Part 3

The Poets of the T`ang Dynasty

At last the golden age of Chinese poetry is at hand. Call the roll of these three hundred eventful years, and all the great masters of song will answer you. This is an age of professional poets, whom emperors and statesmen delight to honour. With the Chinese, verse-making has always been a second nature. It is one of the accomplishments which no man of education would be found lacking. Colonel Cheng-Ki-Tong, in his delightful book `The Chinese Painted by Themselves', says: "Poetry has been in China, as in Greece, the language of the gods. It was poetry that inculcated laws and maxims; it was by the harmony of its lines that traditions were handed down at a time when memory had to supply the place of writing; and it was the first language of wisdom and of inspiration." It has been above all the recreation of statesmen and great officials, a means of escape from the weariness of public life and the burden of ruling. A study of the interminable biographies of Chinese poets and men of letters would reveal but a few professional poets, men whose lives were wholly devoted to their art; and of these few the T`ang dynasty can claim nearly all. Yet strange as it may seem, this matters but little when the quality of Chinese poetry is considered. The great men of the age were at once servants of duty and the lords of life. To them official routine and the responsibilities of the state were burdens to be borne along the highway, with periods of rest and intimate re-union with nature to cheer the travellers. When the heavy load was laid aside, song rose naturally from the lips. Subtly connecting the arts, they were at once painters and poets, musicians and singers. And because they were philosophers and seekers after the beauty that underlies the form of things, they made the picture express its own significance, and every song find echo in the souls of those that heard. You will find no tedium of repetition in all their poetry, no thin vein of thought beaten out over endless pages. The following extract from an ancient treatise on the art of poetry called `Ming-Chung' sets forth most clearly certain ideals to be pursued:

"To make a good poem, the subject must be interesting, and treated in an attractive manner; genius must shine throughout the whole, and be supported by a graceful, brilliant, and sublime style. The poet ought to traverse, with a rapid flight, the lofty regions of philosophy, without deviating from the narrow way of truth. . . . Good taste will only pardon such digressions as bring him towards his end, and show it from a more striking point of view.

"Disappointment must attend him, if he speaks without speaking to the purpose, or without describing things with that fire, with that force, and with that energy which present them to the mind as a painting does to the eyes. Bold thought, untiring imagination, softness and harmony, make a true poem.

"One must begin with grandeur, paint everything expressed, soften the shades of those which are of least importance, collect all into one point of view, and carry the reader thither with a rapid flight."

Yet when due respect has been paid to this critic of old time, the fact still remains that concentration and suggestion are the two essentials of Chinese poetry. There is neither Iliad nor Odyssey to be found in the libraries of the Chinese; indeed, a favourite feature of their verse is the "stop short", a poem containing only four lines, concerning which another critic has explained that only the words stop, while the sense goes on. But what a world of meaning is to be found between four short lines! Often a door is opened, a curtain drawn aside, in the halls of romance, where the reader may roam at will. With this nation of artists in emotion, the taste of the tea is a thing of lesser importance; it is the aroma which remains and delights. The poems of the T`angs are full of this subtle aroma, this suggestive compelling fragrance which lingers when the songs have passed away. It is as though the Aeolian harps had caught some strayed wind from an unknown world, and brought strange messages from peopled stars.

A deep simplicity touching many hidden springs, a profound regard for the noble uses of leisure, things which modern critics of life have taught us to despise -- these are the technique and the composition and colour of all their work.

Complete surrender to a particular mood until the mood itself surrenders to the artist, and afterwards silent ceaseless toil until a form worthy of its expression has been achieved -- this is the method of Li Po and his fellows. And as for leisure, it means life with all its possibilities of beauty and romance. The artist is ever saying, "Stay a little while! See, I have captured one moment from eternity." Yet it is only in the East that poetry is truly appreciated, by those to whom leisure to look around them is vital as the air they breathe. This explains the welcome given by Chinese Emperors and Caliphs of Bagdad to all roving minstrels in whose immortality, like flies in amber, they are caught.

