define a type, a role, or both in the process of evolution of an archetype, these components may be used in a hackneyed fashion and the character may become stilted. It is up to the poet to breathe new life into the basic configuration of charac- ter “traits” by reaffirming that character as a temporally grounded and significant figure, in other words, to preserve the recognizable features but also to make them new. We have seen how Liu Shang and others adapted the type of Ts’ai Yen to suit a more sentimental aesthetic and audience. Liu Shang co-opts the symbolic impact of the late Han heroine to the needs of mid-T’ang literary culture for reconciliation with the political order, but in doing so the essen- tial character is subtly yet certainly changed. In general, adapting a character role to a new set of circumstances allows for a great deal more flexibility and topical significance because the character which emerges is not just compared with better-known ones. In- stead, a new character arises combining the potency of the original archetype with the power of its own experiences and qualities. The poet may use allusive imagery and follow the basic configuration of events from the career of a character like Ts’ai Yen, but set the character and events in a new, topical context to demonstrate the continued vitality of the archetype. Perhaps Ts’ai Yen’s most effective literary descendant is Wei Chuang’s “lady of Ch’in’—a poetic term for a female citizen of the capital, Ch’ang-an. A comparison of the “Song of the Lady of Ch’in” with “Poem of Affliction” reveals the continued life of the archetype of Ts’ai Yen, its broader significance in the light of the more cosmopolitan world of the late T’ang dynasty, and, per- haps most important, a sense of a tradition of poems in this style Character Types and Character Roles 97 which reaffirms the truth of Ts’ai Yen’s experience as an archetype in Chinese culture. Her role is preserved, along with the themes of rebellion, impersonal violence, sexual exploitation, loss of self in a strange environment, loss of self in a familiar environment which has been changed by violence, and the comprehensive inversion of known society as a great dynasty falls. Wei Chuang revives the archetype, evoking the Tung Cho Re- bellion by relating contemporary events in the context of the Huang Ch’ao Rebellion (874-884), which presaged the final fall of the T’ang dynasty in 905.” “Song of the Lady of Ch’in” was written in Loyang perhaps in the spring of 884, after Wei Chuang had fled Ch’ang-an and escaped the fury of Huang Ch’ao’s occupation. The poem was said to have been based on his own experience (Wei Chuang was in Ch’ang-an waiting to sit the chin-shih examinations when Huang Ch’ao’s troops descended), and is unusual both as autobiography and history. While narrative poems containing political criticism were by no means unknown, they were usually couched either in allegorical or symbolic terms, or at least written from a safe distance in time. Tu Fu’s “Lament by the Riverside,” for instance, sets the romance which caused the fall of the emperor Hstian-tsung in the context of the Han emperor Ch’eng-ti’s fatal passion for his consort Chao Fei-yen; while Po Chi-yi’s “Song of Everlasting Sorrow” was written in 808—half a century after the An Lu-shan Rebellion— and still refrains from overt criticism of the main characters. “Song of the Lady of Ch’in” was composed directly after Huang Ch’ao’s sack of the capital in 880-81, and Wei Chuang makes no attempt to disguise the event in any way.”° And where Ts’ai Yen lays the blame for the downfall of the Han emperor’s righteous rule on the rebel Tung Cho, Wei Chuang describes a court panicked, its members unhesitatingly sacrificing the populace to save their own skins. Wei Chuang’s only concession to the convention of removing himself from the context of topical political criticism is the use of a nar- rative frame in which the poet as narrator encounters a victim of the rebellion—the lady of Ch’in—in a peaceful landscape a good distance from the fallen capital. The narrator assumes the role of questioner, leaving the bulk of the narration to be presented from the point of view of the lady: 98 Chinese Narrative Poetry In the third year of the Chung-ho reign, the third month of the spring, Outside Loyang’s city walls the blossoms massed like snow; East, west, south, north the people on the road had vanished, The green willows were quiet and still, the fragrant dust had settled. At the roadside I suddenly came upon a lady like a flower— Alone she had gone to the green willows, and sat down to rest in the shade. Her phoenix clasp was tilted, bell-bird hairpins askew, lock-ends falling every which way, Her rouge smeared off, her brow paint beaded, the line of her eyebrows broken. “Young lady, where have you come from?” I asked. She composed her features and started to speak, but her voice first broke into a sob, So she turned her head to adjust her sleeves, then courteously answered me. “Swept along by the waves of rebellion, how can I bear to speak of it?” (“Song of the Lady of Ch'in,” lines 1-12)” The frame of this initial encounter of the primary narrator (the poet) and the lady establishes a context in which the tale of Huang Ch’ao’s sack of Ch’ang-an may be told from the point of view of an anonymous eyewitness. The lady’s disheveled appearance pre- pares the reader for a tale of violence; it is obvious from her natural distinction that this is not her proper state. After the preliminary courtesies are exchanged, the lady plunges into the tale in earnest, and the presence of the poet is forgotten until the last couplet. Even then he himself does not speak, but is directly addressed by the lady: “I pray you, Sir, to raise your oars and go farther and farther east And chant this long song as an offering to His Excellency of Chin-ling.” (lines 237-38) Character Types and Character Roles 99 Within this frame the lady also uses framing devices and de- scription to introduce other points of view, with the intention of revealing the universal destruction brought on the Chinese people by their careless rulers. The violence and alienation of exile which tormented Ts’ai Yen are even more sinister here because the inver- sion of the known world of the lady of Ch’in takes place suddenly and violently in her known world: the city which has been her home and the center of the empire is transformed overnight into a frightening wilderness. Most important, the Chinese themselves, as rebels against the government, are mercilessly revealed to be no better than the barbarians they despise. The lady briefly describes the calm before the storm, then the complete helplessness of the undefended city as the rebels ap- proach (lines 17-32). Deserted by the emperor and his entourage (line 31), the city is sacked and much of the populace slaughtered (lines 33-84). The lady is captured, laments her loss, and details her life with the rebels—which includes, of course, a new “husband”: From that time on I could never again return to my old ward, From that time on there was no place I might look to find my kinfolk; It has been three years since I first fell into the rebels’ hands, Each day I have trembled and grieved, with my heart and courage broken. At night when I rested a thousand ranks of swords and spears surrounded; At the morning meal, each taste seemed like slivered human livers. Although I “entered the curtains of marriage,” how could I enjoy “marital bliss?” Although I had plenty of precious goods, they were not things I could enjoy. His hair unkempt, his face filthy, his eyebrows bright red! If I gave the man even a sidelong glance, I still could not bear the sight. His clothing was put on inside out, the language he spoke was uncouth, 100 Chinese Narrative Poetry On his face there were boasts of his deeds—the words being tattooed there! (lines 89-100) The details of the lady’s captivity and sexual exploitation are far more complete than Ts’ai Yen’s descriptions, with even a bris- tling description of her husband, not as a person but as a caricature of the physical and moral repulsiveness of the rebels. Nor is the lady disconcerted merely by strange customs: in their attempts to administer the imperial government in the capital city itself, the rebels desecrate Chinese society with their parodic rituals (lines 101-8). After the rebels repel an imperial relief force, the lady con- templates the wasteland that was her home, combining Ts’ai Yen’s emotional desolation as reflected in the landscape of the steppe and the landscape of her razed village: Ch’ang-an lies so still, so still; what is left there now? Ruined markets, desolate streets where shoots of wheat are sprouting, For firewood they chopped down the last of the trees that bloomed in the Apricot Gardens, For building their fortress they doomed the willows along the Imperial Canal. Splendid coaches with paint-patterned wheels were all smashed and scattered, Of the mansions with their vermilion gates, not even half survive. On the floor of the Han-ytian Audience Hall foxes and rabbits roam, The approach to the Hua O Tower is filled up with brambles and thorns. The luxury of former times—now all destroyed and buried; A dreary waste as far as the eye can see—not a single familiar thing there. The Imperial Treasury was burned to the very ash of its brocades and embroideries, On the Street of Heaven were trampled to dust the bones of State Officials. (lines 135-46) Character Types and Character Roles 101 When the lady of Ch’in finally leaves Ch’ang-an, now become a wasteland of famine as well as rebellion (lines 147-216), she finds that the surrounding country has suffered as much as the city, and more—an old man tells her that his family and lands were first pillaged by the rebels and then by the imperial troops to which he had looked for salvation (lines 189-216). He gives words to the lady’s realization of the true nature and extent of this disaster: “. .. But that one person should suffer—alas!—How should that be my only lament? For in the mountains are ever more, thousands and thousands of families: By day hunger gnaws them as they hunt wild raspberries on the hillsides, By night they shelter with the frost, sleeping on reeds and flowers.” I heard this poor old father’s heart-rending words; For the rest of the day I cried and cried, my tears flowed down like rain. (lines 213-18) The lady finally asks the poet to tell her story to “the marquis of Chin-ling,” with whom she hopes to find refuge: perhaps a compli- ment to Chou Pao, the commander of the naval forces on the lower Yangtze at the time of the rebellion, with whom Wei Chuang him- self is said to have found safety.”* Wei Chuang’s lady is a survivor, clear-eyed and unsentimental in her account of events, sensitive in her observations of others, bitterly vivid in her description of the collapse of the power which ordered her whole world. The poem, however, is ultimately not centered on an individual consciousness; Wei Chuang has made the tale of one unnamed individual a lament for the whole empire. While the lady of Ch’in may be regarded as a mouthpiece for the poet in recording his own experience, through imagery and action his vision is extended to embrace the whole northern region of China. By evoking the tradition of Ts’ai Yen, Wei Chuang gives his poem almost a fin-de-siécle consciousness; and his vision indeed presents the end of Ch’ang-an as a capital in Chinese history.” The techniques of description and direct discourse necessary 102 Chinese Narrative Poetry to characterization in narrative shih were also present in personal fu, where they were used to convey the poet’s particular, not uni- versalized, concerns. In narrative shih these techniques are carried further, to develop individuals whose personal identity is not nec- essarily that of the poet. The use of character types and character roles helps to ensure that the poet, as well as the reader, will be separated from the experience of the text. Character thus imparts to narrative a kind of experience which is distinct from lyric, where the tendency is to suppress the particular source of the emotions inspired. Furthermore, a distinctive character such as Ts’ai Yen as narrator rather than poet invokes the lyrical convention of appre- hending a poet’s personality through a poem and redirects it to shed light on her self, as an independent figure in her own right. Thus, the convention of reading to reveal the self of the poet can be considered an essential aspect of characterization in the Chinese tradition, co-opting this critical convention to refer not to the poet but to the narrator or other characters in the poem. The personality of the narrator, rather than that of the poet, is central to “Poem of Affliction” and “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute.” This is true also of explicitly autobiographical poems such as Po Cht-yi’s “Bal- lad of the p’i-p’a,” where the sub-prefect of Chiang-chou—the poet as he sees himself in exile—asserts his centrality throughout. In the case of “Song of the Lady of Ch’in,” the poet’s use of the narrative frame removes him from center stage and refocuses the reader’s attention on the lady as she narrates the traumatic experience of the poet’s entire generation. The methods of characterization in Chinese narrative poetry, however, must also depend upon a strong sense of specific tem- poral context for characters as individuals—not just generalized archetypes. Without a sense of temporal context and development, the most detailed description, the most passionate speech, will be detached from the sense of particular experience which is the essence of narrative experience. To have a sense of a “whole” char- acter is to have a sense of the individual development of that char- acter, which implies a process of development over time. Relying on the power of narrative archetypes, character development in Chinese narrative poetry may indeed become schematic; however, even if a character type or role is evoked merely by allusion, the Character Types and Character Roles 103 recollection of the archetype provides a sense of character fully developed in another context. Whether character development is a process which depends on a sense of objective time or tempo- ral progression, realization of a character is founded on that in- dividual’s existence in time, and as such must be analyzable over time. The sequential structures of narrative shih reflect these con- cerns, and their methods of presentation adapt meter and syntax to accommodate these peculiar expressive needs. 4 Narrative Structure Temporal and Other Sequences We have seen how the presence of explicit points of view reinforces the essentially vicarious nature of narrative, and how description may enhance the particularity of events, characters, and tempo- ral context. To these subjective features we may add the order in which a reader encounters the elements of experience presented in a poem. It follows, therefore, that techniques of sequencing on a large scale are vital to narrative. This chapter will consider how the ordering of experience influences the structure of Chinese narrative poems, and what this means for the way we read them. In chap- ter 1 it was suggested that enumeration may serve the demands of narrative expression when the units or elements to be enumerated involve actions, events, or temporal references. The order of events as related by the narrator determines the underlying structure of a narrative poem. The most obvious structure for a persuasively logi- cal sequence of events is one based on objective time, and indeed Narrative Structure 105 Chinese and Western critics have recognized temporal sequence as an essential aspect of narrative composition.’ A narrative struc- ture based on temporal sequence provides a framework for events apart from the personal experience of the reader. Depending upon the aims of the composition, the framework of objective time can be manipulated for different effects.” In the simplest form a strictly chronological organization recounts events in the order in which they supposedly occurred, as in Ts’ai Yen’s “Poem of Affliction.” While the author of this poem did not place equal emphasis on all events, the events are ordered chronologically from the point of view of the narrator. The reader assumes that the events are related from hindsight, rather than as they occur, but there is minimal in- ternal evidence beyond the naming of Tung Cho’s rebellion as the cause of the lady’s displacement. Shih Ch’ung employed a varia- tion of this structure by including a prose preface with his “Song of Wang Ming-chtin.” The preface, in the poet’s voice, stands out- side the poem, which is in the voice of the lady. The preface gives a brief synopsis of the background of the exile, then the temporal context of Shih Ch’ung’s composition of his poem in the style of the “original”: “she composed a poem full of sounds of sadness. I have subsequently composed one like it, thus... .” The lady as narra- tor then relates her sorrows in the order in which they occurred, ending in the present tense, still in hopeless exile. A more complex temporal structure in narrative shih employs the technique of framing to organize events in a poem. Po Cht-yi included a prose preface giving the precise date and context of the composition of “Ballad of the p’i-p’a,” then organized the events of that night in three narrative tableaux. These reflect the chronology of the experience from the narrator’s point of view, but in terms of objective time they move from the present of the party on the river to the sad events of the past, and back again. The musician’s tale of her past life is interpolated by indirect quotation into the body of the narrative, and then the narrator-poet himself reaches back in time in order to explain his present affinity with her. Shen Ch’tian-ch’i employs a less elaborate version of this sys- tem of narrative tableaux in “My Reply to the Troll: A Letter to Send to My Family.” The contextual frame provides the poet with a questioner to whom he can unburden himself with an exile’s la- 106 Chinese Narrative Poetry ment. In this case the frame of the exchange with the troll (lines 1-12) gives the poet an excuse for a detailed autobiographical nar- rative, relating chronologically the events which led him to this desolate place. While a temporal sequence based on objective time, chronological or not, may seem to be the most logical—even the only possible—structure for a narrative poem, we have seen that in the Chinese tradition it is enumeration, not plot or temporality in themselves, which provides a basis for the organization of events in a poem. In other words, while temporal sequence may emerge from sequences of other kinds, the primary motive of organization in a Chinese poem may be some other kind of sequence or progres- sion entirely. This is not to say that temporal sequence is devoid of interest or significance; rather, it is simply not conceived to be the primary focus of poetic composition and execution. For instance, in the stanzaically organized “Hsia Wu,” from the Shih Ching, each stanza contains an event from the king’s career, and the sense of progression from one event to the next is achieved by organizing the stanzas linked by catenation. The order of events does happen to be chronological, but the effect of this order of events is to bring each event to bear with equal weight on the people’s relation to the political order as established by King Wu, rather than to recount his deeds for their own sake. “Wen Wang yu sheng” is also divided into stanzas, which are unified by the use of a variable refrain as much as by the order of the deeds of the kings. In this case the movement of events is actually chronologically backward, again to explain “the way we are now” from the point of view of the people. In this sense both of these poems from the Shih Ching manipulate a narrative of events to describe the background of a present tradition rather than to enshrine the deeds of the past. The main interest of these poems is not in the narrative, but in contemporary social patterns and con- ventions; not in the myth behind these patterns, but in the rituals said to have been the results of these events.* Temporal sequence as the generator of plot or story is therefore not of primary interest in these poems. Their underlying sequential structure either manipu- lates temporal references as partial means to an end, or perhaps produces the temporal sequence as a by-product of their expres- sive intent. Although this use of the stanzaic form is rare in long, Narrative Structure 107 unified, narrative shih, catenation and the repetition of characters and key phrases as seen in the stanzaic poems of the Shih Ching are used to enforce a sense of connection between events. More par- ticularly, these techniques are crucial to the impression of narrative in a style of shih which employs many of these stanzaic techniques, the poem sequence. Other major genres suggest patterns of organization which are not strictly temporal in themselves, but which may enforce a sense of temporal progression in a text. The poems of the Ch’u Tz’u, especially those termed itineraria, are structured by patterns that are supposed to be more dependent on the ritual movements asso- ciated with shamanism than on strictly temporal progressions. The speaker’s “journey” through the cosmos, because of its ritualistic intent, is not so much temporal as accretive, in the sense that by following the conventions of this ritual the shaman accrues potency to meet his or her divine “lover,” and the flights through the cos- mos detailed in the poems occur under this accumulated spiritual power. Time enters into these compositions explicitly only when the communion is over and the earthbound poet laments that the experience was of too short a duration.’ Patterns other than time may be inferred from natural phenom- ena and used as the structural basis for poetic sequence. Compass directions or astronomical patterns may complement or even domi- nate temporal sequence in narrative shih.° This type of order is also frequently used in fu, especially of the “capital city” type, in which the four corners of the empire are encompassed and united under the harmonious rule of the emperor in his proper place in the cos- mos. It is clear that there are many kinds of sequences in Chinese lit- erature. While narrative seems to emerge from certain sequences, it does not necessarily emerge from every kind.° Let us consider first the case of poem sequences, which display aspects of the principle of enumeration (as noted in the case of the stanzaic poems of the Shih Ching) in combination with the requirements of the prosody of shih as they developed in the later Han dynasty. Poem sequences, while by no means always narrative, may have an underlying struc- ture which evokes progression over objective time. A poem sequence 108 Chinese Narrative Poetry is a group of poems by a single author or by two or even more poets intended to be read together in a specified order. The in- tegrity of a poem sequence is dependent on this prescribed order of presentation. A poem sequence by a single author is sustained throughout by a single voice or point of view, as in the sequence “Poems Presented to Prince Piao of Pai-ma” (“Tseng Pai-ma Wang Piao”), by Ts’ao Chih, or Tu Fu’s “Autumn Meditations” (“Ch’iu hsing”’).’ Those with two or more authors vary in point of view as the pen changes hands, as in the exchange between Wang Wei and his friend P’ei Ti (b. 716), the “Wang Stream Collection” (“Wang ch’tian chi”). A framework of objective time may be implied in a composition because poem sequences are usually based on a par- ticular experience. In the case of a single author this experience is presented as a set of observations from a single point of view, while in sequences with two or more authors the variety of points of view is unified by the context of shared experience.® It is important to note the difference between a poem sequence and a poem series. A series is not conceived in terms of an under- lying unified structure, but rather in terms of a unifying theme. In contrast with a sequence, the poems in a series may be re- ordered without detriment to the integrity of the composition as a whole. Poems collected under a single heading, such as “Poems on Historical Subjects” (“Yung-shih shih”), by Wang Ts’an (177-217), and Poems Expressing My Feelings (“Yung-huai shih”), by Juan Chi (210-263), were not conceived in terms of a prescribed sequence.’ These series are groups of poems on various subjects which re- flect a general theme, usually suggested by the title. Juan Chi’s poems are bound by a general expressive purpose, but the indi- vidual poems vary widely in subject matter and tone, and also in length and diction. Tu Fu’s “Thoughts on Ancient Sites” (“Yung- huai ku-yi wu shou”) have a more unified purpose. They follow the poet’s visits to a variety of places of historical interest, which are described in terms of the significance these sites and the people associated with them have for the poet himself. While this series is unified in terms of subject matter (touring the ancient monu- ments) and theme (the evocative power of these places for the poet’s evaluation of his own plight), their order of presentation is not significant: neither the chronology of the poet’s journey nor the Narrative Structure 109 relative dates of the sites suggest an underlying sequential struc- ture for these poems. They function as an anthology on a single theme or group of related themes, bound together by expressive purpose but not by formal or sequential structure.’ A poem sequence shows consistency in style and purpose from one poem to the next. The same meter is employed through- out, even if all the poems in the sequence are not of the same length. It is a crucial technical feature of the poem sequence that, while the poems in their set order function as an artistic whole and convey a logical progression of events, each poem must have its own value and integrity as a lyric. Poem sequences lay out a chain of events not by integrating the individual units into a single, nar- rative poem, but by presenting a set sequence of lyric vignettes, which considered as an integrated composition convey sequential unity." On the level of poetic diction the individual lyrics may be firmly set in the desired order of experience by interlocking char- acters, catenation, rhymes, or other kinds of repetition, which in turn reinforce the logic of the temporal sequence implied by their order. I say “implied” because the specific context of the experience of a poem sequence is not always included in the sequence itself. In the case of Ts’ao Chih’s “Poems Presented to Prince Piao of Pai- ma,” the precise date and context of the events described in the composition are recorded in an attached prose preface. The preface, though written in the first person, almost certainly was not written by Ts’ao Chih himself. It does not appear in the earliest extant text and has been identified as a fourth-century editor’s addition.” The fact that the preface was attached, however, suggests that the editor was impressed by the particularizing details of the sequence describing a well-known personal crisis in the colorful life of Ts’ao Chih, and I quote it here as the best synopsis: In the fourth month of the fourth year of the Huang-chu reign period (223), the Prince of Pai-ma, the Prince of Jen-ch’eng (Ts’ao Chang), and I went together to the Imperial Court in the capital. When we met to celebrate the seasonal festival, the Prince of Jen-ch’eng died. In the seventh month, the Prince of Pai-ma and I were to return to our fiefs, but later an officer in- 110 Chinese Narrative Poetry formed us that we two princes should lodge separately while traveling to our domains. We deeply resented these insinua- tions, especially because our great parting was but a few days away. I seized the opportunity to open my heart as we said our farewells, and wrote these pieces in frustration. The poem sequence contains seven five-character-line poems in the shih meter. The number of lines in the poems varies from ten to fourteen, each poem sustaining a single rhyme in the even- numbered lines.'