Traditional Chinese Poetry Research Articles

Innovation on Cultural and Creative Product–Designing Traditional Chinese Poetry into Product

The cultural and creative (CAC) industries have experienced rapid growth in recent years, and "Culture" plays a critical role in design. Traditional Chinese poetry is an intangible cultural heritage in China's civilisation. Therefore, designing "Traditional Chinese Poetry" into products will be a CAC product design trend. This study investigates how to transform Traditional Chinese Poetry elements into CAC products with an innovative design model. Through the design practice, participants have successfully designed CAC products based on ancient poetry elements. Moreover, there still needs to be more research on the cultural product design of the intangible traditional culture in China.

Poetic Expression by Virtual Reality Technology

At the present stage, the digital world and physical world continue to blend. Which has become an important trend of future development. The basic relations between people and society, people and people, people and things also have profound changes due to the intervention of digital technology. In the trend of continuous integration, anew space of digital society, digital economy and digital culture has been formed. One of the ways to integrate digital and traditional culture is to use virtual reality technology to realize the digitalization of cultural resources, make culture resources “immortal” and create various application scenes. How to realize the transmission of cultural content and express its spiritual connotation under the capability of virtual reality technology? This paper has started with “poetic”. It describes how to inherit and carry forward the “poetry” in traditional Chinese poetry with modern technology, from the “artistic conception” created in Chinese traditional culture to the “virtual environment” created by reality technology, the “meaning” and “image” produced by the unique narrative mode of Chinese ancient poetry and the “Virtual Reality” technology from the perspective of UR, what are the appropriate application scenarios of poetic expression of virtual reality technology, this paper has summarized the poetic expression and construction methods of ancient Chinese poetry based on virtual reality technology. It also has considered the significance, development and application prospect of virtual reality technology in traditional cultural expression.

Mao Zedong’s Poetry Translated by Eugene Eoyang in Sunflower Splendor: A Textual and Cultural Interpretation

Translating Mao Zedong’s poetry into English has been a significant cause since the founding of New China and aroused great academic attention in China and other countries. In 1975, Eugene Eoyang, a Chinese American scholar, translated eight poems of Mao and published them later in the remarkable poetry anthology Sunflower Splendor, which has made a considerable contribution to the promotion and canonization of Mao’s poetry as well as traditional Chinese poetry in the English world. Eoyang is a scholar translator who knows well about both cultures, the identity, cultural concepts, translation strategies, and other aspects that he demonstrated in his translation are of great reference value compared with other versions home and abroad. By analyzing the textual and cultural features and specific cases in his translation, the translator’s valuable first-hand experience, along with the profound literary and cultural attainments reflected in the translation process, can be learned to guide future translation and promotion of Mao’s poetry in foreign cultures.

Study of the Translation of Stephen Owen's Tang Poems

Tang poetry is not only a historical sparkle and a literary treasure of China, but also an important part of world literature. In recent years, many scholars have begun to translate Tang poetry in an attempt to convey the charm and beauty of Tang poetry to the world. The charm of Tang poetry has crossed national boundaries and become international. In the process of enhancing the impact of the culture of Tang poetry throughout the world, translation is inevitable. In the practice of translating Chinese poets into foreign languages, not only Chinese scholars but also overseas sinologists have been involved. One of these overseas sinologists, Stephen Owen, who is a great fan of Chinese Tang poetry, has made a significant contribution to the translation of Tang poetry through his love and dedication to the cause of translation. This paper will analyse Stephen Owen's book-- Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics : Symbols of the World to analyse his understanding of Chinese poetry. Then the paper will also examine examples of Stephen Owen's translations of Tang poetry. By analysing his understanding of Chinese poetry, as well as his translation practice, a study of Stephen Owen's translation of Tang poetry will be realized.

