Tang.— I have already described the technical developments of poetry during this dynasty. Form was at this time valued far above content. "Poetry," says a critic, "should draw its materials from the Han and Wei dynasties." With the exception of a few reformers, writers contented themselves with clothing old themes in new forms. The extent to which this is true can of course only be realized by one thoroughly familiar with the earlier poetry.
In the main, T'ang confines itself to a narrow range of stock subjects. The mise-en-scène is borrowed from earlier times. If a battle-poem be written, it deals with the campaigns of the Han dynasty, not with contemporary events. The "deserted concubines" of conventional love-poetry are those of the Han Court. Innumerable poems record "Reflections on Visiting a Ruin," or on "The Site of an Old City," etc. The details are ingeniously varied, but the sentiments are in each case identical. Another feature is the excessive use of historical allusions. This is usually not apparent in rhymed translations, which evade such references by the substitution of generalities. Poetry became the medium not for the expression of a poet's emotions, but for the display of his classical attainments. The great Li Po is no exception to this rule. Often where his translators would make us suppose he is expressing a fancy of his own, he is in reality skilfully utilizing some poem by T'ao Ch'ien or Hsieh Ti'ao. It is for his versification that he is admired, and with justice. He represents a reaction against the formal prosody of his immediate predecessors. It was in the irregular song-metres of his ku-shih that he excelled. In such poems as the "Ssech'uan Road," with its wild profusion of long and short lines, its cataract of exotic verbiage, he aimed at something nearer akin to music than to poetry. Tu Fu, his contemporary, occasionally abandoned the cult of "abstract form." Both poets lived through the most tragic period of Chinese history. In 755 the Emperor's Turkic favourite, An Lu-shan, revolted against his master. A civil war followed, in which China lost thirty million men. The dynasty was permanently enfeebled and the Empire greatly curtailed by foreign incursions. So ended the "Golden Age" of Ming Huang. Tu Fu, stirred by the horror of massacres and conscriptions, wrote a series of poems in the old style, which Po Chü-i singles out for praise. One of them, "The Press-gang," is familiar in Giles's translations. Li Po, meanwhile, was writing complimentary poems on the Emperor's "Tour in the West" — a journey which was in reality a precipitate flight from his enemies.
Sung.— In regard to content the Sung poets show even less originality than their predecessors. Their whole energy was devoted towards inventing formal restrictions. The "tz'ǔ" developed, a species of song in lines of irregular length, written in strophes, each of which must conform to a strict pattern of tones and rhymes. The content of the "tz'ǔ" is generally wholly conventional. Very few have been translated; and it is obvious that they are unsuitable for translation, since their whole merit lies in metrical dexterity. Examples by the poetess Li I-an will be found in the second edition of Judith Gautier's "Livre de Jade." The poetry of Su Tung-p'o, the foremost writer of the period, is in its matter almost wholly a patchwork of earlier poems. It is for the musical qualities of his verse that he is valued by his countrymen. He hardly wrote a poem which does not contain a phrase [sometimes a whole line] borrowed from Po Chü-i, for whom in his critical writings he expresses boundless admiration.
A word must be said of the Fu [descriptive prose-poems] of this time. They resemble the vers libres of modern France, using rhyme occasionally [like Georges Duhamel] as a means of "sonner, rouler, quand il faut faire donner les cuivres et la batterie." Of this nature is the magnificent "Autumn Dirge" [Giles, "Chinese Lit.," p. 215] by Ou-yang Hsiu, whose lyric poetry is of small interest. The subsequent periods need not much concern us. In the eighteenth century the garrulous Yüan Mei wrote his "Anecdotes of Poetry-making" — a book which, while one of the most charming in the language, probably contains more bad poetry [chiefly that of his friends] than any in the world. His own poems are modelled on Po Chü-i and Su Tung-p'o.
This introduction is intended for the general reader. I have therefore stated my views simply and categorically, and without entering into controversies which are of interest only to a few specialists.
As an account of the development of Chinese poetry these notes are necessarily incomplete, but it is hoped that they answer some of those question which a reader would be most likely to ask.
1 ↑ Not to be confused with the Four Tones of the Mandarin dialect, in which the old names are used to describe quite different enunciations.
The Method of Translation
THE METHOD OF TRANSLATION
It is commonly asserted that poetry, when literally translated, ceases to be poetry. This is often true, and I have for that reason not attempted to translate many poems which in the original have pleased me quite as much as those I have selected. But I present the ones I have chosen in the belief that they still retain the essential characteristics of poetry.
I have aimed at literal translation, not paraphrase. It may be perfectly legitimate for a poet to borrow foreign themes or material, but this should not be called translation.
Above all, considering imagery to be the soul of poetry, I have avoided either adding images of my own or suppressing those of the original.
Any literal translation of Chinese poetry is bound to be to some extent rhythmical, for the rhythm of the original obtrudes itself. Translating literally, without thinking about the metre of the version, one finds that about two lines out of three have a very definite swing similar to that of the Chinese lines. The remaining lines are just too short or too long, a circumstance very irritating to the reader, whose ear expects the rhythm to continue. I have therefore tried to produce regular rhythmic effects similar to those of the original. Each character in the Chinese is represented by a stress in the English; but between the stresses unstressed syllables are of course interposed. In a few instances where the English insisted on being shorter than the Chinese, I have preferred to vary the metre of my version, rather than pad out the line with unnecessary verbiage.
I have not used rhyme because it is impossible to produce in English rhyme-effects at all similar to those of the original, where the same rhyme sometimes run through a whole poem. Also, because the restrictions of rhyme necessarily injure either the vigour of one's language or the literalness of one's version. I do not, at any rate, know of any example to the contrary. What is generally known as "blank verse" is the worst medium for translating Chinese poetry, because the essence of blank verse is that it varies the position of its pauses, whereas in Chinese the stop always comes at the end of the couplet.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
1. H. A. Giles, "Chinese Poetry in English Verse." 1896. 212 pp. Combines rhyme and literalness with wonderful dexterity.
2. Hervey St. Denys, "Poésies des Thang." 1862. 301 pp. The choice of poems would have been very different if the author had selected from the whole range of T'ang poetry, instead of contenting himself, except in the case of Li Po and Tu Fu, with making extracts from two late anthologies. This book, the work of a great scholar, is reliable — except in its information about Chinese prosody.
3. Judith Gautier, "Le Livre de Jade." 1867 and 1908. It has been difficult to compare these renderings with the original, for proper names are throughout distorted or interchanged. For example, part of a poem by Po Chü-i about Yang T'ai-chēn is here given as a complete poem and ascribed to "Yan-Ta-Tchen" as author. The poet Han Yü figures as Heu-Yu; T'ao Han as Sao Nan, etc. Such mistakes are evidently due to faulty decipherment of someone else's writing. Nevertheless, the book is far more readable than that of St. Denys, and shows a wider acquaintance with Chinese poetry on the part