* With the exception of the first two, all the poems are linked by the repetition of the last two characters of one poem as the first two characters of the next. All the poems consistently have an implicit first-person speaker (the preface uses a first-person pronoun but there are none in the poems), and the continuity of the point of view is reinforced by catenation. The linking characters indicate the necessary order of the poems in the sequence. Each poem describes the poet’s feelings and responses to the landscape at a different stage in his journey, a chronological sequence which corresponds to the formal order of the poems. The first poem, which is not linked to the others by catenation, is also distinct in its treatment of the subject matter. Here Ts’ao Chih gives a swift overview of his predicament, then describes his last, heartbroken look at the capital: When visiting the Emperor I lodged in the Ch’eng-ming quarters, Then forthwith returned from the capital to my former domains. In the clear dawn I set out from the Imperial City; When the sun was setting, I passed by Shou-yang Mountain... I turn back my head and gaze, yearning for the city’s towers, I crane my neck for one last glance, my feelings within me are wounded. (poem 1, lines 1-4, 9-10) The first poem deals with the cause of the poet’s unhappiness and reveals his inmost wishes: to stay in the capital with his family united. Because of the jealous suspicions of his elder brother, the Narrative Structure 111 emperor Wei Wen-ti, the other princes of the blood were only allowed to congregate in the presence of the emperor, and other- wise were distributed in fiefs well separated all over the empire. In the first poem, therefore, Ts’ao Chih casts one last look on all his hopes, then in the next poem turns to the journey into exile. The landscape of his travels reflects the poet’s unhappiness: it is all hardship and obstacles. While the cause of his misery is established in the first poem, it is subsequently amplified and compounded by the rigors of the road. Having turned his back on his last fantasy of family reconciliation, the poet concentrates on the road ahead. The journey from this turning point to the point of his final parting from his brother gives the poems their underlying sequen- tial structure. This sequence is further enforced as each poem, while representing progress on the journey, also reflects the prog- ress of the poet’s emotions. In the first poem he regrets his depar- ture from the capital and all that this implies for his family. In poem 2, with only one brother as companion and knowing they too must part, Ts’ao Chih confronts the hard and lonely road leading away from their proper home: How vast the Great Valley seems! Dense and deep green are the trees on the mountains. Unceasing rains have turned my road to mud, The draining waters wash out the land in all directions. (poem 2, lines 1-4) They are entering unknown territory: “At the crossroads, the tracks of the carts leave off” (poem 2, line 5). His fellowship with the prince of Pai-ma is threatened from this point, as the ill-omened images of poem 3 suggest: “Tufted-ear owls cry on our crossbars / Wolves bar our way at the crossroads” (poem 3, lines 7-8). As the sun sets in poem 4, the poet observes the animals in the land- scape returning to their rightful place, in sad contrast with the two princes: How lonely and barren are the plains— The white sun is suddenly hidden in the west. Returning birds head for their lofty treetops, With a flurry of feathers they urge on their wings, 112 Chinese Narrative Poetry A lone beast chases in search of its herd, Its mouth full of grass, it will not take time to eat. (poem 4, lines 5-10) Facing the inevitability of their parting in poem 5, the poet reflects on the hopeless separation between them and their brother who died in the capital. Since such a final separation is inevitable, why not accept this one? Yet the poet is unable to extinguish his longing: “Is this not the sentimental nonsense of our childhood? / But all in a rush, my yearning for my flesh and blood inspires me” (poem 6, lines 10-11). He tries to comfort himself with the thought that as long as the prince of Pai-ma is still alive there will be someone in the world who cares for him and understands his mind. But even this gleam of comfort is overshadowed by their foreboding that this is in fact their last meeting: “We part, never to meet again, / Now we clasp hands, where shall we have another chance?” (poem 7, lines 7-8). Poems 1-4 make extensive use of visual imagery drawn from the harsh landscape to reflect the emotional state of the poet. Poems 5-7 are more discursive, as the poet abandons landscape description and meditates on the inevitability of death (poem 5), the intimation of death in the loneliness of exile (poem 6), and finally addresses his brother directly, “My prince, take care to cherish your jade body / We may yet enjoy a time together when our hair is yellow with age” (poem 7, lines 9-10). The poem sequence culminates in its own composition: “I check my tears, then turn to the long road / And taking out my pen, write out these verses of farewell” (poem 7, lines 11-12). With such a reference to the act of composition itself, the poet asserts his intent to preserve the integrity of this particular experience, with all the details of his individual feelings. The sequence not only records the emotions of the poet but sets them in a specific and personal context. The temporal progression of the elements of the experience is stressed by the poet’s reflections on the joys and sorrows of the past, his indignation and frustration in the present, and his fears for the future. These poems are not meant to stand as discrete laments, but to reveal a most particular poetic moment and poetic consciousness. In terms of the style of treatment of their subject matter, the Narrative Structure 113 poem sequences written by individual authors seem to provide a satisfying balance between the unified sequential structure of a longer narrative poem and the concentrated expression of emotion typical of shorter, individual lyrics." The form allows the poet to treat elements of particularized experience in sustained and unified form, while avoiding some of the technical difficulties of a long, explicitly narrative composition. Each poem in a sequence focuses on a different moment or aspect of an experience, allowing the poet to express a complex range of emotions in a unified context. While inviting the audience to sympathize with the particular experience, the sequence retains a sense of intimacy. By contrast, the cumulative force of the sequential structure of long narrative poems like “Poem of Affliction,” “Song of Everlast- ing Sorrow,” and “Song of the Lady of Ch'in” presents a totally different kind of experience. Even an “intimate” experience like the night of music in “Ballad of the p’1-p’a” enforces the reader’s separa- tion from the experience by the poet’s assertion of his centrality and uniqueness. In my discussion of “Ballad of the p’i-p’a,” I divided the poem into three parts, based on the poet’s manipulation of point of view, to show how the mode of description so vital to lyric poetry could be adapted to serve the needs of narrative expression. By virtue of their sequential relation and the intent of the poet, those three sections—the poet’s initial encounter with the lady and her first performance, the lady’s tale of her life, and the poet’s re- sponse to her experience by telling his own feelings—form three narrative tableaux. By identifying a shift in point of view or focus of action, rather than a shift in rhyme or language, we may recognize the main divisions of the experience and understand the purpose of their organization. Po Chi-yi’s “Song of Everlasting Sorrow” is organized according to the same principle, using narrative tableaux to focus on the three main phases of the emperor T’ang Hstian- tsung’s romance. This device balances the demands of a plot or sense of narrative progression with the features dearest to the vir- tuoso of shih lyrics, such as imagery, allusion, and description. Any sense of dynamism or action is secondary to the demands of atmo- sphere and emotion, and so the technique of narrative tableaux is ideal for adapting shih poetics to the narrative mode. Technical considerations of meter and diction, parallelism, 114 Chinese Narrative Poetry and rhyme do not always work against the dynamic sequence of events. There are examples of narrative shih in which action pro- vides the underlying structure, which the traditional devices of lyric serve primarily to reinforce. Most impressive in this regard is Wei Chuang’s “Song of the Lady of Ch’in.” It is not only the longest (238 seven-character lines) of the T’ang narrative shih, it is also a virtual showcase of the techniques of T’ang lyricism adapted to the demands of a unified, fully integrated narrative.’* The structure of the poem may be analyzed according to the use of framing devices to present various points of view (there are four explicit speakers in this poem), and also according to poetic units identified by rhyme and syntax, including the style of quatrains and octets so dear to T’ang lyrics. As a result, while for the purposes of this analysis I have divided “Song of the Lady of Ch'in” into twelve main units according to subject matter, these units may be subdivided into smaller units, identified by parallelism or rhyme, each demonstrat- ing its own internal logic. While we might think of the larger units of subject matter as narrative tableaux, the divisions between the units are not as obvious as the divisions in poems like “Song of Everlasting Sorrow.” Indeed, these larger units of subject matter may be linked by rhyme, for instance, to the next section, result- ing in a far more dynamic and tightly integrated structure than the poems organized into narrative tableaux that we have exam- ined. Wei Chuang evidently took great pains to make his narrative units within the larger tableaux evoke standard T’ang quatrains and octets, with occasional striking couplets to vary the rhythm. This represents an important innovation in the adaptation of shih poetics to narrative expression, one that potentially combines features of both poem sequences and unified narrative shih from earlier peri- ods. In “Song of the Lady of Ch’in” the poetic structure and the sequential structure of events are more completely integrated than in the other poems we have studied, suggesting a new awareness on the part of the poet of the importance of an underlying sense of structural as well as thematic unity for achieving narrative effects. The first section (lines 1-16) is the poet’s introduction of the lady who will relate the main body of the tale, and may be divided into four quatrains: lines 1-4 sketch the pastoral setting outside of peaceful Loyang; lines 5-8 describe the appearance of the lady; in Narrative Structure 115 lines 9-12 the poet and the lady exchange greetings; in lines 13-16 the lady invites the poet to hear her story. The story proper begins in the second section (lines 17-32), in which the lady provides the precise date of the arrival of the rebels in Ch’ang-an (line 17). The first quatrain (lines 17-20) describes the lady at her toilette as an im- age of the calm before the storm; then the dust rises for a moment of uncertainty (lines 21-28) before the full extent of the disaster is known: But an instant later my husband came galloping up, stopped at the house, Dismounted, then entered the gate and stood stunned like a drunken man. By chance he had met the Purple Imperial Coach in flight, covered with the dust of exile; Already he saw the rebels’ white flags stream in from the land all around. (lines 29-32) Section 3 (lines 33-84) describes the initial sack of Ch’ang-an. The stampede of the population of the city (lines 33-42) is mir- rored by the stars stampeding in the heavens (lines 43-48), which in turn symbolize the rout of the court and imperial house, who have deserted the capital to save their own lives. The lady then turns back to the city as the slaughter of the civilians begins, first in general terms (lines 49-52), then more particularized, as the next four octets describe the fates of four of the lady’s young neighbors, organized according to the four directions: the daughter of the east- ern neighbor (lines 53-60), the daughter of the neighbor to the west (lines 61-68), the two daughters of the southern neighbor (lines 69— 76), and the wife of the northern neighbor (lines 77-84). Each octet has an internal rhyme scheme, but the relation of the four units is reinforced by the nontemporal pattern of the four directions as well as the headlong rush of the rebels’ onslaught. In section 4 (lines 85-108) the lady goes out to meet the rebels willingly, in order to preserve her life (lines 85-88), then in vignettes which strongly re- call Ts’‘ai Yen she laments the loss of her home (lines 89-92) and describes her life among the rebels with her new “husband” (lines 93-100). This marriage, however, is only part of the larger, and far 116 Chinese Narrative Poetry more serious, desecration perpetrated by the rebels on the state. In attempting to conduct the affairs of the imperial government, the ignorant rebels invert the proper order of their conduct in a way that is chilling, yet hilarious: On the Cypress Terrace, the “Censorate Scholars” had all become fox spirits, At the Orchid Bureau the “Official Recorders” were all rat demons; They kept trying to wear ornate hairpins in their short hair, But without taking off their robes of state, rolled themselves in embroidered quilts. With ivory tablets held upside down, some aped the Three Lords of State, Golden fish tail up and turned wrong way ‘round, some became “Historians of the Left and Right.” In the morning I could hear them report to the Throne and enter the audience chamber, In the evening I could see them go to the wine shops in a brawl. (lines 101-8) This octet is particularly densely packed with action on the lit- eral level and symbols of larger problems on the level of imagery. The description of the new imperial government is a series of par- allel couplets forming two rhyming quatrains. The effect is brisk in pace and underlines the irony of the efforts of the rebels by reeling off their consistent inversion of their roles and even the symbols they have unlawfully adopted. The men who present themselves as the new “Censorate Scholars” and other ministers have no quali- fications but their empty titles, and this is evident even in the way they carry the symbols of their usurped offices. The fact that the “Three Lords of State” carry their ivory tablets upside down is the final symbol of their perverse inversion of the proper order of the state: the rebels seem not to know that the round end (for heaven) should go up, the square (earth) end down—no wonder the empire is topsy-turvy! Section 5 (lines 109-26) is an interlude in which a rumor of Narrative Structure 117 rescue by the imperial troops (lines 109-12) briefly exhilarates the captives and disconcerts their cowardly tyrants (lines 113-22), but hopes are dashed when the vanguard of the army meets with disas- ter (lines 123-26). Section 6 (lines 127-46) then proves that matters can indeed get worse, as Huang Ch’ao wreaks vengeance on the captive populace for their disaffection, and famine comes to the city. The description of the desolation of Ch’ang-an again recalls Ts’ai Yen’s return to her home village, but with the added impact that the lady of Ch’in has been present all through the time her home has been transformed into a desert. A new kind of temporal progress is established in section 7 (lines 147-54), as rebels and captives are forced by the famine to abandon the capital completely. On the first day out, their progress suggests that because of the ravages of the rebellion the boundaries between city and country have broken down; what distinction is there between the wasteland Ch’ang-an and the wastes outside its walls? On the second day out (section 8, lines 155-78), the desola- tion of the countryside extends farther (lines 155-58), but the lady begins to encounter others who have suffered from the rebellion. The lady, acting as questioner, provides a frame (lines 159-63) for the “speech” of an abandoned and impotent village idol, who la- ments that because he was powerless to save his people from the “nightmare demons” (yen-kuei) the times are lean for him (lines 163-74). The lady then begins to reflect on the larger implications of this spirit’s impotence: When I heard this speech, my melancholy deepened— Heaven sends down calamity in due season, not of its own accord. If this spirit runs to the mountains in order to flee his danger, How can we turn accusing looks to the nobles of the East? (lines 175-78) In section 9 (lines 179-88) the refugees finally emerge from the Shensi plateau and begin the descent to Loyang. Seeing the peace- ful landscape lifts their hopes of finding a virtuous government under which to live again. The lady then encounters another victim of the rebellion and hears his tale (section 10, lines 189-216), which 118 Chinese Narrative Poetry reveals that the common people suffered as much at the hands of the imperial troops they expected to protect them as from the out- rages of the rebels. The lady then turns her hopes to news of other provinces (section 11, lines 217-36); while the provinces to the east and west of the imperial domain have been devastated (lines 217- 24), the news from a traveler from Chin-ling (Nan-ching) to the south holds some promise of peace (lines 225-36). The lady’s final remark to the poet (lines 237-38) is also the poet’s “dedication” of the poem to the marquis of Chin-ling. The poet’s intent, however, is not just to compliment one patron. Wei Chuang has taken the tale of one individual and made it the basis of a lament for the whole empire. While the lady of Ch’in may be considered a mouthpiece for the poet in recording his own experience, through imagery and action he has extended his experience at least through the whole northern region of China. While the poet draws on autobiographi- cal material, the ultimate purpose of “Song of the Lady of Ch'in” is to display that personal and highly individualized experience to the general public. The final dedicatory couplet suggests that the poem was intended to present the topical material to someone per- haps capable of bringing relief, but the direct appeal to the marquis of Chin-ling, rather than to the emperor, would not have been lost on his contemporary audience. If the principle of enumeration is considered as it obtains in Wei Chuang’s “Song of the Lady of Ch'in,” it is possible to analyze the sequential structure of the poem on several levels that oper- ate simultaneously as the poem is read. The kinds of sequences vary according to what we identify as the units to be enumerated. We have seen that the smallest units of action or description cor- respond to the units of lyrical expression, like the quatrains and octets of T’ang regulated verse. While there are units of six or as many as ten lines, so identified by their rhyme scheme, patterns of four- or eight-line units dominate the body of the poem. Occa- sionally a rhyme will carry over from one unit of subject matter to the next, as in the shift from the second to the third quatrain of the poem, the introduction of the lady (line 10 rhymes with lines 6 and 8, but there is a shift from description to dialogue at line 9). This has the effect of intensifying our sense of the flow of action, Narrative Structure 119 as the rhyme carries the reader over from one vignette of action to the next. This is a step beyond the effect of catenation in the poem sequences which, while enforcing a sense of sequence of action, also enforced the sense of separation between the units by calling attention overtly to the transition from one poem to the next. These small units of metrical coherence make up the larger units based on a place or scene of action corresponding to the twelve narrative tableaux detailed above. The tableaux may in turn demonstrate an organization that is sequential but nontemporal. Progress in the narrative tableaux, or parts of them, may follow patterns such as the four directions; for instance, in section 3 the sack of the city is told by telling the fates of the neighbors to the east, west, south, and north (lines 53-84). Another kind of sequen- tial structure is provided by the four narrative frames, two of which do correspond to two of the tableaux (section 8, the encounter with the local deity, the “Golden Spirit,” lines 155-78; and section 10, the tale of the elderly householder, lines 189-216). The other two are the larger frames of the “autobiographical” account of the lady, detailing the events in nearly chronological order from the point of view of an eyewitness, and finally the frame of the poet-narrator, telling of how he came to hear this tale. This largest frame pro- vides, as it were, a historical overview, or at least a view of events with poetic if not personal hindsight. It is Wei Chuang’s only con- cession to the convention of presenting political criticism allusively, and a highly ironic one at that—why, after all this, should he bother to disguise himself? Before his own eyes the imperial government has proved to have no power to defend its very roots in the capital against unrighteous rebels and savages; how could it raise a hand against one insignificant poet? Wei Chuang’s “Song of the Lady of Ch’in” actually contains examples of all the styles of sequencing mentioned in this study, and thus should have posed a challenge to later poets adapting the conventions of lyrical expression to narrative. But Wei Chuang’s sense of the risk of such a blatant piece of political criticism caught up with him. He did not include the poem in his own anthology of his shih, Hua-chien chi, and while known by reputation and one vivid couplet, the text was lost to the tradition until this century, 120 Chinese Narrative Poetry when the excavations at Tun-huang uncovered the five manuscripts which form the basis of our reconstructions of the text.” “Song of the Lady of Ch’in” stands now as perhaps the crowning achieve- ment of narrative shih; had the poem been preserved throughout the intervening centuries, narrative poetry after the T’ang might have taken a different course. Epilogue This model of the methods and properties of narrative expression in Chinese poetry is intended to shed light on the relation of lyrical expression to narrative expression, and to bring an important and previously neglected area of Chinese literature within the scope of comparative poetics. Whereas European narrative poetry dis- plays distinctive generic features as well as the expressive concerns associated with narrative in general, the poems in the shih form discussed in this book cannot be identified as narrative by form or meter alone. The Chinese tradition allows us to recognize the extent to which European narrative theory depends upon these formal distinctions, and thus raises a possibility with wide-ranging implications for literary theory: that the narrative mode of expres- sion can be analyzed without primary recourse to the demands of a particular poetic genre. Central to the study of narrative poetry in China is the recog- 122 Chinese Narrative Poetry nition that the dominant aesthetics of Chinese poetry are lyrical. From the Chinese critical tradition we have seen that lyrical expres- sion is intended to be integrative, not only fostering the impression of affinity with the experience of a poem, but also with the per- sonality of the poet who wrote it. Narrative, on the other hand, offers a kind of experience which, however enthralling or sympa- thetic, is essentially vicarious. Through the mediation of a narrator with an explicitly identified voice, the poet arouses curiosity for the significance of an experience which the reader cannot expect to reproduce. The affinity that is felt for the poet through the experi- ence of lyric is in narrative turned to the narrator, who may be far removed from the poet. Considering the conventions of Chinese poetic language, this may be the most difficult of all illusions to maintain. The highly personalized, specific details of context nec- essary to preserve the experience of a poem as vicarious rather than integrative must be rigorously emphasized lest the tendency to a more universalized sense of experience compromise the specificity of narrative. The conventions of Chinese poetic language simply will not support the narrative mode of expression unless the poet displays through his use of language an intent to unify the poem as a particular and irreproducible experience. The expressive nature of Chinese poetic language may be adapted to the needs of narra- tive poetry, but only within the conventions of lyric. It may be only in prose fiction, where the poetic genres are fully integrated into a much larger narrative structure, that this tension ceases to be a major issue for the composition of poetry itself. The features of narrative expression that have been described as they appear in and apply to shih, but whose implications tran- scend a single genre, are point of view, characterization, and se- quence. Point of view as a feature of narrative shih has two vital components. The first is the identification of particular speakers to enforce the separation of the reader from the experience of the text. This explicit presence sets a specific context for the experience of the poem, which by virtue of its particularity is vicarious, re- sisting the reader’s attempts to assume the experience personally. The second component of point of view is a logical consequence of establishing particular speakers and contexts, for its specificity allows the techniques of description so dear to Chinese poetry to Epilogue 123 be adapted from the objective mode of lyric to the subjective con- texts of narrative. The passion for detail and description exhibited in all genres in Chinese literature is at least as important as tem- poral sequence in narrative shih, both for the sheer enjoyment of language and as a technique of enforcing narrative point of view and even narrative progression. Characterization extends the technique of narrative point of view to refer unequivocally to a particular speaker or actor in a poem. Encouraging the reader to bring the knowledge acquired from the text to bear on these speakers or actors as individuals, rather than on the personality of the poet, enforces the specificity and vicarious nature of the experience. The creation of “unique” individuals in narrative also exploits the evocative power of Chi- nese poetic language in the creation and manipulation of arche- types, either as character “types” (distinctive traits which come to be associated with a particular individual) or as character “roles” (distinctive configurations of events which are recognizable even if applied to a variety of contexts). The same principles also allow the adaptation of literary allusion with all its evocative power to the needs of narrative. Finally, a sense of logical, sequential relation of the elements of experience is essential in narrative shih. This is a feature not just of the genre of shih as it comes into its own from the late Han through T’ang dynasties, but of earlier forms as well. The stanzaic poems from the Shih Ching are unified by such linking devices as catena- tion as well as by subject matter, and these poetic devices enhance the sense of progression of events in time and space. The genre of fu provides other models of sequence by virtue of the principle fu, “enumeration,” which is said to have given the genre its name. Within the fu genre the kinds of sequences established may make the difference in generic designations, as between “descriptive” fu and “personal” fu. From the roots of sequence in the principle of enumeration, it is clear that temporal sequences are but a subset of the larger category of poetic sequences. Other features of sequen- tial structure besides temporal references, like catenation, rhyme, and larger metrical units, may contribute as much to the dyna- mism of a poem as a sense of temporal progression could. While a poem like “Song of the Lady of Ch’in” has a definite temporal se- 124 Chinese Narrative Poetry quence according to the historical relation of events, the narrative progression is carried along as much by the sequence of small met- rical units such as quatrains and octets as by a sense of objective time. Indeed, within the lady’s lament the sense of objective time is often eclipsed by other patterns, such as the order of celestial bodies or compass directions. All of these kinds of sequences are in play simultaneously in the experience of the text, giving a sense of complexity which a more straightforward, chronological structure could never impart alone. Indeed, the use of a structure which re- lies on the resonance of so many kinds of sequences is a challenge to the very idea of objective time as the basis of narrative. By delineating the fundamental expressive qualities of lyric and narrative compositions, and identifying the techniques whereby narrative expression is achieved in a tradition of lyrical aesthetics, I have attempted to provide a theoretical basis for a literary history of Chinese narrative poetry. Such a history would otherwise be difficult to imagine, though not because the narrative mode of ex- pression in shih was not recognized. It is the growth of concern for narrative theory that raises the question of the “narrativity” of these works, whose properties were previously recognized more intu- itively than analytically, and whose qualities were happily taken for granted in their native tradition. When considered in a comparative context, the peculiarity of the Chinese model is so striking as to baffle the methods and principles of analysis which have served for the European traditions. This should justify, even demand, a search for an approach to narrative that is truly cross-cultural, one that recognizes underlying principles which transcend the formal and generic considerations familiar from traditional Western criticism. Appendix Four Translations Poem of Affliction (Ts’ai Yen2, late second—early third century) In the later phases of the Han, when it lost hold of its power, Tung Cho rebelled against the abiding principles of Heaven:! He had a perverted ambition to usurp his ruler’s place, But first he murdered all the worthy men and the wise and noble lords. He forced a migration to the old imperial capital,” He got control of his lord and exploited him to make himself strong. The empire rose up with forces of resistance, 1 Tung Cho assassinated the emperor Han Shao-ti in 189, after he had reigned only four months. 