The Rhythm of Breath in Natsume Sōseki’s Recollecting and Such

This article examines Japanese novelist Natsume Sōseki’s (1867–1916) memoir Recollecting and Such (Omoidasu koto nado; 1910). I argue that Sōseki invites the reader to imagine breath through his literary representation of both physiological and metaphysical experience and the rhythm of the narrative’s experimental poetic form. In concert with the theme of this special issue, I show how Recollecting and Such self-reflexively restores and evokes the corporeal experience of sensation beyond just visual perception: the narrative reveals itself as a poetic form of measurement and its first-person narrator a “rhythmanalyst”, someone who listens to the internal rhythms of his own body and then to that of the external world (Henri Lefebvre). The narrator’s awareness of the duration, frequency, and intensity of sensation as well as his regular compositions of metered verse—haiku and kanshi (traditional Chinese poetry as practiced in Japan; Sinitic verse)—are ways that the narrative measures the limits of life, memory, and sensory experience. The oscillation between prose and poetry in the narrative generates an organic rhythm, simulating the long and short breaths of a convalescing body, which invites the reader to breathe together—“to conspire” in the literal sense—with the text as a form of sympathy.

意象개념 정립의 두 가지 갈래, 그 내용과 한계에 대한 고찰

As is well known, most literary theories and conceptual words are abstract and are not easy to define in one word. The same is true of numerous conceptual words raised in traditional Chinese poetry, Various semantic elements inherent in it are evaporated, causing distortion and misunderstanding of its meaning. The “意象” that we want to discuss in this paper is no exception. In particular, “意象” is used as a translation of “image” and It shows the historical process of translation and borrowing of conceptual words that have appeared since modern times, while also showing that it is not easy to define various conceptual words presented in Chinese poetry. Since modern times, the translation of conceptual words and the substitution of them into Western perspectives have led to misunderstanding and distortion of the original concept. As part of this awareness of the problem, this paper aims to explore the various semantic elements inherent in it by using “意 象” raised in traditional Chinese poetry as its research subject. To this end, this paper reviewed the contents of previous discussions on “意象” and proceeded to explore its implications.

The Genesis of Yi’an Style (易安體) in Medieval Chinese Poetry

This article deals with the genesis of Yi’an style (易安體), the poetic style of the outstanding Chinese female poet of the Song dynasty Li Qingzhao (李清照, 1084–1155?). The empirical material for this research is her extant early 22 ci (1098–1108). The first part of the article briefly discusses the specific features of ci genre, which reached its heyday during the Song dynasty (宋朝, 960–1279). The second part examines the peculiar features of Li Qingzhao’s early ci, which indicate her pushing the limits of writing traditional Chinese poetry. These features are 1) modification of the classical themes and images; 2) introduction of love and erotic ci from a female perspective; 3) experiments with the composition of ci and their rhythmic and melodic structure. She introduced the lyric element into conventional ci, composing the poems with strong personal engagement. Her genre innovations lie in overcoming the limits and conventions of the genre, legitimating the Self of a poet in her distinctive personal style – Yi’an style.

Against the Monist Model of Tang Poetics

Abstract In recent decades, a significant amount of Western scholarship on traditional Chinese poetry and poetics has either proposed or assumed a vision of the art underwritten by the supposed “monism,” “nonduality,” and “immanence” of traditional Chinese worldviews. This essay argues that although these were important ideas in certain periods and contexts, they cannot be taken as unproblematically defining the world of thought in which poetry operated during the Tang dynasty. Instead, Tang writers more routinely drew in their discussions of art upon the epistemological tensions and discontinuities posited by medieval intellectual and religious traditions. For this reason, they often outlined models of poetry very different from those most common in contemporary criticism.

Research on the Creation and Dissemination of Chinese Traditional Poetry under the Condition of Computer and Media

China is a country with many excellent traditional cultures, which is the cultural precipitation of China’s 5000 year history. Therefore, we must strengthen the inheritance and dissemination of traditional culture. Among them, Chinese traditional poetry is the embodiment of Chinese traditional culture, which needs our continuous inheritance. Media is an important medium of inheritance, which plays an important role. With the popularity of the Internet, computer media has become the most important way, which has become the main way of communication. Therefore, we need to constantly strengthen the combination of traditional Chinese poetry and financial media. Through the integration of media technology, we can spread Chinese traditional poetry in a digital way, which will become a new communication ecology of information digital sharing. First of all, this paper analyzes the transmission mode of Chinese traditional poetry. Then, this paper analyzes the characteristics of digital communication in the financial media environment. Finally, some suggestions are put forward.

