Front. Lit. Stud. China 2015, 9(4): 551−580
DOI 10.3868/s010-004-015-0032-4
RESEARCH ARTICLE
YANG Zhiyi
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
Abstract This article explores the stylistic innovations in the Ancient-Style
Verse (gutishi 古體詩), and particularly in the subgenre of gexing 歌 , from the
Late Qing to the 1930s and 1940s. It argues that the relative free prosody of the
Ancient-Style allowed innovation disguised as restoration. Yet, instead of being
the prelude to modern vernacular poetry, the innovations in this genre may have
found an end in themselves—namely, creating a style of verse which showed a
unique combination of modern elements and deliberate stylistic archaism. Its
lyric archaism and innovation were formulated in dialectical terms, which have
been frequently evoked in the reformative moments of the Chinese tradition. This
paper examines the evolution of the new gexing style through the close reading
of a few gexing poems by Huang Zunxian 遵憲 (1848−1905), Liang Qichao 梁
啟 超 (1873−1929), Lin Gengbai 林 庚
(1896−1941), and Liu Yazi 柳 亞 子
(1887−1958). Given the rise of vernacular poetry since 1917, the poems of Lin
and Liu may be called the Classicist Verse, which represents the author’s
conscious choice to elaborate on the subject matter using a particular classical
genre, when other modern genres are available. In the end, I will also discuss the
gexing style verses by Li Sichun 李思純 in the translation of multi-stanza
European poetry, as a practice in accord to the indigenization agenda of the
Critical Review magazine.
Keywords Lyric Classicism, Ancient-Style Verse, modernity, gexing, Huang
Zunxian, Liang Qichao, Wang Lixi, Lin Gengbai, Liu Yazi
Introduction
This article explores the stylistic innovations carried out in the Ancient-Style
Verse (gutishi
詩) genre, and particularly in the subgenre of gexing 歌 ,
from the Late Qing poet Huang Zunxian 遵憲 (1848–1905) to the poets of the
1930s and 1940s. The less strict formal requirements of gexing make it the de
YANG Zhiyi ( )
Department of Sinology, University of Frankfurt, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
E-mail: z.yang@em.uni-frankfurt.de
552
YANG Zhiyi
facto free form poetry among the classical genres.1 Classical-style poets of the
modern era, following the innovation of Huang Zunxian, exploited this relative
freedom to experiment with new meters, rhythms, and dictions. And I argue that,
instead of being the prelude to modern vernacular poetry (as some scholars
maintain),2 the innovations in this genre may have found an end in themselves
—namely, creating a style of verse which showed a unique combination of
modern elements and deliberate stylistic archaism. Its lyric archaism and
innovation were formulated in dialectical terms, which have been frequently
evoked in the reformative moments of the Chinese tradition. With these
innovative works, which I term “classicist poetry” (or gudian zhuyi shige 典主
義詩歌 in Chinese), the “ancient” lives in the heart of modernity, preventing it
from becoming one-dimensional and expanding its possibilities for
self-expression.
Huang Zunxian’s combination of vernacular, classical diction, neologism, and
traditional themes has already been extensively explored by Jerry Schmidt in his
pioneering work.3 In the following article, I will examine a gexing poem by
Huang Zunxian as an example of his stylistic innovations in this particular genre.
Further, I will argue that his cautious experimentation with gexing was continued
by later poets, as attested to by the works of Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929),
Wang Lixi 王禮錫 (1901–39), and Lin Gengbai 林庚 (1896–1941). I will end
the study with a few poems written by Liu Yazi 柳亞子 (1887–1958) in the
1940s, in which the boundaries of the genre were seemingly broken, and a new
genre of semi-classical, semi-modern verse—the poetry of modern
classicism—was about to emerge.
Throughout this study, I am aware of the temporal leap from the time of
Huang and Liang to that of Lin and Liu. The intervening period also happened to
be one of the most rapidly changing periods in Chinese history. Socioeconomic
and political changes notwithstanding, their poetic adversaries had also moved
away from the more conservative style of the mainstream classical poetry toward
the rising vernacular poetry. Given the limited length of this article and the broad
temporal scope, I will, in the main, restrict my discussion to stylistic succession
and transformation. This will be done at the expense of contextualization (which
has been and will be the focus of my other papers on the poetry of this period).
1
This form of poetry allowed for greater freedom than other genres, but it was still freedom
by degrees within the constraints of formal classical-style poetry.
2
See, e.g., Gong Xiping, “Jindai ‘getishi’ chutan,” 16, 17.
3
See Jerry D. Schmidt, Within the Human Realm: The Poetry of Huang Zunxian 1848–1905,
58–92.
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
553
The Archaism of Huang Zunxian’s Innovative Poetry
Huang Zunxian was the poster child of the Poetic Revolution (Shijie geming 詩
界革命) that Liang Qichao promoted. According to Liang, Huang’s poetry was
able to “melt new ideals into an old style” (rongzhu xin lixiang ru jiu fengge 熔
4
鑄 理 想 入 舊 風 格 ). While most studies on Huang’s poetry focus on its
“newness,” the following discussion will, on the contrary, explore its so-called
“old style.” In the context of Huang’s work, “old style” certainly does not mean
simply being faithful to a particular style of pre-modern Chinese poetry. Rather, I
argue that it refers to the deliberate archaism that Huang employed in his poetry to
create a stylistic balance when he used modern vocabulary to depict modern life.
Against the late Qing faddism of emulating Tang or Song poetry, Huang
Zunxian emphatically argued that a changing society required changing literary
practices. Thus, in the preface to Poetry within the Human Realm (Renjinglu
shicao 人境盧詩草), he proposed to discard the “dregs” (zaopo 糟粕) of the
ancients.5 This metaphor was borrowed from a Zhuangzian parable in which
Wheelwright Bian (Lunbian 輪 ) boldly advised Duke Huan of Qi to discard
books, since written words were nothing but the dregs of the sages.6 Notably,
however, the wheelwright did not challenge the normative authority of the
ancient sages’ ideas or spirit per se. What he advocated was mastery of the
essence of the sages’ teaching, namely the Way, through wordless and
concentrated practice. Similarly, immediately following his statement of not
being restricted by the ancients, Huang Zunxian declared:
嘗於胸中設一詩境 一曰,復 人比興之
一曰,以單 之神,運排偶之
一曰,取 騷樂府之神理而不襲 貌 一曰,用 文家伸縮 合之法以入詩
7
I once envisioned a realm of poetry in my chest, which shall, first of all,
recover the ancient style of bixing; second, apply the spirit of lineal
narrative to couplets in parallelism; third, grasp the spirit and principles of
Lisao or Music Bureau poetry without emulating their appearance; and
fourth, use the methods of Ancient-Style Prose, such as expatiation,
summary, deviation, and synthesis, in the writing of poetry.8
The second item on the list could refer to the use of liushui dui 流水對
(“running-water parallelism”). Whereas normal parallel couplets contain two
lines that are both complete in meaning, lines in “running-water parallelism”
4
5
6
7
8
Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi shihua (#4), in Liang Qichao quanji, 5296.
Huang Zunxian, “Zixu,” in Qian Zhonglian, Renjinglu shicao jianzhu, 3.
See Guo Qingfan, Zhuangzi jishi, 13:490–91.
Huang Zunxian, “Zixu,” 3.
All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated.
554
YANG Zhiyi
form a single narrative sentence (sometimes comprising the strict formal
parallelism). This type of parallelism, which Huang often employs, increases the
fluidity of the narrative movement between the lines. The other three items all
point to a kind of stylistic archaism that Huang seeks to recover: first, ancient
styles, such as bixing, or explicit and implicit comparisons, as used in the Book of
Odes (Shijing 詩經); second, the ancient spirit, as conveyed in Lisao or Music
Bureau poetry; and third, Tang-Song ancient-style prose. Of these kinds of gu,
the “ancient spirit” might be the hardest to define, as he explicitly says that he
does not seek to emulate the stylistic appearance of Lisao or Music Bureau
poetry. The spirit of Lisao probably refers to the use of allegory. In poems like
“Song on Mixing Lotus, Chrysanthemum, and Peach Blossoms in One Vase” (Yi
lian ju tao zagong yipping zuoge 以蓮菊桃雜供一瓶作歌 ), the harmonious
coexistence of different flowers is used as an allegory for cosmopolitanism. The
spirit of Music Bureau poetry is reflected in songs bearing titles similar to Han
Music Bureau poems or the Tang gexing poems that were inspired by the Han
verse. Some famous examples include “Modern Parting” (Jin bieli 今別 —a
title that evokes the category “Parting, in the Olden Times” [Gu bieli 別 ]
found in the eleventh century Anthology of Music Bureau Poetry [Yuefu shiji 樂
府詩 ], the most comprehensive source of Music Bureau poetry from the Han to
the Tang); “The Great London Fog” (Lundun dawu xing 倫敦大霧 ; xing in the
title is a typical genre designation for gexing poetry); and “The Foreign Guest”
(Fanke pian 番客篇; pian in the title similarly designates Music Bureau or
gexing poetry). The mixing of words like “modern,” “London,” or “foreign” with
terms commonly used to identify the poems, such as gexing, already shows the
poems’ hybrid nature. These are longer verses with irregular meters, in which
highly innovative language is combined with deliberate stylistic archaism (as will
be observed later in my translation of “The Great London Fog”).