2 Tung Cho forced his puppet emperor, Han Hsien-ti, to move the capital from Loyang to Ch’ang-an in 190. 126 Appendix Intending to launch a punitive campaign against the evil. Tung Cho’s horde appeared and swarmed down upon the East, Golden armor glittering in the rays of the sun. The men of the plains were easily broken For the soldiers who came were all Hu and Chiang barbarians:? They surrounded the cities as if they were hunters in the fields, And where they struck, there wasn’t a thing left alive. They killed people wherever they turned until no one was left, Corpses and dry bones propped each other up. On their horses’ sides they suspended the heads of the men, Behind them on their horses’ backs they carried off the women. Long we rode to the west and entered the passes, A twisting road, perilous and impassable. I gazed back into the dark and blurry distance; My vitals were crushed with anguish. Although those they had captured numbered tens of thousands, We were not allowed to camp or meet together. There were times when we might be near our next of kin, But though we wished to speak, we dared not say a word. If they felt displeased at the least little thing They'd bark out, “Kill the captives! Anyone who holds back his blade Will not be left alive.” How could we even wish to go on living? We could not endure their cursing; Sometimes they would just pick up and start beating us So bitterness and pain were mixed as the blows came down. By day we wailed and cried as we trudged along, By night we grieved and groaned as we sat down. If we wished to die, we were unable to manage it; If we wished to live, we were hardly able to do that, either. What crime had we committed against Heaven To meet with such suffering and misfortune? 3 Tung Cho employed mercenaries from the western nomadic tribes to fight the imperial forces; it was during one of their raids that Ts’ai Yen was captured. 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 Poem of Affliction The frontier wastes are not at all like China, The customs have little righteousness or order. Everywhere there is plenty of frost and snow And the nomads’ wind begins to blow in spring and summer. Whipping up, the wind whistled through my clothes, Wailing, it entered my ears. Moved by the passing of time, I thought of my parents: My grieving sighs were endless. When a traveler came from the outside world I always felt happy to hear of it; I would welcome him, ask him for the news, And yet again discover he was not from my native place. Unexpectedly, my wishes for help were finally granted, An envoy from my family came to take me home. But though I was able to have myself released, When I returned, I still had to abandon my sons. There were natural ties which bound our hearts together, I brooded that I would be parted from them, without hope of meeting again. In life or death we would always be separated, And I could not bear to take my leave of them. My children came forward and hung around my neck, Crying, “Mother, where are you going? They say you have to go away, But how will we ever be reunited? Mother, you have always been so loving, so indulgent, How can you now be so unkind to us? We have not yet grown to manhood, How could you not look back and long for us?” To see them this way crushed my very vitals, Distressed as I was, I became as one demented. Wailing and crying, hands clutching, caressing, As I was about to go, I turned back yet again. Some women who had been taken at the same time I was Came out to send me off and say farewell. They envied me as the only one able to go home, The sound of their wails and cries was shattering; 127 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 128 Appendix Even the horses stood, hesitating to leave, And the carts would not roll forward in their tracks. All of the onlookers were sighing, And travelers on the road were sobbing, too. 80 Go, Go! My lingering ties were cut. Marching fast, as days rolled by we were farther and farther away; With the vastness of three thousand li between us, When would I again meet with those I loved? I thought of the sons who were born from my womb; 85 My spirit for life was crushed in defeat. When | arrived, my family was all gone; Again I was without even a distant relative. The city walls had become a mountain forest, The courtyards and pavilions sprouted brambles, go There were white bones of who knows whom In all directions with no one to cover them up; I went outside the gates, but not a human sound— Just the wolves howling and yelping; Desolate, I faced my orphan shadow; 95 Grief and anger swelled in my entrails. I climbed a hill to look off into the distance, And my spirit seemed suddenly to fly from me; But just when I seemed to be at my last breath, Some people near me acted with great kindness. 100 So again I forced myself to go on living, But though I lived, what had I to depend on? I entrusted my life to yet another husband, I did my utmost to force myself to go on. My homeless life completes my suffering; 105 My constant fear is to be cast off again. How long can one person’s life endure? I shall harbor my grief to the very end of my days! 4 Tung Ssu. Song of Everlasting Sorrow 129 Song of Everlasting Sorrow (Po Chi-yi, 772-846) The Emperor prized beauty, and longed for a woman to topple a kingdom, Through a reign of many years he searched without obtaining her. There was a girl of the Yang family, just about grown, Who had been reared in the inner chambers—no one knew of her yet, She had beauty and charms granted by Heaven, difficult to conceal, And so one day was chosen to be the concubine of her sovereign. A glance exchanged, a single smile; she showed a hundred charms, The painted beauties of his Six Palaces seemed to have no allure. In the cold of early spring she bathed in the Flower-Clear Pool, The warm spring’s water polished her skin translucent white and glossy smooth.' A servant helped her up; she was graceful, so helplessly languid— That was the first time the emperor bestowed his favor on her. Her clouds of hair, her lovely face, her swaying, gold-shod steps, Within hibiscus canopies they passed their spring nights in warmth. The spring nights seemed very short, the sun would rise high; But from that time His Majesty would not attend the early court. They took their pleasure at feasts and entertainments without pause, The spring came, and passed on as night followed night. There were three thousand other beauties in the women’s palace; For him, all their three thousand charms were combined in one body. In the golden room, her toilette complete, she seductively attended him all night, 1 In the original Chinese her skin is compared to the whiteness of rendered mutton fat. 10 15 20 130 Appendix In the jade tower, the feasting finished, she harmonized with spring delights. Her sisters and brothers were all given rank and titles; To the dismay of many, her glory reflected on her family, And so throughout the empire the hearts of mothers and fathers Did not value the birth of a boy, but valued that of a girl. In the upper stories of Li Palace, piercing the blue sky, Fairy music wafted on the wind, to be heard everywhere, Slow-paced songs and languorous dances were played by strings and flutes: Though he gaze all day, His Majesty could not gaze on her enough. Then the war-drums from Yu-yang came, shaking the earth, Abruptly breaking off the songs of the “Rainbow Skirt” and the “Robe of Feathers.” The Nine Rings of the Forbidden City threw up smoke and dust, Thousands mounted, ten thousand in carts moved off to the southwest. The Imperial banner fluttered, then its movement stopped West of the city gates more than a hundred Ii. There the six armies refused to budge, no matter what the cost, Until he yielded his moth-browed beauty to die before the horses. Hairpins like flowers flung to the ground, with no one to catch them, A kingfisher crown, golden birds and hair-tassels of jade. The Emperor could only cover his face; he was unable to save her. Looking back, the blood and tears were flowing together. The yellow dust dispersed, the wind blew cold, The trail in the clouds twisted around to climb the Chien-ko Pass.’ Under O-mei Mountain a few people passed, Without light, the day-bright colors of flags and pennants faded. The water of the Shu River is green, Shu Mountain is blue: The Emperor, day after day, night after night, grieved. 2 The forces of the rebel general An Lu-Shan. 3 Into Ssu-ch’uan. 4 One of the five sacred mountains of China, near Ch’eng-tu. 25 30 2) 40 45 Song of Everlasting Sorrow 131 Pacing the palace, he looked at the moon, his wounded heart full of longing, In the night rain he heard bells, but his feelings cut off their sounds. Heaven and Earth swung ‘round again, and the dragon-cart returned, When they came to that spot he hesitated, and could not go on. She was in the earth under the Ma-wei Slope, He could not see her jade face—the place where she died was empty. Lord and courtier, when they met, would soak their clothes with tears, Looking east to the city gates, they trusted their horses to know the way back. When they returned, the pools and parks were as in the olden days, Hibiscus from Lake T’ai-yi, and Wei-yang Palace willows. The hibiscus were like her face, the willows like her brows, So when he looked at them, how could he help but weep? In the spring wind the peaches and plums blossomed with the days, In the autumn rains the wu-t’ung trees shed their leaves in season. The West Palace and the Southern Enclosure were full of autumn grasses, Falling leaves covered the stairs with red, and were not swept away. The attendants of the Pear Garden, their white hair was new, The Pepper House eunuchs’ young eyebrows began to show their age. Fireflies flew in the evening halls; he thought quietly of her, The wick in his lonely lamp burnt out, and yet he would not sleep. Slowly, slowly, the bells and drums began each long night, Brighter, brighter the Milky Way, urging the sky to dawn. The roof-tile mandarin ducks were cold, the frost was bright and thick, His kingfisher-feather covers were cold, for who was to be with him? 50 55 60 65 70 132 Appendix His thoughts were on the distance between life and death, year after year without end, But her spirit would not return, or come to enter his dreams. A Taoist adept of Ling-chun was a voyager in the heavens Able because of his devout conviction to contact spirits. Moved by their sovereign’s constant torment of longing, Some sought out this adept to search diligently for her. He marshalled the clouds and drove ether before him, quick as lightning, Up in the sky, down into the earth, he looked for her everywhere. He rose to the ends of the jade-green sky, he plumbed the Yellow Springs, In both places, look as he might, he did not see her. Suddenly he heard of a mountain of immortals in the sea, The mountain was in the misty realm of emptiness. Splendid towers and gates rose up from the five-color clouds, And in the midst of these delights there were many immortals. Among them was one called “Most Genuine,” With snowy skin, a flower face, who could be compared with her? At the gold towers on the west side he knocked on the jade door, And asked a little jade attendant to inform the one of the paired perfections. When she heard the Chinese court had sent an envoy from the Emperor, She was awakened from her dreams in her nine-flowered canopied bed. Pushing aside her pillow, she dressed and rose like a flying swallow, Rushed over to open the pearly door and the silver screen. New-wakened from sleep, her cloud of hair tilted to one side, Her flower cap was not set straight when she came down to the courtyard. The wind sighed in her immortal sleeves and raised them up in dancing, 5 The underworld. 73 80 85 90 95 Ballad of the p’i-p‘a 133 As if this were the dance of the “Rainbow Skirt” and the “Robe of Feathers.” On her jade face from loneliness the tears trickled down, Like pear blossoms on a branch when the spring brings down the rain. She restrained her emotions, calmed her eyes and thanked the emperor: “Since we parted our voices and faces are dim to one another, Cut off was our happy love in the Court of the Bright Sun, And the long days and nights in P’eng-lai Palace. But when I turn my head to gaze down at the mortal world, I can never see Ch’ang-an, but only fog and dust.” She gave the envoy the old things that were pledges of their love, A golden hairpin in its case she gave him to take away; But of the hairpin she kept one branch, of the box she kept one half, Breaking the hairpin’s yellow gold and the hinge of the box. “Tell him our love should be as whole as this hairpin and its case— In heaven or in the world of men we will meet again.” About to part, she charged him further to take these words, In these words was meaning only their two hearts knew: “On the seventh day of the seventh month, in the Palace of Long Life, At midnight, with no one else there, we exchanged a secret vow: That in the heavens we wished to fly, two birds with joined wings, And on the earth we wished to grow, two trees with branches entwined.” Heaven endures, earth’s span is long, but sometime both will end— This sorrow everlasting will go on forever. Ballad of the p’i-p’a (Po Chi-yi) In the tenth year of the Yuian-ho reign (815) I was degraded in rank to the post of deputy prefect in the Chiu-chiang prefecture. In the autumn of the next year I was seeing off a guest beside the 100 105 110 115 120 124 Appendix P’en River, and we heard from a boat in the night the playing of a p'i-p'a. As I listened to its notes, its jingling had the sound of the music of the capital. I asked after this person: originally she had been a singing-girl in Ch’ang-an, and had studied the p’i-p’a with the two eminent masters Mu and Ts’ao. When she grew older and her charms were fading, she gave herself as wife to a merchant. I ordered wine and asked her to play some songs right away. When the songs were finished she dwelt on her story pathetically, speak- ing a bit of the happy times when she was younger, and of how she now drifted, haggard with grief, constantly moving around the rivers and lakes. I became a provincial official and was sent out two years ago. I had been tranquil and at peace with myself, but affected by this woman’s words, this evening I finally began to feel what it meant to be degraded and banished. Therefore I composed a long poem, a song which I could present to her in 616 characters, called “Ballad of the p’i-p’a.” On the banks of the Hsiin-yang River, I was seeing off a guest one night, The autumn wind sighing in the maple leaves and reed-flowers. As host, I dismounted and joined my guest on the boat, Where we raised up our wine and were ready to drink, but had no music of pipes or strings. Though tipsy, we could not stir up feelings of joy, and were on the point of parting; As we said farewell, the moon seemed half-submerged in the boundless river. Suddenly I heard coming over the water the sound of a p’/-p’a; I forgot all about going home, and my friend did not set out. We followed the sound and discreetly asked who the player might be. The sound of the p’i-p’a halted, reluctantly she answered We moved our boat to the side of hers and invited her to meet us. We ordered more wine, renewed the lanterns, and again began the feast. A thousand calls, ten thousand pleas, before she emerged Still holding the p’i-p’a in such a way as half to hide her face. She turned the pegs and plucked the strings for several notes; Ballad of the p’i-p’a 135 Even before they became a song, they began to reveal her emotion. With every string she pressed or released, each note was full of memories, As if to complain that throughout her life she had never fulfilled her desires. She lowered her brows, let her hands go and played continuously, Expressing all that was in her heart without keeping anything back. Pressing lightly, vibrating slowly, alternately strumming and plucking, First she played “The Rainbow Skirt,” then “Sixes in Dice.”! The large strings drummed with a noise like the rush of rain, The small strings whispered as if they told a secret, Drumming and whispering mingled in her playing Like big pearls and small pearls pouring into a dish of jade. There was the call of a hidden oriole, rolling out from under the flowers, And the muffled sob of a flowing spring as its water poured down the bank. The water of the spring seemed cold, as if the strings were freezing, Their freezing kept the spring from flowing; the sound gradually choked to a halt. The music ceased in deep melancholy, then hidden griefs came forth; Those moments of silence were more powerful than those with sounds of music. A silver pitcher suddenly broke, the liquid burst out, Armored cavalry rushed forth with the ringing of blades and spears, At the end of the piece she paused with her plectrum, then struck right across the heart; 1 Tunes composed by the emperor T’ang Hstian-tsung in honor of the dancing talents of his favorite concubine, Yang Kuei-fei. 20 25 30 35 136 Appendix All four strings gave one sound like the tearing of silk. The boats around us east and west were silent, without a word, Just the white light of the autumn moon was seen in the heart of the river. As if deep in thought, she put the pick in its place under the strings, Then she arranged her clothes, sat up and composed her face. She told us that originally she was the daughter of a family in the capital, She lived in a house at Ha-ma, at the foot of the ridge,” At the age of thirteen her studies of the p’i-p’a had been perfected; Her name belonged among the names of the Imperial musicians. Whenever she played, she was always admired by those with real talent, Whenever she was all dressed up, she was envied by the girls of the season, Wu-ling’s youths vied with each other for her attentions, For just one song, who knows how many rolls of red silk they offered, Silver combs with gold inlay were broken keeping time to her playing, Blood-red silk skirts were soaked by wine cups overturned, One year’s happiness and laughter were followed by next year’s, Autumn moons and spring breezes passed unheeded. Then her little brother went into the army, and her aunt (on her mother’s side) died, The evenings went, the mornings came, and her beauty faded; Her gateway grew desolate, carriages and horses few, As she grew older she made a match, to be a merchant's wife. The merchant valued his profits, and made light of being separated from her— Last month he went out to Fu-liang to buy tea. Since he had gone, at the river’s mouth she kept watch in the empty boat; 2 Near the pleasure quarters of Ch’ang-an. 3 The young men of the capital city. 40 45 50 55 Ballad of the p’i-p’a 137 Surrounding the boat the bright moon and the river water were cold. Deep in the night she would suddenly dream of the doings of her youth, In her dream she cried out, her face streaming with tears and rouge.* When I heard the p’1-p’a I was already sighing, When I had heard her words as well, I sighed once again. “We are both lost wanderers at the ends of the earth; Meeting here, what need have we to have known each other before? Last year I bade farewell to the imperial capital; In exile I live, pining away in the city of Hstn-yang. Hstin-yang is a place so remote that there is no music— For a whole year I have not heard the sound of strings or flutes. I live near P’en-ch’eng, where the ground is low and damp, Yellow rushes and bitter bamboos press in around my dwelling, In such a place, morning and evening, what sort of thing do I hear? The cuckoo cries its bloody cry, and the apes wail mournfully.° In spring on the river are flowery mornings, in autumn are moonlit nights, But any time I go to fetch wine, I must always drink alone. Oh, I’m not without ‘mountain songs’ and ‘village pipes,’ But they do sound uncouth and shrill, and grate on my ears. This evening, when I heard the voice of your p’1-p’a, It was like hearing immortals’ music, and my ears became clear again. Don’t refuse me! Sit down for a while and play another song, 4 Literally, “streaming with ‘red balustrade’ tears.” It suggests a double meaning: that her tears were for the old days “at the red balustrade” (in the pleasure quar- ters waiting for patrons), and that her “red balustrade” makeup (the makeup typical of an entertainer) was streaming down her face, dissolved by her tears. 5 The cuckoo’s unhappy cry is attributed to the regret of the adulterous Emperor Wang, who seduced the wife of his prime minister and in his shame abdicated in the minister’s favor. When he died he was transformed into a cuckoo, which is said to spit blood to show the emperor's continuing remorse. 60 65 70 We 80 138 Appendix And I will in return compose a ‘Ballad of the p’i-p’a’ for you.” Moved by these words of mine, she stood for a long while, But finally sat and hurried the strings’ tempo even faster; In their forlorn emotion not the same as she played before; 85 The whole company listened again, and everyone hid their tears. Of those among the company, who wept most of all? I, sub-prefect of Chiang-chou; I soaked my blue sleeve through. Song of the Lady of Ch’in (Wei Chuang, c. 834-910) In the third year of the Chung-ho reign, the third month of the spring, Outside Loyang’s city walls the blossoms massed like snow; East, west, south, north the people on the road had vanished, The green willows were quiet and still, the fragrant dust had settled. At the roadside I suddenly came upon a lady like a flower— 5 Alone she had gone to the green willows, and sat down to rest in the shade. Her phoenix clasp was tilted, bell-bird hairpins askew, lock-ends falling every which way, Her rouge smeared off, her brow paint beaded, the line of her eyebrows broken. “Young lady, where have you come from?” I asked. She composed her features and started to speak, but her voice first broke into a sob, 10 So she turned her head to adjust her sleeves, then courteously answered me. “Swept along by the waves of rebellion, how can I bear to speak of it? Three years I remained in the rebels’ hands, detained in the land of Ch’in,! Blurred and obscured in my memory are the things that happened there. 1 The old name for the country surrounding the imperial capital. Song of the Lady of Ch’in 139 Sir, if you have the time to loosen your golden saddle for me, 15 I likewise will rest my jade foot to keep you company. The year before last, which was keng-tzu,* on the fifth day of the last month, Just as I was closing the golden cage of my parrot after its lesson, I reached over to take up my bell-bird mirror, lazily combed my hair, And peacefully leaned on the carved balustrade, still idle and without speaking, 20 I suddenly saw that outside the gates of the house red dust was rising, Already I glimpsed in the street men frantically beating on metal drums. The inhabitants then rushed out to them, breathless and terrified; Courtiers, returning, stood incredulous. But just then from the west end government troops marched into the city, 25 Ready to march to T’ung Pass, thus confirming disaster. Everyone said that the Po-yeh troops could hold the enemy back, * Everyone said that the rebels were coming, but could never get this far! An instant later my husband came galloping up and arrived at home, Dismounting, he entered the gate and stood stunned like a drunken man. 30 By chance he had met the Purple Imperial Coach in flight, covered with the dust of exile; Already he saw the rebels’ white flags stream in from the land all around. 2 The name of the year according to a sixty-year calendar. 3 Of great strategic importance throughout Chinese history, T’ung Pass was located at the bend of the Yellow River where the borders of the ancient states of Ch’in, Chin, and Yu met. Enemy troops who could penetrate this point had a clear walk through the valley to Ch’ang-an. 4 A group of local reinforcements. 140 Appendix Supporting the weak, leading children by the hand, shouting to make themselves heard, Some climb to the roofs, others flee by the walls, with no trace of decorum or order, Neighbors run to their northern friends’ hiding places, Neighbors east escape to their neighbors in the west. The women of our northern neighbor’s household come out like a herd together, Bursting their gate like a hurricane, stampeding as if they were cattle. Rumbling, rumbling, a rolling roar! Heaven and earth both shake. The thunder of ten thousand horses wells up from the earth. Fires burst out with golden sparks which fly up to the Ninth Heaven, The Twelve Municipal Thoroughfares fill up with flames and smoke. The sun’s wheel descends to the west, its cold rays are white, The Lord of Heaven still speaks no word—in vain the mind throbs with horror! Dark clouds ring the sun with a halo of haze, like troops in formation for siege, The Minister Stars fall from their paths, tinged with blood, Purple vapors stealthily follow the Royal Throne as it shifts position, Weird rays of light shoot through the darkness, to destroy the Three T’ai Lords’ stars.° Every household flows with blood, bubbling like a spring, Everywhere screams of atrocity; the screams shake the earth. The dancers and the singing girls are all despoiled, Infants and young girls are cast aside to lose their lives. Our eastern neighbor had a girl just beginning to paint her eyebrows, A beauty to overthrow city or state; her qualities yet unknown. 5 These four lines refer to various constellations whose political symbolism indi- cates that the chaos in the heavens reflects the chaos in the world below. 