Research on Chinese Modern Art Songs

Chinese modern art songs produced at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, is an important theme of the early development of Chinese modern new music, has an important position in the history of the development of Chinese modern music. At that time, some composers who studied music in foreign countries began to try to use the combination of excellent traditional Chinese poetry and the accompaniment of western Musical Instruments, the piano, to create art songs with a strong Chinese flavor, which gradually began to spread. In the 1930s and 1940s, more and more musicians devoted themselves to the field of artistic song creation, and they created a considerable number of excellent artistic songs with different themes and forms. The creation of Chinese art songs not only embodies the spirit of The Times, but also opens up a new way of creation.

Ice Cream in the Cathedral: The Literary Failures and Social Success of Chinese Robot Poet Xiao Bing

Abstract In May 2017, Xiao Bing, a popular Chinese chatbot built by Microsoft Research Asia, made her debut as a poet with Sunlight Has Lost Its Glass Windows, a collection marketed as the entirely created by artificial intelligence. She learnt the art of poetry by “reading” the works of 519 modern Chinese poets, and her “inspiration” comes from pictures provided first by her programmers and later by netizens, who upload photographs through her website. Xiao Bing’s emergence made a splash in Chinese society and raised grave concerns among the poets, who polemicized with her engineers. This essay traces Xiao Bing’s literary and media career, which includes both notable literary failures and notable commercial success, exploring her complex connections to technologies of power/knowledge as well as cultural phenomena that range from traditional Chinese poetry and poetry education to postmodern camp aesthetics. From within the renegotiation of the nature of poetry at the threshold of the posthuman era, I propose the critical notion of reading-as-playing to help poetry take advantage of its various entanglements and strictures in order to survive and co-shape the brave new world.

‘Uniformity’ or ‘Dispersion’?—The evolution of Chinese poetic word categories’ distribution patterns

AbstractThe daily language in mainland China has experienced a shift from traditional Chinese language to modern mandarin Chinese at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Chinese poetry ‘revolution’started in the 1910s is considered as a turning point in the Chinese poetry evolution process due to the novel applications of the modern Chinese language. Many temporal poetic studies consider the poems written in traditional Chinese and modern Chinese as two different genres. The two genres are saliently different in rhyme, meter, theme, etc. We aim to detect the specific properties of the evolution process of Chinese poetry in terms of the word categories’ distribution patterns. For the purpose, a corpus with 438 randomly selected traditional and modern Chinese poems is built, and some quantitative language indicators (entropy, relative entropy, repeat rate) and some exploratory statistical analysis techniques applicable in corpus linguistics and quantitative linguistics (one-way ANOVA test, cluster analysis)1 are used to abstract and analyze language data from the corpus. It is concluded that the word categories are distributed significantly differently in traditional poetry and modern poetry. The sound reasons would be that (1) traditional Chinese poetry is more likely to focus on the application of some specific content word categories, for example, nouns, but not auxiliary words and (2) modern poems tend to choose more categories of words. From the perspective of word class distribution patterns, we suppose that the birth of modern Chinese poetry in the 1910s is a sharp change to Chinese poetry production.

ДО ПИТАННЯ МЕТАФОРИЧНОСТІ ДАОСЬКОГО ТРАКТАТУ ІІІСТОЛІТТЯ"КНИГА ЖОВТОГО ДВОРИКА"ТАЇЇВІДЛУННЯУ РАННЬОСЕРЕДНЬОВІЧНІЙ КИТАЙСЬКІЙ ПОЕЗІЇ

The question of the metaphoricity of the Taoist treatise of the 3rd century ʺBook of the Yellow Courtʺ has been investigated; the reflection of Taoist ideas (as well as similar Buddhist) in traditional Chinese poetry have been traced (works by Cao Cao, Wang Wei, Sikong Tu and Ouyang Xiu). We have shown that the metaphoric nature of the ʺBookʺ is due to the eternal tradition of seeing a deep analogy between the micro- and macrocosm, feeling the original holiness of everything and the incorporation of a person into it. This metaphoric nature is already manifested in the title of the ʺBookʺ, since yellow as the color of the center, the earth and the court as an inner closed room reflect the typically Taoist idea of the importance of a tiny center in the human body, able to control not only the whole body but also the Higher Forces of the Universe. It was emphasized the importance of creating poetry in a particular altered state of consciousness, when the artist, feeling unity with all things, is able to penetrate into the transcendent being and get closer to Tao. The influence of conceptual Taoist and Buddhist ideas and postulates covered in the treatise ʺBook of the Yellow Courtʺ on the early medieval Chinese poetry, is demonstrated, which consists, firstly, in the importance of the concept of emptiness for the self-improvement of a Taoist adept and establishing a connection between the individual and the Universe; secondly, in understanding the poet's being and his creative state in a special transcendental state on the verge of being and non-being, which meets the aspirations of the Taoist adept to see his own inner world as if from the outside; thirdly, in the possibility of drawing a parallel between the human world and the macrocosm as a whole; fourthly, in the symbolism of wanderings seen in poetry as an integral part of the Taoist concept of transcendental travel through the human "internal landscape".

