Organizer: Robert Hymes, Columbia University
Chair: Paul F. Rouzer, Columbia University
Poems of Deviant Forms: Literature as Entertainment
Yang Ye, University of California, Riverside
This paper examines the idea of "literature as entertainment," and its practice as exemplified by palindromes and other "poems of deviant forms" (i-t'i shih) in the Six Dynasties, and places them in the context of an intriguing issue of Chinese literary history. Just as the history of poetics may be summarized as a dialectic between the thesis and counter-thesis of Horace's dulce and utile (Wellek/Warren), a polarization of two opposite ideas about the nature and function of literature has run through the Chinese tradition. "Literature as a vehicle for the Tao," a conception with its origin in the moralistic concern of Confucius, was vocalized by the Sung Tao-hsüeh thinker Chou Tun-i and has since become one of the prevailing platitudes of Chinese criticism. The assumption that the opposing conception of literature as entertainment could only have appeared during the decline of Confucianism is challenged by works of formalistic wordplay of authors like Han Yü, a staunch defender of Confucianism. The paper argues that such conception is instead to be traced to the Han dynasty, when the official endorsement of Confucianism synchronized with the dominance of the fu ("rhymeprose exposition") as a literary form composed primarily for entertainment. The canonization of the Confucian classics and the composition of the fu gave rise to the study of philology, and in due course directed the literary interest to its own form, bringing about an important shift from the pragmatic to the aesthetic.
"Joy Without Wantonness, Sorrow Without Rancor": Decorum, Canonicity
and the Reception of Tang Poetry
Mark E. Francis, University of Washington
It is a truism that Chinese poetry, generally and relative to other literary traditions, is considered "decorous." The poems of Shijing, treated as paradigmatic through early traditional times, were lauded by Confucius as sources of knowledge and inspiration which by virtue of their balance and restraint never "swerve" from the proper path. Later exemplary models, such as the works of the Jian An and the High Tang poets, were elevated in no small measure according to their perceived qualities of aesthetic and moral propriety. Not only does the potent authority of an active standard of decorum explain the preeminence of the High Tang poets over their immediate predecessors of the Six Dynasties and their Late Tang, Song, and later successors-it also explains the relative standings, among critics and anthologists, of the Tang poets themselves.
To speak of "decorum" in the reception of Chinese poetry admittedly to some extent involves the imposition of an obviously foreign concept. Nevertheless, the term is justifiable in so far as Chinese critics' phraseology of "praise and blame" reflects values of aesthetic temperance and emotional moderation. Such concerns delineate an effective standard of propriety that sets limits on what early poets have achieved while licensing what late poets may attempt. This paper investigates the vocabulary of Chinese poetic decorum as reflected in the reception of the most prominent Tang poets, suggesting how a standard of decorousness actively informs the Tang canon, and exploring the relation of its authority to larger philosophical and cultural concerns.
Power of the Poem: The Role of Poetry in a Ninth-Century Collection of Anecdotes
Graham Sanders, Harvard University
In the late ninth century Meng Qi (fl. 841-886) compiled a collection of anecdotes entitled True Stories of Poems (Benshi shi). The extant text includes forty-one entries, classified into seven categories, about how certain poems (mostly Tang) came to be uttered. It draws upon a variety of source materials, including xiaoshuo, miscellaneous histories, poem prefaces and hearsay. Meng Qi outlines his motivations, principles of organization, and methods of composition in his preface. The content and form of his work may be derivative, but Meng was innovative in his explicit agenda to gather anecdotes about poetry in one place.
There are two salient themes intertwining in True Stories of Poems: (1) the capacity of poetry to powerfully express and affect the emotions (qing), and (2) appreciation of poetic talent (cai). These themes, occasionally appearing in inverted form, are often admixed with the uncanny or strange. The narratives that manifest these themes are shaped by three forces: (1) canonical precepts of poetry, beginning with Mao's commentary on the Book of Songs; (2) Tang poetic praxis; and (3) inherent generic demands of the source material.