35 40 45 50 Song of the Lady of Ch’in 141 Long spears forced her to climb up into a warrior’s chariot, Turning her head to her fragrant boudoir, her tears filled her handkerchief. Now she pulls out golden threads, learning to mend their banners, And climbs up to a carved saddle, to be taught how to ride a horse. Sometimes from her own horse she may catch a glimpse of her ‘husband’; She dares not turn away her eyes, but helpless her tears fall. Our western neighbor had a girl; truly, a fairy spirit! Sidelong glances flashed like waves from her large, bewitching eyes. Her toilette complete, she was gazing at her spring beauty in the mirror, Still young, she did not know what went on outside her gate. Some scoundrel jumped in over the wall and leaped up the golden steps, Pulling her clothes half off her shoulders, he tried to rape her; Dragged by her gown, she was unwilling to leave her vermilion gate— So rouge, fragrant ointments, and all, she perished under the knife. Our southern neighbor had a girl whose name I do not recall, Just the day before a good matchmaker had exchanged betrothal gifts for her; On the shimmering tiles of the staircase she did not hear footsteps coming, Through her shades of kingfisher blue she saw their shadows too late. Suddenly we saw her at the courtyard’s edge, but a swordblade rang; Her head and body were severed in an instant. Looking to Heaven, then covering their faces with a single cry, Her younger and elder sisters together threw themselves into the well. The young wife of our northern neighbor was hurrying to depart, 22) 60 65 70 JD 142 Appendix Just shaking out her cloudlike hair and wiping green pigment from her brows;°® Already she heard battering sounds at her tall gate, Without thinking, she climbed out onto the eaves and up to her second storey. 80 Soon from all sides the blaze of fires came; When she tried to come down the spiral stairs, the stairs had already collapsed. While her loud screams from the midst of the smoke still begged for her rescue, Her corpse hanging on the rafters was already burned to cinders. I by some chance had been preserved intact from the rebels’ deadly weapons, 85 I did not dare to hesitate, to linger or look back, But combed out my hairstyle’s ‘cicada wings’ to follow the path of the troops, And forcing my brows to a cheerful look, I went out from my gate. From that time on I could never again return to my old ward, From that time on there was no place I might look to find my kinfolk; go It has been three years since the time I first fell into the rebels’ hands, Each day long I have trembled and grieved, my heart and courage broken. At night when I rested a thousand ranks of swords and spears surrounded me; At the morning meal, each taste seemed like slivered human livers. Although I ‘entered the curtains of marriage,’ how could I enjoy ‘marital bliss’? 95 Although I had plenty of precious goods, they were not things I could enjoy. 6 She lets down her elaborate hairstyle and wipes off her cosmetics to make herself seem less attractive. Dark green was a popular color for painting the eyebrows; it was thought to give a youthful appearance. Song of the Lady of Ch’in 143 His hair unkempt, his face filthy, his eyebrows bright red! If I gave my man even a sidelong glance, I still could not bear the sight. His clothing was put on inside out, the language he spoke was uncouth, On his face there were boasts of his deeds—the words being tattooed there!” On the Cypress Terrace, the ‘Censorate Scholars’ had all become fox spirits, At the Orchid Bureau the ‘Official Recorders’ were all rat demons;® They kept trying to wear ornate hairpins in their short hair, Without taking off their robes of state, they rolled up in embroidered quilts. With ivory tablets held upside down, some aped the Three Lords of State, Golden fish tail up and turned wrong way ‘round, some became ‘Historians of the Left and Right.”? In the morning I could hear them report to the Throne and enter the audience chamber, In the evening I could see them go to the wine shops in a brawl. One morning in the fifth watch everyone rose up in alarm With shouting and clamor conflicting, there seemed to be secret tidings. During the night a mounted scout had entered the Imperial city— Yesterday government troops had taken the town of Ch’ih-shui. The distance from Ch’ih-shui to the city is only a hundred li, If they set out at daybreak, ah! by evening they ought to arrive! The big, fierce men on their horses now silently gulp back sighs, While their female companions in their chambers secretly vent their delight. 7 Convicted criminals often were punished by having the character for their crime branded or tattooed on their faces. 8 The Cypress Terrace and the Orchid Assembly were parts of the Imperial Censo- rate. 9 The ivory tablets and golden fish are symbols of the empire’s highest-ranking ministers. 100 105 110 115 144 Appendix All say that outrage and injustice this time will be avenged, Surely, we say, these monstrous troops will die this very day! They gallop their horses in full retreat, really frightened by the rumors, At last they say the army advances, to enter in full force! Now Big P’eng and Little P’eng may well look at each other and worry, This fine fellow and that fine fellow may cling to their saddles and weep.” But for several days we drift on and on, without any news at all, This must mean that the vanguard troops already ‘have jade tablets in their mouths.’" Waving standards and brandishing swords, the rebels then came back To tell us the government's forces were all completely defeated. From this time on, on every side, our suffering grew more dire: A peck of yellow gold bought but a single pint of grain, In Shang Jang’s kitchen they prepared the bark of trees to eat, On Huang Ch’ao’s table they carved the meat of men.” The Southeast was cut off from us, no roads would bring supplies, The moat ‘round the city gradually filled, while the people grew fewer and fewer. Outside the Gates of the Six Armies lay heaps of stiffened corpses, Inside, the Ch’i-chia camp was filled with those who starved to death. Ch’ang-an lies so still, so still; what is left there now? Ruined markets, desolate streets where shoots of wheat are sprouting, 10 Literally, “Big P’eng and Little P’eng . . . Gentleman II and Gentleman IV’—a contemptuous way of referring to their captors. 11 As tokens of submission. 12 At the time of the sack of Ch’ang-an, Shang Jang acted as Huang Ch’ao’s lieu- tenant; however, after the rebels’ later retreat from the city he defected to the imperial cause and dealt his former chief a final, deadly blow in 884. 120 125 130 135 Song of the Lady of Ch’in 145 For firewood they chopped down the last of the trees that bloomed in the Apricot Gardens, For building their fortress they doomed the willows along the Imperial Canal. Splendid coaches with paint-patterned wheels were all smashed and scattered, Of the mansions with their vermilion gates, not even half survive. On the floor of the Han-ytian Audience Hall foxes and rabbits roam, The approach to the Hua O Tower is filled up with brambles and thorns. The luxury of former times—now destroyed and buried; A dreary waste as far as the eye can see—not a single familiar thing there. The Imperial Treasury was burned to the very ash of its brocades and embroideries, On the Street of Heaven were trampled to dust the bones of State Officials. So we set out on the road east of the city, when day was breaking, The wind-borne smoke made the land outside the city look like the frontiers. At the roadside we sometimes came upon wandering parties of soldiers, At the foot of the slope, no guests were welcomed or sent off as they used to be. Gazing off to the east at Pa-ling, all signs of men’s dwellings were gone, Tree-clouded Li Shan’s gold and kingfisher blue had all been destroyed." The great highroads had all become forests of brambles, And travelers had to pass the night in a roofless house under the moon. Next morning at dawn we arrived at the highway to San-feng, 13 A complex of temples and pavilions that had been a major resort for the imperial family. 140 145 150 15D 146 Appendix In hundreds and thousands of homes, not a single family remained. In the barren, deserted fields and gardens only punk-weeds were left, The bamboos and trees were completely destroyed, and all was derelict. By the roadside was Hua Shan’s Golden Spirit, whom I tried to question, But the Golden Spirit would not speak; he was even more grieved than we. Of the ancient cypresses before the shrine, only shattered stumps were left, From the temple’s golden incense burners, only some dark dust rose. ‘Ever since that frenzied bandit laid waste to the heartland, Heaven and earth have been clouded with gloom, and the wind and rain are black. The holy water before the altar failed in its protective spell, The underworld warriors on the wall were unable to drive back the rebels. In the days of peace I falsely accepted kind libations and offerings, For in times of danger I could bring no aid, nor exert any divine power. Now I am filled with shame for my ineptness as a god; I should flee deep into the mountains and hide myself away! Within my domains, no sound of flutes and pipes, No place for me to look for a sacrificial victim on its bamboo mat. The marauding nightmare demons came from all sides around my village, And slaughtered all living beings before a day was done.’ When I heard this speech, my melancholy deepened— Heaven sends down calamity in due season, not of its own accord. 14 The mountain’s genius loci, to whom the surrounding population would offer seasonal sacrifices. 160 165 170 175; Song of the Lady of Ch’in 147 If this spirit runs to the mountains in order to flee his danger, How can we turn accusing looks to the nobles of the East? Year before last, I finally emerged to see the Yang-chen Pass, Raising my head to view Mount Ching at the borders of the clouds; It was like coming out of a world of darkness and reaching the human world, Iimmediately felt that the times were clear and Heaven and Earth at peace. The governor of Shen Chou is a loyal and virtuous man, He does not rise up in rebellion, but only guards his city. The Governor of P’u-chin is able to keep down fighting there, A thousand li of tranquility, without the sound of weapons. One can carry precious goods by day without anyone molesting, At night wearing golden hairpins one can travel alone. The next morning we again went on, passing east of Hsin-an, And on the road we came upon an old man begging gruel. Hoary and old, his careworn face the color of moss and lichens, He tried to conceal himself in a tangled mass of rushes. I asked the old man, ‘In former times, what was your native place? What forced you under the cold sky, to lodge with frost and dew?’ The old man gradually stood erect, wanting to tell his story, But sank back hiding his face in his hands and wept aloud to Heaven. ‘My native fields originally were part of Tung-chi province, Year after year my mulberry groves adjoined crown lands, Each year I would sow two hundred ch’an of fertile fields," The household tax I paid each year was thirty million cash. My daughters were expert weavers of heavy damask robes. My daughters-in-law were able to cook red millet for their meals. I had a thousand granaries! Ten thousand chests as well! 15 A ch’an is a unit of land covering one hundred mou, or acres. 180 185 190 195 200 148 Appendix Even after Huang Ch’ao came through, only half had been destroyed. But ever since, from around Loyang, where the armies are encamped, Day and night patrolling soldiers enter the village walls, The swords they draw are “Green Serpents,” glittering like autumn waters in their scabards, The high winds on their banners blow out the symbol of the White Tiger." Entering the gates, they dismount and swoop down like a whirlwind, Despoil the houses, emptying purses in piles as if they were heaping up earth. Once my household goods were all gone, my flesh and blood were torn from me, So now in my declining years I am all alone, bitter and wretched. But that one person should suffer—alas!—How should that be my only lament? For in the mountains are ever more, thousands and thousands of families: By day hunger gnaws them as they hunt wild raspberries on the hillsides, By night they shelter with the frost, sleeping on reeds and flowers.’ I heard this poor old father’s heartrending words; For the rest of the day I cried and cried, my tears flowed down like rain. I left my home only to hear the cry of the owl, signifying rebellion, Even more do I wish now to hasten east, but where shall I find to live? Yet again I hear that traffic is cut off on the road to Pien,”” 16 These symbols indicate that these are troops loyal to the empire, not the troops of the rebels. 17 K’ai-feng. 205 210 215 220 Song of the Lady of Ch’in 149 And they say on the road west to P’eng-men they are slaughtering one another. Facing that wilderness warriors’ ghosts flee from their bodies, At the fords, the waters mingle with the blood of murdered men. I have just now heard of a traveler who has come here from Chin-ling, Hearing him speak of Chiang-nan, it seems the scenery there is different. For there, though the frenzied bandit subjugated the central plain, No muster of war horses overflows that land’s four borders." There they feel destroying criminals is work of divine merit, They treat all people with mercy and love, just as if they were children. The walls and moats are a secure protection of metal and boiling water, The taxes levied are like clouds, and are sent straight on to the fortresses. How can it be helped that all within the four seas is in violent flux? Yet this one district is clear as a mirror and life there smooth as a whetstone! We who have lived by the royal palace must flee to escape disaster And in our yearning for peace must envy Chiang-nan’s very ghosts. I pray you, Sir, to raise your oars and go farther and farther east And chant this long song as an offering to His Excellency of Chin-ling.” 18 An allusion to the Tao te ching, signifying that a virtuous ruler need not fear attack from outside. 225 230 235 Notes Introduction 1 See Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker (New York: Knopf, 1976), pp. 430-40. For discussion of the influence of “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” on The Tale of Genji, see Endo Toshio, Chohonka Kenkyu (Tokyo: Kensetsusha, 1934); Lin Wen-ytieh, “The Tale of Genji and ‘A Song of Unending Sorrow,’” Tamkang Review 6.2 and 7.1 (October 1975—April 1976): 281-85. For the more general influence of the poetry of Po Chu-yi in Japan, see Robert H. Brower and Earl Miner, Japanese Court Poetry (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1961), pp. 180ff.; and David Pollack, The Fracture of Meaning: Japan's Synthesis of China from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). 2 See Earl Miner, “On the Genesis and Development of Literary Sys- tems,” Critical Inquiry 5, pt. 1 (Winter 1978): 339-53, and pt. 2 (Spring 1979): 553-68, on the fundamental features of traditions based on lyrical 152 Notes Ww poetics, and their influence on the development of literary forms and aesthetics. The term hsii-shih shih is adapted from hsii-shih wen, which refers to prose narrative, especially historiography. It is used in too restricted a sense to be translated with such a broad term as “narrative.” Liu Chih-chi (661-721) used the term in his discussions of the features of historiography; see Shih t’ung hsiao-fan chu (reprint, Taipei: Kuang- wen, 1963), pp. 64-72. For the critical application of the term hsii-shih wen beyond historiography, see Andrew H. Plaks, “Issues in Chinese Narrative Theory in the Perspective of the Western Tradition,” PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 2 (1977): 341. See also Hu Ying-lin (1551-1607), Ssu pu cheng wei, in Wei shu k’‘ao wu chung (reprint, Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1965). Hu Shih (1891-1962) uses both the terms hsti-shih shih and ku-shih shih in Pai hua wen-hstieh shih (Shanghai: Shang-wu, 1928). Chiu Hsieh-yu goes so far as to define ku-shih shih as a subcategory of hsii-shih shih, and translates the term as “epic.” See Chung-kuo li-tai ku-shih shih (Taipei: San-min, 1969). For the primacy of historiography in the evolution of narrative in the Chinese tradition, see Jaroslav Prusek, “History and Epics in China and the West: A Study of Differences in the Conception of the Human Story,” in Prusek, Chinese History and Literature: A Collection of Essays (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1970), pp. 17-34; John C. Y. Wang, “The Nature of Chinese Narrative: A Preliminary Statement of Methodology,” Tamkang Review 6.2 and 7.1 (October 1975—April 1976): 229-45; Andrew H. Plaks, “Towards a Critical Theory of Chinese Narrative,” in Plaks, ed., Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 309-52; and Plaks, “Conceptual Models of Chinese Narrative Theory,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 4.1 (June 1977): 25-47. Another important source for narrative technique and method is pien-wen, or “transformation texts.” These are prosimetric compositions from the popular Buddhist story-telling traditions. In “The Narrative Revolution in Chinese Literature: Ontological Perspectives,” CLEAR 5.1 (July 1985): 1-27, Mair focuses on pien-wen in “an attempt to assess the overall impact of Buddhism on the Chinese narrative tradition” (p. 1). In the same issue of CLEAR, Kenneth Dewoskin and W. L. Idema take up the debate in “On Narrative Revolutions” (pp. 29-45) and “The IIlu- sion of Fiction” (pp. 47-51), respectively. Idema does mention narrative poetry (p. 51), but all three essays focus on the origins of the pien- wen form rather than on the techniques whereby the form achieves a narrative mode of expression. See also Pai Hua-wen, trans. Victor H. Notes 153 Mair, “What is Pien-wen?” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 44.2 (1984): 493-514. 5 I use the terms genre and generic here in the sense of a critical division based on rhetorical structure or “radical of presentation,” as defined by Northrop Frye in Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). According to Frye, the “radical of presenta- tion” determines “the conditions established between the poet and his public” (p. 247), a concept essential to my analysis of the distinctions between narrative and lyrical tendencies in artistic expression in Chi- nese poetry. In this study I will use the term mode when referring to narra- tive or lyrical tendencies in the expressive intent underlying a work of art, and genre when referring to distinctions based on rhetorical struc- ture or formal features of composition. For representative studies of Chinese genre theory, see James Robert Hightower, “The Wen Hstian and Genre Theory,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 20 (1957): 512-33; Ferenc Tokei, Genre Theory in China in the Third through Sixth Centuries (Liu Hsieh’s Theory on Poetic Genres) (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiad6, 1971); and David R. Knechtges, Wen xuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, vol. 1: Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), introduction. 6 James J. Y. Liu, The Interlingual Critic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), pp. 16-21. 7 For a discussion of Hu Shih’s “dissatisfaction” with traditional Chinese narrative, see Lin Shuen-fu, “Ritual and Narrative Structure in Ju-lin Wai-shih,” in Plaks, ed., Chinese Narrative, pp. 245-49. 8 See Kao Yu-kung, “Lyric Vision in Chinese Narrative Tradition: A Read- ing of Hung-lou Meng and Ju-lin Wai-shih,” in Plaks, ed., Chinese Narra- tive, pp. 228-33; James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), especially pp. 63-87; and Pauline Yu, “The Poetics of Discontinuity: East-West Correspondences in Lyric Poetry,” Publication of the Modern Language Association 94.2 (March 1979): 261-74. For a study focusing on this issue in Chinese aesthetics, see Hsu Fu-kuan, “Chung-kuo yi-shu ching-shen chu-t’i chih chen hsien,” in Chung-kuo yi-shu ching-shen (Taichung: Tunghai University Press, 1966), PP- 45-143. 9 For a general discussion of the fundamental properties of narrative in the Western tradition, including the importance of generic character- istics, see Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966). A structuralist analysis of 154 Notes 10 ats | 12 13 this problem, which focuses upon generic quality, may be found in Gérard Genette, Figures III (Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1972). A helpful analysis of the issues raised by Figures II] is Shlomith Rimmon, “A Com- prehensive Theory of Narrative: Figures III and the Structuralist Study of Fiction,” PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 1 (1976): 33-62. Alastair Fowler provides a comprehensive historical and critical study in Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Modes and Genres (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982); see also William Elford Rogers, The Three Genres and the Interpretation of Lyric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 9-76. I have been consistent throughout this study in translating the terms hsing as “ballad,” ko as “song,” and shih as “poem” when they appear in titles, unless otherwise indicated. There is much speculation as to the original significance of these terms for musical or metrical references; however, I have found no consistent use of any one term which would indicate whether the composition so titled was intended to be narrative or lyric, or to adhere to any particular metrical convention. Viktor Poschl, The Art of Vergil: Image and Symbol in the Aeneid (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), pp. 13-24. D. W. Fokkema, “Cultural Relativism and Comparative Literature,” Tamkang Review 3.2 (1972): 59-71, focuses on this issue in relation to the Chinese tradition. The dependence of European literary theory on the fundamental interrelations of the European linguistic traditions is often overlooked. In a sense, linguistic scholarship has fueled the study of cultural interrelations; cf. the influential Antoine Meillet, L’Introduction a l'étude comparative des langues indo-européennes (1903; reprint, Univer- sity, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1964). I have especially con- sulted Georges Dumézil, Mythe et epopée I. L’ideologie des trois fonctions dans les epopées des peuples indo-européens (Paris: Gallimard, first ed., 1968, third ed. with additional notes, 1979); Mythe et epopée II. Types epiques indo-européens: un héros, un sorcier, un roi (Paris: Gallimard, 1971); and Mythes et epopées III. Histoires romaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1973); and W. B. Lockwood, Indo-European Philology. Historical and Comparative (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1969). On Ezra Pound and the influence of his interpretation of Chinese poet- ics on European poetry, see Wai-lim Yip, Ezra Pound's Cathay (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969); and Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). For critical consider- ations of European images of Chinese poetics as interpreted by Pound and others, see Zhang Longxi, “The Tao and the Logos: Notes on Der- 14 15 16 17 18 iy) 20 Notes 155 rida’s Critic of Logocentrism,” Critical Inquiry 11 (March 1985): 385-98; and Hugh Kenner, “The Poetics of Error,” Tamkang Review 6.2 and 7.1 (October 1975—April 1976): 89-97. See also chap. 1, note 4. For a description of the metrical properties of ku-shih, see Hugh M. Stimson, Fifty-five T’ang Poems (New Haven: Far Eastern Publications, 1976), pp. 23-51; Hans H. Frankel, The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 213; Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry from Late T’ang to Northern Sung (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 210-11. Stimson, Fifty-five T’ang Poems, pp. 23-49. See the entry by C. Bradford Langly in William Nienhauser, Jr., ed., The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indi- ana University Press, 1986), pp. 656—60. See also James Robert High- tower, “Some Characteristics of Parallel Prose,” in Seren Egerod and Else Glahn, eds., Studia Serica Bernhard Karlgren Dedicata (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1959), pp. 60-91; and Hsieh Hung-hsien, P’ien-wen heng- lun (Taipei: Kuang-wen, 1973). See Lo Ken-tse, Yiieh-fu wen-hstieh shih (Peking: Wen-hua, 1931); Hsiao Ti-fei, Han Wei liu-ch’ao ytieh-fu wen-hsiieh shih (1944; reprint, Taipei: Ch’ang-an, 1976); Jean-Pierre Diény, Aux origines de la poésie classique en Chine (T’oung Pao Monographie VI) (Leiden: Brill, 1968), pp. 81-100; and Hans H. Frankel, “Yteh-fu Poetry,” in Cyril Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), Pp- 69-107. Stimson goes so far as to term yiieh-fu a “subset” of the genre of ku-shih; see Fifty-five T’ang Poems, p. 51. Frankel analyzes the development of yiieh-fu as a literary rather than folk genre in “The Legacy of the Han, Wei, and Six Dynasties Yiieh-fu Tradition and Its Fuller Development in T’ang Poetry,” in Shuen-fu Lin and Stephen Owen, eds., The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late Han to T’ang (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), stating that “During the second phase [of its development]—from the 190s to the end of the Wei dynasty in 266— yiieh-fu becomes a major poetic genre in the hands of Ts’ao Ts’ao, his sons Ts’ao P’i and Ts’ao Chih, Ts’ao P’i’s son Ts’ao Jui, and some of their contemporaries” (p. 287). For a discussion of the relation of yiieh-fu to T’ang narrative poetry, see C. H. Wang, “The Nature of Narrative in T’ang Poetry,” in Lin and Owen, The Vitality of the Lyric Voice, pp. 217-52, especially sect. 1, “Origins.” Hu Ying-lin, Shih sou (Shanghai: Chung-hua, 1958), pp. 1-55. A recent study that surveys the folk origins of Chinese narrative poetry, 156 Notes 21 22 23 with emphasis on the Shih Ching and yueh-fu, is Joseph Roe Allen III, “Early Chinese Narrative Poetry: The Definition of a Tradition” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1982). Ch’en Yin-k’o, “T’ao-hua yiian chi p’ang cheng,” in Ch’en Yin-k’o, Ch’en Yin-k’o hsien-sheng wen-shih lun-chi, 1:183-93. Chang Wei-ch’i, “T’ao-hua ytian chi shih yi,” Kuo-hstieh ytieh-pao hui-k’an 1 (1924): 201-20; Meishi Ts’ai, “Peach Blossom Spring: A Mythic Arcadia,” Tamkang Review 11.1 (Fall 1980): 1-22. This occurs in both Chinese anthologies and in English translations; cf. Wu Ch’eng-ch’uan (fl. 1711) et al., Ku-wen kuan-chih (Hong Kong: Hua-mei, 1951). The translation in Robert F. Fang, Gleanings from T’ao Ytian-ming (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1980), pp. 178-83, omits the poem, as does Burton Watson, in The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (New York: Columbia Univer- sity Press, 1984), pp. 142-43. I have followed the work of James Robert Hightower, which includes a complete translation of preface and poem as a united composition, with commentary, in The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 254-58. Another complete trans- lation has recently appeared in A. R. Davis, T’ao Yiian-ming, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1:195-201, and 2:139- 43. For a treatment of preface (with partial translation) and poem (com- plete) together as autobiography, see Kang-i Sun Chang, Six Dynasties Poetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 16-20. 