Calligrams
Series editor: Eliot Weinberger
Series designer: Leslie Miller
Chinese Poetic Writing: With an Anthology of Tang Poetry
By François Cheng
Translated by Donald A. Riggs and Jerome P. Seaton
© Editions du Seuil, 1977, 1982 et 1996
© 1982 by Indiana University Press. Rights to the Seaton-Riggs English-language translation licensed from the original English-language publisher, Indiana University Press
Expanded edition copyright © 2016 by The Chinese University of Hong Kong
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cheng, François, 1929- author. | Riggs, Donald Albert translator. | Seaton, Jerome P. translator.
Title: Chinese poetic writing : with an anthology of Tang poetry / by François Cheng; translated by Donald A. Riggs and Jerome P. Seaton.
Other titles: Écriture poétique chinoise. English
Description: Expanded edition. | [Hong Kong] : The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press; [New York] : New York Review Books, 2016. | Series: Calligrams | In English; with anthology in English and Chinese. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016018877 | ISBN 9789629966584 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Chinese poetry–T’ang dynasty, 618-907–History and criticism. | Chinese poetry–T’ang dynasty, 618-907. | Chinese poetry–T’ang dynasty, 618-907–Translations into English.
Classification: LCC PL2321 .C5413 2016 | DDC 895.11/309–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016018877
ISBN 9789629966584
Ebook ISBN 9789629968984
Published by:
The Chinese University Press
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Sha Tin, N.T., Hong Kong
www.chineseupress.com
New York Review Books
435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.
www.nyrb.com
v4.1
a
To the memory of my father
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction to the English Language Edition
Acknowledgments
CHINESE POETIC WRITING
Introduction
1. The Passive Procedures
2. The Active Procedures
3. The Images
AN ANTHOLOGY OF TANG POETRY
Translator’s Note
Jue-ju (Quatrains)
Lü-shi (Regulated Verses)
Gu-ti-shi (Ancient-style Poetry)
Ci (Lyric Poetry)
Biographical Notes
Notes
Bibliography
Introduction to the English Language Edition
American sinology is properly celebrated for both its richness and its vitality. Graced with its many studies of the highest quality, the American reader is doubtlessly in the best possible position to be familiar with the overall scope of Chinese poetry and with the works of individual poets. This study, which is semiotic in nature, attempts only to shed some light upon the formal structures of that poetry, in order to help the reader to grasp a few of its implicit aspects which have often been neglected.
On the occasion of the publication of this English language edition, I would like to propose several summary reflections to place Chinese poetic writing in the more all-embracing context of Chinese cosmology, reflections which may, I hope, contribute to the clarification of the fundamental approach which has guided our research.
The eminent role which poetry played in China is well known. This eminence is due not only to the important functions, both aesthetic and social, which poetry has always had, but also to a more essential phenomenon: the quasi-sacred veneration devoted to the ideographic writing itself in China. This writing was perceived not as an arbitrary invention of man, but as the result of supernatural revelation. Ancient myths report that on the day when Cang Jie (Ts’ang Chieh), inspired by divinatory figures, traced the first signs, Heaven and Earth trembled, and gods and demons wept. For, through the magical trickery of the written signs, man would henceforth share in the secrets of Creation. (Chinese thought is, then, as much marked by the myth of Cang Jie, who steals the signs of written language, as is Western thought by the myth of Prometheus, who stole fire.) From this perspective, poetry, which transforms written signs into song (“a sung writing”), has as its highest function the rejoining of the human spirit to the original and vital forces of the Universe. Let us listen to Zhong Hong, of the sixth century, from the introduction to his Shi Pin: “The Breaths animate beings and things; these in their turn inspire man. Pushed by the impulsions and feelings which dwell within him, man expresses himself through dance and song. His song is a light which illuminates the Three Spirits (Man-Earth-Heaven) as well as the ten thousand creatures. Thus, it constitutes an offering to the spirits, and makes manifest the hidden mystery. For upsetting Heaven and Earth, for moving the Gods, nothing equals poetry.”
