INTRODUCTION

In 481 B.C., or two years before the death of Confucius, it was recorded that a certain wagoner in the employ of the Shu-sun family in the state of Lu, found a lin, or female Chinese unicorn.³ The animal had its left foreleg broken by the wagoner, who carried it home in a carriage. His master, deeming the matter inauspicious, sent word to Confucius, asking “What is it? Is it an antelope with a horn?” Confucius went to see it and said, “It is a lin. Why has it come? Why has it come?” Then he took the back of his sleeve to wipe away his tears which had dampened the lapel of his coat. Asked by his disciple why he had wept, Confucius replied, “The lin comes only when there is a wise ruler. It has now appeared when it is not the time, and it has been injured. That is why I am much grieved.”⁴

Ch’i-lin, the name given by the Chinese to this fabled animal, finds its first mention in the book Ch’un-ch’iu (Spring and Autumn Annals), attributed to Confucius. Although the story may have been only apocryphal, the animal is said “to have the body of an antelope, the tail of an ox, and one horn,” according to the Shuo-wen, the earliest Chinese dictionary published in 100 A.D. Writers of the other Ch’un-ch’iu commentaries, such as the Kung-yang and the Ku-liang, described it as “an animal of auspicious omen”; and from these accounts has emerged the legend that Confucius abandoned the writing of the annals of his native state after the capture of this unicorn. For millenia since, Chinese scholars have kept alive the metaphor about the reappearance of the unicorn as an omen of a world at peace.

This yearning for stability is no less intensely evoked in a poem by the T’ang poet Tu Fu—probably written during the years 742–744 or soon after the poet’s sojourn in the Eastern Capital of Loyang and its vicinity—than what might have been expressed by a Ch’ing dynasty poet a thousand years later. Tu Fu’s poem, in thirty couplets, was addressed to a “man in the mountain,” the hermit Chang Piao, renowned for his filial piety and his accomplishments in calligraphy and verse. The last sixteen lines⁵ of this poem read as follows:

Here, the sentiments expressed may be said to be identical with those found in the ancient Shih-ching (Book of Songs), or in some of the yüeh-fu poetry of later times, but the language and the feelings behind those images are distinctly Tu Fu’s own.

Similarly, one can be intrigued by the same kind of continuity that exists between Tu Fu’s verse and what was written by many Ch’ing dynasty poets. The voice might have been that of a Ming loyalist, like Ku Yen-wu,⁷ couched with greater circumspection (by means of an allegorical bird), in lamenting the defeat of his emperor at the hands of the Manchus:

Or, it might have been that of a woman revolutionary, Ch’iu Chin, martyred in 1907, crying out:

Regardless of the differing circumstances, and the nature of a given poet’s anguish, Chinese classical poetry (i.e., poems [shih] or lyrics [tz’u] written in classical meters; henceforth poetry) is what it always has been through the millenia—a tool of moral suasion on the one hand and on the other a means of self-expression for the educated class.

Despite the commonality of their basic assumptions about poetry, poets and critics sometimes differ on “what” dimensions of the self can or should be accommodated in verse and “how” this expression can best take place, and to what end. And, precisely because the art of poetry in China represents such an old tradition, the yearnings of later poets to break free from the constraints of the past appear especially strong among Ch’ing dynasty poets. They not only had the advantage of surveying the entire tradition but also frequently felt compelled to declare their preference on which aspects of the past they wished to emulate or reject. The poetry of the entire Ch’ing period, therefore, reflects a notable vitality deriving from a great heterogeneity of interests and ideas, a wide catholicity of tastes, continuity in certain things and discontinuity in others.

PROBLEMS OF PERIODIZATION

The arts, both literary and plastic, seldom go hand in glove with politics. Early T’ang poetry, for instance, represents in virtually all essential details a continuation of late Six Dynasties’ verse. What is taken to be the characteristic voice of the T’ang era, the poetry of the “High T’ang” as represented by such figures as Wang Wei (701–761), Li Po, and Tu Fu, emerged only many decades after the founding of the dynasty. Our concern here, however, is not the often intractable problem of historical periodization per se, but rather merely to note that when we decided there was a need for an anthology of late imperial poetry in translation, we were conscious then, as now, that the literary record, like that of institutional or intellectual developments, seldom coincides precisely with political history. Our decision to follow established practices and preserve the dynastic framework was therefore based on matters of convenience more than anything else. Furthermore, also as a matter of convenience, we have divided the main section of the text into three divisions: the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. It would therefore be useful to indicate where the literary boundaries might lie, were we to be guided by literary considerations alone.

We are still at a relatively primitive stage in the formal study of Ch’ing dynasty classical verse; at present there are only three monographic studies in English on the poets of that era, and few more than that in Chinese or Japanese. The present evidence does seem to suggest, however, that there is little if any discontinuity in literary values and practice between the late Ming and the early Ch’ing. The point at which significant change seems to have occurred is the late sixteenth century, when Li Chih (1527–1602) and the iconoclastic Kung-an School of the Yüan brothers-Yüan Tsung-tao (1560–1600), Yüan Hung-tao (1568–1610) and Yüan Chung-tao (1570–1623)—raised aloft the banner of revolt against the rigid and restrictive classicism which had long dominated the literary scene. That liberation of the creative spirit, which tended to coincide with the onset of changes in the intellectual world at large, continued into the early Ch’ing era, with important consequences for the history of Chinese poetry. And it is for this reason that we have felt justified in beginning our selection of poets with the so-called Ming loyalists (yi-min), such as Huang Tsung-hsi, Ku Yen-wu, Wu Chia-chi, and Wang Fu-chih. Moreover, the term yi-min is primarily a political concept, and only by extension a literary one.

At the other end of the Ch’ing political continuum, starting perhaps as early as the late eighteenth century, there are once again indications of a change in literary sensibilities. What these early stirrings actually mean is certainly arguable, but there is a hearkening back to Kung-an School arguments that each age must speak in its own voice. A growing awareness of external social realities also becomes evident in the poems of Cheng Hsieh, Chao Yi, and Chang Wen-t’ao. Other poets of the time, such as Wei Yüan, Cheng Chen, and Li Chien, also show an independence of spirit and a consciousness of the social relevance of the poetic act. Later, the little known but significant poet Chin Ho demonstrated even greater independence from the received tradition by adopting a remarkably free style, a semivernacular diction, and folk themes in his long narrative verse. Toward the close of the nineteenth century, the poet-diplomat Huang Tsun-hsien publicly declared his intention to write as he spoke, manifested a modernist interest in new and foreign themes and vocabulary, and consciously sought to make his poetry relevant to the times. These several poets were not alone in voicing a claim to independence: even a political conservative like K’ang Yu-wei, who founded the Society for the Preservation of the Emperor (Pao-huang hui) declared, “My meaning, my experiences have nothing to do with Li Po or Tu Fu.” In fact, political and literary sensibilities do not always neatly coincide: an arch royalist like K’ang found life tolerable only as a teacher after the fall of the empire, while a scholar thoroughly trained in Western philosophy and research methodologies like Wang Kuo-wei was similarly antirepublican in spirit (both men died in the same year). Besides, there are modernist elements in the poetry of Chin Ho, Huang Tsun-hsien, Ch’iu Chin, and others that are entirely indigenous or only partly foreign derived. Taken all together, such evidence seems to suggest that by the late Ch’ing poetry had already entered a period of transition, thus supporting the thesis advanced by Milena Doleželová-Velingerová for drama and fiction that the rise of modern Chinese literature should be viewed as “part of a continuous process into which even the most discontinuous periods and strongest foreign influences have to be integrated,”⁸ and perhaps also for poetry.

THE HISTORICAL SETTING

When the Manchus, a small nomadic tribe of Jurched peoples which had been united and welded into a disciplined, cohesive paramilitary society early in the seventeenth century, invaded the vast and populous Chinese world several decades later (they were ably assisted in this enterprise by Chinese and other allies), their avowed purposes were to avenge the Ming emperor who had committed suicide prior to the capture of Peking by the rebel armies of Li Tzu-ch’eng (1605?-1645), and to preserve native Chinese culture. They had prepared themselves well for their self-appointed task, and for at least the first 150 years of their 260-year reign, they proved to be vigorous, remarkably able, and firm-minded autocrats. Under their guidance and supervision, the Ming form of government was revived largely intact, and the basic social, economic, and cultural patterns of life were little disturbed.

Once the initial conquest and consolidation of power was completed, a long era of relative peace and stability was ushered in. During the reigns of the emperors K’ang-hsi (reg. 1662–1722), Yung-cheng (reg. 1723–1735), and Ch’ien-lung (reg. 1736–1795), which spanned the latter half of the seventeenth and nearly the entire eighteenth century, the Ch’ing empire achieved an almost unprecedented level of splendor and influence in East and Southeast Asia. Its armies extended its borders to embrace an area surpassed only by the Yüan (Mongol) dynasty of the fourteenth century. Agricultural production increased significantly as new lands were brought under cultivation and new crops and quick-ripening strains of rice were introduced. Production in the nonagricultural sector also showed important gains, and there was substantial growth in domestic commerce and foreign trade. These impressive gains in the economic life of the nation were offset however by a rapid growth in population. According to Leo A. Orleans’s study of China’s population growth, between 1651 and 1734 “more reasonable estimates seem to range from about seventy to eighty million early in the period and 130 and 140 million during the later years.”⁹ Chinese sources cited by Orleans indicate an increase “from 143 million in 1741 to 432 million in 1851,”¹⁰ but the author of this study finds these figures “undoubtedly excessive.” He adds, however, that despite questionable variations in the annual figures, “the long-range trend of increase is reasonable.” He also finds evidence to show a decline from a “high of over 430 million just prior to the Taiping Rebellion to a figure usually estimated at between 375 and 400 million when the empire fell in 1911.”¹¹ This enormous growth in population created heavy pressures on the land, which led to large scale migrations into marginal regions, but this did little to alleviate the problem. In time, these tensions gave rise to widespread social disorder and violence.