24 Text from Ting Fu-pao, T’ao Yiian-ming shih chien chu (1927; reprint, 25 26 27 28 Taipei: Yi-wen, 1964); translation by Hightower, The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien, P2233. For the biography of Liu Tzu-chi, see Fang Hsuan-ling, ed., Chin Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1974), 8:2460—66; for T’ao Ch’ien’s interest in this legend, see Ch’en Yin-k’o, “Notes on the ‘Account of Peach Blossom Spring,’” Ch’ing-hua hstieh-pao 2 (1936), reprinted in T’ao Yuan-ming yen- chiu tzu-liao hui-p’ien (Peking: Chung-hua, 1962), pp. 338-47; and Pei- ching ta-hsueh, Chung-kuo yu yen wen-hsueh hsi, ed., T’ao Yiian-ming shih-wen hui-p’ing (Peking: Chung-hua, 1961), pp. 339-62. Hightower, The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien, p. 257. Stephen Owen, The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 28. I have chosen to use my own translation of “Poem of Peach Blossom Spring” because of my interpretative emphasis on the narrative quali- ties of the poem. It has seemed most appropriate to me to use the first person for the text in translation, as I feel that the narrator and the fisherman are meant to represent the same person. In assuming this 29 30 32 33 Notes 157 “autobiographical” stance, Wang Wei’s poetic persona and his relation to T’ao Ch’ien are emphasized. The text is from Chao Tien-ch’eng, ed., Wang Yu-ch’eng chi chien-chu, 2 vols. (Peking: Chung-hua, 1961), 1:98— 99- Other translations include Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu, The Jade Mountain: A Chinese Anthology Being Three Hundred Poems of the T’ang Dynasty (New York: Knopf, 1929), pp. 203-4; Wai-lim Yip, Hiding the Universe: Poems by Wang Wei (New York: Grossman, 1972), pp. 62-67; G. W. Robinson, Poems of Wang Wei (Baltimore: Penguin, 1973), pp. 34— 37; and a translation with commentary by Pauline Yu, The Poetry of Wang Wei: New Translations and Commentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), pp. 59-61. All of these translations use the third person except for Yip, who carefully avoids the use of any pronouns at all. Hightower, The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien, p. 256. The process followed by the artist for the choice of internalization or externalization of approach to subject matter has been described from the artist’s point of view by Joyce Cary, Art and Reality: Ways of the Creative Process (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958). See also Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953). On the role of stanzaic composition in European ballads, see Francis James Child, ed., The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vols. (Boston: Little, 1886-98), 5:469-502; Gordon Hall Gerould, The Ballad of Tradi- tion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932); and William J. Entwhistle, European Balladry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939). In Japanese Linked Poetry: An Account with Translations of Renga and Haikai Sequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), Earl Miner discusses the role of stanzaic units in long compositions in Japanese literature in detail; see especially pp. 58-85, 132-59; and Jin’ichi Konishi, “Asso- ciation and Progression: Principles of Integration in Anthologies and Sequences of Japanese Court Poetry, a.D. 900-1350,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 21 (1958): 67-127. Miner, Japanese Linked Poetry, pp. 140-59. Diény, Aux origines de la poésie classique en Chine. The importance of formulaic language and the possible folk origins of the Shih Ching is the focus of C. H. Wang, The Bell and the Drum: A Study of the Shih Ching as Formulaic Poetry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). For such considerations in yiieh-fu, see Hans H. Frankel, “The Formulaic Language in the Chinese Ballad ‘Southeast Fly the Peacocks,” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology (Academia Sinica) 39, pt. 2 (1969): 219-44; and “Some Characteristics of Oral Narrative Poetry in China,” 158 Notes Etudes d’histoire et de littérature chinoises offertes a Professeur Jaroslav Prisek, Bibliotheque de I'Institute des Hautes Etudes Chinoises 24 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1976), pp. 97-106. 34 Cary, Art and Reality, pp. 15-20, 37-50. 35 I have dealt with the distinctive features of early Chinese techniques ra of characterization at greater length in “The Trojan and the Hegemon; or, The Culture Hero as Slave of Duty,” Comparative Literature Studies 22.1 (Spring 1985): 136—46. See also C. H. Wang, “Towards Defining a Chinese Heroism,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 95.1 (January— March 1975): 25-35. Narrative Elements in Traditional Chinese Poetics Adapting the terms used by Scholes and Kellogg in The Nature of Narra- tive. Instead of “sequence,” their analysis of narrative sequence focuses on “plot” (pp. 207-49), in accordance with their teleological analysis of the development of European narrative forms culminating in the novel. For the category of “sequence” in preference to “plot,” applied to East Asian models, see Miner, Japanese Linked Poetry, pp. 3-159. During the discussion of C. H. Wang’s “The Nature of Narrative in Tang Poetry,” at the A.C.L.S. Conference on the Evolution of Shih Poetry (York, Maine, June 9-12, 1982), Francois Cheng observed that “in the semiological definition of narrativity, there are three distinc- tive characteristics in Chinese poetry,” which he describes as image, speaker, and sequence. Cheng’s theory of the function of images, which can partake of lyric and narrative modes, is developed in detail in his L’écriture poétique chinoise (Paris: Editions de Seuile, 1977), translated by Donald A. Riggs and Jerome P. Seaton as Chinese Poetic Writing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). Cheng’s description of “active procedures” and “passive procedures” in Chinese poetic lan- guage is contrasted with procedures of poetic language in European models. Chow Tze-tsung suggests that the poems in which the word shih first appeared were composed as early as the eleventh century B.c. See Chow Tze-tsung, “The Early History of the Chinese Word Shih (Poetry),” in Chow Tze-tsung, ed., Wen Lin: Studies in the Chinese Humanities (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), p. 155. More recently, Chow has also discussed the relation of the practices of ancient Chinese shamanism to the evolution of concepts of poetry, dance, and music; see “Ancient Chinese Wu Shamanism and Its Relationship to Sacrifices, Notes 159 History, Dance Music, and Poetry” (“Chung-kuo ku-tai ti wu-yi yii chi-ssu, li-shih, ytieh-wu, chi shih ti kuan-hsi”’), pts. 1-3, Ch’ing-hua hstieh-pao, n.s. 12.1-2 (December 1979): 1-59, and n.s. 13.1-2 (December 1981): 1-25. Part 3 is of most direct interest to this study. 4 This is an aspect of Chinese poetics that has intrigued European artists and critics, most influentially Ernst Fenellosa and Ezra Pound. Unfortu- nately, they focused their attention on the orthography of the Chinese language, especially the so-called pictographs, which led them into erroneous assumptions as to the nature of the Chinese poetic language. The peculiar characteristics of Chinese critical terminology and poetic language are by no means the product of pictographs, which comprise, after all, only a small minority of characters. Indeed pictographs, ideo- graphs, and compound ideographs, according to Yuen Ren Chao’s clas- sifications, “represent words (or rather morphemes) and do not directly represent meanings. They are not therefore strictly pictographs or ideo- graphs, but, to follow Peter A. Boodberg’s terminology, logographs, that is, written forms to represent spoken words.” Yuen Ren Chao, Language and Symbolic Sysiems (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 102-5. While The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry relies heavily on the models from the Shih Ching, it should be remembered that these poems come down to the present time through Han dynasty redactions of texts transmitted orally, preserved by memory from the ravages of the Ch’in dynasty (221-206 B.c.). Furthermore, it has been argued convincingly by Chinese and European scholars that the Shih Ching is in fact what Chinese literary history makes it; namely, an an- thology based on orally composed songs from the folk tradition, and Chou state and local rituals. See C. H. Wang, The Bell and the Drum. Emphasizing the “pictorial” quality of the written language provides a fantastical notion of whence Chinese poetic language derives its expres- sive power. See also Zhang Longxi, “The Tao and the Logos.” George A. Kennedy criticized Fenellosa’s essay in “Fenellosa, Pound, and the Chi- nese Character,” in Li Tien-yi, ed., Selected Works of George A. Kennedy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), pp. 443-62. Perhaps more useful are his two essays dealing with the most persistent clichés about the nature of Chinese language; see “The Monosyllabic Myth,” pp. 104-18; and “The Fate of Chinese Pictographs,” pp. 238-41. 5 James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, pp. 69-70; Chow Tze-tsung, “Ancient Chinese Views on Literature, the Tao, and Their Relation- ship,” CLEAR 1.1 (January 1979): 3-29; and Donald Holzman, “Con- 160 Notes 6 fucius and Ancient Chinese Criticism,” in Adele Austin Rickett, ed., Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucius to Liang Ch’i-ch’ao (Prince- ton: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 21-41. James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, pp. 63-81, 106-16. 7 Shu Ching, pt. 2, book 1, sec. 5.24, translation by Chow Tze-tsung, “The 8 9 10 itil i? Early History of the Chinese Word Shih (Poetry),” pp. 152-53. See also James Legge, The Shoo King, in The Chinese Classics, rev. ed. (Shang- hai: Mer Seng Press, 1935), 3:48: “Poetry is the expression of earnest thought; singing is the prolonged utterance of that expression.” James J. Y. Liu remarks, “The attribution of this statement to the legendary sage Emperor Shun cannot be accepted” (Chinese Theories of Literature, p. 118). Again, it is symptomatic of the importance given to this state- ment that such apocryphal material concerning the nature and proper function of literature should be recorded and considered with the great- est seriousness by literary scholars. The date of composition of the “Great Preface” is by no means fixed. A case for a date as early as the third century B.c. is made by Chu Tzu- ch’ing, Shih yen chih pien (Taipei: K’ai-ming, 1964), sec. 3:19-20. For an overview of the problem, see Ch’u Wan-li, Shih ching shih yi, facsimile ed. (Taipei: K’ai-ming, 1964), introduction, pp. 20-21. For a text and complete translation see James Legge, The She King or the Book of Poetry, in The Chinese Classics, rev. ed. (Shanghai: Mer Seng Press, 1935), 4:34—-36. His text is based on that of the Mao shih chu shu, in Juan Yuan, ed., Shih-san ching chu shu (1815). This text was also the basis for the annotated edition of Kuo Shao-yii, Chung-kuo wen-hstieh p’1-p’ing wen-hsuan (reprint, Tainan: P’ing-p’ing, 1975), on which I have based my translation of the text. See also Chow Tze-tsung, “The Early History of the Chinese Word Shih (Poetry),” p. 157; and James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, pp. 63-64, 69, 119-20. Some Han scholars even went so far as to equate shih with chih, by definition: see Hsti Shen (30?-124?), Shuo wen chieh tzu, in Ting Fu-pao, ed., Shuo wen chieh tzu ku lin, 12 vols. (Taipei: Shang-wu, 1966), pp. 968a-b. See, for example, Kao Yu-kung, “The Aesthetics of Regulated Verse,” in Lin and Owen, eds., The Vitality of the Lyric Voice, p. 348: “Many have pointed out that this simple maxim [shih yen chih] is indeed the cornerstone of Chinese poetic theory, which prescribes an ‘expressive theory’ of poetry by all accounts.” Kao Yu-kung, “Lyric Vision in Chinese Narrative Tradition: A Reading of Hung-lou Meng and Ju-lin Wai-shih,” in Plaks, ed., Chinese Narrative, pp. 228-29. Notes 161 13 Kao Yu-kung and Mei Tsu-lin, “Syntax, Diction, and Imagery in T’ang Poetry,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 31 (1971): 49-136. 14 Kao and Mei, “Syntax, Diction, and Imagery in T’ang Poetry,” pp. 58- 59; see also Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth, trans. Suzanne K. Langer (New York: Dover, 1946), especially pp. 32-33; and Francois Recanati, “Some Remarks on Explicit Perfomatives, Indirect Speech Acts, Locu- tionary Meaning, and Truth Value,” in John R. Searle, Fernec Kieffer, and Manfred Bierwisch, eds., Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics (Dor- drecht: Reidel, 1980), pp. 205-20. 15 See Kao and Mei, “Syntax, Diction, and Imagery in T’ang Poetry,” pp. 58-60 (“Preview of Some Basic Ideas”). 16 Kao and Mei, “Syntax, Diction, and Imagery in T’ang Poetry,” pp. 98- 112; see also W. A. C. H. Dobson, Late Archaic Chinese: A Grammatical Study (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959), p. 76; and Yuen Ren Chao, Mandarin Primer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), introduction. In my interpretation I have relied greatly upon Chou Fa- kao’s historical grammar of classical Chinese; see Chou Fa-kao, Chung- kuo ku-tai yui-fa, 4 vols. (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1959, 1961). 17 Kao, “Lyric Vision in Chinese Narrative Tradition,” pp. 227-31. 18 James J. Y. Liu, The Interlingual Critic, pp. 17-18. See also Achilles Fang, “Some Reflections on the Difficulty of Translation,” in Reuben Brower, ed., On Translation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959); and Eugene Eoyang, “The Tone of the Poet and the Tone of the Translator,” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 24 (1975): 75-83. 19 George A. Kennedy, “The Monosyllabic Myth,” pp. 110-13; see also his “A Note on Ode 220,” in Studia Serica Berhard Karlgren Dedicata, pp. 190-98. 20 Chou Fa-kao, “Reduplicatives in the Book of Odes,” Bulletin of the Insti- tute of History and Philology (Academia Sinica) 34.2 (1963): 661. 21 Chou Fa-kao, “Reduplicatives in the Book of Odes,” p. 669: “Kuan kuan is an identical reduplicative, while ts’en tz’u is an alliterative redupli- cative, and yao t’iao, a rhyming reduplicative.” It should be noted that while most of the reduplicatives in the Shih Ching are qualitative verbs, or “descriptives,” there are some nouns and a few instances of inter- jections and intransitive verbs used in this fashion. See pp. 664—65. For my analysis of the function of reduplicatives and imagistic language in the Shih Ching Iam indebted to conversations with David Lattimore and to his notes, “Verbal Repetition in The Canon of Songs.” 22 James Legge, The She King, p. 1. 23 Bernhard Karlgren, The Book of Odes (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950), p. 2. 162 Notes 24 Arthur Waley, The Book of Songs (London: Allen and Unwin, 1937), no. 87, p. 81. 25 Bernhard Karlgren, Grammata Serica Recensa, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, no. 29 (1957; reprint, Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1972), no. 187, p. 69. 26 Legge, The She King, p. 8. 27 Waley, The Book of Songs, no. 40, p. 45. Chou Fa-kao agrees that Waley is correct in treating this compound as a descriptive. He goes further to state that no transitive verbs are used reduplicatively in the Shih Ching, or perhaps more precisely, no reduplicatives function as transitive verbs here. See “Reduplicatives in the Book of Odes,” p. 665, note 3. 28 Kao and Mei, “Syntax, Diction, and Imagery in T’ang Poetry,” pp. 93- 94. 29 W. A. C. H. Dobson, “Studies in the Grammar of Early Archaic Chi- nese,” T’oung Pao 46, livr. 3-5 (1955): 342. 30 Kao and Mei discuss these verbs under their category of “static verbs,” in “Syntax, Diction, and Imagery in T’ang Poetry,” pp. 98-103. 31 James Robert Hightower, “Allusion in the Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien,” Har- vard Journal of Asiatic Studies 31 (1971): 5-27; reprinted in Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, pp. 108-32; David Lattimore, “Allusion in T’ang Poetry,” in Denis Twitchett and Arthur Wright, eds., Perspec- tives on the T’ang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), pp. 405-39; Chou Shan, “Allusion and Periphrasis as Modes of Poetry in Tu Fu’s ‘Eight Laments,’” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45.1 (1985): 77-128. 32 This issue has been analyzed in great detail, with reference to many European critics, in the discussion of the principle of “manifold mean- ing” in Kao Yu-kung and Mei Tsu-lin, “Meaning, Metaphor, and Allu- sion in T’ang Poetry,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 38.2 (December 1978): 281-356. 33 Chen Shih-hsiang, “The Shih Ching: Its Generic Significance in Chinese Literary History and Poetics,” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Phi- lology (Academia Sinica) 39.1 (1968): 371-413: reprinted in Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, pp. 23-24. 34 This preface has recently been completely translated and annotated by David R. Knechtges, along with the “Two Capitals Fu,” in Wen xuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, vol. 1: Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 93-180. Knechtges has rendered this sentence: “Someone has said, ‘The rhap- sody is a genre of the ancient Songs’” (p. 94). I have translated it differently above in order to avoid the equation of the term “genre” with liu. It is interesting to note that the anthologist Chih Yu (d. c. 310), 35 36 37 38 Notes 163 a contemporary of Lu Chi, also asserted that fu were derived from the Book of Songs, using exactly the same phrase. It is quoted in Ou-yang Hstin (557-641) (Wang Shao-ying, ed.), Yi wen lei-chti (Peking: Chung- hua, 1965), p. 56. Fora translation, with notes, see Joseph Roe Allen III, “Chih Yu's Discussions of Different Types of Literature: A Translation and Brief Comment,” in Two Studies in Chinese Literary Criticism (Parerga 3) (Seattle: Institute for Foreign Area Studies, 1976), pp. 3-36. Interestingly enough, this seems not to apply to the other five principles outside the context of the Shih Ching. Feng, ya, and sung have often been assumed to designate generic categories in the Shih Ching itself, although these terms are not applied to examples of similar genres outside of this anthology. For another perspective, the role of the six principles in the development of Japanese poetics and genre theory in relation to Chinese critical theory is discussed in John T. Wixted, “The Kokinshu Prefaces: Another Perspective,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43.1 (1983): 215-38. For line-by-line correspondences between the “Great Preface” and the two Kokinshu prefaces, see E. B. Ceadel, “The Two Prefaces of the Kokinshu,” Asia Major, n.s. 7.1—2 (1959): 40-51. All poems from the Shih Ching will be cited according to their num- ber in the Mao edition, with particular reference to the commentaries of Mao Heng, Cheng Hsuan (117-200), and K’ung Ying-ta (574-648). K’ung Ying-ta’s edition and commentary, Mao shih cheng yi, relies upon the Mao edition and Cheng Hsuan’s textual notes. I have used Mao shih chu shu, 3 vols., from the series Kuo-hstieh chi-pen ts’ung shu (Tai- pei: Shang-wu, 1968). For later studies, the Sung commentaries of Chu Hsi (1130-1200) are most influential, although his interests are not pri- marily in the realm of literary theory or aesthetics. See Shih chi chuan (reprint, Shanghai: Chung-hua, 1958). In the classification of poems ac- cording to technique, Chu Hsi follows K’ung Ying-ta, but while K’ung Ying-ta remarks on particular phrases or lines he regards as character- istic of given techniques, Chu Hsi assumes that the characteristics of a particular passage apply to the poem as a whole. Chu Hsi’s approach can be explained in other than literary critical or theoretical terms. For a discussion of his principles and aesthetics of canonical commentary, see Daniel K. Gardner, “Principle and Pedagogy: Chu Hsi and the Four Books,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 44.1 (1984): 57-81. David Hawkes, “The Quest of the Goddess,” Asia Major, n.s. 13.1-2 (1967): 71-94; reprinted in Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, pp- 42-68. The etymology cited is from Cheng Hsuan’s commentary on the Chou li 6.13a (Shih-san ching ed.): “fu chih yen p’u.” This etymology is a very ancient one, and seems the most promising 164 Notes 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 for reconciling the critical term with the poetic form, designated by the same character in Chinese. See the entry on fu in Karlgren, Grammata Serica Recensa, no. 104g-h, pp. 47-48. David R. Knechtges also discusses possible etymologies for the term in The Han Rhapsody: A Study of the Fu of Yang Hsiung (53 B.C.-A.D. 18) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 12-14, but is more concerned with the significance of fu as a poetic form than as a principle of composition. For a discussion of fu as a military tax, see Yang Lien-sheng, Studies in Chinese Institutional History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 104-7. Georges Margoulies, Evolution de la prose artistique chinoise (Munich: En- cyclopadie-Verlag, 1929), p. 36. James Legge, The She King, passim. In his notes on the “Great Preface,” Legge first tends to define fu in terms of its effects rather than its tech- nical function: “The term Foo needs little explanation. It is descriptive of a narrative piece, in which the poet says what he has to say right out, writing it down in a simple straightforward manner, without any hidden object. There is no meaning intended beyond what the words express, excepting in so far as we may infer from what is said the state of mind or the circumstances of the writer or subject” (“Prolegomena,” P- 35): Knechtges, Wen xuan, p. 92. Chen Shih-hsiang, “The Shih Ching,” p. 17. Chen Shih-hsiang suggests the terms “poetic usage” and “poetic cor- porality” for K’ung Ying-ta’s terms. What is important to our under- standing of the terms is that “shih chih suo yung” refers to the means whereby certain poetic effects may be achieved, while “shih chih ch’eng hsing” indicates formal distinctions in this context. See K’ung Ying-ta, Mao shih cheng yi, preface. James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, p. 64. C. H. Wang, “The Nature of Narrative in T’ang Poetry,” pp. 218-19. Pauline Yu, “Metaphor and Chinese Poetry,” CLEAR 3.2 (July 1981): 214, 216. Mao no. 35, “Ku feng,” is regarded as representing all three principles in action. See Mao shih chu shu, 1:205-7; Shih chi chuan, pp. 21-22; see also Legge, The She King, pp. 55-58. Karlgren, Grammata Serica Recensa, entry 566g-h, p. 150. For the translation of pi as “similes,” see Chen, “The Shih Ching,” p. 17; as “comparison” or “simile,” see Yu, “Metaphor and Chinese Poetry,” p. 214. Legge is unusual in assigning the term “metaphor” to pi; see The She King, “Prolegomena,” pp. 35, passim. Notes 165 50 Mao shih chu shu, 1:324-26; Shih chi chuan, pp. 40-41; Legge, The She King, pp. 106-8. 51 Mao shih chu shu, 1:554-56; Shih chi chuan, p. 73; Legge, The She King, pp- 186-87. 52 Chung Jung, in Ch’en Yen-chieh, ed., Shih p’in chu (Taipei: K’ai-ming, 1958), p. 4; also cited in this context by Chen Shih-hsiang, “The Shih Ching,” p. 18. In “Theory, Standards, and Practice of Criticizing Poetry in Chung Jung’s Shih-p’in,” Yeh Chia-ying and Jan Walls translate the term fu as “direct description,” pi as “comparison,” and hsing as “evoca- tive image”: “The evocative image yields a meaning beyond words; comparison reveals internal feelings by means of external objects; de- scription is the direct recounting of events and the depiction of objects through words”; in Ronald C. Miao, ed., Studies in Chinese Poetry and Poetics (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1978), 1:43-80, 52. 53 Karlgren, Grammata Serica Recensa, entry 889a—d, p. 237. 54 Chen, “The Shih Ching,” pp. 22-23. For this etymology Chen cites the works of Shang Ch’eng-tso and Kuo Mo-jo on oracle bone inscriptions. See Shang Ch’eng-tso, Yin ch’i i ts’un, 2 vols. (Nan-ching: Chung-kuo wen-hua yen-chiu suo, 1933), p. 62; and Kuo Mo-jo, Pu tz’u t’ung tsuan (1933; reprint, Tokyo: Meiyu, 1977), p. 34. 55 Legge, The She King, “Prolegomena,” pp. 35, passim; Yu, “Metaphor and Chinese Poetry,” p. 214; Chen, “The Shih Ching,” p. 16. 56 Translations by Legge, The She King, pp. 91, 103, 200-201. 57 By the time of the composition of the “Great Preface,” the term which previous to the Han had been used for a certain style of chanting had become more frequently applied to the literary genre, probably in refer- ence to its intended context of public declamation. See Knechtges, The Han Rhapsody, pp. 14-43. 58 C. H. Wang, The Bell and the Drum; Frankel, “Some Characteristics of Oral Narrative Poetry in China,” pp. 97-106. 59 Chu Hsi, Shih chi chuan, pp. 43-44; Legge, The She King, pp. 112-13. 60 Some notable exceptions occur among the sung (hymns) in Chu Hsi’s commentary, twenty-one of which are not divided into stanzas at all. Chu Hsi labels several of these as demonstrating the principle fu, in which the people count their blessings, as it were. This strongly sug- gests that the original applications of the principle as enumeration were still considered valid in Sung literary criticism, even if commentators tended to stress sequences of action over other kinds. 61 Translations of Mao nos. 243 and 244 by Legge, The She King, pp. 458- 64. 166 Notes 62 Legge, The She King, p. 460. 63 For the origins of the genre fu in the poems of the Ch’u Tz’u, see Ch’eng T’ing-tso, “Sao fu lun,” in Wan shu ting yi (Taipei: Chin-ling, 1970), pp. 169-71. 64 David Hawkes, “The Quest of the Goddess,” Asia Major, n.s. 13.1-2 (1967): 79-94; reprinted in Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, Pp. 42-68. See also Arthur Waley, The Nine Songs: A Study of Shamanism in Ancient China (London: Allen and Unwin, 1953); and L. C. Hopkins, “The Shaman or Chinese Wu: His Inspired Dancing and Versatile Char- acter,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1945, pts. 1-2): 3-16. 65 Hawkes, “The Quest of the Goddess,” p. 63. 66 Ch’en Yuan-lung (1652-1736), ed., Yii-ting li-tai fu-hui, reprint, with introduction by Yoshikawa Kojiro (Tokyo: Chubun, 1974). 67 For translations and commentary on Hsiao T’ung’s preface, see James R. Hightower, “The Wen Hsiian and Genre Theory,” pp. 512-33; and Knechtges, Wen xuan, 1:73-91. 68 See Ch’en Yuan-lung, Yii-ting li-tai fu-hui, preface, and the introduction by Yoshikawa Kojiro; and Nakashima Chiaki, Fu no seiritsu to tenkai (Matsuyama: Kankosei, 1963). 69 The terms for the basic categories of fu vary from anthology to an- thology, and critical studies of individual poets are perhaps more help- ful for developing a sense of the distinctions between “descriptive” and “personal” fu. For general discussions of the different classifications, see Nakashima Chiaki, Fu no seiritsu to tenkai; Chin Chu-hsiang, Han tai tz’u fu chih fa-ta (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1931); T’ao Chiu-ying, Han fu chih shih ti yen-chiu (Shanghai: Chung-hua, 1939); and Wang Kuo-ying, “Han fu chung ti shan-shui ching-wu,” Chung wai wen-hstieh 9.5 (1980): 4-34. 70 Ch’eng T’ing-tso, “Sao fu lun,” p. 170. Hsiao T’ung regards Chia Yi as the heir of Sung Yu (third century B.c.), to whom the “Chiu pien” are attributed, and these poems are classified as “sao” in Wen Hsiian 33. The fact that Ssu-ma Ch’ien included Chia Yi’s biography with the biography of Ch’t Yuan points to a far earlier association of the two (Shih Chi 84), and Chia Yi’s earliest extant poem, “Tiao Ch’ii Yiian fu,” suggests that he drew this comparison himself. See Hightower, “The Wen Hstian and Genre Theory,” p. 519; Knechtges, Wen xuan, 1:75. For a complete translation of the “Owl fu” with analysis and notes, see James Robert Hightower, “Chia Yi’s ‘Owl Fu,’” Asia Major, n.s. 7.1—2 (1959): 125-30. 