We may understand, then, the link between poetry and cosmology. We will see that the Chinese poetic language, in its structure, embodies the very laws which rule cosmology as it was conceived of in Chinese thought.
This cosmology, contained in seeds in the Yi Jing (I Ching, or Book of Changes), was formulated in a schematic but decisive form by Lao-zi (Lao Tzu), the founder of Taoism. In Chapter 42 of the Dao-de-jing (Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way and Its Virtue), it is written:
The Tao of Origin gives birth to the One
The One gives birth to the Two
The Two gives birth to the Three
The Three produces the Ten Thousand Things
The Ten Thousand Things take Yin upon their backs
And draw Yang unto their bosoms
Harmony is born in the Void, from the Median Breath
With great simplification we can make the following commentary: The Tao of Origin is conceived of as the Supreme Void () from which emanates the One, which is none other than the primordial Breath (). This Breath engenders the Two, embodied as the two Vital Breaths, which are the Yin and the Yang. These two by their interaction engender and give life to the Ten Thousand Things. However, between the Two and the Ten Thousand Things are the Three. The Three are subject to two interpretations which are not divergent, but, rather, complementary.
According to the strictly Taoist tradition (Huai-nan-zi, Wang Bi, Fan Ying-yuan, Wei Yuan, Gao Heng, etc.), the Three would represent the combination of the Vital Breaths (Yin-Yang) with the Zhong-qi, “The Breath of the Median Void.” This Median Void (which comes from the Supreme Void, from which it derives its power) is necessary for the harmonious functioning of the Yin and the Yang. The Median Void is that which draws and guides the two Vital Breaths in the dynamic process of reciprocal becoming; without it the Yin and the Yang would remain static and amorphous. It is precisely this ternary relationship (Chinese thought is not dualistic but ternary: in any antinomic or complementary couple, the Median Void is the third term) which gives birth to and serves as model for the Ten Thousand Things. For the Median Void at the heart of the Yin-Yang couple resides as well at the heart of all things: inspiring them with Breath and Life, it maintains all things in their relation to the Supreme Void, thus allowing each to accede to becoming, to transformation, and to unity. Thus, Chinese thought is dominated by a crossing double movement, which can be represented by two axes: a vertical axis that symbolizes the interaction between the Void and the Full (the Full, which is all Creation, comes from the Void; but the Void continues to act in the Full), and a horizontal axis that represent
s the interaction within the Full of the Yin and the Yang, an interaction from which all things come (including, of course, Man, who is the microcosm par excellence).
It is precisely the place of Man which characterizes the second interpretation of the number Three. According to this second point of view, one which is inspired by a fundamentally Confucian point of view from the Yi Jing, the Zhong-yong, Xun-zi, and others (but nonetheless one also taken up by the Taoists), the Three, derived from the Two (Yin-Yang), designates Heaven (Yang), Earth (Yin), and Man (who possesses the virtues of Earth and Heaven in his spirit, and the Void in his heart). Here, then, it is the privileged relationship between the Three Entities Heaven-Earth-Man which serves as the model for the Ten Thousand Things. Here man is raised to an exceptional dignity, since he participates as the third party in the work of Creation. Nor is his role in any way passive: if Heaven and Earth are endowed with will and the power of action, Man, through his feelings and emotions, and in his rapport of transformation with the other two Entities, also contributes to the process of the becoming of the Universe, a process which tends ceaselessly toward the shen, the “Divine Essence,” of which the Supreme Void is the source, or the guardian.