In a letter addressed to Liang Qichao in 1902, Huang Zunxian criticized the
poets after the Six Dynasties for having “lost” the true spirit of the Book of Odes,
namely, “the intention of explicit and implicit comparisons (bixing zhiyi 比興之
義)” and “the principle of [using the Odes] to stimulate, to observe, to socialize,
and to complain” (xing guan qun yuan zhi zhi 興觀群怨之旨). They, therefore,
did not merit his emulation.9 Rather, his innovation in poetic language aimed to
recover the ancients’ bixing spirit. If bixing as a style refers to the use of explicit
or implicit comparisons to initiate a poem, then the yi (intention) of bixing,
according to the “Great Preface” to the Odes, is to transform social customs or to
criticize political misconduct. Xing guan qun yuan is a canonical description of
the functions of poetry, declared by Confucius (Analects 17.9) in exhorting his
son to study the Odes. Huang seems to suggest that, by recovering the spirit of
9
Huang Zunxian, Huang Zunxian ji, 490.
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
555
the ancients, he was recovering the critical functions of poetry and making it
socially useful.
The fact that Huang, the most innovative poet of his generation, talked
extensively about recovering the “ancient spirit” and emulating archaic styles, is
not necessarily paradoxical. Rather, in the pre-modern Chinese literary tradition
renovations were often couched as a return to antiquity. In the conceptual world
of the classical Chinese language, gu
(the old, the ancient) is juxtaposed with
jin 今 (the present). (There is no monosyllabic term to express the notion of the
future; weilai 未來 , the term used to designate the future, is an imported
Buddhist term, its foreignness revealed by its disyllabic construction.) Thus,
dissatisfaction with the present is often expressed by a call for a return to the past.
According to this binary nomenclature, the gu of yesterday could well become
the jin of tomorrow—as long as both are distinct from the jin of today. The
sixth-century anthology Selections of Refined Literature (Wenxuan 文選), for
example, used the term Ancient Poetry (Gushi 詩) to denote a specific set of
pentasyllabic verses from the Han dynasty in order to chastise the embellishment
and sensuality of contemporary styles. In the Tang, when Regulated Verse (Lüshi
詩), also called the Recent-Style (Jinti 近 ), was moving from the palace to
the mainstream, writers and literary critics began to use the term Ancient-Style to
denote those poems that consciously rebelled against the tightened meters. The
Ancient-Style, therefore, was not truly ancient; it was a self-conscious rebellion
against prescribed rules (of course, in order to have rebelled against them, the
authors must first have fully internalized these rules). 10 This edge of
self-consciousness distinguishes this poetry from the “naïvely” unregulated
pre-Medieval verse.
A primary example of a writer associated with the so-called “Returning to
Antiquity” (fugu 復 ) movement was Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824). Aside from his
archaic poetry, he began to write what he termed Ancient Prose (Guwen 文)
because he considered popular parallel prose overly embellished and bound by
formal restrictions. As Charles Hartman has argued, Han Yu conceived Antiquity
(gu) to be an almost spiritual state, yet it was a state that stood in dialectical
complementarity to jin; “the two states, although distinct, are ultimately identical,
and when each is perfected, ‘Antiquity is now.’”11 Since the classical Chinese
conception of time was not lineal but cyclical (Yijing 易經), “return” (fu 復),
represented by the fu hexagram in the Book of Changes, meant “the coming back
again of something that once existed before, not a going back to something that
will never exist again.”12 The break from the unsatisfactory present is disguised
10
As Xu Xueyi 許學夷 (1563–1633) argued, the Tang poets had studied regulated meters
since childhood, so their ancient-style poems occasionally used regulated couplets (唐人沿襲
朝,自幼便為俳偶聲韻 拘,故盛唐五 ……多雜用
). See Shiyuan bianti, 177 (entry 17.24).
11
Charles Hartman, Han Yu and the T’ang Search for Unity, 218.
12
Ibid.
556
YANG Zhiyi
as continuity—as if the spirit of the past simply returns in an altered costume.
The idealized ancient reflects an envisioned future.
Huang Zunxian, however, never explicitly used the compound fugu as a fixed
term to express his poetic theory. Perhaps it was because times were
changing—enlightened intellectuals were beginning to question ancient
worldviews, and the “new” began to assume ethical value in itself. In just two
decades, various intellectual or political movements would begin to base their
claims to legitimacy on the virtue of being new. This wave of radicalization was
unprecedented in Chinese history. 13 In the pre-modern Chinese discursive
context, the term “new” (xin ) is normally used in addition to the reference to
antiquity, as seen in Wang Mang’s 王 莽 (45 BCE–23 CE) New dynasty
(Xinchao 朝, 8–23), Bai Juyi’s
易 (772–846) New Music Bureau Poetry
(Xinyuefu
樂 府 ), and Wang Anshi’s 王 安 石 (1021–86) New Policies
(Xinzheng 政). New Music Bureau poetry explicitly evokes an institution that
dates back to the Han dynasty (allegedly to even earlier times) and the type of
poetry that it produced. The New dynasty and the New Policies both evoked The
Rites of Zhou (Zhouli 周禮, itself a classic, likely forged in the Han to present an
idealized bureaucratic system which supposedly existed in early Zhou times) as a
blueprint for reformative political design. In all of these cases, the “new”
suggests a rebirth of antiquity. This discursive strategy tacitly acknowledges that,
despite the glorious birth of a certain notion or institution in antiquity, its
development somehow followed a devious path and resulted in an unsatisfactory
present; thus, a second or even third rebirth was needed to correct historical
wrongs. The future will be the redeemed past.
In this regard, a major change in the twentieth century is that the “new” came
to be understood as a radical break from the past. The “new” eclipsed the
“ancient” as the possessor of normative power and was increasingly equated with
the ethically “good.” But even the guardians of the “new” were hesitant to strip
the ancient of all dignity. Early Chinese philosophy, for instance, was frequently
cited as the original ancestor of imported conceptions like liberty or democracy.
In order to justify their efforts to establish a written vernacular as the standard
form for Chinese literature, writers and thinkers argued that ancient poetry, such
as the Book of Odes or Han dynasty Music Bureau poetry, was written in
languages spoken by the common people of early times. Even with its authority
shattered, the ancient was still invited to stamp the birth certificate of the
modern,14 and the complex dynamism between ancient and modern produced
13
Yu Ying-shih, “The Radicalization of China in the Twentieth Century,” 123–43.
Hu Shi, for instance, tried to build a classical lineage for modern vernacular literature—an
effort particularly evident in his preface to Baihua wenxue shi 話文學 , which declares that
all literature written in an “easy, fluent, and relatively colloquial” style to be the precursor of
the modern literary vernacular that he promoted; see Baihua wenxue shi, 7.
14
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
557
hybrid offspring.
This development was already tentatively suggested by Huang’s decision to
call his poetry “New-School Poetry” (xinpai shi 派詩), implying a certain
confidence in his poetic innovations. Nevertheless, I argue that the so-called
“new” in Huang’s terminology is not actually radical newness, which thoroughly
negates the past, but something else, which appears to lie within the traditional
spectrum of variations created by the dialectical movement between the new and
the old. Huang’s “new” likely meant something similar to the “new” of Bai Juyi’s
New Music Bureau Poetry, namely, a revival of certain stylistic elements from
the past in service of the needs and tastes of the present. In other words, his
newness was quantitative and not qualitative. It was not meant to result in the
New Literature that Hu Shi and his generation would promote.
From the perspective of China’s long tradition of normative discourses, it was
not unusual that Huang Zunxian saw his poetry as something that was
simultaneously new and archaic. Many of Huang’s contemporary admirers
noticed the archaism in his poetry: his style was described by Kang Youwei 康
為 (1858–1927) as “rigorous and upright, archaic and refined” (yanzheng guya
嚴
), 15 and by Liu Yanxun 劉燕勛 (dates unknown) as “archaic and
splendid” (guyan 豔).16 The archaism of Huang’s poetry, moreover, went all
the way back to the early period and was described by contemporary intellectuals
as “befriending the spirit of Lisao or Han poetry” (you shen Sao Han 友神騷漢)17
or “inheriting the spirit and marrow of Han and Wei poets” (de Han Wei ren
shensun 得漢魏人神 ).18 Yet, although these figures praised the archaism of his
poetry as originating from Lisao, yuefu, Du Fu, or Han Yu, they also described
him as the “Columbus of the world of [Chinese] poetry” (shishijie zhi Gelunbu
詩 界 之 哥 倫 布 )—a man who discovered a new continent of linguistic
expression.19 The archaism in his poetry was, at the same time, its innovation.