The final years of the Ch’ien-lung era were marked by the outbreak of rebellion among Miao tribal peoples in Kweichow province and nearby areas, which was followed by the White Lotus sectarian rebellion in the Shensi-Hupeh-Szechwan region. Widespread corruption in government at this time also limited its ability to respond effectively to these threats to its existence. Although both rebellions were ultimately suppressed by its military forces, the cost in human lives and government fiscal resources was enormous. By mid-nineteenth century, the Manchu government found itself beset by still more serious challenges: new and dangerous pressures along its coastal borders exerted by the intrusive Western powers, worsening economic and social conditions within its borders, spreading corruption in its understaffed, overstrained bureaucracy, and widening domestic discontent. Ultimately, rebellions erupted across the land: the Taiping Rebellion in the southern and central provinces, the Nien Rebellion in the central and north-central provinces, Muslim rebellions in both southwest and northwest China, another in the long line of Miao rebellions, and numerous other disturbances of a more localized nature. Without the vital aid of local Chinese leaders and the militias they raised in defense of the dynasty, it is unlikely it could have survived these events. Eventually, however, a semblance of order was restored, although the underlying causes of unrest remained largely unresolved, and thus the old order persisted amid a darkening storm raised by internal decay and foreign aggression. A rethinking about a whole range of topics, including poetry, became imperative.

SOCIOECONOMIC ASPECTS OF CH’ING POETRY

The literature of any age is subject most of all to its own inner dynamics, and less directly to the various intellectual, political, and socioeconomic currents of its time. Readers of Chinese poetry in translation must reckon with the fact that classical poetry served a multiplicity of functions in traditional Chinese society. Members of the literate class, both men and women, received their training in the art of versification from early childhood. All were expected to be able to compose poems extemporaneously on a variety of social occasions. A poem could be sent, in lieu of a letter, to one’s family or friends while traveling. Or, poems could be demanded of participants at a gathering of friends on an outing, on important occasions such as birthdays, homecomings, or leave takings, or to celebrate festivals, or as a parlor game (such examples can be seen in the novel Hung-lou meng, in which art truly imitates life in every detail). And, as literacy spread rapidly among the newly wealthy merchant class, private academies flourished (accepting more and more students from humble backgrounds), and both the printing and the collecting of books became more widespread, poetry became less and less the exclusive preserve of aristocrats, officials, and scholars, as was largely true of earlier dynasties (although, to be sure, the scholar/gentry class retained its dominance in this sphere, as in others relating generally to the polite arts). The first effect on literature of all this was the vast number of men and women who actively cultivated the art (and the relative ease with which their works could get published), resulting in a prodigious outpouring of poetry. The modern anthology Ch’ing shih hui (A Collection of Ch’ing Poetry),¹² compiled under the sponsorship of Hsü Shih-ch’ang (1855–1939) and published in 1929, contains representative selections from the works of more than six thousand poets—about three times the number of poets anthologized in the Ch’üan T’ang shih (Complete T’ang Poetry)—and literally tens of thousands of poems. The recently founded Ming-Ch’ing Literature Institute, which is based at Kiangsu Normal University (under the directorship of Professor Ch’ien Chung-lien), has since 1982 published two volumes of articles and essays on Ming and Ch’ing authors. It is currently surveying the extant literature, and it reports that the individual collected works of Ch’ing tz’u poets alone number over five thousand titles. These figures can provide some indication of the immensity of the extant literature, and our coverage of only seventy-two poets must therefore be considered very modest, indeed.

The wide diversity of background of the poets included in this volume, their social provenance, and even their places of birth, is also characteristic of the times. It is to be expected that since the Kiangnan region, roughly corresponding to the present-day provinces of Kiangsu and Chekiang (i.e., the lower Yangtze delta) was the wealthiest and most culturally advanced region in the empire, the representation of poets from this area would be consistently high for all three periods. Such is indeed the case, totaling forty of seventy-two poets, or 55 percent. As the tabulation (see above) will also show, Southerners outnumber Northerners, and only toward the second half of the nineteenth century, as the high culture spread further south and west, did outlying provinces like Kwangtung or Fukien begin to assume greater importance, with Fukien continuing as an important book-publishing center.

Geographical Distribution of the Place of Origin of the Seventy-two Poets Included in This Volume

An even more interesting revelation than geographical distribution is perhaps the professional orientation of these poets. While the majority can be regarded as “professionals” in the sense that they were seriously devoted to their craft—many of them edited and published their own works, and were prolific writers of “remarks on poetry” books as well as annotators and compilers—they were in another sense “amateurs” since they were involved in other types of work and also made important contributions to other branches of learning. The scholarly annotations of Tu Fu’s works by Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi and Su Shih’s (1037–1101) works by Shih Jun-chang are still admired today. Scores of other poets like Wang Shih-chen, Chu Yi-tsun, Shen Te-ch’ien, Chang Hui-yen, and Chu Hsiao-tsang have left us massive anthologies and collectanea, which are still in use. On the other hand, there were poets who were primarily political thinkers and philosophers (Ku Yen-wu, Huang Tsung-hsi, etc.) or historians (Chao Yi), essayists (Yao Nai and Li Tz’u-ming), literary historians (Wang Kuo-wei), bibliophiles (Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, etc.), playwrights (Hung Sheng, Chiang Shih-ch’üan, etc.), calligraphers (Ho Shao-chi, etc.), painters (Cheng Hsieh, Yün Shoup’ing, etc.), political activists (Chin Jen-jui, Ch’iu Chin, etc.), reformers (Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, etc.), diplomats (Huang Tsun-hsien), geographers (Wei Yüan), emperors (K’ang-hsi), or Buddhist monks (Ching An). There are also quite a few commoners and social failures like Wu Chia-chi, Huang Ching-jen, Chiang Ch’un-lin, and Chiang Shih. There are also well-bred, educated women from both scholar and merchant families (Wu Tsao, Hsüeh Shao-hui, etc.) as well as talented courtesans who married well (Liu Shih, Ku T’ai-ch’ing). That so many of these men and women were not only committed poets but also actually “engaged” in one kind of work or another (besides merely serving in the state bureaucracy after passing the civil service examinations for men) testifies to the pervasiveness of poetry among the educated and also helps to differentiate the poets of the Ch’ing dynasty from those of earlier periods. And that so many of the better poets of the age also had developed interests in classical scholarship is a reflection of the immense vitality of that field of endeavor in Ch’ing times.¹³ This fact also accounts in part for the scholarly tone we find in the verse of many of these people. But since poetry represented both the exercise of acquired literary skills and, as it had always been so regarded by Confucianists, the highest form of the literary arts, Ch’ing poets and critics had to reconcile the highest human aspirations with life in the real world as they found it. How to make the noblest of ideals relevant to their own times became the all-engrossing task for those writers who felt the need, perhaps, to define and defend poetry before a world growing more distant and more disenchanting as the era drew to its close.

SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CH’ING POETRY

Ch’ing dynasty poets did not invent new genres as did the poets of the T’ang, Sung, and Yüan periods; their assertive role, however, can be seen in their attempts to accommodate, to transform, and at times to enrich the old traditions. As material conditions altered, the poets of different periods and of divergent background, training, and temperament naturally responded to the outside world in differing ways. Nevertheless, a few dominant modes of thinking may be pointed to as characteristic of the poetry of this dynasty as a whole. The first is the intensity of its patriotic fervor, particularly at the beginning of the period and toward the end, with grief and indignation being replaced by intense pessimism and despair. The second is a constant awareness of the conflicting demands of “imitation” versus “originality,” creating a plethora of critical theories, and accompanied by an ongoing debate on the relative merits of Tang versus Sung poetry. A third quality is the greater degree of historical-mindedness and preference for dealing with the concrete, as evidenced by the growth of realism and popularity of both narrative and yung-wu poetry (poems on objects). And finally, paradoxical though it may seem, there is a pronounced retreat into the allegorical mode, especially in connection with the revival of the tz’u, under the rallying cry of the Ch’ang-chou school of criticism, whose purpose was no more and no less than to justify the obscure as relevant and also to make the relevant obscure.

