Chinese Poetry and Its Institutions

Chinese Poetry and Its Institutions Pauline Yu (余寶琳) University of California, Los Angeles In a recent interview the American poet Jorie Graham offers an illurninating account of what, in her view, poe t:ry白，缸ld how it is produced. Graham is, even for seasoned critics, something of a cballenge to read, someone whose work takes on 1 訂ge issues with startling imagerγand nonlinear leaps of 出 ough t. For her, poe甘y uses “language in a special way-not to report or record experience, but to create experience in a m缸mer that would be 世1- possible without the medium of words. ‘In poe訂y you bave to feel deeply something inchoate, something which is coming up 企om a place 出 at you don't even know the register of,' sbe says."l Her description of how she writes is, unsurprisingly, poetic and, indeed, syn 自由 etic: “ I need to be in an app訂 ently empty frame of mind, without the noise of thinking so h訂 d. You 訂e 甘ying to hear the music of yo叮 own t趾nking in poe甘 y ， and ifyou have silence around you, it helps. I have never known where I'm going to st訂t. Often there's a music, or sound, or an image that 伊aws . It invites the senses to do a kind ofwork you don't quite bave ins甘uctions for. Then ques tions attach themselves to a current that feels, perhaps, more ancient. A good poem is always a reaction, a moment of acute surprise that occurred in the soul of the speaker. You want to go somewhere you haven't been before. To remain 組訂tist， you have to keep erasing your pa出 behind you." And she goes on to observe: “ Poe的r is a way of saying something 也 at can't quite be said-yet you have to use words. So much of life is like a phantom limb; the whole thing is a haunted existence. To write po的y is to inhabit those zones."2 Any number of poets writing today would likely find Graham's words consonant wi也 their own experience. We can also identify elements of 出is deeply personal, hig凶y individualized, ex廿aordinarily intense and resolutely idiosyncratic description of the poetic process in commen臼 by or about poe臼 in premodem China. At 也es 詛咒 time ， however, a consideration of the larger context (and this applies equally cogently to Renaissance England, to S3 54 Pauline Yu taJ也 just one other example) offers a slightly different perspective on 也e multiple forces behind the development of the form. This is especiaIIy 甘ue of the Tang dynasty (618-907), identified in traditional literary history as Chinese poe位γs “ golden age." There is no question that poe甘y was for centuries implicated in larger political and social structures and projects in China, and in ways 也 at illumi nate how the cultur己 sought to construct itself, even into the twentieth cen tury. PO的-y was 個 institution ， which ，剖nong other possibilities, may be defmed as an establisbed and systematic cultural practice with its distinctive canons and rules. And it was institutionalized in several ways. First，他 forms and themes were honed during the frrst century of the dynasty 扭曲 e institutionaI context of the imperial court, which helped to 企組le conven tions and expectations that endured for centurÌes. Courtly practice created formulae and established norms that were also extended to more informal social contexts for poe甘于wri討ng as well. Second, it was institutionalized as p缸t of the governme瓜， s civil service examination for a brief but important period of time and exerted remarkable inf1uence even when it was not 出us being tested. Th凶， over the course of a long tradition 也 e poets writing dur 旭g 出 is period became identified, and institutionalized or c 組onized，的 peerless exemplars ofthe craft. And fmally, in a11 dimensÍons ofthis process of mstitutionalization the compilation of anthologies played a crucial role. Embedded on several levels within elite culture, poe甘于wrl出19 d叮扭g the Tang dynasty, as we know well, was 個 accepted c叮rency of personal, social, and political exchange. In addition to reviewing re組1S of documents generated in the provinces, drafting decrees 缸中 lementing actions in re sponse, and composing memorials to the emperor, bureaucrats at court were expected to be able to record events in the 廿 professional lives in poetic form as well. Holidays, birthdays, and other rituals and ceremonies provided regular occasions to be memorialized in poe甘y exchanged among those of ficials present. If, for example, on an outing the emperor composed a poem celebrating the occasion, courtiers would be expected to “respond respect fully in accordance" (jenghe 奉和) using 也e form and rhyme of the impe rial model. Or the emperor or member of his family might sirnply set the topic, wi出 the officials in attendance composing poems “to imperial com mand" (yingzhi 應制)，“to the heir designate's comrnand" (y ingli均應令) 。 