Moreover, the gu in Huang Zunxian’s poetry also refers to a particular genre,
namely, Ancient-Style Verse. As Jerry Schmidt has noted, Huang’s Ancient-Style
Verse in particular has been praised as his finest stylistic achievement
—sometimes at the expense of his regulated verse.20 In Lin Gengbai’s words,
Huang Zunxian’s pentasyllabic or heptasyllabic ancient-style verse “opened a
new path for the students of poetry today.” By that account, they were truly “the
15
See Huang Zunxian ji, 77.
See Liu Yanxun’s colophon, Renjinglu shicao jianzhu, 1089.
17
See Liang Qichao’s colophon, Renjinglu shicao jianzhu, 1086.
18
See, for example, the colophons of Yu Mingzhen 俞 震 (1860–1918) and He Zaoxiang 何
藻翔 (1865–1930), Renjinglu shicao jianzhu, 1084, 1085.
19
See e.g., the colophons of Wen Zhonghe 溫仲和 (1849–1904) and Qiu Fengjia 丘逢
(1864–1912), ibid., 1088.
20
See Jerry Schmidt, Within the Human Realm, 59.
16
558
YANG Zhiyi
poetry of our contemporary age” (zhennai jinshi ye 真乃今詩也).21
Lin’s judgment is intriguing. As discussed earlier, the Ancient-Style emerged
as a self-conscious rebellion against Recent-Style Poetry. In the same spirit,
Huang Zunxian’s revolution was a self-conscious one. His use of vernacular,
dialect, and neologism was carefully balanced within the acceptable boundaries
of the lyrical tradition so that its newness was not so new as to challenge the
conventions of the ancient-style genre per se. His New-School Poetry did not
represent a break from the tradition, nor did it seek to overthrow or replace it.
Rather, Huang’s new poetry represented one more possible variation on the
existing tradition and stood alongside all other classical poetic genres—just as ci
did not replace shi and qu did not replace either shi or ci. Through such
continuous variation, the tradition maintained its vitality through history—and, at
Huang’s time, there was no reason to doubt that this model of “continuity in
variety” would be maintained in the future development of Chinese poetry as
well.
Similarly, in using vernacular, dialect, and translated terms, Huang did not
seek to replace classical literary language, but rather aimed to enrich the
repertoire of possible expression—just as the southern dialects in Chuci,
translated Buddhist terms, Six Dynasties folk songs, and Song dynasty
vernacular lyric songs had already enriched this repertoire. Therefore, unlike
many other modern scholars, I do not believe that he regarded his poetry as only
a transitory stage on the path to a complete transformation into the vernacular.
Indeed, he once compared himself to “a single Puritan standing alone in the
blizzard” (獨立風雪中清教徒之一人), awaiting the Washingtons and Jeffersons of
poetry.22 But nothing suggests that the Washingtons he imagined were similar to
the New Culturalists. Instead, he envisioned the creation of an entirely new genre
(or subgenre) that would continue the tradition of classical verse into the modern
age. In a letter to Liang Qichao, written in the fall of 1902, he proposed to create
a genre of Miscellaneous Songs and Ditties (Za ge yao 雜歌謠). The verse would
be written in a hybrid style that combined elements of dialect and popular folk
tunes with traditional verse style. Its content would focus on modern instead of
ancient matters, and its lines could vary between three, five, seven, nine, or more
syllables.23 The term za ge yao refers to the category “Za ge yao ci” 雜歌謠辭
in the Anthology of Music Bureau Poetry. Poems collected under the heading of
“Za ge yao ci” are the most archaic in the anthology. They are the lyrics of
songs—authentically ancient or imaginatively reconstructed—which allegedly
had folk origins, with the earliest pieces dated to the earliest Chinese civilization
21
22
23
Lin Gengbai, “Jinshi xuan fanli,” cited in Renjinglu shicao jianzhu, 1308.
Huang Zunxian, “Yu Qiu Shuyuan shu” (1902), in Huang Zunxian ji, 478.
“Guangxu ershiba nian bayue ershi ri shouzha,” cited in Renjinglu shicao jianzhu, 1245–46.
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
559
ruled by mythological sages. Many of these songs are prosaic. Huang’s
invocation of the term suggested not only the new genre’s folk origins, but also
its illustrious ancestry—thus giving it the moral significance typically associated
with genres considered to have folk origins, as they were believed to enable the
ruling class to observe the lives of common people. Liang responded to Huang’s
proposal and created a “Miscellaneous Songs and Ditties” column in his New
Fictions (Xin xiaoshuo 小說) magazine. From 1902–5, the journal published a
few dozen poems with customary titles such as New Music Bureau Poems or
Cantonese Folk Ditties (Yue-ou 粵謳). Their efforts also suggested that Huang
was expecting generations of future poets to keep writing in this new style and to
expand its horizons of expression. If such lyric experiments in this and other
traditional genres were continued, they would create a separate realm of modern
poetry that absorbed the full spectrum of the Chinese literary tradition. These
future poets who managed to accomplish the task would be the Washingtons and
Jeffersons of the “New World” that Huang, the “Columbus” of Chinese poetry,
had discovered.
The New Gexing Experiments
The genre gexing has an ancient origin. Many Han dynasty Music Bureau poems
are titled as ge, xing, or gexing. Etymologically, ge is the generic term for songs,
and xing, according to the Ming critic Hu Zhenheng 胡震亨 (1569–1645), refers
to longer narrative songs. 24 In actual fact, the difference between the two
subgenres ge and xing is negligible. Indeed, the Southern Song critic Yan Yu 嚴
25
羽 (active 1197–1245) treated them as one genre. In Tang dynasty poetry,
gexing refers to longer ancient-style poems mostly written in heptasyllabic
meters and often mixed with lines of irregular length. According to Xu Xueyi 許
學夷 (1563–1633), gexing originated from Lisao and venerated “strangeness”
(shang qi 尚 ).26 In contrast to other ancient-style poems, which were “orderly
and structured” (zhengzhi 秩), gexing verses seek to be “unconstrained and
audacious” (yidang 軼蕩).27 Huang thought that his pentasyllabic ancient-style
verses (wugu 五 ) were superior to his heptasyllabic ancient-style verses (qigu
七 , which should include gexing). He praised his wugu as “surpassing [all the
poems in this genre from] the last millennia” (lingkua qiangu 凌跨千 ), while
he modestly claimed that his qigu were merely on a par with the work of Du Fu
24
25
26
27
“Yan qi shi er ge zhi yue xing”
而歌之曰 , Tangyin guiqian, 2.
See Guo Shaoyu, Canglang shihua jiaoshi, 49.
See Shiyuan bianti, 190 (entry 18.4).
Ibid., 197 (entry 18.22).
YANG Zhiyi
560
and Han Yu.28 Yet, I regard his gexing poems as his most innovative. The unique
features of the gexing style allowed him to include modern elements, which
appeared “strange” to those who were used to the established lyrical or aesthetic
conventions. Moreover, multisyllabic translated neologisms were more easily
integrated into a poem with lines of irregular length. The unrestrained boldness
required for a gexing poem also encouraged more syntactic experiments, such as
the use of prosaic, narrative lines. Below, I will illustrate these stylistic features
through an analysis of Huang’s poem on the London fog. 29 Although Jerry
Schmidt has already made a wonderful translation of this poem,30 from which my
translation has benefited, my new translation attempts to follow Huang’s original
poem more closely, especially in terms of parallelism and use of allusions. The
breaks of stanzas are also different, as mine are based on the changes in rhyme.
倫敦大霧
蒼 已死
立
倒海 雲 神
一時
醉帝夢酣
舉國沉迷 失日
芒芒蕩蕩國 荒
冥冥蒙蒙黑甜鄉
坐斗室幾匝
面壁惟 燈 王
時不辨朝夕
地不識南
火焰青
漫漫劫灰黑
28
The Great London Fog
The Black Heaven has died; a Yellow Heaven reigns.31
The ocean overturns, clouds tumble, and hundreds of
gods assemble.
In a moment Heaven is tipsy and the High God falls
into a sound dream;
So that the whole capital is lost in a sunless darkness.
Vast and boundless is the city’s desolation in dimming
light;
Benighted and hazy, like a dark kingdom of sweet dreams.
I have been sitting in a tiny studio for months,
Meditating toward a wall and worshipping only the
King of Lamp Light.
I cannot tell dusk from dawn in terms of time,
Or north from south in terms of space.
Lush, lush―the ghostly green flame;
Endless, endless―the black ashes of kalpa!32
See his letter to Liang Qichao, in Huang Zunxian ji, 502.
For the original poem “Lundun dawu xing,” see Renjinglu shicao jianzhu, 509.
30
See Within the Human Realm, 268–69.
31
This line humorously refers to a rumor invented by the late second century rebels the
Yellow Turban (huangjin 巾). The rumor originally implied that a Yellow Heaven should
replace Black Heaven as ruler (Cangtian yi si Huangtian dang li 蒼 已死
當立). See
Wang Xianqian, Houhanshu jijie, juan 71, 804. Because the Han dynasty ruling house believed
that it possessed the virtue of water (which, according to the Five Phase theory, corresponds to
the color black), the rebels claimed to possess the virtue of earth (which corresponds to the
color yellow), which has the power to control water.