71 Ch’eng T’ing-tso, “Sao fu lun,” p. 170. For a study of the problem of Vz 73 74 75 76 77 Notes 167 genre in early Chinese literature focusing on sao see Ferenc Tokei: A kinai elégia szuletése. K’iu Juan és kora (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiad6, 1959). Tokei renders “sao” as “elegy,” and explores the relation between the elegiac quality of Chinese poetry in general and the representative quality of the genre of elegy (sao) in particular. He sees the emergence of the elegy as a natural outgrowth of the social conditions of Ch’t Ytian’s era. A revised edition appears in French under the title Nais- sance de l’élégie chinoise. K’iu Yuan et son époque. Les Essais CXXV (Paris: Gallimard, 1967). Knechtges, The Han Rhapsody, pp. 21-43. See also Waley, The Nine Songs; and Hellmut Wilhelm, “The Scholar’s Frustration: Notes on a Type of Fu,” in John K. Fairbank, ed., Chinese Thought and Institutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), pp. 310-19. Wilhelm emphasizes the importance of persuasive purpose in both descriptive and personal fu, a feature of the essential unity of the genre. F. A. Bischoff also emphasizes the aspect of persuasive rhetoric: see Interpreting the Fu: A Study in Chinese Literary Rhetoric. Munchener ostasiatische Studien, no. 13 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1976). David Knechtges and Jerry Swanson, “Seven Stimuli for the Prince: The Ch’i-Fa of Mei Ch’eng,” Monumenta Serica 29 (1970-71): 99-116; and Frankel, The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady, pp. 186-211. In “Hsieh Ling-yun: The Making of a New Descriptive Mode,” in Six Dynasties Poetry, pp. 68-70, Kang-i Sun Chang suggests a special style of “lyrical” fu, whose development paralleled that of landscape poetry in the shih form, in spite of the preponderence of descriptive (or as Chang terms them, “epideictic”) fu. Her purpose is to consider the possibility of reciprocal influences between shih and fu as the use of description in lyric shih intensified. Ch’en Yuan-lung, Yii-ting li-tai fu-hut, vol. 4 (wai-chi), pp. 1910-14. Beginning with the Shu Ching, as mentioned above, the significance of the phrase “yen-chih” is of great importance in Chinese poetics. My translation here of yen-chih, “to speak of one’s true self,” is used here for the particular purpose of describing this category in the poetic antholo- gies cited, and is not meant to be adequate to the term’s implications in all of Chinese poetic theory. See Chu Tzu-ch’ing, Shih yen chih pien. See William T. Graham, Jr., “The Lament for the South’: Yi Hsin’s “Ai Chiang-nan Fu” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). Graham’s study includes an exhaustive commentary with his complete translation, as well as analyses of the literary and historical sources of the material of the poem. All references to the poem’s text and transla- 168 Notes 78 79 80 81 82 - tions in this study are taken from this work. For the expressive qualities of Yu Hsin’s masterpiece, see Ch’en Yin-k’o, “Tu Ai Chiang-nan fu,” in Ch’en Yin-k’o hsien-sheng wen-shih lun-chi, 2:339-45. Graham, “The Lament for the South,” pp. 43-44, 134-35. Graham, “The Lament for the South,” p. 111. Graham, “The Lament for the South,” p. 67. Graham, “The Lament for the South,” p. 77. Graham, “The Lament for the South,” p. 89. Setting Specific Contexts Point of view is a well-explored concept in theory of narrative, but studies show a persistent bias toward prose fiction. This should be kept in mind when applying the concept to poetry. I have tried to qualify the term according to the requirements of narrative poetry whenever necessary. A comprehensive discussion of point of view in literature, based on European models and especially prose fiction, is Scholes and Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative, pp. 240-82; see also Wayne C. Booth, “Distance and Point of View,” in Philip Stevick, ed., The Theory of the Novel (New York: Free Press, 1967), pp. 87-107. For a historical and bibliographical survey of the concept during the period of the establishment of the primacy of the novel, see Norman Friedman, “Point of View in Fiction: The Development of a Critical Concept,” Publication of the Modern Lan- guage Association 70 (December 1955): 1160-84. For a study of Chinese fiction that deals specifically with this question, see Wong Kam-ming, “Point of View, Norms, and Structure,” in Plaks, ed., Chinese Narrative, pp. 203-26. Norman Friedman emphasizes the importance of point of view for criti- cal interpretation and, suggestively, compares its function in fiction to the choice of poetic genre in poetry; however, he fails to make a con- nection between the functions of point of view in narrative prose and poetry: “Thus the choice of a point of view in the writing of fiction is at least as crucial as the choice of a verse form in the composing of a poem; just as there are certain things which cannot get said [sic] in a sonnet, so each of the categories we have detailed has a proba- ble range of functions it can perform within its limits. The question of effectiveness, therefore, is one of the suitability of a given technique for the achievement of certain kinds of effects, for each story requires the establishment of a particular kind of illusion to sustain it (“Point of View in Fiction,” p. 1180). Notes 169 These applications of point of view do not preclude its use in other narrative genres, as works of structuralist poetics have attempted to elucidate. See, for example, Tzvetan Todorov, “Poétique,” in Oswald Ducrot et al., Qu’est-ce que le structuralisme? (Paris: Seuil, 1968); and Gérard Genette, Figures III. Certainly point of view is of great concern to artists themselves; see Henry James, The Art of the Novel, R. P. Black- mur, ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934); and Joyce Cary, Art and Reality, pp. 15-20, 37-50. In Cary’s discussion point of view is seen as the controlling device through which artists present their intu- itions about the chosen subject matter to their audience. Cary reflects that determining point of view is vital because it is the agency which determines the reader’s access to and appreciation of the content of the author’s intuition and interpretation of events. This formulation is par- ticularly interesting in view of the Chinese critical tradition of “reading” a poet’s character through his literary work (see discussion below). 3 See Kao Yu-kung, “Lyric Vision in Chinese Narrative Tradition,” pp. 227-43. Two studies which deal with the nature of lyricism in tz’u are Shuen-fu Lin, The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K’uei and Southern Sung Tz'u Poetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); and Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry. For a study focusing on T’ang shih, see Stephen Owen, “Transparen- cies: Reading the T’ang Lyric,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 39.2 (1979): 231-51. A more general theoretical discussion appears in Hsu Fu-kuan, “Chung-kuo yi-shu ching-shen chu-t’i chih chen hsien,” pp. 43-143. 4 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, pp. 246-51, 270-81. 5 The Confucian emphasis on purposive creation and criticism, men- tioned in the previous chapter, helps to explain this attitude and its pervasiveness in the Chinese tradition. The assumption forms the basis of innumerable critical studies, especially commentaries, and enforces a methodology of interpreting a poem in terms of what is known of a poet’s biography, or extrapolating biographical detail of an individual poet based on interpretations of particular poems. Even Western schol- ars take these assumptions into account in their critical and particularly biographical studies of Chinese poets. For instance, Arthur Waley’s lives of Po Chii-yi, Li Po, and Yiian Mei (first published in 1949, 1950, and 1956, respectively) are all based on this premise, and scholars con- tinue to emulate his method. It lends itself perhaps most easily to liter- ary biography. William Hung begins the final paragraph of his study, Tu Fu: China’s Greatest Poet (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), with these remarks: “I cannot claim to have fully understood Tu Fu, the poet. I believe I have a fairly accurate understanding of Tu Fu, 170 Notes the man” (p. 282). For more recent works of literary history which fol- low the same tendency, although their critical approaches to the poets studied are distinctive, see Stephen Owen, The Poetry of Meng Chiao and Han Yui (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975); and Ronald C. Egan, The Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1984), to name only two examples. Stephen Owen takes up the issue of “reading the poet” in its own right in “Transparencies: Reading the T’ang Lyric,” and Traditional Chinese Poetics: The Omen of the World (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp. 63-68. 6 In “The Concept of Creative Personality in Traditional Chinese Criti- cism,” Oriens Extremus 27.2 (1980): 183-202, Marian Galik stresses this concept as it applies to the notion of the creative personality in Chinese culture in general: “[Chinese literary theories] accentuate the compo- nents of relations and affinities that lie between ‘reality,’ the author, and the work” (p. 183). See also Maureen Robertson, “. . . “To Convey What is Precious’: Ssu-k’ung T’u’s Poetics and the Erh-shih-ssu Shih P’in,” in D. C. Buxbaum and F. W. Mote, eds., Transition and Permanence: Chinese History and Culture (Hong Kong: Cathay Press, 1972), pp. 323-57. 7 For a discussion of the memorial on “The Buddha’s Finger Bone,” and its biographical consequences for Han Yu, see Homer H. Dubs, “Han Yu and the Buddha’s Relic: An Episode in Medieval Chinese Religion,” The Review of Religion 11 (November 1946): 5-17; and Charles Hartman, Han Yui and the T’ang Search for Unity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 84-93. “The Officer at the Rapids” is mentioned in passing on p. 89, as one of many poems, in many styles, written by the disgraced statesman on his exile. The Chinese text I have consulted is from Chu Yi-tsun (1629-1709), ed., and Ku Ssu-li (1669-1722), annot., Ch’ang-li hsien-sheng shih chi chu (reprint, Taipei: Hsteh-sheng, 1967), sec. 6, pp. 351-53. A translation by Charles Hartman, “The Officer at the Rapids,” appears in Sunflower Splendor, pp. 188-89. 8 Another analysis of “The Officer at Lung River,” focusing on the bio- graphical implications of the poem, may be found in Stephen Owen, The Poetry of Meng Chiao and Han Yu, p. 271. Emphasizing the perspec- tive of literary biography, Owen describes “The Officer at Lung River” (which he translates as “Clerk at the Rapids”) as possibly Han Yu's “finest personal narrative.” Owen assumes that the shift from implicit to explicit point of view constitutes a shift from lyric to narrative mode; see his discussion of the three categories of “personal narratives,” pp. 73-89. 9 For texts, see Ch’tian T’ang shih, 7:2265—-66, 2275-76. For the relation 10 ats 1 Notes 171 of these poems to Tu Fu’s biography and complete translations, see William Hung, Tu Fu, pp. 87-89, 115-18. For translations with critical analyses emphasizing the expressive process and purpose of Tu Fu, see David Lattimore, “The Journey North” (in manuscript), and “From the Capital to Feng-hsien: Five Hundred Words to Chant My Feelings,” Ironwood 17 (also known as vol. 9, no. 1) (Spring 1981): 52-54. Iam grate- ful to Professor Lattimore for sharing these materials with me and for discussions about them. For a translation of “Journey North” focusing on its linguistic peculiarities, see Hugh Stimson, “The Rimes of ‘North- ward Journey,’ by Duh-Fuu, 712-770,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 93 (1973): 129-35; for a complete transcription of its T’ang pro- nunciation and lexicography, with textual notes, see his Fifty-five T’ang Poems, pp. 91-111. Mark Schorer, “Technique as Discovery,” The Hudson Review 1.1 (Spring 1948): 67-87; Herman M. Weisman, “An Investigation of Methods and Techniques in the Dramatization of Fiction,” Speech Monographs 19 (1952): 48-59; Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, pp. 282-93; Rogers, The Three Genres and the Interpretation of Lyric, pp. 77-120. This description of the function of point of view stems from a common- sense interpretation of the process of reading. For discussions of this problem in “reader-response” criticism, with implications sufficiently broad for application to the Chinese models, see I. A. Richards, Practi- cal Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgement (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935); James F. Ross, “On the Concepts of Reading,” Philosophical Forum 6 (Fall 1972): 93-141; Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Com- munication from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 274-94; and Earl Miner, “The Objective Fallacy and the Real Existence of Literature,” PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 1 (January 1976): 11-31. For the relation of “speaker” to experience and expression, see Paul Friedrich, The Language Parallax: Linguistic Relativism and Poetic Indeterminacy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), pp. 137-62; and Wolfgang Motsch, “Situational Context and Illusionary Force,” in Searle et al., Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics, pp- 155-68. In Jen chien tz’u-hua, Wang Kuo-wei draws a distinction between the k’o- kuan shih-jen, or “objective” poet, and the chu-kuan shih-jen, or “subjec- tive” poet. Wang’s analysis of the distinction between these two types is based on their different modes of presentation of subject matter, as determined by their level of experience and intent in composition: “Ob- jective poets must observe the world as much as possible. The more 172 Notes 13 14 15 16 17 profound their observation, the richer and more varied will be their ma- terial. . . . Subjective poets, on the other hand, do not need to observe the world to any great extent. The more superficial their observation the more genuine will be their expression of their own natural feelings.” Translation by Adele Austin Rickett, Wang Kuo-wet's Jen-chien Tz’u-hua: A Study in Chinese Literary Criticism (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univer- sity Press, 1977), p. 46. As they reflect the underlying expressive intent of the poet, the terms are suggestive of the distinctions I would like to draw between lyrical and narrative tendencies in poetic expression. See Jen-chien tz’u-hua, in Hsit Tiao-fu, ed., Hai-ning Wang Ching-an hsien sheng yi-shu (Peking: n.p., 1927-28). On the topic of description as a lit- erary mode, see Jeffrey Kittay, ed., Towards a Theory of Description. Yale French Studies, no. 61 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981). See also Kang-i Sun Chang, “Description of Landscape in Early Six Dynas- ties Poetry,” in Lin and Owen, eds., The Vitality of the Lyric Voice, pp. 105-29; and Six Dynasties Poetry, pp. 47-78. See my introduction, p. 14; and Pauline Yu: The Poetry of Wang Wei, pp. 59-61. For text see Shen Te-ch’ien (1675-1769), ed., Ku-shih yiian, pp. 76- 77. For a complete translation, with analysis focusing on the orphan’s movement in time and space within the poem, see Frankel, The Flower- ing Plum and the Palace Lady, pp. 62-66. For a complete text, translation, and analysis of this poem, see Hans H. Frankel, “The Chinese Ballad ‘Southeast Fly the Peacocks,’” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 34 (1974): 249-71. For an analysis focusing on the characteristics of the poetic language of the piece, see Frankel, “The Formulaic Language in the Chinese Ballad ‘Southeast Fly the Pea- cocks,’” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology 39.2 (1969): 219- 44. Another translation appears in Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, pp. 82-92. Couplets 59, 186-87; text from Wang Yi (second century A.D.), ed., Ch’u tz’u chang-chu (reprint, Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1965); translation by David Hawkes, Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 25, 34 (italics added to emphasize the presence of personal references in the Chinese text). For text see Ch’tian T’ang shih, vol. 4, sec. 97 (Shen Ch’tian-ch’i 3), pp. 1051-52. For a brief discussion of the career of Shen Ch’tian-ch’i and a translation of the first ten lines of this poem, see Stephen Owen, The Poetry of the Early T’ang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 359-60. The term chih-mei is an example of a translator’s nightmare, as English terms for supernatural creatures (in this case, a creature indige- 18 19 20 2 Lad 22 Notes 173 nous to hills and rocks) often have specific connotations from Western folklore which can be misleading when applied to Chinese folklore. I have chosen to use “troll” because of the association of trolls with rocky terrain, as per chih-mei in China and as borne out by Shen Ch’tian-ch’i’s description of the landscape in his poem. For a detailed study of the work of Shen Ch’tan-ch’i in exile, see Suzanne Cahill, “Shen Ch’tan- ch’i; Poems in Exile” (M.A. thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 1978). Hsiao T’ung, Wen Hstian 19. Arthur Waley, The Life and Times of Po Chii-yi (London: Allen and Unwin, 1949), pp. 117-18. My complete translation appears in the appendix. For other complete translations with interpretative analyses, see Howard S. Levy, “Lute Song,” Literature East and West 11.3 (September 1967): 223- 35; and Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, pp. 249-52. The “chance meeting” inspired Ma Chih-yiian (c. 1210-1280) to write a play in the tza-chu form about Po Chi-yi’s romance with the musician. Ch’ing-shan lei (Tears on the Blue Sleeve) transforms the autobiographical encounter of the poet and the musician, here given the name Pei Hsing- nu, into a full-blown romance with its origins in the capital, reuniting them in exile in Hstin-yang on this fateful night. It seems ironic that the poet who made such a romance of the story of Emperor Hstian- tsung and his favorite concubine should have received similar treatment himself. Many later plays were based on Ma Chih-yuan’s version of the story, including a ch’uan-ch’i by the Ming dramatist Ku Ta-tien (chin- shih 1568), Ch’ing-shan chi (The Tale of the Blue Sleeve). For an analysis of Ch’ing-shan chi, see Cyril Birch, “Some Concerns and Methods of Ming Ch’uan-ch’i Drama,” in Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, pp. 220-58. For a study of five plays about Po Cht-yi’s romance, including Ch’ing-shan chi, see Kubo Tenzui (1875-1935), “Biwaku no gokyoku,” in Shina gikyoku kenkyi (Tokyo: Jinbun, 1928). “Ballad of the p’i-p’a,” preface. Text from Ku Chao-ts’ang and Chou Ju- ch’ang, eds., Po Chii-yi shih hsiian (Peking: Tso-chia, 1962), pp. 125-29. I am grateful to Professor Anthony C. Yu for his meticulous critique of my draft translation. The locus classicus for this allusion and the topos of mutual recognition and affinity is the story of the friendship of Po Ya and Chung Tzu- ch’i, from Lieh Tzu 5, “T’ang-wen” (see Chung-hsii chih-te chen ching 5.7a, Ssu-pu tsung-k’an ed.). When Po Ya played his lute, Chung Tzu-ch’i could divine his friend’s thoughts with unerring accuracy and perfect sympathy. For a translation of this anecdote, see Angus Graham, Lieh- tzu: A New Translation (London: John Murray, 1960). My translation of 174 Notes 23 24 25 26 27 the phrase “chih-yin,” literally, “to understand the sound,” is meant to evoke the underlying allusion, which is particularly appropriate to this meeting. For the theme of chih-chi or chih-jen as it influences charac- terization in Chinese fiction, see Plaks, “Towards a Critical Theory of Chinese Narrative,” p. 343. Cary, Art and Reality, pp. 15-20. While Po Chi-yi’s image of his partici- pation as an artist in the experience of the reader is of course founded on entirely different cultural assumptions, his concept of the creative process as it affects point of view is strikingly like Cary’s notion of the role of intuition. See Waley’s discussion of Po Chi-yi’s “Letter to Yuan Chen” (“Yii Ytian Chiu shu”) in The Life and Times of Po Chii-yi, pp. 107- 13; and the letter itself, in Ku Hstieh-hsieh, ed., Po Chii-yi chi, 4 vols. (Peking: Chung-hua, 1979), chap. 45, 3: 959-67. On the characteristics of yiieh-fu prosody and the conventions of ytieh- fu representations of storytellers’ performances, see Frankel, “Ytieh-fu Poetry,” in Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, pp. 69-107; see also Huang Chieh, ed., Han Wei yteh-fu feng chien (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1961), preface (dated 1923). Frankel, “Yiieh-fu Poetry,” and “The Formulaic Language in the Chinese Ballad ‘Southeast Fly the Peacocks.’” Text from Ku Chao-ts’ang and Chou Ju-ch’ang, eds., Po Chii-yi shih hstian, pp. 14-27. My complete translation appears in the appendix. There are many translations of this poem into English. Arthur Waley, author of The Life and Times of Po Chii-yi, did not translate Po Cht-yi’s most famous poem himself, but rather refers the reader of the biog- raphy to the translation by Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu, in The Jade Mountain, pp. 120-25. Other translations include Howard S. Levy, Lament Everlasting: The Death of Yang Kuei-fei (Tokyo: n.p., 1962), see also his Translations from Po Chii-yi’s Collected Works, 2 vols. (New York: Para- gon, 1971), 1:131—40, for additional analyses; and Mimi Chan and Piers Grey, “Three Poems on Yang Kuei-fei,” Renditions 14 (Autumn 1980): 79-84. For an analysis with reference to the relation of Po Chi-yi’s poetry with that of his friend Ytian Chen, see Ch’en Yin-k’o, “Ch’ang- hen ko chien-cheng” (“Yiian Po shih chien-cheng kao chih yi”), Ch’ing-hua hstieh-pao 14.1 (October 1947): 1-34. For historical accounts of Emperor Hstian-tsung’s reign, see E. G. Pulleyblank, The Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-shan (London: Ox- ford University Press, 1955); and Denis Twitchett, ed., The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3: Sui and T’ang China, 589-906 (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1979), pt. 1, pp. 427ff. For a more subjective account from the perspective of the career of the poet Tu Fu, with 28 29 3 1 Notes 175 translations of his poems written during this period, see Hung, Tu Fu, chaps. 6-11, pp. 90-254. Howard S. Levy has made the emperor’s infatuation with Yang Kuei-fei a special topic of study; see “The Career of Yang Kuei-fei,” T’oung Pao 45 (1957): 101-18; “The Selection of Yang Kuei-fei,” Oriens 15 (1962): 411-22. Two biographies of Yang Kuei-fei and studies of the political influence of her family appear in the dynastic histories; see Liu Hsu, ed., Chiu T’ang shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1975), 7:2178-81; Ou-yang Hsiu, ed., Hsin T’ang shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1975), 12:3493-96. For Tu Fu’s poem about the emperor’s romance, “Lament by the River- side” (“Ai-chiang t’ou”), see Hung, Tu Fu, pp. 106-7; David Hawkes, A Little Primer of Tu Fu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 49-59. Hans H. Frankel, “The Contemplation of the Past in T’ang Poetry,” in Wright and Twitchett, eds., Perspectives on the T'ang, pp. 345-64; David Lattimore, “Allusion in T’ang Poetry,” pp. 405-39; James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, pp. 106-16. For text, see Feng Chih, Tu Fu shih hstian (Hong Kong: Ta-kuang, 1961), pp. 48-49. Text from Feng Chih, Tu Fu shih hstian, pp. 77-78; see also Hung, Tu Fu, p- 141; Stimson, Fifty-five T’ang Poems, pp. 112-14. Text from Feng Chih, Tu Fu shih hstian, pp. 78-80; see also Hung, Tu Fu, pp. 141-42. Character Types and Character Roles Levy, “The Trojan and the Hegemon,” p. 136. 2 The role of character in European narrative, like its Chinese counterpart, focuses more on prose fiction than on other genres. For a general sur- vey of the properties of characterization, see Scholes and Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative, pp. 160-208. For other studies of character useful for comparison to the Chinese models, see E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (New York: Harcourt, 1950), pp. 69-125; Henry James, “The Art of Fic- tion”; Lionel Trilling, “Manners, Morals, and the Novel”; and Northrop Frye, “Fictional Modes,” all in Robert Scholes, ed., Approaches to the Novel (San Francisco: Chandler, 1961), pp. 289-312, 231-47, and 31-39, respectively. For more technical considerations, see E. M. Forster, “Flat and Round Characters,” and W. J. Harvey, “The Human Context,” in Philip Stevick, ed., The Theory of the Novel, pp. 223-30 and 231-52, re- spectively. Forster’s essay is particularly suggestive for the distinction between “types” and “individuals” (see discussion below). Character- ization in European literary theory is seen as a dynamic process, which 176 Notes 3 has greatly affected critics’ perception of the function of character in Chinese narrative. See, for example, Marvin Mudrick, “Character and Event in Fiction,” Yale Review 50.1 (Winter 1961): 202-18. Andrew H. Plaks, “Towards a Critical Theory of Chinese Narrative,” in Plaks, ed., Chinese Narrative, p. 344. 4 Plaks devotes a section of his essay, “Towards a Critical Theory of Chi- Ww 6 nese Narrative,” to the problem of characterization; see pp. 339-48. On pp. 343-44, Plaks mentions that Ch’ien Mu deals with the prob- lem of expressing authorial intent through characterization in narrative, stressing that the creation of “unique” individuals is actually a matter of the coherent and persuasive combination of recognizable attributes in a given character, which he terms a balancing of pieh-hsiang (dis- tinctive attributes) and kung-hsiang (common attributes); see Chung-kuo wen-hstieh chiang-yen chi (Kowloon: Jen-sheng, 1963), pp. 27-31. The dis- tinction between exemplary and mimetic characters as they relate to a larger narrative framework in the European traditions is discussed in Scholes and Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative, pp. 204-6. See Andrew H. Plaks, Archetype and Allegory in the Dream of the Red Chamber (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 11-26. Plaks defines the notion of archetypes to refer to “patterns of more general- ized structure” (p. 12). His concern is with the properties of narrative in general and prose fiction in particular: “The abiding patterns of lit- erary form to which we apply the term ‘archetype,’ then, stand out as the synchronic underpinnings that set off and render intelligible the diachronic dimension of historical modification within the system. .. . Just as the spectrum of colors in painting and the tonal scales in music provide internal orders within the materials of artistic creation, so do archetypes of literary structure provide the ground of coherence, the aesthetic expectations, that may be fulfilled, subtly varied, or negatively negatively transformed in a given work” (pp. 12-13). My discussion of narrative archetypes as they apply to the concept of character and techniques of characterization essentially describes a special category within the more general scope of Plaks’s “archetype.” While character archetypes make up a subset of archetypal patterns in general, a distinctive character has the potential to generate these larger patterns of narrative form and structure. My separation of archetypal patterns of character into “types” and “roles” below recognizes this potential and provides an approach to the analysis of the relation of character to larger narrative structures. In “The Wang Chao-chtn Legend: Configurations of the Classic,” CLEAR 4.1 (1983): 3-22, Eugene Eoyang uses these terms in slightly Notes 177 different senses. He analyzes the story of Wang Chao-chiin in terms of character “roles,” which evoke symbolic associations (“The Cinder- ella figure, the proud and haughty beauty, the political hostage, the patriotic heroine, the beauty despoiled”), then assigns these to “types” that are aspects of human concerns (“ambition, pride, power, loyalty, sexuality”); in other words, here “types” indicate the human themes underlying the “roles.” He also refers to these categories as “motifs” (pp. 5-6). Eoyang’s terms reflect his concern with the multiple layers of significance acquired by the story of Wang Chao-chiin over the course of its evolution. My use of these terms focuses rather on aspects of structure and techniques of character presentation. 