r “to princely comrnand" (y ingjiao 應教). In some cases the emperor or prince would set the theme and assign different rhymes to different poets, including himself. Anecdotes surviving 企om such events typically record who fmished his poem frrst and whose was judged ofhighest quality. In his study of the poe甘y of the early Tang, Stephen Owen has ex缸在 ined the n凹的rous conventions of court poetry, many of which were actually developed in the late fifth century at various Southern Dynasties provincial Chinese Poetrγand Its Institutions 55 co叮包. It was an elegant, aristocratic style, wi由 a premium set on graceful performance and speed of composition. Topics, if not prearranged, and dic tion were appropriately decorous, avoicling both emotional and colloquial ex仕emes 組d s甘essing subtle variation within powerful fonnal cons甘aints. Poems 可pically employed a trip 缸tite form 出 at first set out the topic, elabo rated on it imagistically and then closed wi也 a witty comment or rhetorical question. The middle couplets of descriptive amplification typical1y ob served bo也 semantic and tona1 p訂a Il elism ， implicitly recognizing the judi cious and cosmic balance of the rul缸， and the fina1 coup1et usually managed to pay tribute to his 吭此ue and sagacity.3 Although court poe甘y is easily criticized for its fonnulaic and imper sonal qu剖 ities ，他 significance in the history of the ge叮e 臼 a whole is in con甘 overtible. As Owen points out, its attention to an increasingly refined poetic language enco叮aged the development of an ex甘aordin缸ily con densed and gr也nrnatically flexible medium.4 The dominant fo 口ns em ployed at court remained so for much of the 仕 adition . These were systematized as 叮咚 ulated verse" (l郎郎律詩) and quatrains, poems of eight or fo 叮 lines ， with five or seven syIlables in each line, observing set pa位erns of tonal alternation and employing on1y one rhyme at the end of even-numbered lines for an entire poem. One index ofthe irnportance of court poe甘y during the early Tang 扭曲e fact that the earliest anthologies compiled during the dynasty for which we have records focused specifical1y on this body ofpoe位y alone. One, entitled the Collection 01 Scholars in the Forest 01 Brushes (Hanlin xueshi ji 翰林學士集) ， contains 51 poems by the Tang emperor Taizong 太宗 (r. 627- 650) 個d fifteen of his 0 伍 cials. Most appe訂 to have been composed be tween 634 and 645. Since the Hanlin Academy (也e “Forest of Brushes' 乳白e court 0 伍 ce charged with drafting documents, was not created until a century later under the emperor Xuanzo時 's 玄宗 rule ， scholars believe that the anthology probably acqu廿ed its current title at a later date by read ers who saw 也at it contained poems by the emperor and his adminis甘 ation. The title page is missing 企om the only surviving manuscript, so its editor ship is uncertain. The collection seems to have disappeared 企om China by the Song d戶lasty (thus only twelve of its poems 訂e included in the Com plete Tang Poems [Quan Tang shi 全唐詩]， compiled at the beginning of the eighteenth century), but a manuscript was preserved in a monastery in Japan and rediscovered in 出e late Qing.5 Despite its smalI size ，也 is collection gives us a good sense of the prac tice of poe甘y in the early Tang court. Of the 51 poems, 9 位e by emperor Ta的時， with others written by major offi叫 Is such as Shangguan Yi 上官儀 and Xu Jingzong 許敬宗 (592-672) ， who w臼 to serve as chief minister in the governrnent. Many of the poems, furthermore, were wri仕en to 也e 56 Pauline Yu S 缸ne rhyrnes and topics as those set by the emperor's poems (there 訂e only thirteen different titles in all). The overall style of the collection is unsurprising: uniform in tone, balanced in imagery and replete with encomia for the reign. Poems written by Xu Jingzong 訂e included for each title, which has led scholars to speculate that he was the likely fIrst compiler of the volume. However, since the current 訂r組gement of the contents also features his poems w ~也 unseemly prominence (they precede the emperor's), it is also likely that the extant version was re-edited by one of his descendants as a collection designed to showcase his illus甘ious forebe訂. A second early Tang anthology is titled the Collection 01 the Precious Glories (Zhuyingji 珠英集) and contains works by officials at the court of 出 e empress Wu Zetian 武則天 (684-705) ， such as Li Jiao 李轎 (644- 713) and Zhang Yue 張說 (667-731). These men were all engaged in a major editorial project commissioned by the empress to bring together works that had not been included in two ear lier large imperial compendia (the Yulan 御覽 and 也e Wensi boyao 文恩博要)， called the PreCÍoω Glories 01 the Three Teachings (Sanjìao zhuying 三教珠英).

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