POETRY AND POLITICS

The most enduring concept in Chinese poetic criticism, from the “Great Preface” to the Shih-ching, teaches that poetry has the power “to express grievances” (yüan) and to enable the poet to acquit himself as a member of an organized social group or community” (ch’ün). This dictum more than points to an ideal, as if to say: “In the beginning there is the Word.” In this instance, the Word is actually made tangible when one remembers that the earliest known poet in China is the historical figure, Ch’ü Yüan (343?–278 B.C.), a minister of the state of Ch’u whose career ended in suicide by drowning and whose grievances against the corruptions of his time were couched in the elegant allegorical language of the autobiographical poem Li Sao, beloved by nearly all Chinese poets ever since. Hence, following the fall of each dynasty in China, there was always an attempt to collect and publish the works of eminent men of letters from the ancien régime, who were always euphemistically referred to as yi-min, or “remnant people,” denoting that they were not only “surviving” exemplars from the past, but also, perhaps, in the Arnoldian sense, “saving remnants” to the present. Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, Huang Tsung-hsi, Ku Yen-wu, and Wang Fu-chih are considered among the luminaries of this group at the beginning of the Ch’ing era, just as people like Cheng Hsiao-hsü, Chu Hsiao-tsang, and many others would be similarly classified in Republican times. That their poetic oeuvres contain a heavy outpouring of melancholy and despair should therefore come as no surprise.

The despondent voices of these men and women gain greater poignancy when one recalls that many of them were actively engaged in the political life of the nation, either resisting the new Manchu court, or defending it against rebel forces. This kind of involvement stemmed from the popularity of organized societies, such as the Fu-she (Renewal Society) founded by Chang P’u (1602–1647) and Wu Wei-yeh. Its 1639 “Nanking Manifesto” (“Liu-tu fang-luan kung chieh,” or “A Public Proclamation Against Disorder for Those Remaining at the Capital”), regarded by historians as the first “direct interference in politics on the part of students” in China, was signed by Huang Tsung-hsi, for instance. Other similar organizations flourished in the Kiangnan region, the hotbed of resistance against the invading Manchu armies, and were later banned by the court.

Nevertheless, this type of politico-literary club survived until the very end of the Ch’ing dynasty. The Nan-she (The Southern Society) was founded by three poets: Ch’en Ch’ao-nan (1874–1933), Kao T’ien-mei (1877–1925), and Liu Ya-tzu (1887–1964). It had its first meeting on 13 November 1909, at Tiger Hill (Hu-ch’iu) in Soochow, the site of a Fu-she meeting in 1633. Many of those modern poets became revolutionaries, and the story of Liu Ya-tzu’s friendship with Mao Tse-tung (1893–1976) is especially well known to students of modern Chinese history. The picture of Liu Ya-tzu, with his gaunt, esthetic face and his flowing white beard, standing behind the chairman on a platform in front of T’ien-an-men to celebrate the Communist victory in 1949, may be said to epitomize a kind of siren’s song, a spell which politics has cast over poetry in China from ancient times to the present. As a matter of fact, toward the end of the dynasty, there was a strong interest in reviving the loyalist sentiments through the publication of the writings of such men as Ku Yen-wu and Huang Tsung-hsi, as in the attempt by Liang Ch’i-ch’ao to popularize the latter’s Ming-yi taifang-lu, (translated by Wm. Theodore de Bary as “A Plan for the Prince,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1953). And it may be more than a matter of stylistic coincidence that, while the 1629 Fu-she Oath consists of “Seven Don’t’s” (“Don’t follow that which is contrary to established norms,” “Don’t ignore the classics,” etc.), the battle-cry of the May Fourth Movement—Hu Shih’s (1891-1962)“A Humble Proposal For Reforming Literature” (Wen-hseüh kailiang ch’u-yi), published in January 1917—is also couched in the similar “Eight Don’t’s” (“Write only when you have something to say,” “Don’t imitate the ancients,” etc.).¹⁴ Indeed, whether or not the beginnings of modern Chinese literature can be assigned to the late Ch’ing era, an indisputable element of continuity is the strong note of patriotism, which colors both periods. In classical Chinese poetry at least, only a thin line divides a “poet” and a “patriot” in that tradition. From Ku Yen-wu and Wang Fu-chih to K’ang Yu-wei and Ch’iu Chin, their poetic works visibly reflect subtle changes in the political and social temper of the times, as for instance when the modern sense of nationhood gradually dawns in the Chinese consciousness and ultimately replaces the concept of loyalty to the emperor, which Confucianists regarded as the chief duty of a subject.

POETRY IN AN AGE OF PATRONAGE, CONTROVERSY, AND PARTISANSHIP

A system of rewards and punishments, resulting in several celebrated instances of patronage and persecution of literature, is characteristic of any dictatorial rule, imperial or proletarian. It is widely known, for example, that during the height of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which nearly decimated the Chinese intellectual class in this century (1965–1975), many of the leading scholars in the People’s Republic of China were shielded from physical harm by the late Premier Chou En-lai (1898–1976), who assigned them to the huge task of editing and punctuating the Twenty-five Dynastic Histories. The initial Manchu distrust of Chinese intellectuals at the beginning of the Ch’ing dynasty was also destructive of the intellectual life of the time. It led to the persecution, trial, and execution of seventy scholars in 1663, as documented by the excellent study The Literary Inquisition of Ch’ien-lung by Luther Carrington Goodrich. A scholar from Chekiang by the name of Chuang T’ing-lung, who aspired to edit a history of the Ming dynasty and who was said to have used “improper” language, such as mentioning the Ch’ing emperors by their personal names, perished in prison around 1660. His body was disinterred and burned, and his family and colleagues were all executed or exiled. Between 1741 and 1788, as many as sixty-three cases of such literary inquisition were perpetrated. The 1769 edict against the poet Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, then dead for over a century, reads as follows:

Such harsh measures of suppression were intended, of course, to silence opposition, imagined or real. The other side of the coin was rewards and patronage. In addition to the regular civil service examinations, for example, the Ch’ing court convened a special examination to seek out men of talent in private life. This was the po-hsüeh hung-tz’u, or “Extensive Learning and Superior Literary Arts” examination offered in 1678 and again in 1771, whereby hundreds of scholars, regardless of age, were invited, on recommendation, to participate. To be sure, some of those invited to do so declined the honor. In 1771, as many as 267 candidates were recommended to the emperor, but only 220 actually showed up for the examination. In time, special styles of rhetoric, in the writing of both prose and verse, were encouraged and expected of examination candidates, with style invariably being assigned greater value than content. This practice stifled creativity, and many scholars such as Chin Jen-jui, Cheng Hsieh, and later progressive thinkers protested against the excessive rigidity of the so-called eightlegged (pa-ku) essay style. While success in passing the civil service examinations usually led to high office for the individual, conformity to the official orthodoxy was the price exacted by the system.

Perhaps the greatest contribution to knowledge made by the Ch’ing government was the assiduous and often valuable patronage of large scale literary undertakings. Wealthy officials and merchants, following the lead of the government, also supported the arts and letters.¹⁶ However, the government suspended its patronage of scholarship after the eighteenth century. Among the more notable results of such officially sponsored scholarship were the still standard K’ang-hsi tzu-tien (K’ang-hsi Dictionary), completed in 1716; the widely-used phrase dictionary, the P’ei-wen yün-fu, in 106 chüan, which was commissioned in 1704 and completed in 1711 (the printing was supervised by Ts’ao Yin, 1658–1712, the grandfather of the novelist Ts’ao Chan); the Ming-shih (History of the Ming Dynasty), one of the finest works of historical scholarship of its kind, which was authored by an imperial commission during the K’ang-hsi reign; the P’ei-wen-chai yung-wu shih (P’ei-wen Collection of Poems-on-Objects), compiled by a group of scholars including Cha Shen-hsing and printed in 1706; the Ch’üan T’ang shih (Complete T’ang Poetry), consisting of more than 48,900 poems by more than 2,200 authors, in 900 chüan, was printed in 1713; the T’ang-Sung shih-chun (The Best Poetry of T’ang and Sung), printed in 1751–1760; the Ku-chin t’u-shu chi-ch’eng (The Complete Collection of Writings and Illustrations, Past and Present), a vast collectanea of data in 10,000 chüan, intended as a guide for the emperor and his officials in the conduct of government affairs and presented to the throne in 1725; and, of course, the pièce de resistance, the Ssu-k’u chuan-shu (The Complete Collection of the Four Treasuries), the largest compilation of classical and literary tests ever undertaken by the Chinese state, was the product of years of labor by a panel of 361 distinguished scholars who were convened and supported by the Ch’ien-lung emperor. These scholars selected and edited for publication in a common format 3,461 individual works deemed worthy of preservation, totaling 78,000 chüan. The final collection was so large that only seven copies were produced for deposit at designated locations in the empire. The Ssu-k’u ch’üan-shu tsung-mu t’i-yao (An Annotated Index to the Complete Collection of the Four Treasuries), containing descriptive and critical notes on these 3,461 works and another 6,793 works not copied into the Ssuk’u, was printed in 100 ts’e by means of movable-type block-print in 1782. No other Chinese or foreign government ever sponsored textual and emendation scholarship on such a massive scale. The closest parallel may be the Académie Francaise, under King Louis XIV, when one recalls that the first dictionary of the French language, published by the Académie—in four volumes (admittedly, a Chinese chüan corresponds to a “chapter” rather than a “volume” in the Western sense)— was offered to the public only in 1694, nearly sixty years after the founding of the Académie!