29
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
如渡大漠沙盡
如探巖穴
測
塵塵亦緇
望氣氣 墨
色象無可
眼鼻 并塞
561
Like crossing a desert where all sands are yellow;
Like diving into a cave’s immeasurable depths of darkness.
When the fog transforms into dust, the dust is also black;
When I gaze into the air, the air is like ink.
Its form and appearance cannot be named;
Our eyes and noses are as if corked.
33
豈 盤 氏
When will there be another King Pangu, the giant,
出
再闢
Born to separate Heaven and Earth once again?
又非阿脩羅
Could this be another example of the mischief of Ashura,
攪海水 擊
Who stirs the sea to beat up surging waves?
忽然黑暗無間墮落阿鼻獄
Suddenly we fall into the Avici Hell’s endless
又驚惡風吹船飄至羅刹國
出門寸 不能
九 徧地鈴鐸聲
車馬雞棲匿不出
樓臺蜃氣中含腥
shadows,
And are astonished that a malicious wind
blows our ship to the Rakshasa’s Land.34
When I go outdoors, I can hardly move an inch;
All through the avenues I hear the sound of bells.
Carriages and horses are hiding themselves in the
fog like roosters in the den;
Tall towers are illusory like a mirage, with a sea
monster’s fetid breath.35
The net covering Heaven is sometimes open at one
corner,
紅輪色如血
Revealing a red wheel above, the color of blood.
曖曖曾無射目
Darkened and dimmed, its rays do not hurt the eyes;
涼涼未覺炙手熱
Cooled and chilled, its heat does not warm the hands.
吾聞地球繞日日繞球 I’ve heard our globe circles the sun and makes one
revolution daily;
羅磕匝偶露缺
32
Kalpa refers to the periodic destruction of the universe, a popular belief in Hinduism and
Buddhism.
33
The mythological creator of the Universe, who, with an axe, split the Chaos into Heaven
and Earth.
34
Huang uses a few familiar Buddhist (and Hinduist) terms here. Ashura is a species of
belligerent demigod who often fights against heavenly gods. Avici Hell is the Buddhist hell of
endless suffering. Rakshasa is a kind of bloodthirsty demonic creature that eats human flesh.
35
In early China, a mirage was believed to be an illusion created by the breath of giant clams
(shen 蜃) living in the ocean.
YANG Zhiyi
562
今之英屬遍五洲
赤日 照無不到
華遠被 盡頭
烏知都城不見日
人人反抱
墮憂
Now the British Commonwealth extends over five
continents.
Its judiciary covers wherever the bright sun shines;
Its glory reaches as far as the end of the sky.
But who could imagine that no one in its
capital ever sees the sun;
And everyone is afraid that the sky will fall on his
head?36
I’ve also heard that the earth’s moisture
evaporates and condenses to form rain,
算能知雨
Clever calculation can tell the number of raindrops.
邦本以水為家
This country has always been by the sea,
況 竈煙十萬户
And, in addition, has chimneys from a hundred
thousand households.
倘將四海之霧銖積寸算來 If we calculate all the fogs in the whole world
inch by inch,
或尚不如倫敦城中霧
It might still not come close to the fog in
London Town!
又聞地氣蒸騰
為雨
Despite the length of the poem, the rhyme changes every four or six lines, a
technique that avoids the sense of repetition that would result if the author used
just a single rhyme. Aside from the last couplet, all the other couplets are
pentasyllabic or heptasyllabic―auxiliary interjections such as “I’ve heard,” “I’ve
also heard,” and so on do not count toward the syllabic count, and the longest
couplet (“Suddenly we fall… the Rakshasa’s Land”) is comprised of four
pentasyllabic segments. The last couplet uses syntax that is typical of
Ancient-Prose, thus loosening the lyric rhythm and creating a sense of narrative
purpose for a poem that is mostly descriptive. In terms of vocabulary, for the
most part Huang seems to have deliberately avoided neologism. The only novel
word that appears in the first seven stanzas is Dengguang Wang 燈 王, or King
of [Electronic] Lamp Light, presumably a new kind of Liuli guang Wang 琉璃
王, or Bhaisajyaguru, the Buddha of Medicine and King of Lapis Lazuli Light.
The sixth stanza depicts the perils of driving through the dense fog, as well as the
avenues and tall buildings of London, but the terms that Huang uses—jiuqu 九 ,
chema 車馬, loutai 樓臺—are all deliberately archaic. Huang’s use of traditional
36
Liezi 列子 (1.13) describes an extremely anxious man in Qi 杞 who was constantly
worried that the sky would fall on his head, to the extent that he could hardly sleep or eat. See
Yang Bojun, Liezi jishi, 30–31.
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
563
Chinese terms to depict a modern Western metropolis creates a sense of
familiarity among Huang’s contemporary domestic readers, but also serves to
defamiliarize London for readers who have actually visited the city. Huang
furthermore uses traditional terms to a humorous effect. Only in the last two
stanzas does the author begin to show his new knowledge of astronomy,
geography, meteorology, and world politics. These two stanzas are also more
prosaic. There is not a single parallel couplet, and the lines contain subordinate
clauses, rhetorical questions, conjunctive adverbs, and the subjunctive mood. Yet
the poem ends on a deliberately witty note: the reputation of Great Britain as “the
empire on which the sun never sets” is belied by the fact that its capital, London,
seldom sees the sun. Modern meteorology only serves to support a non-scientific
conjecture, that is, there is more fog in London than in the rest of the world
combined.
Huang Zunxian carefully uses archaism and rhythmic lyricism to
counter-balance sections characterized by neologism and prosaism. Similar
experiments are seen in the verses of other poets of his generation, such as Xia
Zengyou 夏曾佑 (1863–1924) and Qiu Fengjia 丘逢
(1864–1912). Liang
Qichao also followed Huang’s example and wrote poems such as “Song of
Leaving the Fatherland” (Quguo xing 去國 ), “Song of the Twentieth-Century
Pacific” (Ershi shiji Taipingyang ge 十 紀 平洋歌), “Song of Patriotism”
(Aiguo ge 愛國歌), “Song on the Eight Worthies in Poetry, Expanded” (Guang
shizhong baxian ge 廣詩中 賢歌), and so forth. These poems are prosaic and
argumentative, and they use neologism and translated terms to demonstrate the
author’s understanding of the modern world. “Song of the Twentieth Century
Pacific,”37 in particular, is an ambitious poem that limns world history, the
discovery of the New World, and the beginning of modernity. The poem
frequently uses irregular longer lines mixed with more regular lines in
pentasyllabic or heptasyllabic meters. As this poem is quite long, I have only
translated the first stanza (which shows extreme variations in prosody).
亞洲大陸
自 任
盡瘁國
斷
不得志
胡服走扶桑
扶桑之
37
一士
梁
讀
尚友既一載
See Liang Qichao quanji, 5426–27.
On the Asian Continent there is a Scholar
Who called himself Rengong and whose
family name is Liang.
He dedicated himself to the affairs of the state,
but his ambition was thwarted;
He ended up cutting his hair and escaping in
foreign garb to the Kingdom of the Sun.
Dwelling in Japan for a year spent in reading
YANG Zhiyi
564
耳目神氣頗
少年
弧四方誌
未敢久戀蓬萊鄉
逝將適彼 界共和政 之祖國
問政求學觀
乃于西 一千
九十九年
臘 晦日之夜半
舟橫渡
平洋
時人靜
黑夜悄悄
怒波碎打寒星芒
海底蛟龍睡初起
欲噓未噓欲舞未舞深潛藏
時彼士兀然坐
澄心攝慮逰窅茫
住華嚴法界第
帝網深處無
38
觀
鏡影涵
旁
and befriending kindred spirits,
His horizon has broadened, his appearance
changed.
Since his youth he had always admired heroes
and desired to see the world;
So he does not dare to linger in the Fairyland
of Penglai.
He shall travel to the fatherland of the
world’s Republicans,
To study its form of government, seek
knowledge, and observe its grandeur.
Thus at midnight of the last day of the last
month of Eighteen Ninety-Nine in the
Western Calendar,
He is riding a tiny boat across the Pacific
Ocean.
At this moment men are at rest, the moon
dark, and the night tranquil,
Raging waves break asunder the bristles of
cold star-light.
Dragons at the bottom of the sea are just
waking up from slumber,
They have yet to breathe and dance,
but are hiding deep.
At this moment the scholar is sitting alone;
With meditative mind and gathered thoughts
his spirit is roaming in the Great Void.
He has reached the third phase of contemplation
in the dharma’s realm of Flower Garland,38
Deep in the bejeweled net in the Lord of
Heaven’s palace,39 infinite mirror images
swim around him.
In the Huayan (Avatamsaka, or Flower Garland) School of Buddhism, the three phases are:
“the contemplation of true emptiness” (zhenkong guan 真 觀); “the contemplation of the
principles and the phenomena that do not hamper each other” (lishi wu’ai guan 理 無礙觀);
and “the contemplation of the total acceptance” (zhoubian hanrong guan 周遍含容觀).