«Стихотворения в прозе» И. С. Тургенева и эстетические особенности традиционной китайской поэзии

В статье рассматривается один из аспектов в истории восприятия русской литературы в Китае — соотношение стихотворений в прозе И. С. Тургенева (1818–1883) и китайской традиционной литературы. Изучаются причины особой популярности стихотворений в прозе И. С. Тургенева среди китайской читательской аудитории. Новизна исследования заключается в том, что в работе впервые представлен обзор о связях между «Стихотворениями в прозе» И. С. Тургенева и традиционной китайской поэзией. Материалом для исследования послужили как тексты традиционной китайской прозы Фу, так и стихотворения для пения Цы и древние малые саньвэни. Особое внимание уделяется анализу внутренних причин — связи традиционной китайской литературы с жанровыми и эстетическими особенностями тургеневских стихотворений в прозе. Выявляется «созвучие» ритма, сюжетов, тематики, композиционных и стилистических приемов при описании природы в стихотворениях в прозе И. С. Тургенева и китайской классической поэзии. Авторы останавливаются на том, как И. С. Тургенев с помощью описания природы выражает собственные чувства. Подчеркивается, что такой лирический прием соответствует как стетическим и художественным особенностям поэтов Древнего Китая, так и классической китайской философии. Проведенный анализ позволяет убедиться в том, что причиной популярности стихотворений в прозе И. С. Тургенева в Китае является соответствие эстетическим характеристикам классической китайской литературы.The article examines one of the aspects in the history of perception of Russian literature in China — the interrelationship of a prose poem by I. S. Turgenev (1818–1883) and Chinese traditional literature. The authors study the popularity of poems in prose by I. S. Turgenev among the Chinese readership. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that this work presents, for the first time, an overview of the links between “poems in prose” by I. S. Turgenev and traditional Chinese poetry. The material for the study was both texts of traditional Chinese prose Fu, as well as poems for singing Tsu and ancient small sanwen. Special attention is paid to the analysis of internal reasons — the connection of traditional Chinese literature with the genre and aesthetic features of Turgenev's poems in prose. The authors discuss the similarity and consonance of form, rhythm, plots, themes and similar techniques in describing nature in prose poems by I. S. Turgenev and Chinese classical poetry. The authors specifically focus on how I. S. Turgenev uses the description of nature to express his own feelings. It is emphasized that this lyrical technique not only corresponds to the aesthetic and artistic features of the poets of Ancient China, but also corresponds to classical Chinese philosophy. The analysis allows us to make sure that the reason for the popularity of poems in prose by I. S. Turgenev in China is the compliance with the aesthetic characteristics of classical Chinese literature.

The Poetry of Du Fu trans. by Stephen Owen, ed. by Stephen Owen, Paul W. Kroll, and Ding Xiang Warner