7 For text and commentary of the “Poem of Mu-lan” (Mu-lan shih), see 8 9 10 11 Pei-ching ta-hstueh, Chung-kuo yu yen wen-hsteh hsi, ed., Wei Chin Nan-pei ch’ao wen-hstieh shih ts’an-k’ao tz’e-liao (Peking: Chung-hua, 1962), PP- 379-82. In The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady, pp. 68-72, Hans H. Frankel provides a complete translation with analysis of its relation to the yueh-fu tradition. For other translations which take the poem’s narrative features into special consideration, see J. D. Frodsham and Ch’eng Hsi, An Anthology of Chinese Verse: Han Wei Chin and the North- ern and Southern Dynasties (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 104-6; Wong T’ong-wen and Jean-Pierre Diény, in Paul Demiéville, ed., An- thologie de la poésie chinoise classique (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), pp. 189-91; and Arthur Waley, Chinese Poems (London: Allen and Unwin, 1946), pp. 113-15. Wang Yi, Ch’u Tz’u chang-chu, sec. 7, pp. 239-44; translation in Hawkes, Ch’u Tz’u, pp. 90-91. See chap. 2, note 22. This approach to the analysis of character in terms of types and roles, especially in terms of understanding the transmis- sion of archetypes and the interplay of types and roles, owes much to Vladimir Propp’s The Morphology of the Folk Tale, 2d ed. (Austin: Univer- sity of Texas Press, 1968), especially pp. 19-65. Fan Yeh (398-445), ed., “Tung Ssu chi chuan,” in Hou Han Shu 84 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1965), pp. 2800-2806. The authenticity of the attribution of “Poem of Affliction” has been a matter of debate since the eleventh century, when the poet Su Shih expressed his skepticism because of the denunciation of Tung Cho in the first lines, and because of the sophistication of the treatment of the five-character meter, which suggested to him a later date than the early third century. The most recent and comprehensive study of Ts’ai Yen’s work is by Hans H. Frankel (“Cai Yen and the Poems Attributed to Her,” CLEAR 5.2 [1985]: 133-56), which includes texts and translation of 178 Notes il74 13 14 the three compositions associated with Ts’ai Yen (including “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute,” which will be discussed below), a survey of the textual problems, and an up-to-date bibliography. The first “edi- tion” of the “Poem of Affliction” studied here appears in the Hou Han Shu, which was compiled between 424 and 445. Frankel suggests that this poem dates from the third, fourth, or fifth century, but feels that it almost certainly was not composed by Ts’ai Yen herself. It should be noted, however, that other recent critics have upheld Ts’ai Yen’s authorship of at least “Poem of Affliction’; see especially Yu Kuan-ying, “Lun Ts’ai Yen Pei-fen shih,” in Han Wei Chin Liu-ch’ao shih lun-tsung (Shanghai: T’ang-ti, 1953). The Japanese scholar Okamura Sadao has gone so far as to assert that all three compositions are genu- ine—at least, genuinely composed by the historical Ts’‘ai Yen—see “Sai En no sakuhin no shugi,” Nihon Chugoku gakkai ho 23 (1971): 20-35. For the historical background of this poem, see Wang Yi-t’ung, “The Lam- entation of Ts’ai Yen (c. A.D. 200),” Delta (January—March 1960): 11-14. For other studies of the authenticity of Ts’ai Yen’s authorship, see Kuo Mo-jo et al., Hu-chia shih-pa p‘ai t’ao-lun chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959). While most of these articles focus on the poem sequence “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute,” the problem of “Poem of Affliction” is also treated in considerable detail. On the relation of events to character for the revelation of inner life, see Scholes and Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative, pp. 171, 177-94; Erich Kahler, The Inward Turn of Narrative (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 9-66. On the narrator’s voice and its powers of persuasion, see Paul Fried- rich, Language, Context, and the Imagination (Palo Alto: Stanford Univer- sity Press, 1979), pp. 402-40; also Zeno Vendler, “Telling the Facts,” in Searle et al., Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics, pp. 273-90. The possibility of autobiographical representation on the part of the author through the narrator or some other character presents special questions on the techniques of characterization for that figure. See Louis D. Rubin, Jr., The Teller in the Tale (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967); Wayne C. Booth, “Distance and Point of View”; and Erich Kahler, The Inward Turn of Narrative. Text from Wei Chin Nan-pei ch’ao wen-hstieh shih ts’an-k’ao tz’e-liao, pp. 161-67. My complete translation appears in the appendix. Other trans- lations include Wang Yi-t’ung, “The Lamentation of Ts’ai Yen” (a re- vised version appears in Sunflower Splendor, pp. 36-39); and Frodsham and Ch’eng Hsi, An Anthology of Chinese Verse, pp. 9-13; Frankel, “Cai Yen and the Poems Attributed to Her,” pp. 135-37. Notes 179 15 For the sequence attributed to Ts’ai Yen, with commentary, see Wei Chin Nan-pei ch’ao wen-hsiieh shih ts’an-k’ao tz’e-liao, pp. 169-72. See also Kuo Mo-jo et al., Hu-chia shih-pa p’ai t’ao-lun chi. This sequence was trans- lated into French by Georges Margouliés under the title “Dix-huit me- sures chantées au cornet Hun,” in his Anthologie raisonée de la littérature chinoise (Paris: Payot, 1948), pp. 267-74; complete English translations are by Rewi Alley, The Eighteen Laments (Peking: New World Press, 1963); and Frankel, “Cai Yen and the Poems Attributed to Her.” 16 For text, see P’eng Ting-ch’iu et al., Ch’tian T’ang Shih, 25 vols. (Peking: Chung-hua, 1960), sec. 303, 10:3450-53. A complete text and transla- tion appear with a study of the Sung handscroll which illustrates Liu Shang’s version of Ts’ai Yen’s story in Robert A. Rorex and Wen Fong, Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute: The Story of Lady Wen-chi (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974). This study concentrates on the biography of Ts’ai Yen (as presented by Liu Shang), as it influenced Chi- nese painting. Other studies of the story of Lady Wen-chi in Chinese art include Kojiro Tomita, “Wen-chi’s Captivity in Mongolia and Her Return to China,” Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin 26 (1928): 40-45; John F. Haskins, “The Pazyryk Felt Screen and the Barbarian Captivity of Ts’ai Wen-chi,” Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities Bulletin 35 (1963): 141-61; and Wang Chu-fei, “Kuan-yii Ming mu (Hu-chia shih-pa p’ai) tu-ti yi-hsieh wen-t’l.” Abstract titled “The Frontier as Seen in a Ming Copy (of the Eighteen Songs) and Some Comparisons,” Wen wu 6 (1959): 36-37. 17 Yen Yu (1180?-1235?), in the second section of Ts’ang-lang shih-hua, “Forms of Poetry” (“Shih-t’i”), divides the literary history of the T’ang into four major periods: early 618-712 (ch’u), high 713-765 (sheng), mid- dle 766-835 (chung), and late 736-906 (wan). See Kuo Shao-yu, ed., Ts’ang-lang shih hua chiao-shih (Peking: Jen-min, 1962). Stephen Owen notes that “most traditional literary historians would have the Mid- T’ang begin after the death of Tu Fu or earlier, directly after the An Lu-shan Rebellion” (The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang, P- 320). 18 A complete text and translation of Liu Shang’s sequence appears in Rorex and Fong, Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute: The Story of Lady Wen-chi (see note 16, above). The introduction reproduces the “Eighteen Songs” narrative handscroll in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession number 1973.120.3). Other studies of the story of Lady Wen-chi in Chinese art include Robert A. Rorex, “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute: The Story of Ts’ai Wen-chi” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Uni- versity, 1975); Kojiro Tomita, “Wen-chi’s Captivity in Mongolia and Her Return to China,” pp. 40-45; and John F. Haskins, “The Pazyryk Felt 180 Notes 19 20 2a Screen and the Barbarian Captivity of Ts’ai Wen-chi.” Haskins trans- lates several poems from the original sequence often attributed to Ts’ai Yen, and remarks: “It will be seen that there are no direct links be- tween the verses and the scenes that illustrate them” (p. 148). In fact, the painting of the final scene from the Wen-chi scroll in Nanjing de- scribed by the author (believed to be a Ming copy of a Sung original) illustrates the ending in the style of Liu Shang, not the poem quoted in the article. The lady is shown returning to her ancestral home, and the saplings which flanked the house in the first scene are shown now grown to full-sized trees. While Haskins posits that the story of Lady Wen-chi became a favorite subject in painting soon after the original poem sequence appeared, he admits that no such painting survives from a period earlier than the Sung dynasty (pp. 145-46); by that time, of course, the character type of Ts’ai Yen had already been changed from the original. Wang An-shih, Wang An-shih shih-chi (reprint, Taipei: Kuang-wen, 1974), PP. 243-46. Rorex and Fong, Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute, introduction; see also Hsii Pang-ta, “ ‘Sung-jen hua jen-wu ku-shih ying chi ‘Ying luan t’u,’ k’ao” (“A study of the identification of a narrative painting as ‘welcoming the imperial carriages,’” Wen wu 8 (1972): 61-63. This scroll is thought to depict the dowager’s actual return from exile. For historical sources of this event, see T’o T’o et al., Sung shih 143 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1977), 11:3439-56; and T’o T’o et al., Chin shih 42 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1975), 35949259. Eugene Eoyang has taken up the literary evolution of Wang Chao-chtin in several contexts, at least through the T’ang dynasty. For the evocative power of the figure, see “A Taste for Apricots: Approaches to Chinese Fiction,” in Plaks, ed., Chinese Narrative, pp. 65-67. Eoyang has made a complete translation of a ninth-century T’ang pien-wen version; see “Word of Mouth: Oral Storytelling in the Pien-wen” (Ph.D. diss., Indi- ana University, 1971), appendix A.5, pp. 275-96. Most recently, “The Wang Chao-chun Legend” surveys the origins of the story, its liter- ary sources, and its transformations. It should be emphasized that the historical Wang Chao-chin predates Ts’ai Yen; indeed, besides two brief accounts in Han Shu g and 94 (suite), 1:297, and 8:3807-8, and Homer H. Dubs, The History of the Former Han Dynasty, (Baltimore: Waverley Press, 1944), 2:335, the earliest source for her life appears in the Ch'in Ts’ao of Ts’ai Yung, the father of Ts’ai Yen (Ts’ai Yung, Ch'in Ts’ao, Ts’ung-shu chi-ch’ang ed. [Shanghai: Shang-wu, 1937], pp. 23-24). These accounts focus on Wang Chao-chun’s experience as an unappre- 22 23 24 25 Notes 181 ciated member of the emperor’s household—thus her consignment to the Hsiung-nu chieftain. While these established Wang Chao-chun as a character archetype in her own right, certain elements of the charac- ter role which seem to originate with the figure of Ts’ai Yen are later attached to the figure of Wang Chao-chin as an exile. Shih Ch’ung’s poem is perhaps the first to emphasize these aspects, which Eoyang might term “the political hostage” and “the beauty despoiled” (“The Wang Chao-chin Legend,” p. 5). Shih Ch’ung’s use of the name Wang Ming-chiin is in deference to a taboo on the personal name of the emperor Wei Wen-ti (r. 220-27, perhaps better known as Ts’ao P’i): “The woman Wang Ming-chun was originally called Wang Chao-chiin, but because of an infringement of the taboo of Emperor Wen-ti the name was changed” (“Song of Wang Ming-chun,” preface). Characters occurring in personal names or other titles of members of the royal house were often proscribed for other uses. Shih Ch’ung himself was probably more notorious for his wealth and luxurious mode of living than for his literary talents. He owned a vast property northeast of Loyang known as the Chin-ku yiian (Golden Valley estate). Revels there were described by P’an Yueh (d. 300) in his poem “Chin-ku chi tso shih” (“Poem on the Golden Valley Gather- ing”). Shih Ch’ung also wrote his own poem about the same literary gathering, “Chin-ku shih” (“Poem on the Golden Valley”), whose pref- ace is quoted by Li Shan in his commentary on P’an Yueh’s poem in Wen Hstian 20:439—-40. See also Frankel, The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady, p. 223; and Helmut Wilhelm, “Shih Ch’ung and the Chin- ku-yuan,” Monumenta Serica 18 (1959): 314-27. Text from Ting Fu-pao, ed., Ch’iian Han San-kuo Chin Nan-pei ch’‘ao shih (Taipei: Yi-wen, 1968), 1:532-33, translation mine. A complete transla- tion appears in Frodsham and Ch’eng, An Anthology of Chinese Verse, PEW 4a/9; Plaks, “Towards a Critical Theory of Chinese Narrative,” pp. 311-14; John C. Y. Wang, “Early Chinese Narrative: The Tso Chuan as Exam- ple,” pp. 3-20; Ronald C. Egan, “Narrative in the Tso Chuan,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 37 (1977): 323-52; Levy, “The Trojan and the Hegemon,” pp. 144-45. For sources on the varied career of Wei Chuang, see Lionel Giles, “The Lament of the Lady of Ch'in,” T’oung Pao 24 (1926): 316-25; Hsia Ch’eng-t’ao, Wei Tuan-yi nien-p’u (Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1959); Hsin Wen- fang (fl. 1304), T’ang ts‘ai-tzu chuan, in Pi-chi hsu-pien (reprint, Taipei: Kuang-wen, 1969); Chi Yu-kung, ed., T’ang shih chi shih 68 (Peking: 182 Notes 26 27 28 29 Chung-hua, 1975), pp. 1051-52; Sun Kuang-hsien, ed., Pei-meng suo-yen 6, in Ya-yu t’ang ts’ang shu (Taipei: n.p., 1966), secs. 2-8; Wang Kuo-wei, Kuo-hstieh chi-k’an (Shanghai: Tung-fang, 1924), vol. 1, pt. 4; Lo Chen- yu, Tun-huang ling-shih (Shanghai: Tung-fang, 1924). I have been unable to consult a forthcoming study by Robin D. S. Yates, Washing Silk: The Life and Selected Poetry of Wei Chuang 834?-910 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, in press). For a study of the era of the Huang Ch’ao Rebellion, see Twitchett, The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3: Sui and T’ang China, pp. 727ff. As a literary figure Wei Chuang has received more recognition for his works in the tz’u form than for his shih; for his contributions to the de- velopment of tz’u, see Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry, pp. 33-62; and John T. Wixted, The Song-Poetry of Wei Chuang (836-910 A.D.). Occasional Paper no. 12 (Center for Asian Studies, Ari- zona State University, 1979), introduction. This introduction includes an abbreviated biography of the poet. Giles, “The Lament of the Lady of Ch’in,” pp. 316-17. The conventions of political allegory of this kind are discussed in James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, pp. 106-16; see also David Lattimore, “Allusion in T'ang Poetry,” pp. 405-39. Text from Ch’en Yin-k’o, Ch’in-fu yin chiao-chien (Taipei: Hua-cheng, 1974); see also Chiang Tsung-p’ing, Wei Tuan-yi shih chiao-chu (Taipei: Chung-hua, 1968), pp. 272-90. My complete translation appears in the appendix. Other complete translations of “Song of the Lady of Ch'in” are by Lionel Giles, “The Lament of the Lady of Ch'in,” with text and commentary; and Robin D. S. Yates, in Sunflower Splendor, pp. 267-81. Wang Kuo-wei, Kuo-hstieh chi-k’an (Shanghai: Tung-fang, 1924), vol. 1, pt. 4. See Edward Schafer, “The Last Years of Ch’ang-an,” Oriens Extremus 10.2 (1963): 133-79. Schafer especially mentions Wei Chuang’s eye- witness account of the sack of the city by Huang Ch’ao (pp. 157-58), then Wei’s poem on the city’s final “death” in the tenth century, “An Old Precinct of Ch’ang-an” (“Ch’ang-an chiu-li’), p. 169. For the text of this quatrain, see Chiang Tsung-p’ing, Wei Tuan-yi shih chiao-chu, p. 221. Narrative Structure Plaks, “Towards a Critical Theory of Chinese Narrative,” pp. 310-16, has a discussion of the problem of defining what constitutes an “event” in Chinese narrative. Plaks focuses on the critical term shih (events) as opposed to yen (words), citing Pan Ku’s seminal distinction of two Notes 183 types of early narrative in Han Shu 30, “Yi-wen chih,” 4:1715. The asso- ciation of shih with action is emphasized by the later substitution of tung (action) for shih by Hsun Yueh (148-208) in Shen Chien 2 (Ssu-pu pei-yao ed.), p. 6a; and in the Li Chi, in Wang Fu-chih (1619-1692), ed., Li Chi chang-chu 13 (Taipei: Kuang-wen, 1967), p. 2a. My purpose is to consider how the units of narrative presentation, events or actions, are organized over time, whether the objective time of the experience of the text or the temporal dimension of the reader’s experience of the text. For more general discussions of the notion of time in Chinese poetry, see James J. Y. Liu, “Time, Space, and Self in Chinese Poetry,” CLEAR 1.2 (July 1979): 137-56. For the fundamental quality of temporal structures in Western narrative, see Scholes and Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative, pp. 207-8; see also Paul Ricoeur, “Narrative Time,” Critical Inquiry 7.1 (Autumn 1980): 169-90; and Claude Bremond, “La logique des possibles narratifs,” Communications 8 (1966): 60-76. 2 Plaks discusses treatment of time as it is manipulated in narrative struc- ture in “Towards a Critical Theory of Chinese Narrative,” pp. 329-39. For time as a defining aspect of narrative structure, see Gérard Genette, trans. Jane E. Lewin, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980); Georges Poulet, Etudes sur le temps humain (Paris: Plon, 1976-77), introduction, pp. i-xlvii; Eric Rabkin, Narrative Suspense (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1973), pp. 71-89; Frank Kermode, “Secrets and Narrative Sequence,” Critical In- quiry 7.1 (Autumn 1980): 83-101; Nelson Goodman, “Twisted Tales; or Study, Story, Symphony,” Critical Inquiry 7.1 (Autumn 1980): 103-19; and Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure; Or, a Study of How Poems End (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), p. 137. 3 Levy, “The Trojan and the Hegemon,” p. 136. 4 See David Hawkes, “The Quest of the Goddess,” pp. 62-63; and Chen Shih-hsiang, “The Genesis of Poetic Time: The Greatness of Ch’t Yuan, Studied with a New Critical Approach,” Ch’ing-hua hsiieh-pao, n.s. 10.1 (1973): 1-45. 5 Kang-i Sun Chang, “The Concept of Time in the Shih Ching,” Ch’ing-hua hstieh-pao, n.s. 12.2 (1979): 73-85. 6 Jin’ichi Konishi, “Association and Progression: Principles of Integra- tion in Anthologies and Sequences of Japanese Court Poetry, A.D. 900- 1250,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 21 (1958): 67-127; Earl Miner, Japanese Linked Poetry, pp. 8-9; see also Claude Bremond, Logique du récit (Paris: Seuil, 1973). 7 Stephen Owen comments that Tu Fu’s poem sequences were one of his major contributions to the poetic tradition, and sums up his purpose: 184 Notes “The sequence was the perfect solution to a central problem of Chinese lyric: how to give a topic extended treatment without sacrificing the elliptical density and intensity of the short poem” (The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang, p. 218). He compares Tu Fu’s techniques of sequencing with Ts’ao Chih’s “Poems Presented to Prince Piao of Pai-ma,” which will be analyzed in detail below. 8 See n. 7 above. See also Tsu-lin Mei and Yu-kung Kao, “Tu Fu’s ‘Au- 10 1 12 ay 13 tumn Meditations’: An Exercise in Linguistic Criticism,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 28 (1968): 44-80. Owen deals with the structure of the sequence according to theme, Mei and Kao according to formal and linguistic features. Chou Shan, in “Allusion and Periphrasis as Modes of Poetry in Tu Fu’s ‘Eight Laments,’” brings another element of cohe- sion to bear on a poem sequence; namely, the potential of allusion as an underpinning of sequential structure. A study emphasizing European theories of semiotics is Tim-hung Ku, “A Semiotic Approach to Wang Wei’s Wang River Sequence: An Exploration of the Principle of Equiva- lance and the Principle of Disjunction,” Tamkang Review 14.1—4 (Autumn 1983—Summer 1984): 339-54. For more general discussions of the nature and aesthetics of poem sequences, see Jin’ichi Konishi, “Association and Progression”; and Earl Miner, Japanese Linked Poetry, introduction, pp. 3-159. For a modern English-language response to the problem of poem sequences with a chinoiserie twist, see Michael Bernstein, The Tale of the Tribe: Ezra Pound and the Modern Verse Epic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 3-187. For a study of the life of Juan Chi and his poem series, see Donald Holzman, Poetry and Politics: The Life and Works of Juan Chi (A.D. 210-263) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). See Owen, The Poetry of the Early T’ang, pp. 256-73. For Tu Fu’s poems, see Tu Fu shih hstian, pp. 222-25. Owen, The Great Age of Chinese Poetry, p. 218. Hans H. Frankel, “Fifteen Poems by Ts’ao Chih: An Attempt at a New Approach,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 84 (1964): 1-14; and Lei Chia-chi, “Ts’ao Chih Tseng Pai-ma Wang Piao shih ping hsti chien- cheng,” New Asia Journal 12 (1977): 337-404. Text from Wei chin Nan-pei ch’ao wen-hstieh shih ts’an-k’ao tz’e-liao, pp. 72-78. Other translations include Frodsham and Ch’eng, An Anthology of Chinese Verse, pp. 36-39; and George W. Kent, Worlds of Dust and Jade: 47 Poems and Ballads of the Third Century Chinese Poet Ts’ao Chih (New York: Philosophical Library, 1969), pp. 52-56. For more detail on the background of Ts’ao Chih’s woes, which to some extent may have been Notes 185 deserved, see Robert Joe Cutter, “The Incident at the Gate: Cao Zhi, the Succession, and Literary Fame,” T’oung Pao 71 (1985): 228-62. 14 My analysis follows the edition of the text from Wei Chin Nan-pei ch’ao 15 16 17 wen-hstieh shih ts’an-k’ao tz’e-liao, pp. 72-78; however, other editions combine poems 1 and 2 into a single composition. I have chosen to fol- low the edition above because of my interpretation of the subject matter of the two poems (see below), but it should be noted that in addition to the lack of catenated lines between poems 1 and 2, both poems have the same rhyme throughout. For an edition which divides the sequence into six poems, see Shen Te-ch’ien, Ku-shih yiian, pp. 121-23. The trans- lation of the sequence by Frodsham and Ch’eng also follows this plan; see An Anthology of Chinese Verse, pp. 36-37. Stephen Owen compares the “narrative of personal experience” to the Latin verse epistle, but does not discuss this in terms of poem se- quences. See The Poetry of Meng Chiao and Han Yi, p. 78. In “The Nature of Narrative in T’ang Poetry,” C. H. Wang also treats “Song of the Lady of Ch’in” (or, as he calls it, “Lament of a Ch’in Woman”) as the culmination of narrative expression in T’ang shih (pp. 245-46). The two lines preserved were 145-46: The Imperial Treasury was burned to the very ash of its brocades and embroideries, On the Street of Heaven were trampled to dust the bones of State Officials. The couplet appeared in Sun Kuang-hsien’s early Sung work, Pei-meng suo-yen 6.7-8, which also includes the comment that Wei found it nec- essary to suppress the poem, in spite of the fact that its fame was such that he had acquired the nickname “Ch’in-fu yin Graduate” (Ch’in- fu yin hsiu-ts’ai). For the history of the manuscript, see Lionel Giles, “The Lament of the Lady of Ch'in,” pp. 305-23; and Wang Chung-min, Tun-huang ku-chi hsii-lu (Shanghai: Shang-wu, 1950), pp. 303-8; Ch’en Yin-k’o, Ch’in-fu yin chiao-chien. Glossary of Chinese Characters “At Chiang-nan fu” “Ai chiang-t’ou” An Lu-shan (d. 757) Chang Heng (79-138) “Ch’ang-an chiu li” “Ch’ang-hen ko” “Ch’en feng” Cheng Hstian (117-200) “cheng tsai” A GHIA hoy" of pal 9 Re 8. ERR SM REE? K NRK Ji, A AeA 4% Ae G. 188 Glossary of Chinese Characters Ghia chia-nu Ch’iang Chien-k’ang Ch’ien Mu chih chih-chi (chth-jen, chih-yin) Chih Yui (d. c. 310) “Ch'in-fu yin” Chin-ling chin-t’t shih ching fu Ch’ing-shan lei “Ch’iu hsing” “Chiu ko” Chou li Chu Hsi (1130-1200) chu-kuan shih-jen Chu tzu Ch’t Yuan chiian “Chuan-erh” ch’uan-ch'1 chtieh-chii “Chiin-tzu yang yang” “Chiin-tzu yii yt” x At SRE ra 32 OR Be i EE 4a (keA » FOF ) # I Ie th o> Be FR Ta ES Bae SR OF RR} os ch sy aly HA so aS ee Ss Glossary of Chinese Characters 189 Chung Jung (or Hung, 44 vip 469-518) Chung Tzu-ch’i 4 + # feng J8L fu IA fu K fu a) “fu chih yen p’u” $i» | 4A “Fu-niao fu” me, 12 BA Han Ch’eng-ti (r. 32-7 B.c.) Em 5 Han Wu-ti (r. 149-85 B.C.) YH e Han Yiian-ti (r. 48-32 B.c.) ae Hou Ching (fl. 549) 1k & Hsi-yu chi @ % 3b “Asia Wu” F A hsiang-ming 44 or hsiao fu ls IN Hsiao T’ung (501-531) A * Hsiao Yi (Liang Ytan-ti, a 4 (RAL? T. 552-554) “Hsin-hun pieh’ 2h 6p 5 hsing oa hsti Je hsti-shih shih ALG HH hsii-shih wen iQ g 5a Hstin-yang ve i Hu of 190 Glossary of Chinese Characters “Hu-chia shih-pa p’at” huang-wang Hung-lou meng Juan Chi (210-263) Ju k’o-kuan shih-jen “Ko sheng” “Ku-er hsing” “Ku feng” ku-shih ku-shth shih ku-t’i shih kuan “K’ung-ch'iieh tung-nan fei” kung-hsiang K’ung Ying-ta (574-648) lao-fu lao-yu “Li sao” “Liang-tu fu” lien-mien tzu liu Liu Shang (fl. 770-773) liu-shih liu-yi “Lo-shen fu” th ga + \ 74 g 8 Ks. AEF fia 4a BHLUA % 4 BAT Am Jal EH ah F 3G 4 ite Ai SLE RAH * aL FA K 44 %, «é Mt SE mh At WH if 4 vA #\ ® Glossary of Chinese Characters 191 lii-shih AE 3 luan al “Lung shih” ab 1% Ma Chih-yiian (c. 1210-1280) BK im Mao Heng (second 4, 4 century A.D.) Mei Sheng (?—140 B.C.) A pa Nan Hsiung-nu mH Awe Ou-yang Hstin (557-641) Be p'ai-lu 4: HE Pan Ku (32-92) HE 1B “Pei cheng” 4 GL “Pei-fen shih” 4G Z P’ei Ti (b. 716) ¥ iv pi rb “P’i-p’'a hsing” Bed pieh-hsiang IN 44 pien-wen Bx p ien-wen (p’ien-t’i wen) Bt Po Chii-yi (772-846) A Jk I Po Ya Wa A “San li” ye “San pieh” 2 f'] sao ie A sao fu 192 Glossary of Chinese Characters “Shang-lin fu” Shen Ch’tan-ch’i (c. 650-713) shih shih shih chih ch’eng hsing shih chih suo yung Shih ching Shih Ch’ung (249-300) “Shih-hao /i” shih-lei fu Shih P’in Shih ta hsii “shih yen chih” shui shui ch’u Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju (179- 17 B.C.) SUNY Sung Ch’in-tsung (r. 1126) Sung Hui-tsung (r. 1101-1126) Sung Kao-tsung (r. 1127-1161) “Ta ch’th-mei tat-shu chi chia-jen’ ta fu T’ang Hsuan-tsung (Ming-huang, 684-762, I. 713-755) any ay aye A vy avy ce & se T’ao Ch’ien (365-427) “T’ao-hua yuan shih” “T’ao yuan hsing” ti-li “T’len wen” “ts‘ai ts’ai chuan erh” Ts’ai Yen (Wen-chi, late second—early third century) Ts’ai Yung (133-192) Ts’ao Chih (192-232) Ts’ao Ts’ao (155-220) “Tseng Pai-ma Wang Piao” tu Tu Fu (712-770) tung Tung Cho (d. 192) Tung Ssu (late second—early third century) “Tung Ssu chi chuan” tza-chii tzu “Tzu ching fu Feng hsien hsien yung-huai wu-pai tzu” “Tzu-hsii fu’ wai-cht “Wan lan” Glossary of Chinese Characters 193 HAF Bp (24h) a $ #6 BP 1% BR OB EH, 14 FLA $ $F 4 #2 42,22 HE Hel 4 AGAR LH PANELED FT oh £ 194 Glossary of Chinese Characters wang Wang An-shih (1021-1086) Wang Chao-chiin (Ming-chin, first century B.C.) “Wang ch’tian chi” wang hou “Wang Ming-chiin tz’u” Wang Ts’an (177-217) Wei Chuang (c. 834-910) Wei Hung (first century A.D.) Wen Hsuan “Wen wang cheng tsai” “Wen wang yu sheng” wo wu ya Yang Hsiung (43 B.c.—A.D. 18) Yang Kuei-fei (718-756) yen yen chih yen-ch'ing fu yen-kuet yen-wal “Yi-wen chih” “Yi-wen lei-chti” yu “Yu nu? =~ Sk LEB £m k (AA) yA = as Uf “Yung-huai ku-chi wu shou’ “Yung-huai shih” “Yung-huai wu-pai tzu” “Yung shih shih” yu Yu Hsin (513-581) “Yu Yiian chiu shu” yuan ytieh-fu (ytieh-fu shih) Glossary of Chinese Characters 195 KN GLA Hh VR tha G F WR 7+ BRAS Be See FRE SE aR it 4 Selected Bibliography Works in Chinese and Japanese Chang Wei-ch’i. “T’ao-hua ytian chi shih yi,” Kuo-hsiieh ytieh-pao hui- k’an 1 (1924): 201-20. tk fhe BE. Hb He LG AS AR EH. Chao Tien-ch’eng, ed. Wang Yu-ch’eng chi chien-chu. 2 vols. Peking: Chung-hua, 1961. HRM. KERB. Ch’en Yin-k’o. “Ch’ang-hen ko chien-cheng” (“Yuan Po shih chien-cheng kao chih yi”). Ch’ing-hua hstieh-pao 14, no. 1 (October 1947): 1-34. REE. RRKREMA ( UHOBZEBRZ-?. ———.. Ch’en Yin-k’o hsien-sheng wen-shih lun-chi. 2 vols. Hong Kong: 198 Selected Bibliography Wen Wen Publications, 1973. PRA Ht XR GK | . Ch’in-fu yin chiao-chien. Taipei: Hua-cheng, 1974. Rid RE . . “T’ao-hua yiian chi p’ang cheng.” In Ch’en Yin-k’o hsien-sheng wen-shih lun-chi, 1:183-93. He He hie HK. . “Tu Ai Chiang-nan fu.” In Ch’en Yin-k’o hsien-sheng wen-shih lun-chi, 2:339-45. . “Yu Hsin Ai chiang-nan fu yi Tu Fu Yung-huai ku-chi shih.” In Ch’en Yin-k’o hsien-sheng wen-shth lun-chi, 1:201—-03. BMG Rie DAA EA ARE EH, Ch’en Yuan-lung (1652-1736), ed. Yii-ting li-tai fu-hui. Preface 1706. Reprinted, with an introduction by Yoshikawa Kojiro. Tokyo: Chubun, 1974. PR FLAG ef REIKO Ch’eng T’ing-tso. “Sao fu lun.” In Wan shu ting yi. Taipei: Li-hang, 1970. Aish He. BRA te. WLS TT Chi Yu-kung, ed. T’ang shih chi shih. Peking: Chung-hua, 1975. ot A. fe UF Chiang Tsung-p’ing. Wei Tuan-yi shih chiao-chu. Taipei: Chung-hua, 1968. DHF SH th bh GE Ch’ien Mu. Chung-kuo wen-hstieh Chiang-yen chi. Kowloon: Jen-sheng, 1963. Sh 4. FRE ABH. Selected Bibliography 199 Chin Chi-hsiang. Han tai tz’u fu chth fa-ta. