A Passage to China (走近中国) - Poetry

Chinese poetry sprang up long before written language was devised, and its poetics were formed and developed through people’s daily work and labor, their songs and their dances.

The Book of Poetry is the anthology of verse in China. It includes 305 poems created between the 11th century BC and the 6th century BC. The poems are divided into three sections: feng (songs), ya (odes and epics) and song (hymns). The song was used by the ruling class during their sacrifices to the gods and ancestors. Ya referred to odes to former heroes and satire on the current politics of the day. Feng is the most important part of the anthology, including folk songs collected from 15 city states.

Of the great poets living in the 4th century BC, the most famous is Qu Yuan, born in the State of Chu (one of the seven states during the Warring States Period). Qu Yuan and his follower Song Yu established a new style of poetry – chuci (literature, poetry of the south). Qu Yuan’s major work was Sorrow after Departure.

Chuci developed more varied forms of poetry, freeing itself from four-character poetry, the form adopted in The Book of Poetry, and developed three-character, four-character, five-character poetry. In terms of artistic technique, Chuci absorbed the romantic attributes of myth and established the romantic style of Chinese literary creation.

In the wake of The Book of Poetry and Chuci rose a new form of poetry extant in the Han Dynasty – the yuefu folk songs (poetic genre of folk songs and ballads in the Han Dynasty). The yuefu folk songs of the Han Dynasty contained more than 100 pieces, which were mostly written in five-character lines, and later became the major form of poetry during the Wei and Jin Dynasties.

Major Poets and Their Works

The Book of Poetry

The Book of Poetry is the first anthology of Chinese poems. It contained 305 poems written over a period of 500 years spanning from the beginning of Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period. The Book of Poetry has three parts: feng (songs), ya (odes and epics) and song (hymns). Feng includes 160 songs sung by people in 15 city states. Ya include 105 poems in two parts: “The Book of Odes” and “The Book of Epics”. Song includes 40 poems in three parts: “The Hymns of Zhou”, “the Hymns of Lu”, and “the Hymns of Shang”.

“The Book of Songs” (feng) is the most significant segment of The Book of Poetry. The folk songs of the Zhou Dynasty collected into “The Book of Songs” recount the real life of common people, and express people’s indignation about oppression and their yearning for a happy life. “The Book of Songs” is the wellspring of Chinese realist poetry. “The Life of Peasants” faithfully captures the wretched lives led by enslaved people. The “Woodcutter’s Song” roused the slave class to awareness. The angry slaves called the slave owners to account: “How can those who neither reap nor sow have three millions sheaves on their plate? How can those who neither hunt nor chase have in their courtyard the game of each race?” Some poems even described the direct resistance of slaves to the ruling class, such as “The Large Rat”. Some poems in “The Book of Songs” captured the trauma caused by forced military service and conscribed labor, for example, “My Man is Away,” and search for happy marriage, as in “A Faithless Man” and “A Rejected Wife”. “Depression”, another love poem, even disclosed a deep awareness of resistance. “All of Shepherdess” and “Gifts” wished for good cheer and called for optimism. All of the poems in “The Book of Songs” are honest expressions of laboring people’s thoughts and feelings.

Many folk songs in “The Book of Songs” criticized and satirized the ruling class’s decadent and promiscuous lifestyles, for example, “Incest”, “The Duke’s Mistress” and “Complaint of a Duchess”.

The most distinctive artistry in “The Book of Songs” lies in its realistic depiction of objects in simple language, mirroring social reality with glimpses of ordinary life. Characterization in “The Book of Songs” is also realistic: authors’ voices character’s joys and sorrows through the direct expression of their inner feelings. Most poems in “The Book of Songs” were written in three-character lines as well as lines of irregular length. For example, “The Woodcutter’s Song” was written in the form of irregular lines which change along with the rising emotions and have distinct rhymes and musical quality. The language used in “The Book Songs” is focused, elegant and lively. The skilled application of double-adjectives, rhyming words and alliterations enhanced the songs’ artistic appeal. The adoption of the expressive technique of fu, bi and xing greatly reinforced its illustrative power.

Poems in ya (ode and epics) and song (hymns) were used by the ruling class for specific occasions. Although they could not match the poems in The Book of Songs in their ideological content, they reflected some aspects of social life and therefore also had certain social meaning.

The Book of Poetry splendidly signals the onset of Chinese literature. Its spirit of realism has exerted great influence on the literature of later times. The Book of Poetry enjoys a high reputation in both China’s and the world’s cultural history.

