Kuo Hsiang 郭象 (d. 312), commenting on the idea of the “music of Heaven” 天籍 in theChuang Tzu莊子 observes in a distinctively Wei-Chin 魏晉 (220–420) style of thought:

The music of Heaven is not an entity existing outside of things. The different apertures, the pipes and flutes and the like, in combination with all living beings, together constitute Heaven. Since non-being is non-being, it cannot produce other beings. Before being itself is produced, it cannot produce other beings. Then by whom are things produced? They spontaneously produce themselves, that is all. By this is not meant that...

It is our habit in the West, when we study Chinese poetry, to put the emphasis on its content (themes, genres, historical and philosophical references, etc.). Should we happen to approach the question of forms, we are usually content to enumerate the complement of prosodic rules fixed by tradition. It seems to me that the time has come to consider this poetry as a language in its own right and to ask the significance implicit in its basic structure. Using the assumptions of modern semiology, according to which all formal elements of a language are significant, we find that those...

The paradox of poetics and the poetics of paradox are both rooted in the paradox of language, which must therefore engage our attention first. Basically, the paradox of language may assume two forms. In the first form, the paradox lies in the seeming contradiction between the presumed necessity of language and its alleged inadequacy: we need language as a medium of human communication, yet poets, critics, and philosophers have eloquently complained that ultimate reality, or deepest emotion, or sublime beauty, cannot be conveyed in words. (The eloquence with which they complained about the inadequacy of language is of course but...

The ancients tell us that there are three kinds of achievement by which a person may hope to endure: moral power, deeds, and words (立德, 立功, 立言).² The promise that these forms of achievement do endure contains no clue as to the pragmatic means of their preservation. The later-born Ts’ao P’i 曹不 looks to precisely that question—tohowa reputation may be conserved, not to the accomplishment that makes it worthy of survival. Three possibilities are raised: trust a historian; struggle for political power; or give your energies to writing. These means to immortality swerve in interesting ways from...

Every important age in literature designates a particular kind of aesthetic judgment. In literary criticism, we call such a judgment “taste.” Although taste often seems rather subjective (e.g., “Everyone to his own taste”), one of the functions of criticism is precisely to provide a set of criteria for judging what is beautiful and appropriate in literature. As such, certain critical standards and concepts may become popular at a particular age, and then gradually fall from favor.

During the Six Dynasties in China, it was the idea of “description” that came to dominate the aesthetic taste in poetry. The basic tenet...

In one of his poems Li Po 李白 (701-762) once referred to “P’englai literature and Chien-anku(bone)” (蓬萊文章建安骨).¹ In another context, he commented that the dominance of highly ornamented style in literature after the Chien-an period (196–220) was not to be valued (自從建安來, 綺麗不足珍).² There can be no doubt of Li Po’s admiration for the literature of the Chien-an period. Even before Li Po, Ch’en Tzu-ang 陳子昂 (661–702) had remarked:

The Way of literature has been declining for five hundred years. Thefeng-ku風骨 (wind and bone) of the Han (206 B.C. to A.D. 220) and Wei...

“Les montagnes sont, en Chine, des divinités.” Thus Edouard Chavannes (1865–1918) began his magnificent monograph on T’ai Shan 泰山, reminding us that the most prominent features of the Chinese landscape are not merely natural, but numinous, objects.¹ One of the great virtues of Chavannes’ classic study—and one apparent also in the more recent monographs on the important peaks Lo-fou Shan 羅浮山 and Mao Shan 茅山, by Michel Soymié and Edward H. Schafer, respectively²—is the detailed documentation and evocation of the manifestly sacred climate that traditionally invested China’s “notable mountains” (ming shan名山). Indeed it was not only...

Narrative poetry constitutes a significant category of T’ang literature. Here social concerns, intellectual judgment, and artistic sensitivity find effective expression in a comprehensive form to define momentous events in plot. The general nature of narrative is complex, and it is particularly so in T’ang poetry, which is most famous for its unyielding lyricism. To investigate the nature of narrative in T’ang poetry, therefore, we will inevitably attend to the nature of that lyricism and, with due caution, we may have to question the meanings commonly attributed to both. I do not intend to rewrite the definition of T’ang lyricism, but...

Two phases may be discerned in the development ofyüeh-fu樂府 as a high literary genre in Han and Wei times.¹ During the first phase—from the beginning of Han rule in 202 B.C. to the last decade of the second century A.D.—a few educated men sporadically composed secularyu̇eh-fufor self-expression and entertainment. During the second phase—from the 190s to the end of the Wei dynastry in 266—yüeh-fugradually separated itself from standardshih詩 poetry and became a major literary genre in the hands of Ts’ao Ts’ao 曹操, his sons Ts’ao P’i 曹不 and Ts’ao...

In discussing the development ofyu̇eh-fu樂府 poetry, the Ming critic Hu Ying-lin 胡應麟 (1551–1602) asserts that the stylistically embellishedyu̇eh-fuof the Wei are inferior to the plain, unembellishedyüeh-fuof the Han. He goes on to say that because they are full of parallelism and antithesis, Chinyüeh-fuare inferior to those of Wei and that T’angyueh-fuare inferior even to those of Chin.¹ It is clear that Hu’s criterion for relative excellence is the proportion of plain style and ornamentation—a one-sided criticism, in my opinion.

In the more balanced view of the Ch’ing poet...

Chüeh-chü絕句, or literally “broken-off lines,” is one of the most important genres of poetry of the T’ang dynasty (618–907). The term designates the brief quatrains written in either five- or seven-character lines. In theChüan-T’ang-shih全唐詩 (Complete T’ang Poetry),chüeh-chüandlu-shih律詩 or “regulated verse,” the two major genres ofchin-t’i-shih近體詩 or “modern-style poetry,” constitute the two largest categories of poems by genre.² Though much smaller than that oflu̇-shih, the number of chüeh-chü surpasses by a significant margin the total number of poems written in the various forms known collectively asku-t’i-shih古體詩 or “ancient-style...

“Regulated verse” (lu̇-shih律詩) is a highly schematized verse form which, after a period of incubation, emerged as a popular poetic genre in the seventh century. Even before that time, “regulated verse” had come to play a significant role in traditional Chinese society, not only as a literary form, but also as a political and social medium. In the normal usage of the term, “regulated verse” refers to a form containing eight lines of uniform length, with either five or seven characters per line, and conforming to a generally accepted code of phonetic and rhetorical rules. In this study, an...