Reviewed by: The Poetry of Du Fu trans. by Stephen Owen, ed. by Stephen Owen, Paul W. Kroll, and Ding Xiang Warner David McCraw The Poetry of Du Fu translated by Stephen Owen, edited by Stephen Owen, Paul W. Kroll, and Ding Xiang Warner. 6 vols. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. $210.00 cloth, open access e-book. In Jin Yong's 金庸 novel The Eagleslayer (Shediao yingxiong zhuan 射雕英雄傳), chef Huang Rong 黃蓉 keeps a valued martial arts instructor by offering to cook him stir-fried cabbage and steamed doufu 豆腐 (tofu).1 Huang knows the master appreciates that Huang's consummate art can appear most purely when it leavens the most modest and humdrum of tasks. Given all the fancy things a literary critic and scholar can do—think of Stephen Owen's accomplishments in the history of Tang poetry, his writings on Chinese literary thought, or his interpretations in works such as Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics: Omen of the World (hereafter Omen of the World)—one marvels that his latest magnum opus spends 2,700 pages humbly translating every known poem by one poet.2 Pared of ascents into literary history, theory, or elegant [End Page 378] interpretive explorations—stripped of the usual spices we associate with Owen's work—what does the great chef have to offer in so humble a genre? Humility might seem an odd word to describe the most ambitious translation of Chinese poetry yet completed under one title: Owen translates more than 1,400 shi 詩 (poems), plus some grueling fu 賦 (poetic expositions), by Du Fu 杜甫 (712–770), generally considered China's greatest poet. But Owen eschews any excurse on Du Fu's style: he refrains from offering the piquant diversions and delightful hermeneutic rambles we know he can offer. Instead, Owen gives each poem an unadorned, literal, and unpretentious English equivalent. When necessary, he adds a note to explain allusions and usages that would defeat most English-language readers. Otherwise, he just moves on to the next poem, offering a vast banquet of stir-fried cabbage and steamed doufu. Owen's achievement in this massive enterprise attests to his peerless culinary powers as well as his remarkable endurance and indefatigable perseverance. You might come up with a handful of scholars who have the stamina to attempt so daunting a feat; but can you think of one so well versed in the language of Tang poetry? This enormous effort deserves our highest praise, not least because the loftiest scholar in the field stoops low to produce a sturdy translation pony for students of Tang poetry. Moreover, Owen provides a searchable Du Fu database for students who have not yet mastered Chinese. One facet of this toil can illustrate how intelligently and productively Owen has approached the task. Not only does his tautly constructed, cogent list of allusions economically introduce you to lore essential for understanding Du Fu, his index of allusions allows you a quick purview of most relevant examples. For example, say you want to know how Du Fu deploys the third-century poet Wang Can 王粲 (177–217) in writing verse. By perusing Owen's index, you can immediately learn that Du Fu utilizes five different strains of Wang Can material: "giving books, leaving the capital, seven sorrows, well in Xiangyang 襄陽, gazing from a tower" (v. 1, p. 430). You can also see from the fourteen listed examples that only after fleeing to Sichuan does Du Fu get fascinated by Wang Can's lot as exile. Most of Du Fu's examples do not use Wang's full name, so you can appreciate how useful Owen's index can become. Incidentally, by my count Du Fu refers to Wang Can a [End Page 379] total of twenty-one times, so do not assume Owen's index always gives a complete total. As translation ponies go, Owen offers much more of a workhorse, almost nothing of a show pony. You can verify this modesty by comparing versions from The Poetry of Du Fu (hereafter PoDF) with earlier, more adventurous versions from Owen's vast oeuvre. For example, in his 1985 Omen of the World, Owen tackles the poem "Broken Boat" ("Pochuan" 破船) and, after providing a bare-bones...

On Parting, Separation and Longing in the Chinese Poetic Tradition

The article introduces two conventional themes, namely, parting and separation imbued with longing in the Chinese poetic tradition of the Tang period (618–907). It focuses on the interpretation of selected Tang poems written by the famous poets Wang Wei, Li Bai, Du Fu, Du Mu, Bai Juyi and Li Shangyin. Parting from an old friend, who was usually also a fellow official at the court in the then capital Chang’an (now Xi’an), was a common occasion for versification. More than half of the poems presented and discussed in the article illustrate this poetic genre, since the cult of friendship played an important role in everyday life in traditional China. In addition to parting poems, the article deals also with the second conventional theme: separation and longing between husband and wife. This topic, too, was often transformed into poems expressing the helplessness and despair of one of the partners due to a long-time absence of the other. Despite all the suffering, there is always hope of a reunion eventually. Both groups of poems are permeated with feelings of sadness and melancholy embodied in a simple, yet elegant language. Linguistic simplicity is a significant feature of the traditional Chinese poetry which culminated in the Hight Tang, i.e. in the eighth century.