Void-Full, Yin-Yang, and Heaven-Earth-Man thus constitute the three relational and hierarchical axes around which Chinese cosmology is organized. Poetic language, which proposes to explore the mystery of the Universe by means of the Universe by means of signs, has not neglected to structure itself, on its different levels, along these three axes. Accordingly, on the lexical level, analyzed in chapter 1, is displayed the subtle play between the empty (Void) words and the full; on the syntactic level, treated in chapter 2, the dialectical interplay of Yin and Yang takes place, notably in the form of parallelism; and finally, on the symbolic level, which is the object of study in chapter 3, metaphorical images, through transfer of meaning and the implied circular movement between subject and object, fully exploit the ternary relationship Man-Earth-Heaven. It is evident that this poetic language, having taken to itself the basic dynamic of Chinese thought, thus represents the semiotic order par excellence and serves as a model for all the other signifying practices of the Chinese domain.
On the subject of this poetic language, which, as we have said, puts fully into play the relationship Man-Earth-Heaven, we may go on to specify: if the metaphorical expressions primarily develop the Man-Earth relationship, as attested by the traditional critical term Qing-jing (human feelings—natural wonders), there is, nonetheless, a third term, Heaven, which embodies a sort of language “Beyond language” toward which Chinese poetry has always tended. In other words, the privileged Man-Earth link is never allowed to become a closed circuit, it must end in something else, something open. Chinese rhetoricians have always sought to formulate this something else, this “Beyond language,” symbolized by the word Heaven. Si-kong Tu, of the Tang, declares that the ultimate goal of poetry is to attain “the Image beyond images, the Landscape beyond landscapes” (). Yan You, of the Song, says, for his part, that, “Among the great poets of the Tang, the highest place is always given to the ineffable spirit. Like antelope horns which blend with tree branches in the forest, their verses devote little preoccupation to observation or analysis. They possess a radiant transparency which can never be discerned. Sound which vibrates in the air, color which shimmers like a mirage, the moon reflecting in the water, the face looking out of the mirror: such is the appearance of their poetry, a poetry of limited words, yet of meaning always extending Beyond.”
Xie Zhen, of the Ming, reiterates that, “in all poetry the landscape is the intermediary, the feeling is the matrix. A poem is born of the combination of the two. But the art of poetry ought to aim at touching the Ten Thousand Things on the basis of few words; its supreme spirit is the Limitless, moved by the primordial Breath.”
This passage shows clearly the ardor with which Chinese poets worked to attain the realization of the infinite communion among things, and, through the realization of this communion, toward the attainment of the mystery of Origin. It is not in the least surprising, then, that the poetry of Du Fu (Tu Fu) should have been called “Heaven-sharpened sword” () or that of Li Bai (Li Po) a “song from beyond Heaven” ().
Considering these conditions, it is not difficult to appreciate the nearly impossible task of one who attempts to transpose Tang poetry into any foreign language. Perhaps what success we have had in recovering the quality of certain of these poems in the French version comes from the fact that we have carried them with us for years. As to the present American versions, we can only congratulate ourselves on the beautiful work of Professor Jerome P. Seaton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
François Cheng
November 1981
Acknowledgments
This work, fruit of many years’ labor, has benefited from the influence of all of those by whom I have been enriched: my teachers, my students, my friends.
Among my teachers, to whom I owe my training in sinology and semiology, I would like first of all to name Paul Demiéville, Alexis Rygaloff, Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and the late Émile Benveniste. Their teaching and their works inspired the conception of this work. May they find here the expression of my deep gratitude.
I would also like to acknowledge my debt to the work of several American sinologists, including Professors Hans Frankel, James R. Hightower, James J. Y. Liu, Edward H. Schafer, and Yu-Kung Kao, and to note my special thanks to Professor Liu and Professor Kao for their many valuable comments on the text for the American edition.
The translations of the poems in the anthology owed much to the experience and finesse d’esprit of Eugéne Simion. His voice, both other than and yet in harmony with my own, allowed the distancing from the original work that is indispensable for a true transposition.
But this work would not have seen the light without the constant presence and aid of my wife and my daughter, Anne, who know not only the work of research and reflection, but also the joy of a shared creation.
