A Brief Introduction to Chinese Classical Poetry

[zowie86]

Chinese Literature - Poetry - Ancient Poetry

In China "poetic education" in the original meaning is learning The Book of Songs. This is the first comprehensive anthology of Chinese poems including 305 poems of the Zhou Dynasty (1122-256 B.C.). It was originally called Shi (Poems) and Shi Sanbai (Three Hundred Poems). Each poem in The Book of Songs was set to music and could be sung. The compilers classified the 305 poems into folk songs, ceremonial songs, and sacrificial songs, according to their contents and the style of the music. Folk songs, which were popular among the people, made up the best part of The Book of Songs, while ceremonial songs and sacrificial songs were used mainly on sacrificial or ceremonial occasions to eulogize the merits and virtues of the Son of Heaven and of his forefathers.

Confucius (551 B.C. - 479 B.C.), a great philosopher and educator was very fond of The Book of Songs. He used to recite the poems from time to time, and used it as a textbook for his pupils. In the Han Dynasty, The Book of Songs was formally accepted as a classic of the Confucian school, called Shi Jing. The Book of Songs has over a long period of times been highly appreciated, and has exerted a profound and far-reaching influence on the development of Chinese literature, especially that of poetry, over a period of more than 2000 years. It has also served as important historical data for the study of ancient China from the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period.

By the 4th century B.C. China's boundaries had expanded to include the vast area of the Yangtze river valley, where the strong State of Chu became even stronger. This region is very fertile and the life of the inhabitants was more highly developed than that of the northern people. They produced their own type of song, a representative collection of which was compiled under the name of the Chuci (楚辭 Songs of Chu). The songs in this collection are more lyrical and romantic. The style is different from that of The Book of Songs. It is called "poetic prose of Chu", or "the Sao style", in the history of Chinese literature. The representative poet is Qu Yuan (ca. 340-278 B.C.) and his follower Song Yu (fourth century B.C.).

In the following literary history, there were certain periods which were dominated by one distinctive predominant literary genre, such as fu (descriptive prose interspersed with verse) during the Han Dynasty, poetry in Tang, Ci poetry (a special poetic form) of Song and qu (singing verse) of Yuan.

During the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), the Chu lyrics evolved into the fu (賦), a poem usually in rhymed verse except for introductory and concluding passages that are in prose, often in the form of questions and answers.
The Han was a period of cultural flowering. A poetic form that became the norm for creative writing, began to flourish. Emperor Wu created a music bureau, called "yuefu", 乐府, in Chinese, specially to collect and record ceremonial chants, but also the songs and ballads of ordinary people. Collected by the Han Music Bureau "Yuefu", many of these songs are anonymous, but also men of letters wrote these tunes, folk ballads, many of them are very narrative. Later, during the Eastern Han, poems with five characters to a line in imitation of the yuefu style appeared. The employment of five characters to the line was found to be a more rewarding measure, permitting a smoother and more melodious effect and the evocation of subtler human feelings.

The yue fu began to develop into shi or classical poetry- the form which was to dominate Chinese poetry until the modern era.These poems have five or seven character lines, with a caesura before the last three characters of each line. They are divided into the original gushi (old poems) and jintishi, a stricter form developed in the Tang dynasty with rules governing tone patterns and the structure of the content. The greatest writers of gushi and jintishi are often held to be Li Bai and Du Fu respectively. The Tang Dynasty was a period of great radiance in literary creation and was especially noted for poetry writing, for which it has been dubbed the golden age of poetry, a predominant genre among all literary forms popular with both the rulers and the populace for about 300 years. There had emerged during this period of time a considerable number of brilliant poets and outstanding poetic compositions.

Towards the end of the Tang dynasty, the ci lyric became more popular. Most closely associated with the Song dynasty, ci most often expressed feelings of desire, often in an adopted persona, but the greatest exponents of the form (such as Li Houzhu and Su Shi) used it to address a wide range of topics.

As the ci gradually became more literary and artificial after Song times, the san qu, a freer form, based on new popular songs, developed. The use of san qu songs in drama marked an important step in the development of vernacular literature.