Chinese lyrical tradition and the Taiwan new cinema: The case of Hou Hsiao-hsien

Abstract Many film critics have noted Hou Hsiao-hsien’s distinguished film style and associated it with traditional Chinese aesthetics, but few scholars have succeeded in articulating Hou’s translation of traditional Chinese aesthetics into his cinematic work. This article intends to fill this gap by proposing that the static tragedy is the form that Hou consciously or unconsciously appropriates in his films. According to sinologist Chen Shixiang, the static tragedy of traditional Chinese poetry lacks antagonism and dynamic conflict typical of Greek tragedy, but it embodies a kind of cosmic sorrow that insignificant human beings feel while facing nature’s grand scale and noticing the unstoppable passage of time. While looking or gazing at nature, the poet occupies a bystander’s position; he keeps a sympathetic eye without intervention, detaching himself from the observed world while avoiding being completely indifferent. This bystander’s position has been duplicated in Hou’s films through the use of static camera, long takes and medium/long shots. Through this distinctive style of film language, two of Hou’s films in particular, A Time to Live, A Time to Die (1985) and The Puppetmaster (1993), enquire into the universal life circle of birth, growth, illness and death as well as meditate on the impermanence of life against the background of eternal nature, and thereby serve as examples that illustrate the characteristics of static tragedy.

Discursive Metaphors Analysis: The Love Metaphor of Plant in Chinese Love Poetry

A conceptual metaphor may have various meanings in different languages, and usually contains cultural background. Based on cognitive approach, this paper aims to study Chinese metaphor through analyzing four conceptual metaphors of four typical plants in traditional Chinese poetry. This article also discusses why these ancient metaphors can still be used commonly in modern Chinese language. At the same time, through analyzing these metaphors, relevant implicating Chinese cultural aspects are described. Key words: Discursive metaphor; Ancient Chinese poetry; Love; Plant

The Limits of Poetry as Means of Social Criticism: The 1079 Literary Inquisition against Su Shi Revisited

The Limits of Poetry as Means of Social Criticism: The 1079 Literary Inquisition against Su Shi Revisited Yugen Wang The 1079 literary inquisition against Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101), known as the Wutai shi’an 烏臺詩案, or “Crow Terrace Poetry Case,” has been of enormous interest to students of Song literary and cultural history. Many aspects of the case, especially, the political motivation and significance of the inquisition, the legal issues involved and judicial procedures followed in it, and the case’s general literary profile and its impact on Su Shi as a writer, have received extensive examination.1 The rich literary interpretive and hermeneutical consequences and implications of the case, however, although they have been variously touched upon in existent scholarship, remain to be fully explored. This article is devoted exclusively to exploring the case’s complicated literary interpretive and hermeneutical landscape. Since the establishment, proceedings, and final resolution of the case all centered upon the key issue [End Page 29] of how some of Su Shi’s poems should be and could be interpreted, a focused study of this aspect of the trial will provide us with an opportunity to observe how the established conventions and principles of poetic interpretation interacted with the political and intellectual contingencies of the inquisition and, particularly, how the ancient premise of poetry as a legitimate means of indirect social criticism figured in the case. My aim is to see how the terms of that age-old tenet were tested and subtly renegotiated under the dramatic and harsh circumstances of a life-threatening inquisition and, again, how this subtle process of renegotiation was indicative of changes and tendencies in the broader literary and intellectual culture of the time. To better understand the rich dynamics of this process, I will posit the question in both the immediate microcosmic context and concerns of the trial itself and the larger political and intellectual contexts and conditions defined by the many purposes, perspectives, and interests represented by the different parties directly or indirectly involved in the case. In other words, I will examine not only the trial and its internal mechanism, but also how the event was reminisced, reflected upon, and evaluated in the broader literary and scholarly community both at the time and in later periods. I begin with a poem that would figure prominently in the trial and summarize my findings and conclusions at the end of the article. Prologue: The Interpretation of a Poem 江梅有嘉實 The river plum bears fine fruit; 託根桃李場 it lodged its roots in the garden of regular peaches and plums. 桃李終不言 The regular peaches and plums in the end did not speak a word; 朝露借恩光 it nevertheless availed itself of the morning dew and favoring sunshine. 孤芳忌皎潔 Envied was its solitary fragrance, together with its brightness; 冰雪空自香 pure as ice and snow, it gave off its scent in vain. 古來和鼎實 Since ancient times a harmonizing ingredient in the ritual tripod, 此物升廟廊 this plant has ascended to the halls of the ancestral temples. 歲月坐成晚 Time passed quickly and all of a sudden the year was already late; 烟雨青已黃 in the misty rains, its fruits have turned from green to yellow. 得升桃李盤 Having been elevated to the plates for regular peaches and plums, 以遠初見嘗 they were for the first time, because of their distance, being tasted. 終然不可口 In the end, they proved to be unpleasant to the palate, 擲置官道傍 and were discarded on the broad roadside. 但使本根在 So long as the original roots are intact, 棄捐果何傷 what harm, indeed, can this abandonment bring to it? [End Page 30] The poem tells a story of striving and abandonment, of ambitions unfulfilled, of value and talent being not appreciated and being wasted. It begins with a description of the fine qualities of the “river plum” 江梅, a species of wild plum known for the intense brightness and fragrance of its blossoms, the plant’s privileged status in the ancestral ceremonies, and its perseverance in seeking to join the ranks of the “regular peaches and plums” 桃李. It then, in the second half, turns to narrate the seasonal ripening of its fruit, its first tasting, and eventual abandonment. In traditional Chinese poetry, this is indeed a very old theme, traceable, most prominently, to the “Ode to the Orange Tree” 橘頌 in the Chu lyrics 楚辭. In that...