But the objectives of the Ch’ien-lung emperor in sponsoring the last-mentioned project were not wholly benign. For the survey of all extant literature and scholarship which the Ssu-k’u project entailed was a convenient mechanism for ferreting out all subversive, anti-Manchu sentiments, real and imagined. As a result, many invaluable texts were ordered destroyed and their authors, if still living, subjected to extremely harsh reprisal. The inquisitorial spirit which infected some of these compilation projects quite naturally generated a mood of nervous caution among the scholarly community. On the other hand, this kind of patronage, public and private, did provide employment for degree holders who could not find positions in the state bureaucracy.

Many scholars themselves were attracted to this kind of endeavor, and the compilation of large anthologies or collectanea became, if not the rage, at least a common enough activity since the beginning of the Ch’ing dynasty. To cite just a few of the outstanding compilations, there were Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi’s Lieh-ch’ao shih-chi (Anthology of Ming Poetry), 1649; Ku Ssu-li’s (1669-1772) Yüan-shih hsüan (Selected Poems of the Yüan), published in three series in 1694, 1702, and 1720 with the fourth series coming out circa 1810); and Li E’s Sung-shih chi-shih (Records of Sung Poetry), 1746—not to mention the widely influential T’ang shih san-pai shou (Three Hundred T’ang Poems), compiled by an anonymous scholar during the Ch’ien-lung era, known as Heng-t’ang t’ui-shih (The Retired Scholar of Heng-t’ang), later conjecturally identified as Sun Chu.¹⁷ Because of its compactness and the depth of insight that governs the selection, this small anthology achieved a place comparable to Palgraves’s Golden Treasury in China, thus becoming a primer for school children for generations to come. Many other poets of the era, from Wang Shih-chen to Shen Te-ch’ien and Chu Hsiao-tsang were avid anthologists; and several resorted to the task of compiling anthologies in order to advance their own critical views on poetry. The impact on poetry of all this kind of scholarship was to encourage greater introspection, a deeper awareness of the past, and sometimes a heavier reliance on the use of allusions, as is true in the case of Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi.

This tendency also translated into a devotion to textual criticism and a fascination with historical personages, as with the sage minister Chu-ko Liang and the assassin Ching K’o. The past was inescapable. And because the present was so bound up with the past, the comparison of contemporary poetry with the works of the great masters, most often those of the T’ang and Sung eras, became unavoidable. Indeed, the perception that the monumental achievements of such great poets as Ch’ü Yüan, T’ao Ch’ien (365–437), Li Po, or Tu Fu could not be matched, let alone surpassed, was common. This belief, although apparently less pervasive in Ch’ing than in Ming times, nevertheless laid heavily on all fledgling poets. Those who took their craft seriously had to struggle constantly with the most difficult problem of coming to terms with long established norms and values without losing their identity in the process. Especially when it came to the question of what kind of poetry prior to their own age was worthy of emulation, most Ch’ing poets sooner or later found themselves embroiled in a debate on the relative merits and limitations of the poetry of the two eras: T’ang and Sung. Comparisons led to claims and counterclaims, charges and countercharges, and schools of poetry proliferated. For the study of Chinese poetry, the Ch’ing period, from Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi to Wang Kuo-wei, looms larger than any other historical period as an age of criticism.

THE PROLIFERATION OF THEORIES OF POETRY

The proliferation of schools of poetry in the Ch’ing era is an extraordinary phenomenon, but considerations of space limit us to giving only a capsule summary in this introduction. “Of all successive dynasties,” Professor James J. Y. Liu wrote in 1964, “the more systematic discussion of poetics was undertaken by the several major poets of the Ch’ing dynasty. Those of us who study Ch’ing poetics will actually be engaged in studying the sum total of the different schools of poetics of successive dynasties.”¹⁸ The florescence of poetic criticism in this age¹⁹ is actually a continuation of the battle waged in the Ming dynasty between the Archaic school of poetry, under the leadership of Li Mengyang (1472–1528) and others, and the more independent-minded Kungan and Ching-ling poets. The controversy stems from a seminal anthology of T’ang verse known as the T’ang shih p’in-hui (A Collection of Tang Poetry in Ranked Order of Excellence), compiled by Kao Ping (1350–1423), preface dated 1392, which argues for the emulation of only the poetry of the High T’ang (713–756). Against such strict prescriptions of orthodoxy, the importance of hsing-ling (native sensibilities) as the bedrock of poetry was championed by the Kung-an and Ching-ling critics, the latter under the leadership of Chung Hsing (1574–1624) and T’an Yüan-ch’un (1586–1631)—who jointly compiled the Ku-shih kuei (Fountainhead of Ancient Poetry) and the T’ang-shih kuei (Fountainhead of T’ang Poetry), both printed in 1617. This overthrowing of authority finds a strong parallel in the Classical-Romantic debate in England in the eighteenth century. For example, just as Alexander Pope (1688–1744) had written, in 1711, in An Essay on Criticism (note that by “Nature” Pope means “human nature”):

Li Meng-yang wrote in his “Letter to Master Chou” (published in 1530) the following words of wisdom:

This famous credo became the central teaching of the Archaic (fu-ku,literally “return to the ancients”) school of critics who believed that to imitate Tu Fu was the surest way of mastering harmony and all the natural laws of the universe.

Though neither Chung Hsing nor T’an Yüan-ch’un wrote any inspired poetry, many of their critical ideas were echoed in the writings of several early Ch’ing poets, such as Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, Ku Yen-wu, and Wang Fu-chih. In the preface to Ku-shih kuei, for example, Chung Hsing writes, “Genuine poetry is the product of a writer’s spirit (ching-shen),to make manifest his hidden emotions and singular thoughts”²² In a similar vein, T’an Yüan-ch’un insists that “In everyone there is what he uniquely understands . . . and that is the stuff of poetry.”²³ Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, the founder of the Yü-shan school of poetry, also condemns plagiarism (p’iao) and slavish imitation (nu), although he openly castigates the Ching-ling poets for “burrowing in ratholes” or, even worse, for being “gobblins and monsters.” Being a friend of the youngest of the Yüan brothers, however, he was more sympathetic to the goals of the Kung-an school and shared their view on the importance of emotion (ch’ing) as the sine qua non of genuine poetry. In the matter of emulation, Ch’ien advocated a broader outlook favoring, as he said, the method of “learning from several masters,” a dictum he borrowed from a quatrain on poetry, by Tu Fu, whose supremacy he nonetheless upheld all his life.

Another important advance in the critical approach of the Kungan school is the idea that every age should speak in its own voice, that change (pien) is a natural law. An early defender of this “evolutionary” view of literature is Ku Yen-wu, who in his Diaries (Jih-chih lu) argues this point as follows:

The other poet-critic whose ideas anticipated not only Wang Shihchen but also Wang Kuo-wei is Wang Fu-chih. Wang Fu-chih is best remembered today for his original theory on the fusion in poetry of ch’ing (emotion) and ching (scene), referring to the poet’s “inner experience” and the “exterior reality” described in a poem. These elements he regarded not as separate entities, but as “two only in name . . . inseparable in reality” (as transformed by the poet’s consciousness).²⁵ While Wang Fu-chih shows a strong affinity for the intuitionist view of poetry advocated by the Sung critic Yen Yü (fl. 1180–1235) and later by Wang Shih-chen, he also recognizes the importance of the principles (li) of things. He believes that the only way “to experience things and capture the spirit” (ti-wu erh te-shen) is through “what one sees with his own eyes and what one experiences himself.” And he considers the presence of talent (ts’ai), learning (hsüeh), and thought (ssu) as important as emotion, thus revealing a catholicity of taste which anticipates nearly all the major poetic theories of the Ch’ing era.

The appreciation for T’ang poetry during the Ch’ing reign reached a peak with the critical writings of Wang Shih-chen, the major voice whose theory on the spirit and personal tone (shen-yün) of poetry caused prolonged controversy. Indebted to the T’ang critic Ssu-k’ung T’u (837–908) and to Yen Yü, Wang used the term shen-yün to mean “an ineffable personal tone or flavor in one’s poetry.”²⁶ And, to illustrate this quality, Wang anthologized the poems of forty-three T’ang poets, dominated by Wang Wei and Meng Hao-jan (689–740), without including a single poem by Li Po or Tu Fu, under the title of T’anghsien san-mei chi, (Samadhi Collection of T’ang Worthies), 1668. In the preface of this work, Wang writes:

Wang Shih-chen implies by this statement that the essence of poetry is spiritual enlightenment, or a sudden awakening, as taught by the Ch’an (Zen) school of Buddhism. Opposing this metaphysical view of poetry is Wang’s kinsman and contemporary poet Chao Chih-hsin, who argues that poetry must be based on the rules of prosody and deal with concrete events.

QUALITIES OF T’ ANG AND SUNG VERSE CONTRASTED

It may be useful at this point to illustrate these rather abstruse ideas about the nature of poetry with a comparison of some T’ang and Sung poems, especially since the debate between the admirers and followers of the two respective styles was kept alive throughout most of the Ch’ing dynasty. At the risk of oversimplification, one may say that the communication of emotion (ch’ing) is paramount with T’ang poets while, with Sung poets, the attention is shifted to what has been called the event (shih) or principle (li). Take, for instance, a familiar quatrain by Meng Hao-jan:

and contrast it with “Spring Day” by Su Shih:

Cooing pigeons, nursling swallows, all quiet without a sound;

Sunlight pierces western windows, splashes my eyes sparkle.