After the Song dynasty, both shi poems and lyrics continued to be composed until the end of end of the imperial period, and to a lesser extent to this day. However, for a number of reasons, these works have always been less highly regarded than those of the Tang dynasty in particular. Firstly, Chinese literary culture remained in awe of its predecessors: in a self-fulfilling prophecy, writers and readers both expected that new works would not bear comparison with the earlier masters. Secondly, the most common response of these later poets to the tradition which they had inherited was to produce work which was ever more refined and allusive; the resulting poems tend to seem precious or just obscure to modern readers. Thirdly, the increase in population, expansion of literacy, wider dissemination of works through printing and more complete archiving vastly increased the volume of work to consider and made it difficult to identify and properly evaluate those good pieces which were produced. Finally, this period saw the rise of vernacular literature, particularly drama and novels, which increasingly became the main means of cultural expression.


From http://www.china-guide.com/culture/poetry.html (modified)

If you are interested in the English translation of Tang poetry, I'll give you more information about that next time.

[Silas Thorne]

Thank you for putting all of this information in one place for us all!

[zowie86]

Thank you for putting all of this information in one place for us all! Are you a specialist in translating Classical Chinese poetry into English?

I have interest in the English translation of classical Chinese poetry, especially in T'ang poetry as it marks an insurmountable peak in Chinese poetry. I suppose I'm on my way to be a specialist. hehe.

I want to know your ideas about the English translation of classical Chinese poetry. Have you read any? In Chinese or in English? If in English, how do you like the translation? Have you ever thought that the translation you have read and liked might not be faithful to the original?

If you have interest, I'm thinking of conducting an activity to help you know more about the English translation of classical Tang poetry.

Do reply and let me know how I can make the activity more rewarding for you.

[Silas Thorne]

I must say, I have been a little disappointed by some English translations I have read of Tang Shi or Song Ci compared to the original. I can read them in Chinese with a bit of work, but not easily (due to the dense historical and cultural information packed into them), and I'm certainly not able to translate them well. One problem seems to be for me that if you try to include this cultural information in a translation, I feel you would need to constantly refer the reader to footnotes, which could make these works an ordeal to read.

Just my opinion based on the little knowledge I have of Classical Chinese poetry. I actually know very little about this. I know more about the 晏子春秋, the 'Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan' and ministerial rhetoric (specifically 谏 'remonstrance'） in the Chunqiu period.

[Jozanny]

I have interest in the English translation of classical Chinese poetry, especially in T'ang poetry as it marks an insurmountable peak in Chinese poetry. I suppose I'm on my way to be a specialist. hehe.

I want to know your ideas about the English translation of classical Chinese poetry. Have you read any? In Chinese or in English? If in English, how do you like the translation? Have you ever thought that the translation you have read and liked might not be faithful to the original?

If you have interest, I'm thinking of conducting an activity to help you know more about the English translation of classical Tang poetry.

Do reply and let me know how I can make the activity more rewarding for you.

You might be interested in this review of Hinton's translations from the T'ang dynasty:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.ht...998b4382b9&p=4

[zowie86]

You might be interested in this review of Hinton's translations from the T'ang dynasty:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.ht...998b4382b9&p=4

I really appreciate that.

He is right in stating that "the attenuation or absence of many features of English grammar, including pronouns and tenses--all these factors make it impossible for the reader of an English translation to have any accurate sense of how a Chinese poem sounds, moves, and feels to a Chinese reader."

However, as far as I know, lots of English readers never thought about the original when they were reading a translation. They just took a translation as the translation, limited by their ignorance of Chinese.

That's a pity. They thought they were reading Chinese poetry, but actually they were NOT. What is absurd here is that those preferred by English natives are often severely criticized by Chinese scholars versed in English and Chinese as they were considered unfaithful to the original!

[stlukesguild]

He is right in stating that "the attenuation or absence of many features of English grammar, including pronouns and tenses--all these factors make it impossible for the reader of an English translation to have any accurate sense of how a Chinese poem sounds, moves, and feels to a Chinese reader."

However, as far as I know, lots of English readers never thought about the original when they were reading a translation. They just took a translation as the translation, limited by their ignorance of Chinese.

The lack of nearly any common linguistic basis between Chinese and English (or any Western language) makes adequate translation that is at once true to the literal "meaning" and able to capture some sense of the poetic flow more than challenging. The fact that the number of English scholars and poets fluent in Chinese has been quite limited in comparison to those fluent in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian... even Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek has certainly curtailed the number of good translations available of Chinese poetry in English. A number of recent translations have spelled out some of the structural elements in Chinese poetry that are virtually untranslatable. Personally, I have gained some further concept of what we are missing from a close Chinese friend.

