POETRY--INSCRIPTIONS
The poetry which is representative of the period between the death of
Confucius and the 2nd century B.C. is a thing apart. There is nothing
like it in the whole range of Chinese literature. It illumines many
a native pronouncement on the poetic art, the drift of which would
otherwise remain obscure. For poetry has been defined by the Chinese as
“emotion expressed in words,” a definition perhaps not more inadequate
than Wordsworth’s “impassioned expression.” “Poetry,” they say, “knows
no law.” And again, “The men of old reckoned it the highest excellence
in poetry that the meaning should lie beyond the words, and that the
reader should have to think it out.” Of these three canons only the
last can be said to have survived to the present day. But in the fourth
century B.C., Ch‘ü Yüan and his school indulged in wild irregular
metres which consorted well with their wild irregular thoughts. Their
poetry was prose run mad. It was allusive and allegorical to a high
degree, and now, but for the commentary, much of it would be quite
unintelligible.
[Sidenote: LI SAO]
CH’Ü YÜAN is the type of a loyal Minister. He enjoyed the
full confidence of his Prince until at length the jealousies and
intrigues of rivals sapped his position in the State. Then it was
that he composed the _Li Sao_, or Falling into Trouble, the first
section of which extends to nearly 400 lines. Beginning from the
birth of the writer, it describes his cultivation of virtue and his
earnest endeavour to translate precept into practice. Discouraged by
failure, he visits the grave of the Emperor Shun (chapter ii.), and
gives himself up to prayer, until at length a phœnix-car and dragons
appear, and carry him in search of his ideal away beyond the domain of
mortality,--the chariot of the Sun moving slowly to light him longer
on the way, the Moon leading and the Winds bringing up the rear,--up
to the very palace of God. Unable to gain admission here, he seeks out
a famous magician, who counsels him to stand firm and to continue his
search; whereupon, surrounded by gorgeous clouds and dazzling rainbows,
and amid the music of tinkling ornaments attached to his car, he starts
from the Milky Way, and passing the Western Pole, reaches the sources
of the Yellow River. Before long he is once again in sight of his
native land, but without having discovered the object of his search.
Overwhelmed by further disappointments, and sinking still more deeply
into disfavour, so that he cared no longer to live, he went forth to
the banks of the Mi-lo river. There he met a fisherman who accosted
him, saying, “Are you not his Excellency the Minister? What has brought
you to this pass?” “The world,” replied Ch‘ü Yüan, “is foul, and I
alone am clean. There they are all drunk, while I alone am sober. So
I am dismissed.” “Ah!” said the fisherman, “the true sage does not
quarrel with his environment, but adapts himself to it. If, as you
say, the world is foul, why not leap into the tide and make it clean?
If all men are drunk, why not drink with them and teach them to avoid
excess?” After some further colloquy, the fisherman rowed away; and
Ch‘ü Yüan, clasping a large stone in his arms, plunged into the river
and was seen no more. This took place on the fifth of the fifth moon;
and ever afterwards the people of Ch‘u commemorated the day by an
annual festival, when offerings of rice in bamboo tubes were cast into
the river as a sacrifice to the spirit of their great hero. Such is the
origin of the modern Dragon-Boat Festival, which is supposed to be a
search for the body of Ch‘ü Yüan.
A good specimen of his style will be found in the following short poem,
entitled “The Genius of the Mountain.” It is one of “nine songs” which,
together with a number of other pieces in a similar strain, have been
classed under the general heading, _Li Sao_, as above.
“Methinks there is a Genius of the hills, clad in wistaria, girdled
with ivy, with smiling lips, of witching mien, riding on the red pard,
wild cats galloping in the rear, reclining in a chariot, with banners
of cassia, cloaked with the orchid, girt with azalea, culling the
perfume of sweet flowers to leave behind a memory in the heart. But
dark is the grove wherein I dwell. No light of day reaches it ever. The
path thither is dangerous and difficult to climb. Alone I stand on the
hill-top, while the clouds float beneath my feet, and all around is
wrapped in gloom.