Qu Yuan

Qu Yuan (340-278 BC) was the first great patriotic poet in the history of Chinese literature. He composed 25 poems including “Sorrow after Departure”, “The Nine Songs” (11 pieces), “Asking Heaven”, “The Nine Elegies” (9 pieces), “The Far-off Journey”, “Divination” and “The Fishman”.

“Sorrow after Departure” is Qu Yuan’s classic work, which is also the earliest long lyric poem in China. The poem resolutely uncloaked the repulsiveness of the ruling class by deploying a series of metaphors and at the same time portrayed some upstanding models who, adhering to justice, were not devoted to their country and people.

Tao Yuanming

Tao Yuanming (365 – 427), also known as Tao Qian, is a famous landscape poet. He had been a minor official for several years during his youth. Weary of the corruption in government, he resigned his post and lived a recluse’s life ever after.

Many of his poems reflect his disgust of the negative side of social reality and a strong love for the quiet and simple life in the countryside. In “Back to Nature”, he compared officialdom to a net and life in official circles to that of a “caged bird” and a “ponded fish”, and the recluse’s life was likened to “breaking the birdcage” and “returning to nature”.

Li Bai

Li Bai (701-762), the most outstanding poet at the height of the Tang Dynasty, is one of the great romantic poets after Qu Yuan. He was later called the “poetic genius”. Li Bai’s life was full of frustration and his thoughts were complex. Besides a great talent for poetry, Li Bai had also an air of a swordsman, hermit, Taoist and adviser. Notions of Confucianism, Taoism and chivalry were all embodied in his character. His life philosophy was “rest on one’s laurels”.

Li Bai’s extant works include more than 900 poems, which artistically recount his own life, social reality and the spirit of the high Tang Dynasty. Li Bai had great political ambitions all though his life and he never concealed his yearning for fame and honor in his poems, as in “Chant of Liang Fu – A Small Hill”, “Read the Story of Zhuge Liang”, and “To Can Xiong”. Li Bai revered the chivalrous spirit when he was young and wrote many poems on that, like “Song of a Swordsman”. Three years of political life in Chang’an exerted a great influence in Li Bai’s literary creation. He found that his own political ideals were in sharp contradiction with the seamy sides of social reality, which inspired him to write a series of famous poems, like “Drinking Alone at a Cold Night – A Reply to Wang, Twelfth among His Brothers”. Li Bai was a roamer all through his life and traveled all over the country, visiting many famous mountains and rivers. Many poems praised the beautiful landscape of the country, reflecting his uninhibited character and strong desire for freedom. “Traveling to Tianmu Mountain in a Dream: A Parting Song” is his most classic work. In the poem he gives full play to his imagination of spiritual pursuit, which greatly soothed a soul so frustrated with the real world. The concluding lines, “How can I serve the haughty with my head down? / No, I shall keep my heart buoyant and free forever, Oh!” resonate with his unyielding reputation as an upright scholar.

Du Fu

The poems of Du Fu (712 - 770), the exemplary realist poet in the history of Chinese literature, are a good mirror of the social outlook of the once prosperous Tang Dynasty in decline. Du’s poems are poems are rich in social content, and have a distinct epochal character and a definitive political inclination. His poetry fervently appeals to the nation in the uplifting spirit of self-sacrifice. He is called the “The Sage of Poetry” and his poems praised as “epic poetry”.

He wrote more than 1,000 poems throughout his life, the famous ones being “Three Officers”, “Three Partings”, “A Song of Chariots”, “My Thatched Hurt is wrecked by the Autumn Wind”, “A Song of Fair Ladies” and “A Spring View”. His poetry offered great sympathy to common people and revealed the sharp contradiction between exploiters and exploited in feudal sociality. “Wine and meat rot behind vermilion gates, while on the roadside, people freeze to death” has been a line indelibly inscribed in the minds generation after generation of the Chinese people. “A Spring View” and “Upon the News of the Recapture of Henan and Hebei by the Imperial Armies” shows the poet’s great love for his motherland. “A Song Chariots” and “A Song of Fair Ladies” not only praise the people’s desire to serve the country; they also expose the malfeasance of a warlike ruling class. Some of his poems focus on describing scenery or reflecting the love between couples, among brothers and friends, yet they are also infused with the poetry is an artistic recounting of the turn in the fortunes of the Tang Dynasty. In the history of Chinese literature, his poetry is unmatched in its rendering of enlightenment and elegance.