39
According to the Avatamsaka Sutra, a vast net hangs in the palace of Indra, Lord of Heaven,
and its strands are joined together by jewels. When light reflects onto one of the jewels, the
same light is reflected and re-reflected endlessly throughout the expanse of the net. This
metaphor expresses the concept of mutual interpenetration.
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
驀然忽想今夕何夕地何地
乃在
舊
紀之界線
東西
半球之中央
不自
不自
置
界第一關鍵之津梁
胸中萬千塊壘突兀起
斗酒傾盡蕩氣回中腸
獨飲獨語
曼聲浩歌歌
無賴
十 紀 平洋
565
All of a sudden he reflects, “Which night is
tonight, and where am I?
I am right at the moment when the new
century is being divided from the old,
And in the middle of the eastern and western
halves of the globe.
It is neither before
nor after me —
I am upon the world’s most vital bridge!”
Thousands of emotions rise sharply from my
chest;
And as I wash them down with a goblet of
wine, my bowels stir.
Ah, in vain am I toasting and talking to
myself;
So instead I sing a slow, heroic song on my
Twentieth Century Pacific!
This poem was written in 1900, during Liang’s trip from Japan to America. The
entire poem has 1,539 characters. Aside from a few auxiliary interjections, there
are 85 couplets, with a few couplets consisting of three instead of two lines. Each
couplet rhymes with /-ang/, with 18 couplets in which both lines rhyme, so that
altogether there are 104 characters at the end of a line that rhyme with /-ang/.
Even though a few rhyme words are used more than once, the poem still
represents an extraordinary display of lyric skill. The rhyming is condensed,
particularly toward the ending, with couplets 78−83 all containing double
rhyming lines. The last two couplets again restore the ABCB rhyming scheme
and use more prosaic syntax to release the cascading lyric tension. The formal
tour-de-force is matched in content by the author’s ostensible display of his
erudition in the classical Chinese intellectual tradition, modern geography, world
history, and Western politics. Many interlineal notes are employed to instruct the
reader. For instance, into a line describing a “divine bird flying on winged
神鳥翔), he inserts a note explaining that when Columbus
wheels” ( 輪
arrived in America, the natives thought he was a god, because they mistook the
sails on his ship to be gigantic bird wings. For another line that mentions the
“four great kinds of freedom” (四大自 ), his notes explain that these refer to the
freedoms of thought, speech, action, and press. The prosodic variation and
prosaic syntax, coupled with the overwhelming exhibition of skill and erudition,
suit the pedagogic purpose of the poem.
A closer examination of the section translated above demonstrates that the
voice morphs freely from third-person to first-person narrative. The opening
566
YANG Zhiyi
recalls the line “In the East there is a scholar” (東方 一士) from the eponymous
poem by Tao Qian 陶潛 (352? –427?); and the second line echoes the couplet
“The clan of Qin has a good daughter / who named herself Luofu” 秦氏 好女/
自 為羅
from the anonymous Han yuefu poem “Mulberries on the Path”
(Moshangsang
桑). The way in which Liang Qichao introduces himself in
the third-person emulates Lisao, where, at the beginning, the authorial voice of
Qu Yuan introduces his ancestry, the origin of his name, and his frustration at
state affairs. Another reference to early poetry is seen in the line: “It is neither
before/nor after me,” which is a direct quotation from the Ode “The First Month”
(“Zhengyue”
, Mao 191). These lines are interlaced with neologisms and
references to Buddhist canons; a number of lines seem prosaic and almost
vernacular; and the length of the lines shows the deliberate creation of an entirely
hybrid work. Yet, in general, all these variations are built upon the combination
of traditional meters in units of two, three, four, and five syllables, and their
grammar does not exceed the limits of flexibility of the classical Chinese literary
language. These variations are carefully calculated to make sure that the verse is
innovative, but not so innovative that it breaks the acceptable conventions of the
genre. In comparison to Huang’s “Great London Fog,” Liang’s poem is even
bolder. Liang follows Huang’s pioneering style in combining archaism with
innovation, but, unlike Huang, pays little attention to formal regularity or
semantic parallelism.
Classicism as a Choice
The stylistic experiments of the Late Qing Poetic Revolution were continued by
some poets of the Southern Society (Nanshe 南社; active 1909–23), a group of
progressive intellectuals founded in Suzhou on November 13, 1909. At its peak,
the Society had more than 1180 registered members, whose networks reached as
far as Japan, Southeast Asia, and America. The longest-serving chair of the
Society was Liu Yazi, whose poetry was much indebted to the reformist tradition
of Huang Zunxian (though he fashioned himself more after Gong Zizhen 龔自珍
[1792–1841], another innovative Late Qing poet, whom Liu saw as Huang’s
predecessor).
At the time of its foundation, the Southern Society’s leading poets perceived
their main rivals to be the late Qing Tongguang poets, whose refined, erudite, and
traditionalist style was part of the “old world” that they aimed to overthrow.
However, the radical New Literature, which began to assume preeminence in
intellectual circles in 1917, promoted the exclusive use of a constructed written
vernacular for all literary forms (foremost among them poetry). At this point, the
Southern Society poets suddenly found themselves branded as “conservatives,” a
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
567
label with which they struggled to cope. 40 The rise of vernacular poetry
threatened to shrink the Southern Society poets’ presence in published media. A
case in point is the literary supplement to the Shanghai Republican Daily
(Minguo ribao 民國日報), which had been the official bulletin of the Southern
Society for years and exclusively published the classical-style literary works of
its members. However, as the Chief Editor, Shao Lizi 邵力子 (1882–1967),
increasingly turned to Marxism, the supplement published its first vernacular
poem on August 22, 1919. By the following year, classical poetry had
disappeared entirely from its pages. Thus, with New Literature rising to claim the
mainstream, a poet’s continued composition in the classical style became a
gesture of resistance against the Westernized modernity that the New Literature
represented or, at least, reflected a conscious decision to continue the classical
tradition. The Southern Society poets continued to carry out various stylistic
experiments to keep classicist poetry relevant in an increasingly modern world.
Like the gexing poems of Huang Zunxian and Liang Qichao, the compositions of
Southern Society members Lin Gengbai and Liu Yazi are hybrid and
experimental. However, Lin and Liu’s work is more radical in style and
illustrates their deliberate attempt to push the classical genre to its limits.
Lin Gengbai’s conception of poetry bore important similarities to Huang
Zunxian’s. Like Huang, Lin had studied a wide range of earlier poetry.41 He
emphasized the importance of competing with the ancients instead of being
restricted by them. Also like Huang, he was confident enough to declare that his
poetry had surpassed that of Du Fu, let alone Zheng Xiaoxu 鄭 孝 胥
(1860–1938), the representative Tongguang poet. 42 Lin composed some
vernacular poems, which are rhymed and show certain regularity in metrical
patterns. According to Lin, despite the immediate popularity of vernacular poetry
shortly after 1917, by the early 1930s the sales figures for vernacular verse had
fallen so low that bookstores refused to sell them (this was especially true for
freestyle poems). Lin boasted that he had not only reinvented classical-style
poetry to depict modern life, but was also opening a new epoch in vernacular
poetry. 43 His habitual megalomaniac posture aside, his classical-style verse
usually abided by traditional genre conventions, even though it embraced
linguistic simplicity and neologism. The poem in which he shows the greatest
stylistic innovation is “Alas, Where Shall I Go?—Matching a Poem by [Wang]
40
The Southern Society poets responded in diverse and intellectual sophisticated ways to the
challenges posed by the rise of the New Culture Movement. For more on this group, see Yang
Zhiyi, “The Tower of Going Astray: The Paradox of Liu Yazi’s Lyric Classicism.”
41
See Liu Yazi, “Lin Gengbai jiazhuan,” in Libailou yiji, 1227–28.
42
See “Libailou shihua,” in Libailou yiji, 983.
43
See “Jielou suibi,” in Libailou yiji, 775.
YANG Zhiyi
568
Lixi” (Wuhu wu jiang an wang xi he Lixi 嗚呼吾將安往 和禮錫),44 written
around 1939. Because Lin’s poem is explicitly a matching poem, I will shortly
introduce Wang Lixi’s poem as well. Despite the latter’s stylistic freedom, Lin’s
matching poem shows greater boldness and innovation.
Wang Lixi was a poet and leftist KMT member whose activism led to his
repeated exile to Europe in 1933 and 1934–38. The Chinese and English poems
that he wrote during his exiles were collected as Manuscripts in Exile (Quguo
cao 去國草) and published in the wartime capital of Chongqing in 1939. Most of
these poems are written in regular archaic or regulated styles. The poem “Alas,
Where Shall I Go!” (Wuhu wu jiang an wang xi 嗚呼吾將安往 ),45 however,
shows greater lyrical freedom—apparently inspired by the innovative poetry of
Huang Zunxian and Liang Qichao, on the one hand, and by “Summons of the
Soul” (Zhaohun 魂) in Chuci, on the other. Each stanza begins with the same
rhetorical question that comprises the title of the verse. As in “Summons of the
Soul,” the work depicts the four directions (east, south, west, and north), each in
a stanza, only to find havoc and destruction in every direction. The speaker then
ponders whether or not to stay in England, but he is overcome by the London
smog and bourgeois hypocrisy, which disgust him. He ends by declaring:
嗚呼長
異邦
心神摧
吾安往 吾欲
無論 生快死
如處女之靜
抑如脫兔之
或得 頭而溺
或得 而食 肉寢 皮
火 而風
灰
必
一日民氣伸
四萬萬心如一心
四萬萬人如一人
與 地日
不朽
44
45
Alas! A long dwelling in a foreign country
breaks my heart!