Awakened from noontime torpor, I find nothing to do

Except in spring sleep to enjoy a sunny spring.²⁹

Or, contrast this Sung poem with “A Quatrain” by Tu Fu:

One can see that the qualities the Chinese critics found and prized in T’ang poetry included what Wang Shih-chen would call “inspiration encounters” (hsing-hui), while a Sung poet like Su Shih focused on the “event” or the core of an experience, that is, the “principle” of things. The latter manner involves a more orderly, logical development—so much so that much of Sung poetry is said to be “discursive,” and a poet like Su Shih is sometimes accused of being too prosaic. His poem, too, seems much more labored, and those critics who emphasize the technical approach will probably praise Su’s imaginative use of “pierces” (she), an archery term, and “splashes” (p’o) which literally means “splashing water.” There is wit in his poem, for the last word of the poem, ch’ing, “a sunny day,” is homophonous with ch’ing, meaning “emotion.” A number of Ch’ing poets, such as Li E, Chiang Shih, Ch’en San-li, and Cheng Hsiao-hsü, attempted to write in this manner. Like a pendulum swinging back and forth, the elevation of Sung over T’ang poetry engaged many critics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, compensating somewhat for the excessive veneration for the works of Wang Wei, Li Po, or Tu Fu earlier in the dynasty.

THE LATER CRITICS

The most moralistic critic of the Ch’ing era is undoubtedly Shen Te-ch’ien, who believed that poetry owed its exalted position to its power “to modulate human nature and emotions, to improve human relationships, to assist in the affairs of governing a nation, and to move the gods.”³¹ He hoped to inculcate through poetry the virtues of wen(moderation), jou (gentleness), tun (sincerity), and hou (depth). Although he also advocated the imitation of the ancients, he maintained that imitation should not be so slavish as to exclude the possibility of change (pien). ³² Shen even discoursed on the formal elements of poetry, as when he said, “One practical manifestation of poetry is the sound quality ... [and] by means of controlled breathing ... [a good reader] will come to experience what has never before been expressed by writers, and to catch the subtlety of the extra message beyond the sound.”³³ Shen’s approach, therefore, though basically didactic, is an admixture of ideas embracing both the intuitionistic and the technical.

Shen Te-ch’ien’s emphasis of formal elements of style led to Weng Fang-kang’s (1733–1818) theory of ko-tiao, two words implying either a standard of excellence (as in p’in-ko, which is said of one’s character) or rules (as in ko-lü, prosodie rules), or both. To reinforce this idea of a formal (as opposed to personal) style, Weng proposed a theory of “flesh texture” (chi-li, literally “muscles” and “veins”), which, he insisted, was the same thing as Wang Shih-chen’s shen-Yün but which had been misinterpreted by Wang to emphasize only the abstract and the abstruse. According to Weng, poetry “is concerned with self, concerned with the times, concerned with the events, with each and every thing based on reality before it is transformed [by the poet’s consciousness].”³⁴ Therefore, he directs our attention to the text itself and to the need for learning (hsüeh) as a prerequisite for the writing and understanding of poetry. In an obvious reference to the words of Chuang Tzu made famous by Wang Shih-chen about “forgetting the trammel after catching the fish,” Weng wrote: “An archer must subject himself to rules before he can forget about the use of his hands or mind; he who sets up nets for fish or trammels for rabbits must first obtain the net and trammels before he can forget them.”³⁵

Rebelling against such close attention to the formal aspects of poetry, Yüan Mei became an ardent advocate of the hsing-ling or “native sensibilities” theory. Of course, such early Ch’ing poets as Chin Jen-jui, Huang Tsung-hsi, Yu T’ung, and others had maintained that the primary function of poetry is to describe one’s human nature and emotions (hsing-ch’ing). But it was this popular literatus of Hangchow who took up the cudgel in challenging the views of such a redoubtable scholar of his time as Shen Te-ch’ien (both Yüan and Shen passed the chin-shih examination in the same year [ 1739], when Yüan was merely twenty-three years of age and Shen was already sixty-six). In two letters Yüan addressed to Shen, the youthful critic accused Shen of “having given his approbation to a change of style from Han and Wei times to T’ang, and yet refusing to sanction a change of style from T’ang to Sung.”³⁶ He went on to declare that “in what is encountered by one’s human nature and sensibilities, in everyone there is this ‘I.’ “³⁷ He even accused Shen of esthetic blindness and moral inconsistency by leaving out some love poems from an anthology Shen had edited. Yüan may be guilty of self-contradiction, as some modern scholars have charged, or of occasional flippancy, but his defense of originality and of everything that is “fresh,” “new,” or “alive” must be seen as a bold stance, representing a crystalization of more advanced and more refined ideas on individuality than those held by the Kung-an and Chingling critics two hundred years earlier. It may be instructive to note that an analogous battle between conventionality and individualism took place in the field of Chinese painting at a slightly earlier date. In The Compelling Image, a recent work of deep insight and understanding, James Cahill describes seventeenth-century China as “a great age of individualism ... [though fragmented by local and personal styles]”³⁸ “The expressionism,” he wrote, “that inspired [artists] was attained, like all types of expressionism, by limiting artistic means, emphasizing and exaggerating some elements of style at the cost of others.”³⁹ The same dilemma was true of Chinese poetry also. Like so many Chinese individualist poets, the great painter Tao-chi (also known as Shih-t’ao, 1642–1708), a royal Ming dynasty prince who became a Buddhist monk before taking up painting, wrote “Long ago I saw the four-word phrase wo yung wo fa [I use my own method] and was delighted with it. Painters of recent times have all appropriated the styles of the old masters, and the critics accordingly say then, ‘So-and-so’s style resembles [the old masters], so-and-so’s style does not.’ I could spit on them.”⁴⁰Even Yüan Mei could not have been less civil or more direct.

THE RISE OF REALISM IN CH’ING POETRY

The stresses and strains in the body politic also found reflection in the poetry of the times. In an age of peace and tranquility, it was often enough to celebrate the scenic beauty and bucolic delights of an idealized natural world, the pleasures of human companionship, and the interrelationship of heaven, earth, and man. However, when the times were out of joint, these conventional themes gradually gave way to those of a more pressing concern. To be sure, social protest verse is as old as Chinese poetry itself, dating back to the Shih-ching and yüeh fu style verse, and it was sanctioned by Confucian literary and political theories which urged the public to voice injustice and the educated elite to be responsible for the well-being of the lower classes. As early as the T’ang era, the ballads of Tu Fu, and later those of Po Chü-yi (772–846), which pointed the way for poets to satirize harsh government taxation measures and conscription practices, won universal admiration for their powerful imagery and humanitarian spirit. It was always necessary, of course, that the voicing of complaints against political injustices be couched in circumspect and allusive terms lest the poet run the risk of being charged with lèse majesté.

Poems depicting the inhumanity and suffering of war, the hardships caused by excessive taxation, the devastation of rural areas by natural disasters, and other social and economic ills increase with the passage from early to late Ch’ing times, and they constitute one of the elements which give that poetry its distinctive flavor and vitality. As the crisis in Chinese society deepened, reflections of this fact assumed a sharper, more distinct image in the poetry of the times, and this may also account for the revival of interest in Sung-style poetry among some poets. In this respect, these poets represent the poet engagé calling public attention to the darker side of life; they were also “poet-historians” (shih-shih) recording the cataclysmic events of the day in poetic form, in the time-honored tradition of a Ch’ü Yüan or a Tu Fu. Thus, Cheng Hsieh describes in moving terms the plight of the peasantry being driven from the land by famine and migrating great distances in search of a new livelihood, while Wei Yüan writes of the malaise and economic dislocation caused by the insidious opium trade. In the mid-nineteenth century, Cheng Chen chronicled in verse the horrors and savagery of the so-called Miao Rebellion in Kweichow province, where for more than a decade the conflict raged between and within ethnic and sectarian groups in a maelstrom of violence. Chin Ho drew on his own personal experiences to capture as few others did the human side of the Taiping Rebellion. Later, Huang Tsun-hsien and others recorded China’s struggle against the foreign powers which sought to profit from her weakness, and reflected the inner conflicts of intellectuals confronted for the first time with an awareness of the outside, alien world. This period of vitality failed to survive the early 1900s, however, as the rapidly developing political events of the time engulfed the old culture. Classical poetry proved to be too fragile a craft, too specialized a training, to compete in attention and popularity with advances in journalism or popular fiction, or with the new, experimental forms of verse, derived mainly from the West and written in the vernacular (pai-hua) language.

THE REVIVAL OF THE TZ’U

There were good reasons for the resurgence of tz’u poetry in the Ch’ing era. Tz’u, lyric poems, were originally songs set to fixed tune patterns and meant to be sung. The new poetic form emerged in the late T’ang era and achieved a high level of sophistication during the Northern and Southern Sung periods.⁴¹ Then, with its musical origins largely forgotten or ignored, tz’u poetry became a powerful vehicle for many purposes, including narration and intellectual discussion. Under the Ming dynasty, lyric poetry was not totally neglected, but was unable to compete successfully with other literary genres, such as fiction and the dramatic and nondramatic verse (hsi-ch’ü and san-ch’ü) that gained ascendency. After a long period of relative disuse, tz’u poetry found favor again with many Ch’ing poets: initially with Ch’en Wei-sung and Chu Yi-tsun—the authors of a joint tz’u anthology entitled Ch’u-Ch’en ts‘un-tz’u— who succeeded in popularizing this genre before the end of the seventeenth century; in the second phase, with the rise of the Ch’ang-chou school, under Chang Hui-yen, just a century later; and, finally near the end of the nineteenth century, with a group of talented tz’u writers that includes Wang P’eng-yün, Cheng Wen-cho, Chu Hsiaotsang, and others.