A Poet's Emperor

In the long list of imperial patrons the name of the Emperor Ming Huang of the T`ang dynasty holds the foremost place. History alone would not have immortalized his memory.* But romance is nearer to this Emperor's life than history. He was not a great ruler, but an artist stifled in ceremony and lost in statecraft. Yet what Emperor could escape immortality who had Tu Fu and Li Po for contemporaries, Ch`ang-an for his capital, and T`ai Chen of a thousand songs to wife? Poet and sportsman, mystic and man of this world, a great polo player, and the passionate lover of one beautiful woman whose ill-starred fate inspired Po Chu-i, the tenderest of all their singers,** Ming Huang is more to literature than to history. Of his life and times the poets are faithful recorders. Tu Fu in `The Old Man of Shao-Ling' leaves us this memory of his peaceful days passed in the capital, before the ambition of the Turkic general An Lu-shan had driven his master into exile in far Ssuch`uan. The poet himself is speaking in the character of a lonely old man, wandering slowly down the winding banks of the river Kio.

-- * A.D. 685-762.

** See <Po Chu-i> and <The Never-ending Wrong>. --

"`Alas!' he murmured, `they are closed, the thousand palace doors, mirrored in clear cool waters. The young willows and the rushes renewing with the year -- for whom will they now grow green?'

"Once in the garden of the South waved the standard of the Emperor.

"All that nature yields was there, vying with the rarest hues.

"There lived she whom the love of the first of men had made first among women.

"She who rode in the imperial chariot, in the excursions on sunny days.

"Before the chariot flashed the bright escort of maidens armed with bow and arrow.

"Mounted upon white steeds which pawed the ground, champing their golden bits.

"Gaily they raised their heads, launching their arrows into the clouds,

"And, laughing, uttered joyous cries when a bird fell victim to their skill."

In the city of Ch`ang-an, with its triple rows of glittering walls with their tall towers uprising at intervals, its seven royal palaces all girdled with gardens, its wonderful Yen tower nine stories high, encased in marble, the drum towers and bell towers, the canals and lakes with their floating theatres, dwelt Ming Huang and T`ai Chen. Within the royal park on the borders of the lake stood a little pavilion round whose balcony crept jasmine and magnolia branches scenting the air. Just underneath flamed a tangle of peonies in bloom, leaning down to the calm blue waters. Here in the evening the favourite reclined, watching the peonies vie with the sunset beyond. Here the Emperor sent his minister for Li Po, and here the great lyrist set her mortal beauty to glow from the scented, flower-haunted balustrade immortally through the twilights yet to come.

What matter if the snow Blot out the garden? She shall still recline Upon the scented balustrade and glow With spring that thrills her warm blood into wine.

Once, and once alone, the artist in Ming Huang was merged in the Emperor. In that supreme crisis of the empire and a human soul, when the mutinous soldiers were thronging about the royal tent and clamouring for the blood of the favourite, it was the Emperor who sent her forth --

lily pale, Between tall avenues of spears, to die.

Policy, the bane of artists demanded it, and so, for the sake of a thousand issues and a common front to the common foe, he placed the love of his life upon the altar of his patriotism, and went, a broken-hearted man, into the long exile. From that moment the Emperor died. History ceases to take interest in the crownless wanderer. His return to the place of tragedy, and on to the capital where the deserted palace awaits him with its memories, his endless seeking for the soul of his beloved, her discovery by the priest of Tao in that island of P`eng Lai where --

gaily coloured towers Rise up like rainbow clouds, and many gentle And beautiful Immortals pass their days in peace,

her message to her lover with its splendid triumphant note of faith foretelling their reunion at the last -- in fine, the story of their love with the grave between them -- is due to the genius of Po Chu-i. And to all poets coming after, these two lovers have been types of romantic and mystic love between man and woman. Through them the symbols of the mandarin duck and drake, the one-winged birds, the tree whose boughs are interwoven, are revealed. They are the earthly counterparts of the heavenly lovers, the Cow-herd and the Spinning-maid in the constellations of Lyra and Aquila. To them Chinese poetry owes some of its finest inspirations, and at least two of its greatest singers, Tu Fu and Li Po.