That's a pity. They thought they were reading Chinese poetry, but actually they were NOT. What is absurd here is that those preferred by English natives are often severely criticized by Chinese scholars versed in English and Chinese as they were considered unfaithful to the original!

This brings up an intriguing question: what exactly amounts to a good or faithful translation of poetry. We've all heard the aphorism that "poetry is what's lost in translation"... but translation remains a necessity if we are to gain any understanding and appreciation of the thought and artistic achievements of those outside our own culture. My own thoughts on translation have longed mirrored that of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, himself a marvelous poet and translator (see his The Early Italian Poets including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova):

The life-blood of... translation is this, - that a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one. The only true motive for putting poetry into a fresh language must be to endow a fresh nation, as far as possible, with one more possession of beauty. Poetry not being an exact science, literality of meaning is altogether secondary to this chief aim. I say literality, not fidelity, which is by no means the same thing. When literality can be combined with what is thus the primary condition of success, the translator is fortunate, and must strive to unite them. When such object can only be attained by paraphrase, that is the only path.

Without a grasp of Chinese, one cannot say which translations fail to capture the literal meaning... or suggest something of the poetic flow. One can only recognize which translations succeed or fail as poetry in English. Barring the mastery of the language in question, the best path may be to have access to several different translations... especially for the "most important" texts. Translations, after all, age in a manner which the original does not because by their very nature they capture but one aspect of the original. Alexander Pope's Homer is inherently different than Allen Mandelbaum's or Robert Fagles' who come to the work centuries after Pope.

That much said there is still the fact that the translations from Chinese are woefully limited. Those that I have enjoyed the best include the classic Arthur Whaley's, Kenneth Rexroth's, David Hinton's, David Young's, and Tony and Willis Barnstone's. Each of these translators has been quite good at providing notes that help in a further understanding of multiple layers of meaning, subtexts, and formal structures that could not be in an way "translated".

The poets that have intrigued me the most (in translation) include Tu Fu (Du Fu), Li Po (Li Bai), and Wang Wei. I must admit to a certain fascination with non-Western culture (including poetry) as of late... linked, no doubt, with my interest in non-Western art. This includes not merely Chinese poetry but also Japanese, Indian, Persian, and Islamic.

[JBI]

Actually, there is an interesting collection edited and translated by Wai-Lim Yip that seeks to remedy the absence of English grammatical constructions in Classical Chinese, by providing both the translation in the original form, and the characters + literal definitions for each character (with footnotes pointing out parallels and things).

I'll add more later, as right now I am recovering from having my wisdom teeth out, and am in a lot of pain since T3s supposedly do not really work on me, and the anesthetic has left me a little bit dizzy. Anyway though, thank you for posting this - I was meaning to get a thread started on Chinese poetry, but couldn't really find any resources that I could cut and paste - thanks for starting this, more later.

But if this thread becomes long, can we agree to use the Pinyin system (perhaps omitting the tone markers) for poets' names, so that people can more easily find who we are talking about, without having to search for alternate spellings, if the conversation strays beyond Lǐ Bái, Dù Fǔ and Wáng Wéi, and perhaps Lǎozǐ, as it hopefully will?

[Silas Thorne]

But if this thread becomes long, can we agree to use the Pinyin system (perhaps omitting the tone markers) for poets' names, so that people can more easily find who we are talking about, without having to search for alternate spellings, if the conversation strays beyond Lǐ Bái, Dù Fǔ and Wáng Wéi, and perhaps Lǎozǐ, as it hopefully will?

That's a good plan, JBI. Pinyin, as opposed to the Wade-Giles system, is the more accepted system worldwide now to transliterate Chinese into English letters. It has been standard in China for quite some time now.

The fact that the number of English scholars and poets fluent in Chinese has been quite limited in comparison to those fluent in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian... even Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek has certainly curtailed the number of good translations available of Chinese poetry in English.

Quite true, St. Lukes Guild! And though more and more people outside China are learning Chinese, this is dwarfed by the sheer number of Chinese people learning English. Many of the good translations in future too will also come from people with a Chinese background who can also write excellent poetry in English.

[JBI]

That's a good plan, JBI. Pinyin, as opposed to the Wade-Giles system, is the more accepted system worldwide now to transliterate Chinese into English letters. It has been standard in China for quite some time now.