Where shall I go? I want to return!
Regardless if I will preserve my life or die a
quick death,
Regardless if I will live quietly like an
unmarried maiden,
or advance fast like an escaped rabbit dashing
home.
I will either pee in my enemies’ skulls,
or seize them, eat their flesh, sleep on their
skins, burn their bodies, and scatter the
ashes in the wind!
There will be a day when our people’s
spirit lifts,
when the four hundred million hearts are united
as one,
and the four million people act as one person.
Until then, shall the soul of China never die,
See Libailou yiji, 497–98.
Wang Lixi, “Wuhu wu jiang an wang xi,” in Wang Lixi shiwen ji, 530–31.
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
中華之魂
569
eternal like Heaven and Earth, the
Sun and the Moon!
This stanza includes two rhyming sequences, as indicated by the line break. The
poet imagines the worst possible death for his enemies—apparently referring to
the invading Japanese army. (The Chinese version conjures up less graphic
images than the English translation; he uses only clichéd phrases of hatred,
which strike the reader as more palatable and are not to be taken literally.)
Despite his uncertainty about his personal future, he remains hopeful and
anticipates China’s collective rebirth as a unified nation. The longest line in this
stanza, which is also the longest in the whole poem, contains seventeen
characters, but its syntax allows it to be easily broken into smaller, regular units.
The same holds true for other longer lines in the poem. In comparison to the
poetic personas of Huang and Liang, Wang Lixi (or at least his poetic persona) is
no longer in awe of the vast world beyond. Rather, he sees the world as full of
peril and is sickened by the modern malaise, even though he is well versed in
Western culture, as demonstrated by his references to Shakespeare and Shelley in
the fifth stanza of the poem and his composition of English poetry. As a writer of
classicist verse, Wang Lixi was not only able to choose among various available
genres, but also able to choose among languages, as he wrote poems in both
Chinese and English.
Lin Gengbai’s matching song is even more interesting than Wang’s original
verse. Lin follows the original only in its basic structure of listing the four
directions and in using the words for the directions as rhyme categories.
Otherwise, Lin’s poem is not restricted by the original. Most of the lines are
heptasyllabic, but there is no observable pattern to his movement between
heptasyllabic and uneven lines. Almost every line rhymes, and, aside from some
common allusions which are easy to comprehend, the poem does not seek to
achieve stylistic erudition or elegance. Rather, it reads as somewhat akin to a
freestyle anti-colonial, pro-Communist treatise. The tone is also optimistic, as we
see in the first stanza:
嗚呼吾安往 吾 東
扶桑之水可以濯 胸
欲一蹴落日紅
盡驅
士親勞農
盡收
坂之金銀鋼鐵銅
Alas! Where shall I go? I go to the east!
The Sea of Japan can wash my chest.
I would like to kick the round red ball of the
setting sun,
to drive all the warriors to befriend the laborers
and farmers,
and to collect all the gold, silver, steel, iron, and
YANG Zhiyi
570
日本中華本弟
胡為 革猶洶洶
少壮之欲方無窮
臣
老两耳聾
蛇
商與
財賦已竭聚敛
軍興十室今九
望
思子多婦翁
相煎萁豆使 心忡忡
孰云久戰中國必無幸
如
足之蟲彼狂童
彼又如暴富之家嬰災
淺者但聞飛機大炮
唐克之車聲隆隆
危疑恐惧震厥
安得一朝紫氣生日宫
萬鐵錘鐮刀之眾歌
東方携手車
炎
之裔大和風
bronze from the hillocks46 [for peace].
Japan and China have always been brethren;
So why should it wage a war against China, a
fierce fight that never ends?
The young Turks’ [territorial] lust cannot
be satiated;
The senior establishment turns a deaf ear
[to criticism].
The merchants and entrepreneurs work either
for or with them, hand in glove.
Normal taxation has been exhausted, and they
resort to plunder.
Since the militarization began, young men are
depleted;
wives long for their husbands, and fathers miss
their sons.
The fratricidal war pains my heart.
Who says that China cannot survive a prolonged
fight?
We are resourceful and will die hard, and our
enemy is an arrogant brat.
Like a misbehaving upstart he will pay
in the future.
Shallow people only hear the roaring sounds of
planes, canons, and tanks;
so that they feel endangered, become
apprehensive, and shake to the core.
Shall there be a day when the purple aura
of fortune rises from the sun,
中 And the crowd of a million, raising their hammers
and sickles, sing?
The whole East is united under the same
institutions and culture;
The offspring of Yan-Huang joins the Yamato
people.
46
The term sanban 坂 does not lend itself to easy interpretation. I failed to identify a
reference to any real Japanese place name or conventional expression. I therefore chose to stay
with the original meaning of ban as “hills, slopes,” and understand “three” as pars pro toto,
referring to “all.”
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
青
日之旗
櫻花之
蒼
大醉傾千鐘
571
The Blue Sky with a White Sun banner flies above
the clouds,
And underneath the cherry blossoms, I shall wash
away my worries with a thousand goblets
of wine.
Unlike Wang, who sees cosmic destruction in every direction, Lin analyzes the
political situation in Japan closely and argues that the war is unsustainable for the
Japanese economy. China, in contrast, is a big country that could survive a
prolonged war. As a KMT leftist, Lin was a disciple of Marxism and thus
believed that by awakening the laborers, China and Japan could work hand in
hand in the future and realize a genuine Pan-Asianism. This certainly did not
mean an East Asian order dominated by Japanese militarism, but instead referred
to an anti-imperialist political ideal upheld by many Chinese at the time,
including Sun Yat-sen.
Stylistically, aside from one line (“Who says that China cannot survive a
prolonged fight?”), every line ends with /-ong/, a rhyme category decided by the
first line, which ends with the direction of “east” (dong 東 ). This style is
commonly known as Boliang Style 柏梁 , its origin traced by to a group poetic
composition by the emperor Han Wudi 漢 帝 (156–87 BCE; r. 141–87 BCE)
and his courtiers. The Boliang Style is used more often in heptasyllabic poems;
applying it to an extensive gexing with uneven line lengths is quite unusual, but it
increases the sense of phonetic archaism.
The unusual rhyming scheme is important in determining where line breaks
occur in lines like the following:
又不見蘇維埃之國無
官污吏亦無一人日騖聲色玉帛營第宅
Don’t you also see that in the Soviet Land there are no corrupt bureaucrats
and no one who daily lusts for sensual pleasures and luxury goods or is
preoccupied with building mansions for himself.
The line contains 26 characters in total, and the rhyme is determined by the last
character zhai 宅, which in classical Chinese has the entering tone (rusheng 入
聲 ) and rhymes with “north” (bei
). The meter is comprised of highly
fragmentary units of 3–5–1–4–1–3–2–4–3. In general, lines in Chinese classical
poetry contain only two or three caesurae, usually between bi-, tri-, or
tetrasyllabic units, as is still seen in poems by Huang Zunxian, Liang Qichao, and
Wang Lixi. In Lin’s poem, however, the classical meter is occasionally crushed
to its building blocks and reassembled into something highly unusual. Certainly,
it is also possible to break the line in the middle, namely before the yiwu 亦無
(“and no”). Adding a break here would make the line into a couplet with the
572
YANG Zhiyi
“running-water” syntactic structure. But since li 吏 is in the departing tone and
does not rhyme with the rest of the stanza, adding a break here does not seem
natural. Moreover, even the addition of a line break would not change the highly
unusual metric structure.
Wang and Lin’s poems both use the gexing style to make political arguments.
The lyrical form increases the emotional appeal of the argument, and the
archaism further relates their poems to the long tradition of “recitations on
history” (yongshi 詠 ) poetry, a subgenre that expresses the author’s judgments
about illustrious historical figures or political events. On the one hand, the
evocation of the classical tradition lends weight to their arguments, amplifying
them in the echo chamber of genre history. On the other hand, the strident spirit
of innovation makes this verse what I have termed a Classicist Verse—namely, a
verse that borrows elements and some genre conventions from the classical
tradition, but is otherwise unrestricted by it. A Classicist poem represents the
author’s conscious choice to elaborate on the subject matter using this particular
classical genre, when other modern genres are available. In contrast to his
Classicist verse, Lin Gengbai’s vernacular poems are usually about his romantic
sentiments, suggesting a division between classicist and modernist verse that
characterized his use of these genres—just as, beginning in the Song dynasty, the
shi and ci genres were used to treat different subject matter (with shi being a
public genre and ci a largely private one).
Both Wang and Lin died soon after their respective poems were written.