With the fall of the Ming, the new cultural and political milieu must have suggested to many poets that a China under Manchu rule was not much different from the society of the Southern Sung, precarious under the constant threat of occupation by the Chin rulers to the north. There was at the time a strong sense of the close connection between tz’u poetry as a literary genre and key historical events. In a recent study of the origins of lyric poetry by the eminent scholar Jen Pan-t’ang (Jen Erh-pei), he reports that over twenty of the T’ang chiaofang (Palace Music School) tune titles were either directly or indirectly descriptive of royal entertainments, and that the emperor Hsüan-tsung, the great patron of poetry and music, himself once performed a dance to the music of “Ch’ang-ming nu” (Maid of Longevity).⁴² Jen also suggests that the poets who cultivated this type of poetry, which depicted life either in the palace or at military outposts, could qualify to be called poet-historians or music-historians (yüeh-shih).⁴³ We also know that in the winter of 1278, when the tombs of the Sung emperors were said to have been plundered and the corpses desecrated, a group of fourteen scholar-poets met to compose highly allusive lyrics to express their sorrow and rage.⁴⁴ Over six hundred years later, a group of late Ch’ing lyricists, under the leadership of Wang P’eng-yün, gathered to write a series of lyrics published under the title of Keng-tzu ch’iu tz’u (Lyrics of the Autumn of 1900), to register their outrage and sorrow over China’s defeat by the Western powers in the Boxer Rebellion. Similar historical parallels could not have escaped such early lyricists as Wu Wei-yeh, Wang Fu-chih, or Ch’en Wei-sung (whose father was a signer of the “Nanking Manifesto” and whose grandfather was a member of the Tung-lin Party). With or without Chang Hui-yen’s allegorical theory, the historicity of the lyric tradition must have exercised a strong appeal among the empirical-minded Ch’ing poets.

Of the many poets who composed lyrics during the seventeenth century, two emerged as leaders: Ch’en Wei-sung as the founder of the Yang-hsien school (Yang-hsien being the ancient name of Ch’en’s hometown, Yi-hsing, Kiangsu), and Chu Yi-tsun as the founder of the more successful Che-hsi (West Chekiang) school. The former sought to emulate Su Shih and Hsin Ch’i-chi (1140–1207) by writing in a bold and vigorous style; the latter set out to emulate Chang Yen (1248–1320?) and Chiang K’uei (ca. 1155-ca. 1221) by writing in a more elegant and refined manner. But the greatest lyric poet of the century, and perhaps the entire age, was Singde, a member of the Manchu ruling class, the naturalness and immediacy of whose verse was believed by Wang Kuo-wei, the modern tz’u critic and himself a lyricist par excellence, to represent the supreme achievement in that form. In his Jen-chien tz’u-hua (Remarks on Lyric Poetry in the Human World), Wang has written, “Tz’u writers can be considered among those who have not lost their childlike heart.”⁴⁵ Thus, we again encounter the Ming philosopher Li Chih’s famous assertion that the “childlike heart” is the “true heart,” and whoever retains it will be able to produce great literature.⁴⁶ Time and again in his critical writings, Wang also insists on the importance of authenticity (chen) as the touchstone of lyric poetry.

But such authentic voices among poets are of course rare, and Singde founded no school of poetry. Thereafter, the lyric came under the influence of Chang Hui-yen. In 1797—just a year before two English poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge, wrote their famous Preface to the epochal Lyrical Ballads (no two books published so close together in time, though admittedly the products of two worlds, could be more dissimilar)—Chang Hui-yen and his brother Chang Ch’i (1765–1833) compiled a slim volume of 116 lyrics by forty-four T’ang, Five Dynasties, and Sung poets, for the edification of their pupils. And it is from this collection that we date the beginning of the influential Ch’ang-chou school of lyric poetry.⁴⁷

In an attempt to elevate the lyric above the charges of frivolity and eroticism, Chang Hui-yen insists that a lyric must always express a covert meaning through the devices of pi (comparison) and hsing (analogy), two terms borrowed from the ancient Shih-ching criticism. Essentially moralistic and old-fashioned, Chang surprisingly found in even the most straightforward of occasional love lyrics deeper, hidden meanings of an allegorical nature. One cannot but wonder: was someone like Chang Hui-yen an effective advocate of tz’u poetry, or its own terrible nemesis?

To be fair to this school, it must be pointed out, as other scholars have done, that the inflexible position of its founder was transformed by its later, more able leaders, such as Chou Chi (1781–1839) and T’an Hsien. For example, Chou Chi admits, “Whatever inspiration moves a man to write does not necessarily have to be serious or proper.. . . The words [of a lyric] will not cause any harm to the intent (chih) of a reader; therefore, the reader must not reject the work on any account.”⁴⁸ And this from T’an Hsien: “To the same extent that a writer’s meaning may never be known, the reader is free to interpret a work of literature in whatever way he pleases.”⁴⁹ This unbiased approach to literary interpretation, when sanctioned for lyric poetry, represents a far cry from the narrow, didactic views of its founder, and a significant advance in Chinese poetic criticism.

It may be helpful here to inquire into another aspect of tz’u poetry which became more and more pronounced during the Ch’ing era. The lyric, originally a short, subjective statement deriving from personal experiences, often involved the use of material objects (wu) or scenes (ching) to objectify the poet’s feelings. The majority of T’ang and Five Dynasties lyrics do not have subject titles; only tune titles are given (and this is also true of Northern Sung lyrics to a large extent). The use of subject titles, and even long prose prefaces, started in the Southern Sung era. But when poets felt the need to become more secretive and private, they resorted to a subgenre of Chinese poetry known as the yung-wu shih (or tz’u); that is to say, poems written on objects. A large number of our selections, especially of the tz’u variety, are poems of this type. To be sure, yung-wu shih is nearly as old as the Chinese poetic tradition itself, dating back at least to the Six Dynasties period; but, ever since Su Shih’s tz’u on willow-catkins, a lyric written in response to another person’s on the same subject,⁵⁰ won the wide praise of many readers, this mode of composition inspired much of the finest poetry in China, and became a favorite with many Ch’ing poets.

In his study of the lyric tradition of the Southern Sung period, and particularly Chiang K’uei’s contributions to yung-wu poetry, Shuenfu Lin states, “In writing a yung-wu song, the poet shrinks from the vast world of his lived experience and concentrates his creative vision on one tangible object. ... The poet retreats from a position in which his own perception of a given poetic situation constitutes the lyric center of a poem, into another position in which the poet himself becomes a mere observer of that lyric center.”⁵¹ Thus, he finds, “[t]he experiential world of a lyric poet is reduced to one single point of view, one moment, or a series of moments of feeling, vision, or awareness of the lyrical self.”⁵² Whether or not this refinement of technique exemplifies “new forms of eremitism” which, Professor Lin believes, also crystalized in the paintings of Southern Sung artists like Ma Yüan and Hsia Kuei⁵³—is another matter. But there is no question that this subgenre of yung-wu poetry enjoyed a great vogue among Ch’ing lyric poets.

CONCLUSION

Our anthology includes examples of the poetry of men and women who held a wide variety of political and esthetic views. There were as many who retreated to a contemplation of the “lyric center” in a yung-wu lyric as there were others who expressed in verse a candid, passionate protest against social injustices. There were as many who, like Yüan Mei, preferred the bucolic delights and sensual pleasures as there were others who involved themselves in the mainstream of political activities and struggled to alleviate existing social problems.