Examining this collection provides a fascinating glimpse into how different forms of discourse project ideals of poetry derived from an ancient tradition onto the plane of quotidian social interaction in the Tang. One learns of the types of stories that were told about poetry, stories that demonstrate its power. These are "true stories" of literary imagination to complement "real stories" of literary history.
Hanging by a Thread: The Deviant Closures of Li He
David McCraw, University of Hawai'i
With one tiny exception-a short 20-year old piece on closure in Qing quatrains-Sinologists have paid too little attention to closural effects in Chinese poetry. No one has observed their unique properties in Li He's verse; yet his endings vividly express Li's distinctive style and bizarre realms of poetic imagination. This presentation will amend that omission.
This presentation proceeds by an inductive, phenomenological approach. Close readings build up a sense how Li He shaped and wielded his closures. Comparisons with exemplary Tang verse that provided "models" for Li demonstrate the striking originality of Li's endings. Further sidelights on Western poetics and practices afford some insights into comparative poetics.
"Hanging by a Thread" bases itself on a mature article that, while complete, has not yet appeared in print (it's currently under review at a major Sinological journal). Thus, it offers original and important insights that still await an audience. It also features a surprise ending that revises. . . but let's not spoil the ending's suspense. Instead, let's let Li He himself close with "Hanging By a Thread's" last poem:
"The Old Jade-Hunter: Song"
Hunt for jade, hunt for jade-must be "Aqua-emerald."
Chiseled into "step-&-sway"-all for a lecher's lust.
The old man cold & famished makes the Dragon fret.
Indigo Gorge's water and air may lose their clarity.
Night rain on the crags as he eats a few filberts.
Blood from a nightjar's mouth-an old man's tears.
Indigo Gorge's water long glutted with live humans
Bodies dead 1000 years yet hate the Gorge's water.
Cypress wind down the mt. slope, rain like a scream.
Twine hung down the cataract grayly twists & twirls.
Wintry thorp, blank hut-fears for a pampered babe;
Ancient terrace, stone steps-ropehanged gutwrench grass.
"Tough" Solution Out of "Soft" Tradition: "Heroic"
Tz'u as Defined by Tz'u Decorum
Xinda Lian, Denison University
By the end of the Northern Sung (960-1127), tz'u poetry had developed into a full-fledged poetic genre with distinctive generic properties of its own. Being typically light, gentle and exquisite, tz'u poetry became an effective medium for literati to express almost exclusively their delicate and tender-often amorous-feelings.
As a consequence of the fall of North China to the Jurchen invaders and the subsequent retreat of the Sung court to the South, a new mode of tz'u poetry set in on the poetic scene of the early Southern Sung (1127-1279). A group of poets used the tz'uform to express their deep sorrow over the fall of the Northern Sung and their strong will to reclaim the lost territory. Later critics-not only detractors, but also many admirers of this new poetic voice-considered it cacophonic, as the stylistic features of this new mode were apparently at odds with the generic qualities of the genre.
A close examination, however, will reveal that this new mode was by no means an odd-man-out in the development tz'u. On the one hand, its emotional force and the intensity of its expression benefited a great deal from many of the merits of the "traditional" tz'u mode, such as the progressive strophic layout and the multi-functional stanzaic structure, and the roundabout yet persistent manner of poetic presentation. On the other hand, the excessively direct emotive expression of the new mode was in fact a result of the desperate search of the group of poets for a new voice when they found the traditional form inadequate for expressing their strong sentiment. In other words, the new and the old formed a dyad coexisting in a contentious harmony.
There seems no question that the "traditional" (the soft and gentle, hence "feminine") tz'u best exemplified the decorum of the genre. As to the new (the heroic and tough, hence masculine) mode while in many respects continuing to be the carrier of the overt value of the established decorum, it conspicuously gave a powerful expression to what I would call the "negative content" of the decorum. A study of this phenomenon will lead us a step closer to the solution of certain problems that have long been puzzling the tz'u critics: Why could a same poet of the "tough" mode often turn out "soft" tz'u poems without difficulty (and without qualm)? Why could some prominent aesthetic ideals of the "tough" mode in the early Southern Sung find an expression in some of the most representative "soft" tz'uworks in the latter half of the Southern Sung?