Bai Juyi

Bai Juyi (772 - 846) was another outstanding realist poet after Du Fu. He was the most prolific poet among Tang Dynasty poets. His poems were divided by himself into four categories: satire, leisure, sentiment and miscellany. His most important legacy to Tang Poetry was the attributes of his satirical poems.

His satirical poems have two themes: poems reflecting on the bitter life of common people, as in “The Old Man in Duling”, which shows sympathy for the peasant; “The Lady of Shangyang Palace and the Songs of the Imperial Harem”, which bemoans women’s fate; and poems unmasking the evils of the ruling class, such as “The Old Charcoal Seller and Red Carpet”.

Wang Wei and Meng Haoran’s Landscape Poetry

Wang Wei (701? – 761?) and Meng Haoran (689 - 740) was both skilled at depicting natural scenery in five-character lines. The extant works of Wang Wei include more than 400 poems. His landscape and pastoral poems mainly described his reclusive life and the beautiful scenery in Zhongnan and Wangchuan. He was keenly perceptive of nature and always patterned his poems with a painter’s craft. Commenting on his works, people often say”there is poetry in his painting and in his poetry”. Wangchuan Ji – A Collection of Wang Wei’s Poetry – shows off the best of his poetics. The language in his poetry is fresh and refined.

Meng Haoran was the first poet to write a large number of landscape and pastoral poems. His existing includes more than 260 poems, mostly in five – character lines. His existing for describing the beautiful landscape of his hometown – Xiangyang – is infections, as found in poems “To Zhang, the Fifth among His Brother”, “When Mounting Orchid Mountain on an Autumn Day” and “A Song of Returning to Deer – Gate Mountain at Night”, where the mountains, trees, crescent moon and boats appeared so familiar and sweet in his writing. In poems full of vitality as “Visiting an Old Friend on His Farm”, the simple life a peasant family, deep feelings between old friends and the tranquil and harmonious atmosphere in rural areas, all leave an unforgettable and impression in reader’s mind. Some of his short poems, such as “Spring Dawn”, are also fresh and explicit with a lingering appeal. Although his poetry does not possess a rich ideological point-of-view as does Wang Wei’s poetry, from an aesthetic point of view, Meng may be classed with Wang.

Gao Shi and Cen Shen

Gao Shi (702 – 765) and Cen Shen (715 - 770), both veterans of military service, excelled at writing seven-character-line verse. Their poems reflect a common desire to devote their lives to their country – but the artistic techniques adopted in their lives to their poems are widely different. The poetry of Gao Shi was more realistic than romantic. In describing life on the frontier, he sought to reveal the severity of battles and the hardships endured by soldiers. Very sympathetic with the soldiers, in “Song of the Northern Frontier”, he vividly described the desolate barren land, the fierce cast of war and a soldier’s complex psychology. His poems are powerful, simple and heroic. He also wrote some excellent stanzas on parting, such as “Bid Farewell to Dong, the Oldest among His Brother” and “Bid Farewell to Wei, the Adjustant”, These poems are also imbues with the heroic spirit of his frontier poems.

The poetry of Cen Shen unleashed a powerful force, rich imagination and fervent passion. Unlike Gao, Cen Shen tended to heroic myths of frontier life. His poems were basically romantic, as represented by “Song of the Horse Cantering Plain to General Feng in His Western Expedition”, “Song of Luntai to General Feng on His Western Expedition”, and “Song of White Snow to Secretary Wu Returning to the Capital”, he even compared snowflakes falling down in August in North China to pear blossoms, as in the famous line “pear trees were all in bloom a hundred, a thousand.” In his poems, cold weather, reluctance a time of farewell and nostalgia were back grounded in favor of heroism and optimism. Some of his poems which invoked grand landscapes and diverse folk customs on the frontier are also masterpieces.

Li Shangyin

Li Shangyin’s (813 – 858) poems further built on the artistic traditions of Chinese classical poetry and broadly encompassed four areas: politics, history, landscapes and lyric, and love. His political poems are splendid, suffused with effervescent spirit. His historic poems are exquisitely schemed and profound. His most popular poems were love poems titled “no title”. They tended to be of two types. In the first type, obscure, vague and unable to make his love public, he could only express his love through lazy verses. In the second type, which was emblematic, he called on love to help express his indignation over the unfairness of fate.

Learning extensively from the mastery of poets before him, he inherited the depth and cadence of Du Fu’s poetical lines with seven characters each, meshing into his own poems the ornate and flowery style of poetry created during the Qi and Liang periods. He emulated the strange fantasy in Li He’s poems, and was good at using apt literary quotations to express sentiments heretofore to express sentiments heretofore inexplicable.