How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology (review)

Reviewed by: How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology David McCraw (bio) Cai Zong-qi . How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. 456 pp. Paperback $35.00, ISBN 978-0-231-13941-0. The world could definitely use a good undergraduate textbook that covers traditional Chinese poetry. Those of us who teach survey courses have either made do with inadequate anthologies, or made up our own materials, in frustration. Surely, an off-the-shelf one-volume textbook would find wide welcome among literature teachers? Cai Zongqi's volume looks like it could fill this void. It includes 400 pages of scholarly contributions with one expert writing a chapter on each of eighteen chronologically selected topics, a neatly thematic index, and extensive appendices, including a welcome list of words with final stops that modern Mandarin has lost. It even claims to focus attention on formal and prosodic issues. Sounds promising; we read with high expectations! On reading Cai's preface, we immediately get pulled up short by his assertion that this anthology will "help students overcome language barriers and engage with Chinese poetical texts in ways that yield as much aesthetic pleasure and intellectual insight as one gets from the originals" (p. xxi). Well, since we are dealing with an undergraduate textbook here, that seems too high an ideal. However, adding the Chinese might enrich the experiences of those students with enough Chinese to divine some of the sense under the translations. In his next paragraph, Cai asserts "classical Chinese poetry may be regarded as a living tradition"; from my experience with young Chinese students, this also rings too idealistic. Bold claims continue. Cai recommends that "like Chinese readers, students should be able to see the physical shape of a poem in Chinese, read it out loud, and hear it read fluently in the original." Now we are sure his vision of an undergrad literature class belongs to fantasy; this textbook will certainly not achieve that aim—not without adding years of hard work at the language! Furthermore, what does he mean by "original"? Given this volume's nearly exclusive reliance on Mandarin romanizations, you could wonder whether he thinks ancient and medieval poets spoke like people in Beijing today. Then Cai reveals we have worse problems than just his overly ambitious goals. He continues: "[T]he inclusion of Chinese texts reveals the nonalphabetical nature of Chinese writing. The romanizations make apparent the monosyllabic and tonal nature of Chinese characters. They carry tone marks that will aid students in reading poems aloud. . . ." Nonsense! Including Chinese texts reveals nothing unless you can already read Chinese. Languages can be monosyllabic and tonal (though we could argue at considerable length whether this generalization always applied to Old Chinese), but characters do not carry tone marks. In fact, characters by themselves do not tell us how to read them—as experience with Japanese would [End Page 22] convince anyone. Cai has made some sort of blunder; has he here (as later on) confused talk of language with talk of its writing system? Or, perhaps more probably, has he committed a simple English error by an inadvertently ambiguous pronoun reference? In either case, this muddled statement will surely mislead undergrads. The curmudgeon in me starts to raise his churlish head. Cai continues by claiming that his translations "afford a direct look at the noninflectional nature of Chinese and demonstrate how the absence of inflectional tags changes the entire dynamic of reading. Instead of being told the poet's feelings and thoughts, we are often expected to experience them ourselves while creatively engaging words and images in a dynamic interplay." First, we doubt any translation could "afford" all that. Second, does Cai really want to argue that, when the Chinese poet says "Today I'm unhappy," readers will experience this vicariously in a way that they could not if a Latin poet or a French poet said so? We take leave of this preface with unease, still hoping the rest of this volume may redeem a bad preface. Unfortunately, Cai's introduction does little to dispel that unease. It contains additional English problems: consider "probably a major theme" (p...