Therefore, we do not know if, given more time, they would have carried on such
stylistic experiments. However, a group of poems by Liu Yazi, Lin Gengbai’s
closest friend, written in the 1940s in Guilin, pushed stylistic innovation even
further—to the extent that the New Gexing style seemed to be on the verge of
disintegrating into modern prose poetry. We do not know if Liu was directly
inspired by Lin’s experiment, apart from the fact that at the time he was
co-editing Lin’s posthumous anthology 47 with Lin’s wife, Lin Beili 林 麗
(1916–2006), a project that they completed in 1944. Regardless of whether there
was any direct influence, the stylistic affinity is quite notable.
Liu Yazi’s poetry and his literary theories were intriguing in and of themselves.
In contrast to Lin Gengbai’s confidence in his vernacular poetry, Liu only wrote
three vernacular poems in his entire life; he admitted that they were no good, as
the classical meter had become too natural for him. This presents a rather curious
paradox because Liu Yazi began to adhere to radical literary theories in the early
1920s and supported the complete vernacularization, if not Romanization, of the
Chinese language. Yet he simply could not bring himself to write vernacular
47
The anthology was called Libailou yiji and was finally published in 1996 by Renmin
University Press in Beijing.
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
573
poems.48 The majority of his poems are regulated verse. Even though sometimes
his writing appears to be fast and facile, the regulated prosodic structure remains
well-maintained, proving that Liu had fully internalized this structure. In the
1940s, however, he wrote a series of long experimental poems that stylistically
followed the New Gexing experiments of earlier poets and were quite radical.
This series starts with a long song written extemporaneously—at least according
to the title—on the morning of February 12, 1941.49 It appears to have been
written in response to Guo Butao’s 郭步陶 (1879–1962) lament that vernacular
poetry was replacing classical-style verse. In the poem, Liu argues that it is
natural for the new to replace the old, and that in the future there would be great
vernacular poets on a par with the poets of the past. His argument on behalf of
vernacular poetry, however, is expressed entirely in regular heptasyllabic meter.
Only toward the end of the poem does the verse become a true gexing,
employing longer lines and neologism to discuss the future of domestic and
international politics. The writing is stridently casual and straightforward, as if
the speaker were simply expressing his opinions in an animated conversation.
Similar use of the irregular gexing form as a medium to discuss international
politics is seen in another poem written by Liu in October 1941 as a response to
General Chen Xiaowei’s 陳孝 威 (1893–1974) poem for President Franklin
Roosevelt.50 Perhaps because it was written to address an American president,
this poem shows a clear awareness of stylistic experiment. Regulated
heptasyllabic sections are interlaced with longer lines that are mostly
argumentative.
Liu composed a third poem, which I will cite and discuss in greater detail here,
in Guilin on May 5, 1944, to celebrate a new Poet’s Day in the Gregorian
Calendar. Far away from the wartime violence, scenic Guilin had become a
haven for many cultural celebrities. Liu Yazi had come to Guilin in June 1942
after barely escaping from fallen Hong Kong. On May 30, 1941, in honor of the
Duanwu 端 午 (or Duanyang 端 陽 ) festival, which, according to tradition,
commemorates the death of patriotic poet Qu Yuan, these refugee intellectuals
celebrated the first Poet’s Day (Shirenjie 詩 人 節 ). The Chairman of the
48
The same paradox can be observed in the life and work of Liu’s “poetry friend” Mao
Zedong. When Mao’s classical-style poems were first collected and published in 1957 in the
first issue of Shikan 詩刊, he asserted that young people should never follow his suit and
declared that classical-style poetry was a “dead form.” See Yang Zhiyi, “Classical Poetry in
Modern Politics: Liu Yazi’s PR Campaign for Mao Zedong,” 226.
49
Liu Yazi, “Shi’er ri chenqi cheng changge yishou bucheng Butao Chenlou shuangcan” 十
日晨起 長歌一首補呈 陶茞樓雙粲, in Mojianshi shiciji, 927–28.
50
Liu Yazi, “Chen Xiaowei jiangjun yi fu zeng Meilijian Dazongtong Luosifu shi shi suohe
manchou changju” 陳孝威將軍以賦贈美利堅大總統羅 福氏詩索和漫酬長 , in Mojianshi
shiciji, 933.
574
YANG Zhiyi
ceremony was Yu Youren 于 任 (1879–1964). After arriving in Guilin, Liu
Yazi argued that the ancient festival should be celebrated on May 5 of the
Gregorian calendar. Since Sun Yat-sen had formally assumed the Presidency on
May 5, 1921, and Sun could also write classical-style verse, the day should be
made into a New Poet’s Day (Xin shirenjie 詩人節)—so that the holiday
commemorated not a poet who died out of loyalty to a tyrant, but one who
founded a new nation. Liu wrote a long poem to argue in favor of the change in
the festival’s name. The first half is translated below.51
May First, May Third,52 May Fourth, May
Seventh,53 and again May Ninth54—
Blood and tears fill my chest, and I can hardly
bear to toast a cup of wine.
獨 詩人佳節五五時日良
The only good day is May Fifth, the Poet’s Day.
況在文 圣城
安故郡
How much more so that I’m in [Guilin,] this holy
江號相思峰獨秀
city of culture, the ancient town of Shi’an,
where the river’s name is Romantic Longing
and the mountain is called Solitary Beauty.
端陽吊屈據亂 于
The mourning for Qu Yuan at the Duanyang
Festival in this chaotic wartime began with Yu,
Mr. Beard;55
移宮 羽 平改制吳江柳
The one who altered the tune and changed the
institution in a peaceful manner was Liu [Yazi]
from Wujiang.56
昌創義 大功未竟
The Wuchang Uprising failed to accomplish
乃 非常總統粵都之 位
the great feat [of national revolution], hence
we have the Extraordinary President’s
swearing in at Guangzhou.57
雙十雙五 儼如 妹 雙偶 The Double Tenth and the Double Fifth are
like a lovely pair of sisters.
五一 五
五四 五七
更五九
填胸血淚未忍酹杯酒
51
“Shiri jucanhui jishi,” 是日聚餐會紀 , in Mojianshi shiciji, 1193–94.
Memorial Day for the Ji’nan Incident, which occurred on May 3, 1928, when the Japanese
army attacked Ji’nan and killed more than 2000 civilians.
53
Memorial Day for Japan’s ultimatum, the Twenty-One Demands, 1915.
54
Memorial Day for Yuan Shikai’s 袁 凱 (1859–1916) government’s acceptance of the
Twenty-One Demands, 1915.
55
Yu Youren’s style name was Rangong
, or Mr. Beard.
56
He proposed a new Poet’s Day and changed the date from the Han Calendar to May 5 of the
Gregorian Calendar. Wujiang (in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province) was Liu’s hometown.
57
The Wuchang Uprising on October 10, 1911 resulted only in Yuan Shikai’s “stealing” the
victory of the national revolution. Sun Yat-sen assumed the title of the Extraordinary President
(feichang dazongtong 非常大總統) on May 5, 1921 in Guangzhou, thus beginning the northern
expeditions against the Beiyang 洋 warlords.
52
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
中山 生況能詩
歌風真見尼山又
東方西方革命
卬須孫
列
聖人
心友
大師更 馬克思
病理生理一以 之
奚須偏袒分
五 五日紀念多
尊孫壽馬 美俱 并
豈徒憑弔 沙叟
夏
周
楚曆
秦曆汗漫那能理
何以報功崇德近代哲人茂
575
Moreover, Mr. Sun Yat-sen can also write poetry;
The style of his songs is like encountering
another Confucius.
Two Sages of the Revolution in the East and the
West—
the admirable Sun Yat-sen and Lenin share
the same soul.
I further venerate Karl Marx, the Grand Master,
whose theory is a single thread running through
pathology and physiology – why should we
show favoritism to the left or the right?
There are so many anniversaries on May Fifth!
We venerate Sun’s presidency and celebrate
Marx’s birthday, because their merits are
peerless, instead of simply mourning the old
man who embraced sand [Qu Yuan, who
committed suicide by jumping in the Miluo
River].
Furthermore, the calendars of Xia, Zhou, Chu,
and Qin are too confusing for us to
determine the actual date [of Qu Yuan’s death].
Why shouldn’t we instead reward the deeds and
merit of a modern man of illustrious virtue?
Even though the gexing style is known for its strangeness, this poem is still a
curiosity. In comparison to Lin Gengbai’s easy style, Liu’s poems are erudite in
an eccentric way, as he mixes classical, modern, Chinese, and Western references.
The rhyme scheme is the only way to determine the line breaks for lines of
extraordinary length and complex syntax. Aside from the first couplet, in which
both lines rhyme, the rest of the poem rhymes every two lines. Still, modern
punctuation helps us to read this poem. Classical Chinese texts have little need
for punctuation, since usually there are particles, parallelism, and meters to help
the reader break up the lines. In particular, classical poetry has no use for markers
of line breaks, because its rhyme pattern is generally easy to detect and line
lengths are regular. Modern punctuation was introduced into poetry only with the
emergence of freestyle vernacular poems, first used in the fourth issue of The
New Youth (Xin qingnian 青年), in January 1918. In Liu Yazi’s poem, however,
line breaks are needed since the rhyming words /-ou/ are few and far between,
while many sentences are long and highly prosaic. Even when, relying on the
rhyme scheme, one breaks the poem into lines and couplets, the couplet structure
is idiosyncratic. For example, the syntax within each line is so complicated that
576
YANG Zhiyi
some lines (see lines 4, 7, 14, and 16) include a few clauses or separate sentences.
