The Art of Chinese Poetry

James J.Y. Liu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781032260761
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000582017
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book, first published in 1962, is a majestic survey of the whole structure of Chinese poetry. It is a critical introduction to the field as well as an exposition of Chinese views on the nature of poetry. It discusses the Chinese language as a poetic medium from various angles – visual, semantic, auditory, grammatical and conceptual. It also describes the bases of Chinese versification and the major verse forms, and offers interpretations of various schools of traditional Chinese criticisms of poetry. The author suggests a synthesis among the different schools and evolves a view of poetry from which critical standards for Chinese poetry can be derived. In applying these standards, he attempts a further synthesis – one between this mainly traditional Chinese view of poetry and the modern Western method of verbal analysis. Imagery, symbolism, allusions and other features of Chinese poetry are analysed critically.

PART I The Chinese Language as a Medium of Poetic Expression

1 The Structure of Chinese Characters

It is generally realized that Chinese is written with characters instead of an alphabet—a feature which is the ultimate source of many of the characteristics of Chinese poetry. However, there is a fallacy still common among Western readers outside sinological circles, namely, that all Chinese characters are pictograms or ideograms. This fallacy on the part of some Western enthusiasts for Chinese poetry has had some curious results. Ernest Fenollosa in his essay, ‘The Chinese Character as a Medium for Poetry’, stressed this misconception and admired Chinese characters for their alleged pictorial qualities. While one can understand his enthusiasm for a language that he imagined to be free from the tendencies towards jejune logicality of modern English, and while one is flattered by his attribution of superior poetic qualities to one’s mother tongue, one has to admit that his conclusions are often incorrect, largely due to his refusal to recognize the phonetic element of Chinese characters. Yet this essay, through Ezra Pound, has exerted considerable influence on some English and American poets and critics. This may be a happy example of the so-called catalytic effect of scholarship, but as an introduction to Chinese poetry, the Fenollosa approach is, to say the least, seriously misleading.

To clear away this basic misconception, we have to examine the principles underlying the structure of the characters. Traditional Chinese etymology postulates six principles known as the Liu Shu. This term has been translated as ‘The Six Scripts’, though in fact it does not refer to six classes of characters but six principles regarding the formation of characters, and may therefore be rendered ‘The Six Graphic Principles’. The definition and correct order of the six principles have been subjects of controversy among Chinese scholars for centuries, and we cannot enter here into intricate arguments about them. I shall simply describe each principle in the way that seems to me to be most reasonable, without quoting sources and authorities to support my interpretations. If any sinologue should object to this, I can only forestall his objection by pointing out that I am writing on Chinese poetry for a non-specialist public, not on Chinese philology for experts.

The First Graphic Principle is Hsiang-hsing

or ‘Imitating the Form’. For instance, the character for jih (‘sun’) is

(ancient form

); that for jueb (‘moon’) is

(ancient form

); that for jen (‘person’) is

(ancient form

); that for mu (‘tree’) is

(ancient form

); that for yang (‘sheep’) is

(ancient form

). These characters based on the First Principle may be called Simple Pictograms and represented by the letter P.

The Second Graphic Principle is Chih-shih

or ‘Pointing at the Thing’. Characters based on this principle are symbols of abstract notions, not pictures of concrete objects. For example, the numbers yi, erh, san (‘one, two, three’) are represented by corresponding numbers of strokes:

. Such characters may be called Simple Ideograms and represented by the letter I. Sometimes a Simple Ideogram may consist of an already existing Simple Pictogram with an additional indicator, e.g. the character for ‘tree’ with a stroke across its top becomes the character for mo (‘tree top’):

(ancient form

), and the same character with a stroke across its base becomes the character for pen (‘tree root’):

(ancient form

). These characters may be represented by the formula I = P + i, where i means indicator.

The Third Principle is Huei-yi

or ‘Understanding the Meaning’.¹ This concerns the combination of two or more simple characters to form a new character in such a way as to suggest the meaning of the new one. For instance, the character for ming (‘bright’) is

(ancient form

), which consists of a window and a moon (not sun and moon); the character for nan (‘man’) is

(ancient form

), which consists of ‘field’ and ‘strength’. Such characters may be called Composite Ideograms and represented by the letter C. Each component part of a Composite Ideogram may be a Simple Pictogram, Simple Ideogram, or another Composite Ideogram, as the case may be. (C = P + P’; C = P + I; C = I + I’; C = C + P; C = C′ + C″.)

¹ This is the usual explanation, although I strongly suspect that huei here means ‘join’, and the whole phrase means ‘joining the meanings’.

The Fourth Principle is Hsieh-sheng

or ‘Harmonizing the Sound’. This refers to the use of one character as a component part of another to indicate the sound of the latter. When thus used it is known in English as a ‘phonetic’. At the same time, the other part of the composite character, which signifies the meaning, is called the ‘radical’ or ‘significant’. Thus, if we use the letter N to represent a Composite Phonogram, it usually consists of a phonetic (p) and a significant (s), while the phonetic and the significant in themselves could be Simple Pictograms, Simple Ideograms, Composite Ideograms, or other Composite Phonograms. (N = p + s; p = P, I, C, N′; s = P′, I′, C′, N″.) Thus, the Composite Phonogram for chung (‘loyalty’) is

which consists of a phonetic chung

and a significant hsin

(‘heart’). The phonetic chung in itself means ‘middle’, and is a Simple Pictogram, showing a line cutting through the middle of a square:

(p = I); while the significant hsin

(ancient form

) is a Simple Pictogram of the heart, which here signifies that ‘loyalty’ has something to do with the heart (s = P). Occasionally we find a Composite Phonogram with one phonetic and more than one significant. For example, the character for pao (Archaic¹ pronunciation pog; ‘treasure’) is

, which consists of a phonetic fo

(Archaic¹ pronunciation piog), and three significants: ‘roof’

‘jade’

and ‘mother-of-pearl’

(N = p + s + s′ + s″.)

The Fifth Principle is Chuan-chu

or ‘Mutually Defining’, which is concerned with the use of synonymous characters.

The Sixth Principle is Chia-chieh

or ‘Borrowing’, which concerns the loan of homophones.

It will be seen that the last two principles are concerned with the extended use of already existing characters and not with the formation of new ones. Thus in fact there are only four basic principles underlying the structure of the characters, and consequently four main categories of them: Simple Pictograms, Simple Ideograms, Composite Ideograms, and Composite Phonograms. The first two form only a small minority, but since they are the characters for the most common objects (e.g. sun, moon, tree) or the most essential concepts (e.g. number, above, below, middle), they tend to disguise the fact they are only a minority. The majority of Chinese characters belong to the last category and contain a phonetic element. Moreover, even those characters which were originally formed on a pictographic principle have lost much of their pictorial quality, and in their modern forms bear little resemblance to the objects they are supposed to depict. (A comparison of the ancient forms with the modern forms of the Simple Pictograms given above will prove this.) The fallacy of Fenollosa and his followers should now be evident.

¹ Archaic Chinese is the term used by the Swedish sinologue Bernhard Karlgren for the language of early Chou (cir. 1100-600 b.c.).

Another popular fallac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I. The Chinese Language as a Medium of Poetic Expression
• Part II. Some Traditional Chinese Views on Poetry
• Part III. Towards a Synthesis
• Epilogue
• Appendix: Note on Romanization
• References
• Index of Chinese Names and Book Titles