“Gently blows the east wind; softly falls the rain. In my joy I become
oblivious of home; for who in my decline would honour me now?
“I pluck the larkspur on the hillside, amid the chaos of rock and
tangled vine. I hate him who has made me an outcast, who has now no
leisure to think of me.
“I drink from the rocky spring. I shade myself beneath the spreading
pine. Even though he were to recall me to him, I could not fall to the
level of the world.
“Now booms the thunder through the drizzling rain. The gibbons howl
around me all the long night. The gale rushes fitfully through the
whispering trees. And I am thinking of my Prince, but in vain; for I
cannot lay my grief.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SUNG YÜ]
Another leading poet of the day was SUNG YÜ, of whom we know
little beyond the fact that he was nephew of Ch‘ü Yüan, and like his
uncle both a statesman and a poet. The following extract exhibits him
in a mood not far removed from the lamentations of the _Li Sao_:--
“_Among birds the phœnix, among fishes the leviathan holds the
chiefest place;
Cleaving the crimson clouds the phœnix soars apace,
With only the blue sky above, far into the realms of space;
But the grandeur of heaven and earth is as naught to the
hedge-sparrow race._
_And the leviathan rises in one ocean to go to rest in a second,
While the depth of a puddle by a humble minnow as the depth of the
sea is reckoned._
_And just as with birds and with fishes, so too it is with man;
Here soars a phœnix, there swims a leviathan ...
Behold the philosopher, full of nervous thought, with a flame that
never grows dim,
Dwelling complacently alone; say, what can the vulgar herd know
of him?_”
As has been stated above, the poems of this school are irregular
in metre; in fact, they are only approximately metrical. The poet
never ends his line in deference to a prescribed number of feet, but
lengthens or shortens to suit the exigency of his thought. Similarly,
he may rhyme or he may not. The reader, however, is never conscious of
any want of art, carried away as he is by flow of language and rapid
succession of poetical imagery.
Several other poets, such as Chia I and Tung-fang So, who cultivated
this particular vein, but on a somewhat lower plane, belong to the
second century B.C., thus overlapping a period which must be
regarded as heralding the birth of a new style rather than occupied
with the passing of the old.
* * * * *
It may here be mentioned that many short pieces of doubtful age and
authorship--some few unquestionably old--have been rescued by Chinese
scholars from various sources, and formed into convenient collections.
Of such is a verse known as “Yao’s Advice,” Yao being the legendary
monarch mentioned in chapter ii., who is associated with Shun in
China’s Golden Age:--
“_With trembling heart and cautious steps
Walk daily in fear of God ...
Though you never trip over a mountain,
You may often trip over a clod._”
There is also the husbandman’s song, which enlarges upon the national
happiness of those halcyon days:--
“_Work, work;--from the rising sun
Till sunset comes and the day is done
I plough the sod
And harrow the clod,
And meat and drink both come to me,
So what care I for the powers that be?_”
[Sidenote: INSCRIPTIONS]
It seems to have been customary in early days to attach inscriptions,
poetical and otherwise, to all sorts of articles for daily use. On
the bath-tub of T‘ang, founder of the Shang dynasty in B.C.
1766, there was said to have been written these words:--“If any one on
any one day can make a new man of himself, let him do so every day.”
Similarly, an old metal mirror bore as its legend, “Man combs his hair
every morning: why not his heart?” And the following lines are said to
be taken from an ancient wash-basin:--
“_Oh, rather than sink in the world’s foul tide
I would sink in the bottomless main;
For he who sinks in the world’s foul tide
In noisome depths shall for ever abide,
But he who sinks in the bottomless main
May hope to float to the surface again._”
In this class of verse, too, the metre is often irregular and the rhyme
a mere jingle, according to the canons of the stricter prosody which
came into existence later on.