Of all the fin de siècle writers who kept alive the lyric tradition after Chang Hui-yen—including Hsiang Hung-tso and Chiang Ch’unlin in the first half of the nineteenth century and T’an Hsien, Cheng Wen-cho, Chu Hsiao-tsang, K’uang Chou-yi, and others toward the end of the dynasty—none were able to match the greatness of Wang Kuo-wei, a tragic genius whose suicide in 1927 truly marked the end of an era. An attractive, though still undocumented, theory advanced by Professor Chow Tse-tsung, of the University of Wisconsin, has suggested that there exists a special affinity between the propensity of tz’u to record a darker, more deterministic, view of the universe and the life and philosophy of this scholar-poet-critic.⁵⁴ As this quality defies easy definition, Professor Chow also resorts to the traditional interpretation; namely, that it comprises two characteristics: “nothing to be done” (wu-k’o-nai-ho) and “seems-to-have-known” (ssu-ts’eng hsiang-shih), two phrases taken from a tz’u by Yen Shu (991–1055).⁵⁵These two phrases were made even more famous by an apocryphal story and still later by an anecdote involving Wang Shih-chen. According to the apocryphal story, found in the works of the Sung critic Hu Tzu (fl. ca. 1147), these two lines were said to represent a perfect illustration of parallelism and were the result of collaboration between the author and another poet, Wang Ch’i (fl. ca. 1056).⁵⁶ In the later anecdote, taken from Wang Shih-chen’s own account, when Wang was asked by his students to describe the differences between shih and tz’u (or ch’ü), he quoted these two lines as an apt illustration of the quality of lyric poetry.⁵⁷ Another attempt at defining tz’u, by K’uang Chou-yi, has been quoted by Chow: “Whenever I listen to the wind and rain, whenever I view the mountains and rivers, I often feel that beyond the wind and rain, beyond the mountains and rivers, there is something like ‘it-cannot-be-otherwise’ [wan-pu-te-yi] that endures. This is the heart of tz’u poetry.⁵⁸

Whatever the subtle characteristics of lyric poetry may be, no other poet understood them better than Wang Kuo-wei. He was familiar not only with his native traditions but also with Western literature and thought. Between 1903 and 1907, he studied Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche intensely, and only later returned to literature, abandoning the study of philosophy. “By 1907,” according to Adele Austin Rickett, “he had become disillusioned with Schopenhauer, whom he felt failed to answer the question of universal salvation.”⁵⁹ According to Chow, Wang’s own philosophical writings are replete with references to “will” and “freedom,” both of which were eventually dismissed by Wang as illusionary.⁶⁰ Perhaps, it is Wang’s constant awareness of the contradiction between the concept of social responsibility on the one hand and individual feelings of regret or remorse on the other that gave rise to some of the best Chinese lyrics ever written.

Perhaps, also, it was just as characteristic of Wang Kuo-wei to adopt the title Jen-chien tz’u (Lyrics of the Human World) for the collection of his own tz’u poetry, and the title Jen-chien tz’u-hua for the book containing his remarks on lyric poetry. Professor Chow has pointed out that the phrase jen-chien appears thirty-eight times in Wang’s 115 lyrics.⁶¹ At any rate, an awareness of the human condition was paramount in Wang Kuo-wei’s mind. In this respect, Chow finds Wang Kuo-wei to have been heavily indebted to the German poet Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), who believed that poetry must always be concerned with human life.⁶² Another German thinker who influenced Wang’s theory of esthetics, Professor Chow suggests, was Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), whose doctrine of humanität was fundamental to German Neoclassicism and who was hailed by Goethe as a “philosopher of the sublime and beautiful in humanity.”⁶³ Another contemporary critic, Ch’ien Chung-shu (b. 1910) finds Wang Kuo-wei’s poetry to be imbued not only with the idea of Sehnsucht (yearning) from German Romanticism, but also with the ideas of Plato and Protagoras.⁶⁴ When the scope of Chinese lyric poetry could be so enlarged as to accommodate such diverse strands of thought and expression in addition to those of the Buddha, Confucius, or Lao Tzu, it should be clear that Ch’ing poetry, tz’u and shih, was not fatally impaired by derivativeness or stagnation, as many critics have heretofore believed.⁶⁵

In the realm of shih poetry, the curtain was brought down on the Ch’ing era perhaps less dramatically, but with equally clear signs of a greater realism and a more candid espousal of expressionism. From Ku Yen-wu and Wang Fu-chih at the beginning of the era to Kung Tzu-chen, Huang Tsun-hsien, and K’ang Yu-wei, we have seen that even the staunchest of the Confucianists recognized that emulation of any sort must not stifle self-expression. The revival of interest in Sung poetry, signaling a more intense preoccupation with the real world, actually started in the eighteenth century, with poets like Cha Shenhsing, Li E, and Chao Yi. But the cause was pursued with greater boldness and vigor by poets of the nineteenth century, such as Ho Shao-chi, Ch’en San-li, and Cheng Hsiao-hsü, leading to a lessening of the influence exerted by the poetry of the High T’ang. And among the great T’ang poets, the influence of other masters, such as Han Yü, Liu Tsung-yüan, Po Chü-yi, Yüan Chen, Meng Chiao, and Li Shangyin, also began successively to be felt. The poetry of Han, Wei, and the Six Dynasties period, too, found staunch admirers, especially in Wang K’ai-yün. Throughout the period, an unusually strong interest in the narrative, satiric tradition can be detected; witness the selections by Cheng Hsieh, Chiang Shih-ch’üan, Chin Ho, and others—not to mention the two historical, epic-like poems on Yüan-yüan by Wu Weiyeh and on the Yüan-ming Imperial Park by Wang K’ai-yün. As recently as 1982, it was reported in Chinese Literature, a monthly journal in English published in Peking, that “[t]wo long [Ch’ing] poems of more than two thousand lines each have been discovered in Wuxi and Wujiang in Kiangsu by folk literature researchers,” both being tragic love stories.⁶⁶ It is obvious that not all the extant literature of the Ch’ing era has been studied even by scholars in China.

It may be said that Ch’ing dynasty poets labored, on the one hand, under the heavy constraints of a long, rigid tradition and, on the other, had to contend with a rapidly changing reality, especially after the middle of the nineteenth century. There were those, like Wei Yüan, Huang Tsun-hsien, and K’ang Yu-wei, who were eager to experiment with new vocabulary and modern concepts and to assimilate them into classical verse forms. And there were others who looked exclusively to the past for inspiration. A good example is Ho Shao-chi’s poem “Samantabhadra Facing Westward,” in which the tone of moral indignation, the condemnation of superstitious faith, is straight out of Han Yü, the famous opponent of Buddhism of another era. (Similar poems may be found in the works of Chiang Shih-ch’üan and Chin Ho.) This poem by Ho Shao-chi also employs lines of unequal length—a clear sign that perhaps some poets, including Sung Hsiang and Chang Wen-t’ao were already growing restive with the constraints of the prevailing five-and seven-word meters. As a matter of fact, erudite poetry in China was constantly invigorated by folk poetry. Many Ch’ing poets, beginning with Chu Yi-tsun and including Kung Tzu-chen, Wei Yüan, and Huang Tsun-hsien, collected or wrote their own “Bamboo-Branch” and other folk songs of their respective regions.⁶⁷ The commingling of these two traditions of vocabulary and style never really ended, even after the rise of the vernacular (pai-hua) poetry in the 1920s.

With the advent of the modern era, what was fast disappearing from the scene was really the values and mores of traditional China. For it can be assumed that even in such trivial matters as travel, life in eighteenth-century China was not much different from what it had been a thousand years before—not to mention the same imperial form of government and a similar social and family structure. But with the coming of the railway, steamboat, and airplane (which made its first appearance in classical poetry in a poem by Cheng Hsiao-hsü that is translated in the main body of the text), and the disintegration of the old society, life was irretrievably altered; and it became more and more difficult to keep alive a dying tradition. In a recent article “In Search of an American Muse,” a contemporary poet, Robert Bly, laments the difficulties of being a poet in America, of having to spend much of the time alone. Perhaps in tongue-in-cheek fashion, he asks: “To be a poet in the United States is more difficult than to be a poet in Ireland. If poetry is a harnessed horse, we can say that in Ireland one finds harnesses still hanging in a barn. In the United States one has to kill a cow, skin it, dry the hide, cure it, cut the hide into straps, make buckles by hand, measure all the straps on a horse that won’t stand still and then buy a riveter from some old man, get a box of rivets, rivet the straps together, make reins. And then what about the bridle? What about the collar? And what do you hitch it to?”⁶⁸ Indeed, as Mr. Bly says, “to be a poet ... one ... has to find some way back to the nourishment of the ancestors.”⁶⁹ And these “nourishments” certainly will include more than a bridle or a rein. As modernism spreads in China, both the “singing whip” (yin-pien) and the “carved saddle” (tiao-an) will become as rare as the Chinese say, as “the phoenix’s feathers or the unicorn’s horn.” But the poet’s yearning for a world at peace remains a universally shared dream.

IRVING YUCHENG LO
WILLIAM SCHULTZ

NOTES

1. “Ancient Airs, No. 1,” translation by Joseph j. Lee, reprinted (with modification) from Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo, eds., Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975; New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 1983), p. 114.

2. “Thirty Rhymes Addressed to Hermit Chang Piao, Chang the Twelfth” A Concordance to the Poems of Tu Fu (Cambridge: Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, supplement no. 14; 1966), p. 338.

3. The compound designating a Chinese unicorn is usually given as ch’ilin, with ch’i referring to the male of the species and lin, the female.

4. The translation of this passage from Ch’un-ch’iu and Tso-chuan follows that of James Legge’s, with minor modifications; see The Chinese Classics, 5 vols. (Hong Kong: 1960 reprint of the 1894–1896 Oxford University Press edition), 5:833–835.

5. Translation by Irving Lo.

6. Major tributaries, respectively, of the Yellow River and the Yangtze.

7. Dates are not provided in the introduction for poets represented in the text that follows, where they are cited in the short bio-critical essays which precede each poet’s selections.

8. “The Origins of Modern Chinese Literature,” in Merle Goldman, ed., Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 17. Ms. Doleželová-Velingerová discusses these matters with reference to the novel and drama but also notes that “these new poets,” like Huang Tsun-hsien, K’ang Yu-wei, etc., “emphasized the necessity for authentic emotions,” in order to break out of “ossified patterns” of the past (p. 27).