Quite true, St. Lukes Guild! And though more and more people outside China are learning Chinese, this is dwarfed by the sheer number of Chinese people learning English. Many of the good translations in future too will also come from people with a Chinese background who can also write excellent poetry in English.

It's interesting though, that the direction is going both ways. I've seen Sonnets, for instance, translated from Chinese (meaning Chinese poets working with Sonnets, which is almost cheating, given that 10 syllables go a longer way in Chinese, making the sonnet have much, much more room). I mean, there are poets who embrace Chinese elements - Ezra Pound being one (though, from what I know, his Cathay and other writings on Chinese poetry are incredibly flawed, and based on mediocre source material and scholarship via Japanese, though he tries to copy elements of classical Chinese poetic constructions, so I am told, throughout the Cantos (my knowledge of classical Chinese is far worse than that of the Cantos, a text which I have, like virtually everyone, great, great trouble understanding)), and perhaps the closest to a native English speaker incorporating Chinese elements, Gary Snyder. Though, the amount of good poetry coming from people of Chinese origin in the diaspora is undeniably high (though I sense a slight hegemony, yielding toward English forms and constructs over Chinese ones in many instances).


Pinyin is also good for writing names, because it is easier for people to learn to pronounce them (there are many Pinyin sites available, which will give a sound recording per syllable, including intonation).

[jinjang]

I want to know your ideas about the English translation of classical Chinese poetry. Have you read any? In Chinese or in English? If in English, how do you like the translation? Have you ever thought that the translation you have read and liked might not be faithful to the original?

If you have interest, I'm thinking of conducting an activity to help you know more about the English translation of classical Tang poetry.

Do reply and let me know how I can make the activity more rewarding for you.

I read only a couple of translations chosen by Chinese friends. It was based on stoicism and I thought it refreshing. They are short poems but well-translated according to my Chinese friends. Apparently you can translate some for us with your language skills in English and Chinese. I would like to be a part of your activity. I can only appreciate without criticism, since I am not an expert in literature.

[JBI]

I have read quite a few actually, the ones with the longest introductions seem to be the most interesting, and ones that go into detail about form seem great too. Editions that have no or very short introductions, and no real footnotes seem to be missing everything, and from an interest perspective, they are rather flat, though in terms of reading worth in English, they are far easier to "get", then more academic ones.

That being said - I am no expert on the subject (though I perhaps aspire to be, being such a wannabe Sinologist ). I'd just avoid though, anything with a cover that looks like it has been designed with an orientalist sort of exoticism as its objective, or something with a title that sounds nonacademic.

[crystalmoonshin]

I think Westerners are more familiar with the poet 李 白 than any Chinese poets. Here's his most famous poem. (Actually, it's the only Chinese poem I've memorized. Learned it when I was in high school.)

靜 夜 思

床 前 明 月 光 chuáng qián míng yùe guāng

疑 是 地 上 霜 yí shì dì shàng shuāng

舉 頭 望 明 月 jǔ tóu wàng míng yùe

低 頭 思 故 鄉 dī tóu sī gù xiāng


My translation: (You may want to correct me, since I'm not quite sure if I get it right.)

Thoughts on a Silent Night

The bright moonlight before my bed
Resembles ice on the ground.
With head raised, I look at the moon
With head bowed, I think of my home country.

[Silas Thorne]

That's a good general translation. I love this poem too (along with many others). Although I'm not a specialist in this though, and I'm sure zowie86 will put my right if I stray a bit sensewise, I think there are points that you've missed here.

First of all 'shuang' is closer to 'frost' than 'ice', at least in my understanding of the charater.

'Yi' at the start of the second line I feel could be better translated, from meaning anyway, as 'I mistook for' or 'I thought was'.

I also think that 'ju' and 'di' at the beginning of the last two lines actually function as verbs, 'raising' or 'lifting up' for 'ju', and 'lowering' for 'di'.

Just a short note, got to go now.

[zowie86]

It’s interesting that in above replies I found you have quite opposite ideas about notes and whether to paraphrase.
On notes, Silas Thorne thought that notes could make works an ordeal to read. While stlukesguild stated that providing notes helps in a further understanding of multiple layers of meaning, subtexts, and formal structures. And JBI liked long introductions. You are quite divided.

On whether to paraphrase, JBI implied that translations should have Chinese flavor; whereas stlukesguild preferred paraphrase to bring beauty to the target culture. Is it possible that JBI has been influenced by Yip’s style in translating Chinese poetry? And stlukesguild by Dante?