Su Shi

Su Shi’s (1073 – 1101) poems were of a virile timbre and an unrestrained spirit. Most were written to express his own feelings and in praise of the beauty of nature. Some are classic poems with an imagination unbounded, written in either powerful or refined and delicates touches.

Compared to his poems, his lyrics made an even grater impact in terms of creativity. Beyond merely describing sorrows felt by parting lovers, he included recollections of the past, travel notes and reasoning, swept aside the gentle and restrained style of the lyrics created in the late Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties and thus established the “powerful and free” school of lyrics.

Liu Yong

Liu Yong (about 971 – 1053) was the first poet to devote himself totally to the writing of lyrics in the Northern Song Dynasty. He made great contributions in broadening the use of langue, developing long lyrics and enriching the expressive techniques of lyric poetry. His lyric poetry falls into three categories, lyrics describing the prosperity of cities and an urban dweller’s way of living; lyrics describing the love between men and women; and lyrics that were sighing over his own frustrations in life.

His long lyrics greatly enriched the song lyrics, providing a new form of lyric aside from the short lyrics. He excelled at developing his subject matter, expressing his feelings by way of narration, and utilizing much spoken language.

Li Qing Zhao

A remarkable woman poet of the Song Dynasty, Li Qing Zhao (1084 – 1155?) made great achievement in prose and poetry, but most of all in the field of lyrics.

The style of her lyrics changed sharply after she fled to the south after the invasions of the Kin Kingdom in North China. Before she went south, her lyrics mainly recounted the lives of girls and women in their boudoirs. After fleeing south, she endured great hardships in life and the style of her lyric poetry turned deep and pithy. In her southern poems, she rose above self pity and expressed her fears for the whole nation.

Her lyrics are woven with a “silicate restraint” in the following ways: merging intense passion with literary images, creating an artistic conception in which feelings and scenery are well blended; and using simple but original language. Not many literary quotations sprinkled her lyrics but with much spoken language and common sayings, her lyrics had the beauty of music, very easy to recite.

Lu You

Lu You’s (1125 – 1210) works include more than 9,300 poems, covering almost all the aspects of social life in the early Southern Song Dynasty. His poems have two major attributes: first, the powerful and heroic, resolute and self-sacrificing spirit, fully evident in lines like “I can still destroy the Invaders from Yan and Zhao Kingdoms in Battles as soon as the War Drum sounds,” composed at the age of 82; second, his acerbic flaying of capitulations and his self-assurance and resolution against Kin invaders. Some poems expressed his self-assurance and resolution against Kin invaders. Some poems expressed his unfulfilled ideals, as in “Expression of Indignation”, “Autumn Thoughts”, “Poem Composed Casually while Lying in Bed”, and “A Stormy Day on November 4”. Other poems extol the beauty of life, as in his “Touring Shanxi Village” and “Spring Rain Stops in Lin’an”. Basically a realist, he placed emphasis on expressing his objective feelings and seldom gave details of a subjective nature, hence his poems are generalized but very expressive. Yet, his poetry also has a touch of romanticism. Using refined and natural language, his poems are mainly expressed through his magnificent evocation of the anti-Kin war and the consequent recovery of his homeland.

Xin Qiji

Xin Qijin (1140 – 1207) wrote more than 600 lyrics, which were collected in “Jiaxuan’s Lyrics”. Strong patriotism and fighting spirit are the basic essence of his lyrics. In “Partridge Sky and Dance of the Cavalry”, he reiterated his yearning for the North and his memories of the war against the Kin in North China. In “Congratulations to the Bridegroom and Groping for Fish”, he compared the collapsing Southern Song Dynasty to the “remains of mountains” and a “setting sun” in order to express his distaste at the imperial court’s submission in the face of invasion. Unable to fulfill his ambitions, he has to take his umbrage through his works. He was good at writing lyrics reflecting on past events. For example, in “Water Dragon Chant (on Riverside Tower at Jiankang)” and “Water Dragon Chant (Passing by Shangxi Tower at Nanjing)”, before a breath-taking landscape he remembered past heroes and his high ideals were greatly inspired, yet all he could do was to sigh over his confined abilities. The intense confrontation between his ideas and reality was reflected in his lyrics with a simple and stirring heroism.

After the Song Dynasty, drama and fiction began to appear and there were few or no poets who would stand among the poets mentioned above until the beginning of the 20th century. To name a few modern poets, there are Guo Moruo, Xu Zhimo, Wen Yiduo, Zang Kejia, Ai Qing, etc.

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