9. Leo A. Orleans, Every Fifth Child (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1972), p. 20.

10. Ibid., p. 24.

11. Ibid.

12. The full title of this anthology is Wan-ch’ing-yi [Ch’ing] shih hui, with the first three words being the name of Hsü’s studio inside the presidential palace. Hsü Shih-ch’ang was the only civilian in modern Chinese history to hold the presidency of China, 10 October 1918–1922. Within the palace, Hsü established a society for the study and writing of classical poetry, and a bureau for sponsoring other literary projects, including the compilation of the Ch’ing-ju hsüeh-an, modeled after Huang Tsung-hsi’s Ming-ju hsüeh-an and Sung-Yüan hsüeh-an. Hsü was awarded a D. Litt, degree by the University of Paris.

13. The history of Ch’ing dynasty scholarship is a complex subject and therefore beyond the purview of this introduction. For a recent study of the major schools and individual scholars and their works, see Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984). See also the seminal article “Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Ch’ing Confucian Intellectualism,” by Ying-shih Yü in Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, 2:105–146 (December, 1975).

14. Hsin ch’ing-nien(La jeunesse), January 1917 issue; in Hu Shih wents’un (Shanghai, 1921), 1:7–23.

15. Luther Carrington Goodrich, The Literary Inquisition of Ch’ien-lung (New York: The American Council of Learned Societies, 1935; Paragon Book Reprint, 1960), pp. 102–103.

16. See, for instance, Ping-ti Ho, “The Salt Merchants of Yang-chou: A Study of Commercial Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 17:130–168 (1954); and Lynn Struve, “The Hsü Brothers and Semiofficial Patronage of Scholars in the K’ang-hsi Period,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 42.1:231–266 (1982).

17. This anthology has several English translations, the most popular being The Jade Mountain, translated by Witter Bynner from the texts of Kiang Kanghu (New York: Knopf, 1929) and reprinted by Doubleday/Anchor, 1964.

18. “Ch’ing-tai shih-shuo lun-yao,” (“On the Essentials of Ch’ing Dynasty Poetic Criticism”), Hsiang-kang ta-hsüeh wu-shih chou-nien chi-nien lunwen chi [Hong Kong University Fiftieth Anniversary Symposium Volume], (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University, 1964), p. 32. The “several major poets” whose views on poetry are discussed by Liu in this article are: Shen Te-ch’ien, as representative of the didactic school; Chin Jen-jui and Yüan Mei, of the individualistic school; Wang Fu-chih, Wang Shih-chen, and Wang Kuo-wei, of the intuitionist school. Compare his The Art of Chinese Poetry (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1962) for a definition of these terms.

19. See Wu Hung-yi, Ch’ing-tai shih-hsüeh ch’u-t’an [An Exploratory Study of Ch’ing Poetics], (Taipei: Mu-t’ung ch’u-pan she, 1977).

20. Pope, An Essay on Criticism, lines 88–140, in Gay Wilson Allen and Harry Hayden Clark, eds., Literary Criticism: Pope to Croce (New York: American Book Company, 1941), pp. 6–7.

21. Yeh Ch’ing-ping and Shao Hung, eds., Ming-tai wen-hsüeh p’i-p’ing tzu-liao hui-pien, 2 vols. [A Collection of Ming Dynasty Literary Criticism Materials], (Taipei: Ch’eng-wen chu-pan she, 1979), 1:295. Translation by James J. Y. Liu, in The Art of Chinese Poetry, p. 80.

22. Ibid., 2:744.

23. Ibid., 2:777.

24. Jih-chih-lu chi-hsi, chüan 21; 2:70.

25. See Siu-kit Wong, “Ch’ing and Ching in the Critical Writings of Wang Fu-chih,” in Adele Austin Rickett, ed., Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucious to Liang Ch’i-ch’ao (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 121–150.

26. James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1975), p. 45.

27. Translation by Richard Lynn. See Richard John Lynn, “Orthodoxy and Enlightenment: Wang Shih-chen’s Theory of Poetry and Its Antecedents,” in Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed., The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), pp. 218–257. The translation appears on p. 240.

28. Unpublished translation by Eugene C. Eoyang.

29. Translation by Irving Lo, Sunflower Splendor, p. 345.

30. Translation by Jerome P. Seaton, Sunflower Splendor, p. 142.

31. “Second Preface” to T’ang-shih pieh-ts’ai.

32. Shuo-shih ts’ui-yü, item 10; Ch’ing shih-hua, 2:525.

33. Ibid., item 3; 2:524.

34. “Shen-yün lun, ll,” in Yeh Ch’ing-ping and Wu Hung-yi, eds., Ch’ing tai wen-hsüeh p’i-p’ing tzu-liao hui-pien, 2 vols. [A Collection of Ch’ing Dynasty Literary Criticism Materials], (Taipei: Ch’eng-wen chu-pan she, 1979), 2:536.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid., p. 451.

37. Ibid.

38. James Cahill, The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University, 1979), (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 225.

39. Ibid.

40. Ta-ti-tzu t’i-hua shih pa, quoted by Cahill, p. 185.

41. For background information on the tz’u, see James J. Y. Liu, Major Lyricists of the Northern Sung (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974); Irving Yucheng Lo, Hsin Ch’i-chi (New York: Twayne, 1971); Lin Shuen-fu, The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Lois Fusek, Among the Flowers: Hua Chien Chi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); and Marsha Wagner, The Lotus Boat:The Origins of Chinese Tz’u Poetry in T’ang Popular Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).

42. Jen Pan-t’ang, T’ang-sheng shih [Poetry in the T’ang Voice], 2 vols. (Shanghai: Ku-chi chu-pan she, 1982), 2:28.

43. Ibid., p. 11.

44. Thirty-six lyrics by Chou Mi (1232-ca. 1310) and others, written on such preselected subjects as “the dragon’s saliva,” “the crab,” etc., collected and published under the title of Yüeh-fu pu-t’i. See Lin Shuen-fu, pp. 191–193, for a fuller account of this episode.

45. Jen-chien tz’u-hua, item 16; p. 94 in the new annotated edition by Teng Hsien-hui, Jen-chien tz’u-hua hsin-chu (Jinan: Ch’i-lu ch’u-pan-she, 1981). The translation is that of Adele Austin Rickett in her “Wang Kuo-wei’s Jen-chien tz’u-hua: A Study in Chinese Literary Criticism” (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1977), p. 46.

46. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, p. 78.

47. See Chia-ying Yeh Chao, “The Ch’ang-chou School of Tz’u Criticism,” in Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucius to Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, pp. 151-188. Chao offers the following evaluation: “Through the remainder of the Ch’ing dynasty and into the early years of the Republic scarcely a tz’u writer or critic escaped the enveloping influence of the Ch’ang-chou School” (p. 152). And some revealing statistics: a collection of Ch’ing tz’u written in the Ch’ang-chou style, published toward the end of the nineteenth century, included 3,110 selections by 498 poets.

48. Quoted in Chao, p. 183 (translation slightly modified).

49. Ibid. (translation slightly modified).

50. See James J. Y. Liu, Major Lyricists of the Northern Sung, pp. 145–160. About this poem, Liu writes: “It is difficult to imagine a more striking example of how genius triumphs over technical restraints. ... It is as if someone had written another Ode to a Nightingale’ using the same meter and rhyming words as Keats yet successfully expressing his own thoughts and feelings” (p. 150).

51. Lin, The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition, p. 11.

52. Ibid., p. 143.

53. Ibid., pp. 36–43.

54. Chow Tse-tsung, Lun Wang Kuo-wei Jen-chien Tz’u (Hong Kong: Wanyu t’u-shu kung-ssu, 1972).

55. See Liu, Major Lyricists of the Northern Sung, pp. 18–19. Liu’s translation of this lyric is as follows [italics ours]:

56. T’iao-ch’i yü-yin ts’ung-hua, 20:5a.

57. Hua-ts’ao meng-shih, in vol. 2 of Tz’u-hua ts’ung-pien, p. 7a.

58. Chow, Lun Wang Kuo-wei Jen-chien Tz’u, p. 3.

59. Rickett, Wang Kuo-wei’s Jen-chien Tz’u-hua, p. 18.

60. Chow, Lun Wang Kuo-wei Jen-chien Tz’u, p. 10.

61. Ibid., p. 40.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid., p. 41.

64. Ch’ien Chung-shu, T’an-yi lu (Hong Kong: Lungmen, 1965 reprint of the 1931 edition), p. 30.

65. This mistaken belief finds expression for instance in John Scott, Love and Protest: Chinese Poems from the Sixth Century B.C. to the Seventeenth Century, A.D. (New York: Harper & Row reprint, 1972), p. 23, where the author dismisses the poetry of the entire Ch’ing era as being “relatively undynamic,” a point of view now being dramatically revised by the research of contemporary scholars.

66. “Cultural News,” Chinese Literature (September 1982), p. 125.

67. We regret that space considerations compell us to exclude san-ch’ü, or the nondramatic song-poems, by known authors, from our anthology. Actually, quite a few of the poets included in this volume are also writers of ch’ü, notably Chu Yi-tsun, Wu Hsi-ch’i, Li E, Hung Sheng, etc. Regrettably, for reasons of space, we were also unable to include translations of folksongs submitted to us by several scholars.

68. The New York Times Book Review (22 January 1984), p. 29.

69. Ibid.