François Cheng
CHINESE POETIC WRITING
Introduction
Signs incised upon the shells of tortoises, upon the bones of oxen. Signs borne upon bronze vessels, sacred and mundane.1 Divinatory or utilitarian, these signs are manifest first of all as tracings, emblems, fixed attitudes, visualized rhythms. Each sign, independent of sound and invariable, forms a unity of itself, maintaining the potential of its own sovereignty and thus the potential to endure. From its beginning the Chinese writing system has refused to be simply a support for the spoken language: its development has been characterized by a constant struggle to assure for itself both autonomy and freedom of combination. Apparent from its very origin is a contradictory, a dialectical, relationship between represented sounds and a physical presence that extends toward gestural movement, between the requirement of linearity and the desire for a spatial evasion. Is it appropriate to speak of a “senseless defiance” on the part of the Chinese for thus maintaining (and, at that, for nearly forty centuries) this “contradiction”? Whether or not, it is a matter of a most astonishing risk: one may say that through the maintenance of this writing system, the Chinese have made a most singular wager, the great beneficiary of which has been the poet.
It is but by the grace of this wager, this system of writing, that a song, uninterrupted for three thousand years, has been passed down to us.2 This song, at its inception intimately linked both to sacred dance and to simple field work, has known, through the years, many metamorphoses. At the source of these metamorphoses there lies, as a determining element, just that system of writing, a system that has engendered a profoundly original poetic language. All of the poetry of the Tang, surely the Golden Age of Chinese poetry, is a written song, as much as a sung writing. Through these signs, obeying a primordial rhythm, the spoken word may burst forth, and in every area go beyond its act of signifying. To define and delimit the reality of these signs, to demonstrate the specific
nature of the Chinese ideograms, and to clarify their connections with other signifying practices (such are the subjects of this Introduction) is already to reveal essential traits of Chinese poetry.
It is customary, when one discusses Chinese characters, to call to mind their imagistic aspect. Those who are unfamiliar with the writing system are likely to imagine that it is no more than a heap of “little pictures.” It is true that in its oldest known state a large number of pictograms may be perceived, such as for the sun (, eventually stylized as ), the moon (, stylized as ), and man (, stylized as ). Yet, scattered among these in even the earliest periods there appear some more abstract characters, which may already properly be called simple ideograms, such as those for king ( which relates heaven, earth, and man), middle (, a space cut through the middle by a line), and to return (, stylized , a hand making a gesture of returning upon itself).
Beyond these simple characters, there developed, at a later stage, more complex forms; indeed, these constitute the majority of the characters in use today. A complex character is obtained by the combination of two simple characters, as in the character (“brightness”), combining the character (“sun”) and the character (“moon”). More commonly, however, the complex characters are of the type “radical plus phonetic sign,” that is, they are formed by the combination of a radical or root element, formed from a simple character (often stylized for sake of concision in combination), and another part, also consisting of a simple character, which serves as a phonetic sign. The pronunciation of this second element marks the pronunciation of the “new” character (that is, the pronunciation of the simple character which serves as the phonetic sign and that of the complex character of which it is a part are the same). For example, the complex character (“companion”) is formed of a root element, , the radical for man, and another simple character, , which is pronounced, in isolation, ban, and which indicates that the complex character is also pronounced ban. It should be understood that the choice of the simple character as phonetic element, though its primary function is merely that of phonetic sign, is not always gratuitous. In the example just cited, the simple character ban means “half“; combined with the root element for man, it evokes the idea of “the other half,” or of “the man who shares,” contributing thus to the precise sense of the complex character , “companion.” This example may raise an important issue. The simple characters, which seek to “signify of themselves,” strike us with their gestural and emblematic aspect; and even here, when it is, or should be, simply a matter of a purely phonic element, we try nonetheless to perceive a connection with meaning. To suppress the gratuitous and arbitrary at all levels of the system, a semiotic system founded upon an intimate relationship with the real, so that there is no rupture between signs and the world, and hence none between man and the universe: such would seem to be the constant direction of the Chinese. On the basis of this formulation we may go further with our reflection upon the specific nature of the ideogram.
Chinese Poetic Writing Page 1