Modern punctuation greatly helps the reader’s comprehension of these lines. This
poem can be categorized as classical-style verse only because of the meter and
some of the stylistic conventions. Although less than one-third of the lines are
heptasyllabic, some longer lines (such as lines 4, 8, 14, and 16) also contain
semantic units that are heptasyllabic. These longer lines also contain tetrasyllabic
and pentasyllabic units, mixed with bisyllabic or trisyllabic elements. The
prosodic complexity of the poem is unprecedented. Except for one couplet
toward the end of the poem (which is not quoted here), there are no parallel
couplets in the poem, but parallelism within a line (a technique called juzhongdui
中對) is used extensively. Neologism is used so frequently that it is taken for
granted; it is employed without flourish and sometimes even abbreviated to form
parallel phrases, as seen in the lines “pathology and physiology” (bingli shengli
病理生理) or to “venerate Sun’s presidency and celebrate Marx’s birthday” (zun
Sun shou Ma 尊孫壽馬). What began as innovation by Huang Zunxian had
become convention for Liu Yazi.
The lyric freedom shown in this poem finds no parallel in previous gexing
poetry. It is possible that Liu’s versatility in classical poetry enabled him to
compose poems in classical meters and grammar without deliberately trying to
do so. This skill gave him great freedom to incorporate modern elements and
break down genre conventions. If we compare this poem to the other
compositions discussed above, we can trace a lineage of New Gexing poems
from Huang Zunxian all the way down to Liu Yazi’s generation. However, by the
time Liu Yazi was active, New Gexing poems had become so radically different
from standard gexing poems that the generic label had begun to lose its meaning.
In my opinion, poems such as Liu Yazi’s verse on New Poet’s Day may be more
aptly termed classicist poems, because their invocation of the classical tradition
represents a conscious stylistic choice. Whereas neither Huang nor Liang could
envision writing poems in freestyle form or in the vernacular, Lin and Liu could.
The fact that they continued to embrace classical generic and linguistic features,
even while including a great deal of Western and vernacular elements, is
significant. It is perhaps not a coincidence Lin and Liu’s New Gexing poems
were argumentative and commented on political matters. The semi-classical form
allows them to more easily draw upon historical precedents to comment upon the
current situation. For instance, Lin’s poem uses the metaphor “burning bean
stems to cook beans” (xiangjian qidou 相煎萁豆) for “fratricidal fight.” This
phrase refers to a poem credited to Cao Zhi
植 (192–232), which he
supposedly composed impromptu when his brother Cao Pi
(187–226)
wanted to kill him. Similarly, Liu Yazi’s poem uses the phrase “embracing the
sand” (huaisha 沙). Anyone with a basic knowledge of the classical lyric
tradition would know immediately that this phrase refers to Qu Yuan’s chosen
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
577
means of suicide and evokes a sense of patriotic pathos. In this way, the past is
used to shed light upon the present, amplifying the expressive space of the poem.
Moreover, the semi-classical language also allows for the formulation of pithy, if
sometimes odd, phrases (like the aforementioned zun Sun shou Ma). This
pithiness, typical in classical poetry when a well-known personality is referred to
only by one character in his or her name, enables the poet to provide the greatest
amount of information within the limited space of the poem.
Curiously, Liu did not continue his poetic experimentation. Aside from a few
poems,58 such experimentation largely disappeared from Liu’s poetry, and he
continued to write in predominantly regulated meters. This may have been a
conscious decision, since even in Lin’s modern gexing songs, the most
memorable lines are often relatively regular (e.g., “In the best of the times there
is no marriage, and in the secondary ones there is free love”
無婚姻, 次乃
59
自 ). Both of these lines are written in pentasyllabic ancient-style meter, but
the relatively conservative form does not prevent them from being strikingly bold
and novel in content. So, it is entirely possible that Liu simply did not like to
write structurally radical poems. It is hard to say what he thought of them—he
never mentioned them in his critical writing or letters, making his experiment a
silent and largely unnoticed one. However, the existence of such radical poems
proves that his stylistic reversal was as self-conscious as was his decision to
write radical verse. He continued to experiment with various innovations, though
in a less strident fashion.
Coda
The relatively free form of the gexing style imbued it with the potential to
transform into a modern genre with a wide range of functions. For instance, it
was used to translate multi-stanza foreign poems. According to Li Sichun’s 李思
純 preface to his Xianhe ji 仙河 , an anthology of translated French poetry first
published in the journal Critical Review (Xueheng 學 ),60 there were three
styles of translated Western poetry. Ma Junwu’s 馬 君
(1881–1940)
58
For instance, “Fang Guanyinshan jisih” 訪 觀 音 山 紀
(1944), in Mojianshi shiciji,
1200–1202; “Shixi Suye Fangke zhaoyan Lügong badie jiuzi yun” 是夕素
方可 宴綠宮
疊九字韻 (1944), ibid., 1202–3; and “Shixi Xi’nan diyijie xiju zhanlan dahui juxing bimu
dianli […]” 是夕西南第一 戲劇展覽大會舉 閉幕典禮[…](1944), ibid., 1215–16.
59
“Nankang Liu Zehong nüshi wanshi” 南康劉澤宏女士挽詩 (1946), in Mojianshi shiciji,
1416.
60
Critical Review had ties to the Southern Society. Of the four founders, Mei Guangdi 梅 迪
(1890–1945) and Hu Xiansu 胡 骕 (1894–1968) were both members of the Southern Society,
and Wu Mi 吳宓 (1894–1978) and Liu Yizheng 柳詒徵 (1880–1956) were also friends with
Southern Society leaders.
578
YANG Zhiyi
translations were in strictly regulated classical meters. Su Manshu 蘇 曼 殊
(1884–1918), also a Southern Society member, translated poems into the
ancient-style with relatively free prosody. Hu Shi’s translations, in contrast, were
in the freestyle vernacular.61 Li Sichun regarded Su’s translations as the best,
because they were sensitive to both the poems’ original meaning and the prosodic
elegance of the Chinese language.62 Most of Su’s translations are in the more
regular ancient-style, but he also translated some poems into the gexing form.
Examples include “Ji Xinailai houjue” 寄西 萊侯爵 (Au Marquis de Seigneley
by Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux [1636–1711])63 and “Bayue zhi ye”
之夜
64
(La nuit d’aout by Alfred de Musset [1810–57]). The Critical Review
magazine in general aimed to find indigenous cultural roots for imported modern
notions, and Li Sichun’s translation of foreign verses into native meters was in
line with their agenda of indigenization.
Given the limited scope of this article, it is impossible to exhaustively cover all
of the stylistic and thematic variations in gexing that emerged in the years after
Huang Zunxian’s innovations. A selected analysis of texts has nevertheless
demonstrated the vitality of the Chinese poetic tradition. We have examined the
eventual transformation of the classical gexing form, as it acquires new
characters, grammar, and vocabulary. During the late Qing and early Republican
period, gexing seemed to be on the verge of developing into an entirely new
genre, which combined elements of regulated poetry, ancient-style poetry, and
modern vernacular poetry. The poets’ formal innovations were sustained by
dissatisfaction with the acceptance of the classical tradition as a fait accompli.
Whereas Huang and Liang were dissatisfied with the traditional genres available
to them as means of expression, Wang, Lin, and Liu showed that New Literature,
with its modern vernacular poetry, was also not an adequate vehicle through
which to express their thoughts and feelings. Because classical poetry had
traditionally been used to record history and voice political opinions, modern
poets, in using classical forms, found their voices amplified in the echo chamber
of literary history. Complete vernacularization would have stripped their poetry
of such argumentative power. They sought the best vehicle to express their
thoughts, and the innovative form of gexing provided a balance between freedom
and regularity.
61
The distinction between these three styles of translation is not absolute. For instance, all
three poets once translated Byron’s “The Isles of Greece.” Su Manshu’s translation is a
pentasyllabic ancient-style poem; Ma Junwu’s is a gexing poem; and Hu Shi’s, interestingly
enough, is a sao 騷 poem in the style of Chuci (another highly archaic genre). Their chosen
styles to translate this poem all differ from Li Sichun’s characterization.
62
See Li Sichun, “Xianhe ji xu,” 3.
63
Ibid., 14.
64
Ibid., 32–35.
The Modernity of the Ancient-Style Verse
579
The “ancient” thus exists in the dialectical core of the “modern.” The “ancient”
is contemporaneous with the “modern,” as the modern requires the ancient in
order to move forward in a dynamic, reciprocal relationship with time and space.
To be truly modern—not just in the sense of being “current,” but also in the
stylistic and historical sense of the word—is, in Marshal Berman’s words, to be
paradoxical.65 The experimental New Gexing poems, with their curious mixture
of seemingly contradictory elements, thus represent the modern voice of their
age.
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