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1931. Bh Ae. RIK BB IR Ch’iu Hsieh-yu. Chung-kuo li-tai ku-shih shih. Taipei: San-min, 1969. Ae KR. PARAKEY Chou Fa-kao. Chung-kuo ku-tai yii-fa. 4 vols. Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1959 and 1961. Raza. CAEN BB Chu Hsi (1130-1200), ed. Shih chi chuan. Reprint. Shanghai: Chung- hua, 1958. KA. HEN Chu Tzu-ch’ing. Shih yen chih pien. Taipei: K’ai-ming, 1964. Chu Yi-tsun (1629-1709), ed., and Ku Ssu-li (1669-1722), annot. Ch’ang-li hsien-sheng shih chi chu. Reprint. Taipei: Hsueh-sheng, 1967. RAD MAL SRALURE Ch’ti Wan-li. Shih ching shih yi. Facsimile edition. Taipei: K’ai-ming, 1964. BAL. HR. Chung Jung (fl. 502-519). Shih p’in chu, edited by Ch’en Yen-chieh. Taipei: K’ai-ming, 1958. Ae Be (PRE MED. Se 2 72. Endo Toshio. Chohonka Kenkyu. Tokyo: Kensetsusha, 1934. ik ih A RRA OTR. Fan Yeh (398-445), ed. Hou Han Shu. Peking: Chung-hua, 1965. a Se 7 7 200 Selected Bibliography Fang Hsutan-ling, ed. Chin Shu. Peking: Chung-hua, 1974. ae 9 Feng Chih. Tu Fu shih hstian. Hong Kong: Ta-kuang, 1961. o> FG Bee Hsia Ch’eng-t’ao. Wei Tuan-yi nien-p’u. Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1959. BAS. Fim H Hsiao Ti-fei. Han Wei liu-ch’ao yiieh-fu wen-hstieh shih. 1944. Reprint. Taipei: Ch’ang-an, 1976. BW a. 7 Ba 7% NB Hy KOE RK Hsieh Hung-hstian. P’ien-wen heng-lun. Taipei: Kuang-wen, 1973. Ri GAM & Hsin Wen-fang (fl. 1304). T’ang ts’ai-tzu chuan. In Pi-chi hsii-pien. Reprint. Taipei: Kuang-wen, 1969. HK. BATE. FRM. Hsu Fu-kuan. “Chung-kuo yi-shu ching-shen chu-t'i chih cheng hsien.” In Chung-kuo yi-shu ching-shen. Tai-chung: Tunghai University Press, 1966, pp. 45-143. Ve fe FR Baye RHA. Hsu Pang-ta. “ “Sung-jen hua jen-wu ku-shih’ ying chi ‘Ying luan t'u,’ k’ao” (“A study of the identification of a narrative painting as ‘welcoming the imperial carriages’ ”). Wen wu 8 (1972): 61-63. ie RE OR ABAWEKE Rep EAS. Hsti Shen (c. 30-124). “Shuo wen chieh tzu.” In Shuo wen chieh tzu ku lin, edited by Ting Fu-pao. Taipei: Shang-wu, 1966. ik. MAA F Hu Shih (1891-1962). Pai hua wen-hsiieh shih. Shanghai: Shang-wu, 1928. ih 4g HR Selected Bibliography 201 Hu Ying-lin (1551-1607). Shih sou. Shanghai: Chung-hua, 1958. tf MH. 3 . Ssu pu cheng o. In Ku shu pien wei ssu chung. Reprint. Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1965. orth. teh Huang Chieh, ed. Han Wei yiieh-fu feng chien. Hong Kong: Commer- cial Press, 1961. KH. iF Ho RAZ Juan Yuan, ed. Mao shih chu shu. In Shth-san ching chu shu. 1815. Reprint. Taipei: T’ai-hua, 1977. fn. 44H 2A. tee. Ku Chao-ts’ang and Chou Ju-ch’ang, eds. Po Chii-yi shih hsiian. Peking: Tso-chia, 1962. BBB RAG. AEHBE. Ku Hstieh-hsieh, ed. Po Chii-yi chi. 4 vols. Peking: Chung-hua, 1979. Wh 48. 0a /é Io Kubo Tenzui (1875-1935). “Biwaku no gokyoku.” In Shina gikyoku kenkyu. Tokyo: Jinbun, 1928. ANE AB HE 7 AL. Rap A OTH K’ung Ying-ta (574-648), ed. Mao shih cheng yi. In Mao shih chu shu. 3 vols. Kuo-hstieh chi-pen ts’ung shu. Taipei: Shang-wu, 1968. MBE. KHER. AHH. Kuo Mo-jo. Pu tz‘u t’ung tsuan. 1933. Reprint. Tokyo: Meiyu, 1977. phe. b BBK , et al. Hu-chia shih-pa p’ai t’ao-lun chi. Peking: Chung-hua, 1959: tf Ge t AM WF. . Kuo Shao-ytt. Chung-kuo wen-hsiieh p’i-p’ing wen-hstian. Reprint. Tai- 202 Selected Bibliography nan: P’ing-p’ing, 1975. Hf Oe. FARE YR | Lei Chia-chi. “Ts’ao Chih ‘Tseng Pai-ma Wang Piao’ shih ping hsii chien- cheng.” New Asia Journal 12 (1977): 337-404. BRI RUM ORLY EA EM Liu Chih-chi (661-721). Shih t’ung hsiao-fan chu. Reprint. Taipei: Kuang-wen, 1963. Il xe He RH A HK 7B Liu Hsu, ed. Chiu T’ang shu. Peking: Chung-hua, 1975. Bly. BAS Lo Chen-yt.. Tun-huang ling-shih. Shanghai: Tung-fang, 1924. WARE. MEH. Lo Ken-tse. Yiieh-fu wen-hstieh shih. Peking: Wen-hua, 1931. Fi the Hm AER Nakashima Chiaki. Fu no seiritsu to tenkai. Matsuyama: Kankosei, 1963. PIF HK. Ao KAKA. Okamura Sadao. “Sai En no sakuhin no shugi.” Nihon Chugoku gakkat ho 23 (1971): 20-35. MH KM. BRO Ont. Ou-yang Hsiu, ed. Hsin T’ang shu. Peking: Chung-hua, 1975. Ke. WAS Ou-yang Hstin (557-641). Yi-wen lei-chu, edited by Wang Shao-ying. Peking: Chung-hua, 1965. itm. (£4e#). BAR Pan Ku (32-92), ed. Han Shu. Peking: Chung-hua, 1961. yi. ES Selected Bibliography 203 Pei-ching ta-hstteh, Chung-kuo yt yen wen-hsieh hsi: ed. T’ao Yuian- ming shih-wen hui-p’ing. Peking: Chung-hua, 1961. WAKE. PAULA. MIR ELRE F . Wei Chin Nan-pei ch’ao wen-hsiieh shih ts’an-k’ao tzu-liao. Pe- king: Chung-hua, 1962. he FD LE LRA RA. P’eng Ting-ch’iu et al. Ch’tian T’ang Shih. 25 vols. Peking: Chung-hua, 1960. BRK PAN. Shang Ch’eng-tso. Yin ch’i yi ts’un. 2 vols. Nan-ching: Chung-kuo wen-hua yen-chiu suo, 1933. AK - PARK. Shen Te-ch’ien (1675-1769), ed. Ku-shih ytian. Reprint. Peking: Chung-hua, 1963. ese 1G. Ee iM. Sun Kuang-hsien, ed. Pei-meng suo-yen. In Ya-yii t’ang ts’ang shu. Taipei: n.p., 1966. WKKE. HFK MALATE T’ao Ch’iu-ying. Han fu chih shih ti yen-chiu. Shanghai: Chung-hua, Uv Bieh KF . TRAM 2 35 WK Ting Fu-pao, ed. Ch’tian Han San-kuo Chin Nan-pei ch’ao shih. Taipei: Yi-wen, 1968. THI. BELA DARA . Shuo wen chieh tzu ku lin. 12 vols. Taipei: Shang-wu, 1966. ee ee . T’ao Ytian-ming shih chien chu. 1927. Reprint. Taipei: Yi-wen, 1964. rel aa ol 3a 2 204 Selected Bibliography T’o T’o et al. Chin shih. Peking: Chung-hua, 1975. WAL. R . . Sung shih. Peking: Chung-hua, 1977. LS ee Ts’ai Yung (133-192). Ch’in Ts‘ao. Ts’ung-shu chi-ch’ang edition. Shang- hai: Shang-wu, 1937. Wang An-shih. Wang An-shih shih-chi. Reprint. Taipei: Kuang-wen, 1974. LER. Leh es Wang Chung-min. Tun-huang ku-chi hsii-lu. Shanghai: Shang-wu, 1950. EE WW. LIS HHA. Wang Fu-chih (1619-1692), ed. Li Chi chang-chu. Taipei: Kuang-wen, 1967. LRA. HF. Wang Kuo-wei. Jen-chien tz’u-hua. In Hai-ning Wang Ching-an hsien sheng yi-shu, edited by Hsu Tiao-fu. Peking: n.p., 1927-28. EAH. APA. ARAL. BELHEKt AD . Kuo-hstieh chi-k’an. Shanghai: Tung-fang, 1924. i) FA Al. Wang Kuo-ying. “Han fu chung ti shan-shui ching-wu.” Chung wai wen- hstieh 9, no. 5 (1980): 4-34. ZAVE FRR A HKE mw. Wang Yi (second century a.D.), ed. Ch’u tz’u chang-chu. Reprint. Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1965. Lit. HFA Wu Ch’eng-ch’uan (fl. 1711) et al. Ku-wen kuan-chih. Hong Kong: Selected Bibliography 205 Hua-mei, 1951. KKH. ER MY Yen Yu (c. 1180-1235). Ts’ang-lang shih hua chiao-shih, edited by Kuo Shao-yu. Peking: Jen-min, 1962. Rd. RMA UBE Yu Kuan-ying. “Lun Ts’ai Yen Pei-fen shih.” In Han Wei Chin Liu-ch’ao shih lun-tsung. Shanghai: T’ang-ti, 1953. The FU RIND EBERT AK. Works on Chinese Literature in Western Languages Allen, Joseph Roe III. “Chih Yti’s Discussions of Different Types of Literature: A Translation and Brief Comment.” In Two Studies in Chinese Literary Criticism (Parerga 3). Seattle: Institute for Foreign Area Studies, 1976. . “Early Chinese Narrative Poetry: The Definition of a Tradi- tion.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1982. Alley, Rewi. The Eighteen Laments. Peking: New World Press, 1963. Birch, Cyril. “Some Concerns and Methods of Ming Ch’uan-ch’1 Drama.” In Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, edited by Cyril Birch, pp. 220-58. , ed. Studies in Chinese Literary Genres. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. Bischoff, F. A. Interpreting the Fu: A Study in Chinese Literary Rheto- ric. Mtinchener ostasiatische Studien, no. 13. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1976. Brower, Robert H., and Miner, Earl. Japanese Court Poetry. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1961. Bynner, Witter, and Kiang Kang-hu. The Jade Mountain: A Chinese Anthology Being Three Hundred Poems of the T’ang Dynasty. New York: Knopf, 1929. Cahill, Suzanne. “Shen Ch’tian-ch’i; Poems in Exile.” M.A. thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 1978. Ceadel, E. B. “The Two Prefaces of the Kokinshu.” Asia Major, n.s. 7, nos. 1—2 (1959): 40-51. Chan, Mimi, and Grey, Piers. “Three Poems on Yang Kuei-fei.” Renditions 14 (Autumn 1980): 79-84. 206 Selected Bibliography Chang, Kang-i Sun. “The Concept of Time in the Shih Ching.” Ch’ing- hua hstieh-pao, n.s. 12, nO. 2 (1979): 73-85. . “Description of Landscape in Early Six Dynasties Poetry.” In The Vitality of the Lyric Voice, edited by Lin Shuen-fu and Stephen Owen, pp. 105-29. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. . The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry from Late T’ang to Northern Sung. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. . Six Dynasties Poetry. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Chao, Yuen Ren. Language and Symbolic Systems. London: Cambridge University Press, 1968, pp. 102-5. . Mandarin Primer. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948. Chen Shih-hsiang. “The Genesis of Poetic Time: The Greatness of Ch’u Yuan, Studied with a New Critical Approach.” Ch’ing-hua hstieh-pao, n.s. 10, no. 1 (1973): 1-45. . “The Shih Ching: Its Generic Significance in Chinese Literary History and Poetics.” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Phi- lology (Academia Sinica) 39, no. 1 (1968): 371-413. Reprinted in Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, edited by Cyril Birch, pp. 8—41. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cheng, Francois. L’écriture poétique chinoise. Paris: Editions de Seuile, 1977. Translated by Donald A. Riggs and Jerome P. Seaton as Chinese Poetic Writing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Chou Fa-kao. “Reduplicatives in the Book of Odes.” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology (Academia Sinica) 34, no. 2 (1963): 661-98. Chou Shan. “Allusion and Periphrasis as Modes of Poetry in Tu Fu’s ‘Eight Laments.’” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45, no. 1 (1985): 77-128. Chow Tze-tsung. “Ancient Chinese Views on Literature, the Tao, and Their Relationship.” CLEAR 1, no. 1 (January 1979): 3-29. . “Ancient Chinese Wu Shamanism and Its Relationship to Sacrifices, History, Dance Music, and Poetry” (“Chung-kuo ku-tat ti wu-yi yti chi-ssu, li-shih, yiieh-wu, chi shih ti kuan-hsi’”). Ch’ing-hua hstieh-pao, n.s. 12, nos. 1-2 (December 1979): 1-59; n.s. 13, nos. 1-2 (December 1981): 1-25. . “The Early History of the Chinese Word Shih (Poetry).” In Wen Lin: Studies in the Chinese Humanities, edited by Chow Tze- Selected Bibliography 207 tsung, pp. 151-210. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968. Coleman, John D. “Lute Song.” Renditions 10 (Autumn 1978): 155-58. Cutter, Robert Joe. “The Incident at the Gate: Cao Zhi, the Succes- sion, and Literary Fame.” T’oung Pao 71 (1985): 228-62. Davis, A. R. T’ao Yiian-ming. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1983. Demiéville, Paul, ed. Anthologie de la poésie chinoise classique. Paris: Gallimard, 1962. Dewoskin, Kenneth. “On Narrative Revolutions.” CLEAR 5, no. 1 (July 1985): 29-45. Diény, Jean-Pierre. Aux origines de la poésie classique en Chine (T’oung Pao Monographie VI). Leiden: Brill, 1968. Dobson, W. A. C. H. Late Archaic Chinese: A Grammatical Study. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959. . “Studies in the Grammar of Early Archaic Chinese.” T’oung Pao 46, nos. 3-5 (1958): 339-68. Dubs, Homer H. “Han Yti and the Buddha’s Relic: An Episode in Medieval Chinese Religion.” Review of Religion 11 (November 1946): 5-17. . The History of the Former Han Dynasty. 2 vols. Baltimore: Waverley Press, 1944. Egan, Ronald C. The Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. . “Narrative in the Tso Chuan.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 37 (1977): 323-52. Eoyang, Eugene. “A Taste for Apricots: Approaches to Chinese Fic- tion.” In Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays, edited by Andrew H. Plaks, pp. 65-67. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. . “The Tone of the Poet and the Tone of the Translator.” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 24 (1975): 75-83. . “The Wang Chao-chtin Legend: Configurations of the Clas- sic.” CLEAR 4, no. 1 (1983): 3-22. . “Word of Mouth: Oral Storytelling in the Pien-wen.” Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1971. Fang, Achilles. “Some Reflections on the Difficulty of Translation.” In On Translation, edited by Reuben Brower. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959. Fang, Robert F. Gleanings from T’ao Yuan-ming. Hong Kong: Commer- cial Press, 1980. 208 Selected Bibliography Fenellosa, Ernst. The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, edited by Ezra Pound. Washington, D.C.: Square Dollar Series, 1951. Fokkema, D. W. “Cultural Relativism and Comparative Literature.” Tamkang Review 3, no. 2 (1972): 59-71. Frankel, Hans H. “Cai Yen and the Poems Attributed to Her.” CLEAR 5, No. 2 (1985): 133-56. . “The Chinese Ballad ‘Southeast Fly the Peacocks.’” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 34 (1974): 249-71. . “The Contemplation of the Past in T’ang Poetry.” In Perspec- tives on the T’ang, edited by Denis Twitchett and Arthur Wright, Pp- 345-64. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973. . “The Legacy of the Han, Wei, and Six Dynasties Yiieh- fu Tradition and Its Further Development in T’ang Poetry.” In The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late Han to T’ang, edited by Lin Shuen-fu and Stephen Owen, pp. 287-95. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. . “Fifteen Poems by Ts’ao Chih: An Attempt at a New Ap- proach.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 84 (1964): 1-14. . The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. . “The Formulaic Language in the Chinese Ballad ‘Southeast Fly the Peacocks.’” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology (Academia Sinica) 39, no. 2 (1969): 219-44. . “Some Characteristics of Oral Narrative Poetry in China.” In Etudes d’histotre et de littérature chinoises offertes a Professeur Jaroslav Prusek, Bibliotheque de I’Institute des Hautes Etudes Chinoises. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1976, 24:97—106. . “Ytieh-fu Poetry.” In Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, edited by Cyril Birch, pp. 69-107. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. Frodsham, J. D. The Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yun (385-433), Duke of K’ang-lo. 2 vols. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967. , and Ch’eng Hsi. An Anthology of Chinese Verse: Han Wei Chin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. Galik, Marian. “The Concept of Creative Personality in Traditional Chinese Criticism.” Oriens Extremus 27, no. 2 (1980): 183-202. Gardner, Daniel K. “Principle and Pedagogy: Chu Hsi and the Four Books.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 44, no. 1 (1984): 57-81. Selected Bibliography 209 Giles, Lionel. “The Lament of the Lady of Ch'in.” T’oung Pao 24 (1926): 316-25. Graham, Angus. Lieh-tzu: A New Translation. London: John Murray, 1960. Graham, William T., Jr. “The Lament for the South”: Yt Hsin’s “At Chiang-nan Fu.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Hartman, Charles. Han Yui and the T’ang Search for Unity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Haskins, John F. “The Pazyryk Felt Screen and the Barbarian Cap- tivity of Ts’ai Wen-chi.” Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities Bulletin 35 (1963): 141-61. Hawkes, David. Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959. . A Little Primer of Tu Fu. 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Holzman, Donald. “Confucius and Ancient Chinese Criticism.” In Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucius to Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, edited by Adele A. Rickett, pp. 21-41. Princeton: Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1978. . Poetry and Politics: The Life and Works of Juan Chi (A.D. 210- 263). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Hopkins, L. C. “The Shaman or Chinese Wu: His Inspired Dancing and Versatile Character.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1945, pts. 1 and 2): 3-16. 210 Selected Bibliography Hung, William. Tu Fu: China’s Greatest Poet. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952. Idema, W. L. “The Illusion of Fiction.” CLEAR 5, no. 1 (July 1985): 47-51. Kao Yu-kung. “The Aesthetics of Regulated Verse.” In The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late Han to T’ang, edited by Lin Shuen-fu and Stephen Owen, pp. 332-85. 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See also Pronouns, Personal references “At Chiang-nan fu” (“Lament for the South”) by Yu Hsin, 49-52, 61, 63-64 “Ai Chiang-t’ou” (“Lament at the Riverside”) by Tu Fu, 76, 79, 97 Allusion, 33, 39, 49, 76, 113, 119 An Lu-shan Rebellion, 57, 71, 76-77, 90, 97 Archetypes, 81-82, 89, 92-93, 96-97, 102-3, 176 n.5 Autobiography, 2, 69, 82-84, 89, 102, 106, 118-19 “Autumn Meditations.” See “Ch’iu hsing” “Ballad of the Orphan.” See “Ku-er hsing” “Ballad of Peach Blossom Spring.” See “T’ao ytian hsing” “Ballad of the P’i-p’a.” See “P’i-p’a hsing”’ Book of Songs. See Shih Ching Cary, Joyce, 17, 157 n.30, 169 n.2, 174 N.23 Catenation, 16, 42-43, 106-7, 110, 119, 123 “Ch’ang-hen ko” (“Song of Everlast- ing Sorrow”) by Po Chu-yi, 1-2, 70-75, 97, 113; translation of, 129-33 220 Index Chao Fei-yen, 76, 97 “Chao Hun” (“Recalling the Spirit”). See Ch’u Tz’u Character: roles, 82, 90, 96, 102, 123, 176n.5, 177 n.6; types, 82, 89-91, 102, 123, 176N.5, 177 n.6. See also Characterization Characterization, x, 17, 27, 79, 80-83, 95-96, 102-3, 123, 176 Ne4y 177 nO Chen Shih-hsiang, 34, 37, 39, 164 n.43, 165 n.54 Ch’en Yuan-lung. See Yii-ting li-tai fu-hui Cheng Hsuan, 41, 47, 163 n.36 Ch’eng T’ing-tso, 46-47 “Ch fa” (“Seven Stimuli”), 47-48 Chia Yi, 45-46, 56, 61, 63, 166 n.70. See also “Fu-niao fu” Chih (“intent”), 21-25, 55-56, 160 n.10 Chih-yin (“one who understands the nature of the music”; also chih-chi, chih-jen), 68, 82, 173-74 n.22 “Ch'in-fu yin” (“Song of the Lady of Ch’in”) by Wei Chuang, xi, 1, 18, 90, 96-102, 114-20; translation of, 138-49 Chin-t’i shih (“new-style poetry”), 7-8 “Ch'iu hsing” (“Autumn Medita- tions”) by Tu Fu, 108 “Chiu ko” (“Nine Songs”). See Ch’u Tzu Chou Fa-kao, 28-29, 161 n.21, 162 n.27 Chu Hsi, 36, 41-42, 163 n.36, 165 n.60 Ch’u Tz’u (Songs of Ch’u), 43-44, 47, 107. See also Ch’t: Yuan, “Li sao” Ch’t Yuan, 44, 46, 48, 50, 60-61, 82 Ch’tian T’ang shih (Complete T’ang Poetry), 18 Chiieh-chii (“quatrains”), 8 Chung Jung (or Hung), 39, 165 n.52 Chung Tzu-ch’i, 82, 173 n.22 Classic of History. See Shu Ching Confucian attitudes toward poetry, 22-24, 169 n.5 Description, x, 40-41, 54, 59, 61, 66, 71-72, 74-75, 79, 101-2, 104, 167 n.74 Descriptives. See Lien-mien tzu Disyllabic compounds, 28 The Dream of the Red Chamber (Hung-lou meng), x “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute.” See “Hu-chia shih-pa pai” “Encountering Sorrow.” See “Li sao” Enumeration. See Fu EPIC; DG)27 570; 17, Exile: as theme in the poetry of Ch’ Yiian, 60-61; Han Yu, 56-57; Po Chu-yi, 64-69, 82, 102; Shen Ch’tian-ch’i, 62, 105-6; Shih Ch’ung, 62, 93-95; Ts‘ai Yen, 83-89, 91, 93, 97; Ts’ao Chih, 111; Wei Chuang, g9; Yu Hsin, 52 Expression (as part of poetic act), 24-25 Fenellosa, Ernst, 31, 159 n.4 Feng (“airs”), 37, 163 n.35 Frame, narrative, 61-64, 69-71, 75, 79, 99, 105-6, 117 “From the Capital to Feng-hsien: Five Hundred Words Chanting My Feelings.” See “Tzu ching fu Feng hsien hsien yung-huat wu-pai tzu” Frye, Northrop, 55, 153 n.5 Fu (“enumeration”), 34-46, 52-53, 104, 107-9, 118-19, 123, 165 n.52 Fu (“rhymeprose, rhapsody”), 16, 35-36, 40-41, 43-49, 85, 107, 165 n.57, 166 n.69; categorization of, 44-47; descriptive, 45-49, 123, 166 n.69, 167 n.72; personal, 45-49, 52, 56-58, 61-63, 71, 84, 102, 123, 166 n.69, 167 n.72 “Fu-niao fu” (“Owl fu’) by Chia Yi, 45-46, 48, 56, 61, 63-64 “Great Preface.” See Shih ta-hsii Han Ch’eng-ti, 76, 97 Han Wu-ti, 8 Han Yu, 56-57, 90 Han Ytian-ti, 92-93 Hawkes, David, 36, 43-44 Historiography, 2, 17-18, 95-96, 152n.3 Homer, 6 Hou Han shu (History of the Later Han), 83 Hsiao T’ung, 44, 46 “Hsin-hun pieh” (“The Parting of the New Bride”) by Tu Fu, 77-78 Hsing (“association”), 34, 37-40, 165 n.52 Index 221 Hsing (“ballad”), 5 Hsti-shih shih (“narrative poetry”), 2, 1520.3 “Hu-chia shih-pa p’ai” (“Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute”) by Liu Shang, 90-92, 96, 179-80 n.18; by Ts’ai Yen, 89-92, 95, 102 Hu Shih, 3 Huang Ch’ao Rebellion, 97-98, 117 Imagistic language, 25-28, 30-34 Intent. See Chih Itineraria, 43-44, 107 “Journey North.” See “Pei cheng” The Journey to the West (Hsi-yu chi), a Juan Chi, 108 Kao Yu-kung, 24-27, 31, 162 n.32 Karlgren, Bernhard, 29-30, 39, 161 N.23, 163-64 n.38 Kennedy, George A., 28 Knechtges, David R., 36, 44, 47, 162 n.34, 163-64 n.38 Ko (“song”), 5 “Ku-er hsing” (“Ballad of the Orphan”), 60 Ku-shih (“old-style poetry,” also known as ku-t’i shih), 5, 7-9, 18, 58 “Ku-shih shih” (“story poetry”), 2, 152n.3 “K’ung-ch'tieh tung-nan fei” (“South- east Fly the Peacocks”), 60, 70 K’ung Ying-ta, 37, 41, 163 n.36, 164 n.43 222 Index “Lament at the Riverside.” See “Ai chiang-t’ou” “Lament for the South.” See “Ai Chiang-nan fu” Legge, James, 29, 36, 39-40, 40, 42-43, 164 n.40 “Li sao” (“Encountering Sorrow”) attributed to Ch’u Yuan, 43-46, 49-50, 60-61. See also Ch’'u Tz’u Lien-mien tzu (“reduplicatives”), 28-31, 161 n.21, 162 n.27 Liu, James J. Y., 3, 28, 37, 160 n.7 Liu Shang, 90-92, 96 Liu Tzu-chi, 11, 15 Liu-yi (“Six Principles”), 34-37 “Lung shih” (“The Officer at Lung River”) by Han Yu, 56-58 “Lo-shen fu” by Ts’ao Chih, 63-64 Lii-shih (“octets”), 8 Lyric: as contrasted with narrative, i, 3) 7p sy, Pal, Vl ap oloy, Glen 102, 113; mode, 2, 5, 9-10, 26, 75, 170 n.8; lyrical experience, X13=4, 10, 1722725). 3270557 58; lyrical expression, ix-x, 3, 27-28, 31-32, 55, 112, 118; lyrical tendencies, 3, 17, 26, 32, 79, 171-72 n.12 Mao Heng, 22, 35 Margoulies, Georges, 36 Mei Sheng, 47-48 Mei Tsu-lin, 25-27, 31 Mu-lan (Chinese heroine), 82 Narrative: as contrasted with lyric, 2-3, 7, 15, 18-19, 20-21, 26-27, 40-42, 55-58, 69-70, 79, 95-96, 102, 104-6, 113, 121-24; mode, x-xi, 2, 5, 9-10, 17, 58-59, 75, 113, 122, 124, 170 n.8; narrative experience, 4—5, 10, 17, 25-26, 75; expression, ix—x, 8, 16-17, 20-21, 27, 30, 34, 75, 104, 114, 121-24; tendencies, 3, 18, 27, 32, 79, 171-72 n.12 Objective, as ref. to lyric, 26-27, 55, 59, 79, 171-72 n.12 “The Officer at Lung River.” See “Lung shih” Oral composition, 16, 41, 70, 157 N.33, 159 N.4 Ou-yang Hsiin, 44 P’ai-li (“regulated couplets”), 8 Pan Ku, 35-37, 46, 182-83 n.1 Parallelism, xi, 33-34, 113-14 Peach Blossom Spring, as theme, 10-12, 14, 22, 51, 82 “Pei cheng” (“Journey North”) by Tu Fu, 57-58 “Pei-fen shih” (“Poem of Affliction”) attributed to Ts’ai Yen, xi, 62, 83-89, 95, 105, 113, 177-78 n.11; translation of, 125-28 emlinaos Perception, as part of poetic act, 24-25 Personal references, 58-61 Pi (“comparison”), 37-39 “P’i-p’a hsing” (“Ballad of the p’i- p’a”) by Po Chi-yi, xi, 61-62, 64-69, 82, 84, 102, 105, 113, 173 n.20; translation of, 133-38 P’ien-wen (“parallel prose,” also “p'ien-t’l wen”), 8 Plaks, Andrew H., 81, 176 nn.3-5, 182-83 nn. 1-2 Po Chut-yi, 1-2, 61-62, 64—69, 70-75, 82, 84-90, 97, 102, 105, 113. See also “Ch’ang-hen ko,” “P’1-p’a hsing” Po Ya, 82, 173 n.22 “Poem of Affliction.” See “Pei-fen shih” “Poem of Peach Blossom Spring.” See “T’ao-hua yuan shih” Poem sequence, 18, 38, 78, 107-9, 113, 184 n.8 Poem series, 38, 108 “Poems Presented to Prince Piao of Pai-ma.” See “Tseng Pai-ma Wang Piao” Point of view: as a characteristic of narrative, x, 17, 27, 31, 54-56, 58-61, 75-76, 79, 80, 88, 121-22, 168-69 nn. 1-2, 171 n.11; explicit, 75, 79; implicit, 7 Political criticism, 2, 56-58, 76, 79, 97, 119, 182 n.26 Pound, Ezra, 6-7, 31, 159n.4 Pronouns, 14, 32-34, 59-60, 77, 110 Propositional language, 25-28, 30-34 Reduplicatives. See Lien-mien tzu “Response to a Troll: A Letter to My Family.” See “Ta chih-mei tai-shu chi chia-jen” “San li” (“Three Conscripting Officers”) by Tu Fu, 76-79 “San pieh” (“Three Partings”) by Tu Fu, 76-79 Sao, 40, 44, 46-47, 49, 166-67 n.71 Sequence: as principle of poetic structure, 17-18, 34-38, 42-44, Index 223 49-50, 103-7, 113-14, 118— 19, 122-24; temporal, 34-35, 40-41, 44, 77, 104-7, 123-24, 182-83 n.1 “Seven Stimuli.” See “Ch’i fa” Shen Ch’tan-ch’i, 62, 105-6 Shih (“poetry”), 5, 21-23 Shih: genre, ix-x, 5, 15-16, 18, 21-22, 26, 35, 52, 64, 70, 76, 81, 83-84, 96, 102-3, 107, 110, 113-14, 121-24; narrative, ix-x, 5, 7-8, 18, 64, 81-82, 84, 102-3, 105, 107, 114, 120-24 Shih Ching (Book of Songs): anthol- ogy, 1, 9, 16, 21-22, 28, 34-35, 38, 40-43, 46, 60, 123; poems referred to by Mao edition no.: 1 (“Kuan kuan chii chiu’), 28-30; 3 (“Chuan-erh”), 30, 32; 55 (“Chi ao”), 39; 60 (“Wan lan”), 39; 63 (“Yu hu”), 39; 66 (“Chiin-tzu yu yt”), 41; 67 (“Chiin-tzu yang yang”), 41; 124 (“Ko sheng”), 39; 132 (“Ch’en feng’), 39-40; 243 (“Hsia Wu"), 42, 106; 244 (“Wen wang yu sheng’), 42-43, 106 Shih Ch’ung, 62, 93-94, 105, 181 n.22 “Shih-hao Ii” (“The Conscripting Officer at Shih-hao”) by Tu Fu, 77179 Shih P’in, 39 Shih ta hsti (“Great Preface [of the Shih Ching]”), 22-24, 24-37, 40, 160 n.8, 163 n.35. See also Shih Ching Shu Ching (Classic of History), 22, 167 n.76 Shui (“persuasions”), 47-48 224 Index Six Principles. See Liu-yi “Song of Everlasting Sorrow.” See “Ch’ang-hen ko” “Song of the Lady of Ch'in.” See “Ch’in-fu yin” “Song of Wang Ming-chiin.” See “Wang Ming-chun tz’u” Songs of Ch’u. See Ch’u Tz’u “Southeast Fly the Peacocks.” See “K’ung-ch'tieh tung-nan fei” Ssu-ma Ch’ien, 50, 166 n.70 Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, 44-45, 47-48 Stanza, as poetic form, 16, 35, 41-43, 106-7, 123 Subjective, as ref. to narrative, 26-27, 55, 59, 79, 171-72 n.12 Sung (“hymns”), 37, 163 n.35, 165 n.60 Sung Kao-tsung, 92 “Ta chih-mei tai-shu chi chia-jen” (“Response to a Troll: A Letter to My Family”) by Shen Ch’tan-ch’i, 62, 105-6 Tableaux, narrative, 18, 67, 113-14, 119 Tale of Genji, The, 1-2 T’ang Hsuan-tsung (Ming-huang), 71-75 113 T’ao Ch’ien, 10-12, 14-15, 21-22 “T’ao-hua ytian shih” (“Poem of Peach Blossom Spring”) by T’ao Ch’ien, 10-12, 22 “T’ao yuan hsing” (“Ballad of Peach Blossom Spring”) by Wang Wei, 12-15, 21-22, 59-60; translation of, 12-14 “Three Conscripting Officers.” See “San li” “Three Partings.” See “San pieh” Ts’ai Yen (also Ts’ai Wen-chi), 62, 82-102, 115, 117, 177-78 n.11. See also “Hu-chia shih-pa p‘ai,’ “Pei-fen shih” Ts’ao Chih, 63-64, 108-12 Ts’ao P’i (Wei Wen-ti), 110-11 Ts’ao Ts’ao, 83, 93 “Tseng Pai-ma Wang Piao” (“Poems Presented to Prince Piao of Pai-ma”) by Ts’ao Chih, 108-12 Tu Fu, 57-58, 71, 76-79, 97, 108 Tung Cho, 84, 97, 105 Tung Ssu, 83, 93 “Tzu ching fu Feng hsien hsien yung-huai wu-pat tzu” (“From the Capital to Feng-hsien: Five Hundred Words Chanting My Feelings”) by Tu Fu, 57-58 ul Verbs: modal, 31-32; performative, 27, 30-32; qualitative, 27-28; relational, 32; stative, 27 Vergil, 5-6 Wang An-shih, 92 Wang, C. H., 37 Wang Chao-chun (also Wang Ming-chun), 90, 92-95, 176-77 n.6, 180-81 n.21 “Wang ch’tian chi” (“Wang Stream Collection”) by Wang Wei and P’ei Ti, 108 “Wang Ming-chiin tz’u” (“Song of Wang Ming-chiin”) by Shih Ch’ung, 62, 92-95, 105 Wang Ts’an, 108 Wang Wei, 12-15, 21-22, 59, 108 Wei Chuang, 18, 90, 96-102, 114- 20, 185 n.17. See also “Ch’in-fu yin” Wei Hung, 22, 34-35 Wen Hsiian, 44 Ya (“odes”), 21, 37, 163 n.35 Yang Hsiung, 44 Yang Kuei-fei, 71-76 Yen-chih (“to speak of one’s true self”), 49, 52, 167 n.76 Yen-wai (“beyond words”), 24 Yi wen chih (Bibliographical Treatise), 46 Yi wen lei-chii, 44 Yu Hsin, 49-52, 61, 63-64. See also “Ai Chiang-nan fu’ Yu, Pauline, 37, 39, 60 Yii-ting li-tai fu-hut, 44 Index 225 Ytieh-fu (“poems from the Music Bureau,” also yiieh-fu shih), 8-9, 60, 62, 69-70, 75; relation to ku-shih, 155 n.18 “Yung-huai ku-yi wu shou” (“Thoughts on Ancient Sites”) by Tu Fu, 108 Yung-huai shih (Poems Expressing My Feelings) by Juan Chi, 108 “Yung-shih shih” (“Poems on Historical Subjects”) by Wang Ts’an, 108 Dore J. Levy teaches Chinese and comparative li Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Maina hes: oer ee * is tt hy eS ee £ Pils el . if Duke University Libraries ee |: D00222601D si or ne DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA 27706 0922200 Ja}U8Q sdIAeg Ayeiqi7 ayn