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From Snow to Plum Blossoms: A Commentary on Some Poems by Mao Tse-tung

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

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The Great Shun once said, “Poetry bespeaks the emotion.” As Ezra Pound puts it, “Poetry is a verbal statement of emotional values; a poem is an emotional value verbally stated.” From the earliest anonymous composer to Mao Tse-tung, we observe in the outpourings of the poet's heart his innermost feelings and the shape of things in the offing. In the Ch'un-ch'iu period (722–484 B.C.) poetry was not only composed to voice the poet's emotion, but also quoted to the accompaniment of music on diplomatic missions to exchange views between states without causing affront or embarrassment, a fact which underlies the “moderation and magnanimity” characteristic of Chinese poetical tradition.

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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1966

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References

1 Shih yen chih (Shang-shu, “Shun-tien” [Ssu-pu ts'ung-k'an ed.], 1.11a).

2 Pound, Ezra, The Confucian Odes (New York: New Directions, n.d.), p. xvGoogle Scholar; cf. “In the heart it is emotion; expressed in words it is poetry” (Mao-shih [SPTK], 1.1b).

3 See Tso-chuan, “27th Year of Duke Hsiang” (Legge, James, The Chinese Classics, V, 530Google Scholar; tr. 533–534). It was also customary among the elite in those days to predict a person's destiny by the passages he quoted. See “Letter to Counselor Mei [Chih?]” in Su Tung-p'o chi (Wan-yu wen-k'u ed.), ts'e 13, 63–64.

4 Wen-jou tun-hou (Li-chi, “Ching-chieh” [SPTK], 15.1a). There are exceptions to this rule even in the Odes (see n. 92 below), but it is an important criterion in Chinese poetical criticism.

5 See Mao chu-hsi shih-tz'u chiang-chieh [“Commentaries on Chairman Mao's Poems”] (Peking, 1962), pp. 32–33, fn. to Snow. In the latest collection Mao chu-hsi shih-tz'u [“Chairman Mao's Poems”] (Peking, 1963), p. 22, Snow is dated Feb. 1936.

6 Chen, S. H., “Metaphor and the Conscious in Chinese Poetry under Communism,” The China Quarterly, 13 (Jan.-March, 1963), p. 58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Wu Ou-t'ing, Tz'u-ming so-yin [“Index to Tz'u Names”] (Peking, 1958), pp. 48–49.

8 Ibid. p. 54, s.v. Nien-nu-chiao, citing Yüan Chen (779–831) (note misplaced punctuation mark between kuan and ti which should come after the compound kuan-ti [a small flute]). It is significant of the times that an emperor should condescend to share his infatuations with his subjects and an imperial prince to play accompaniment for a courtesan.

9 The names of 325 tunes current in T'ang, mostly from Kuchah and other countries of the “Western Regions,” are listed in Ch'ui Ling-ch'in (fl. 750), Chiao-fang chi [“Notes on Dancers and Musicians”] (Shanghai, 1957), pp. 8–14.

10 Irregular meter, however, is not a necessary criterion of tz'u. Chu Shu-chen's (fl. 1131) amorous First Full Moon to the tune Sheng-cha-tzu [“Hawthorn Berries”?] contains eight lines of five syllables. Su Tung-p‘o’s jaunty Watching the Tide to ]ui-che-ku [“The Auspicious Partridge”] not only has eight lines of seven syllables but also the rhyme-and-tone pattern and antithetical middle couplets characteristic of T'ang-dynasty lü-shih [“regulated poem”], thus indicating the transition of tz'u from regular to irregular meter during the latter part of T'ang and the Five Dynasties.

11 “Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music,” states Ezra Pound, and “meter is the articulation of the total sound of a poem” (William McNaughton, “Ezra Pound's Meters and Rhymes,” PMLA, 78.1 [March, 1963], 136). Tz'u is comparable, in English poetry, to the verse of the Rossetti's (Miu Yüen, Shih-tz'u san-lun [“Random Talks on Shih and Tz'u”] [Hongkong, 1963], p. 15), which is “exquisite in phrase, flexible in music” (Untermeyer, Louis, A Concise Treasury of Great Poems [New York, Permabooks, 1958], p. 358)Google Scholar. For a synopsis of tz'u development, see Hightower, James R., Topics in Chinese Literature, Rev. ed. (Harvard, 1962), pp. 9092Google Scholar. See also Baxter, Glen William, “Metrical Origins of the Tz'u,” HJAS, 16 (1953), 108145.Google Scholar

12 CTS, ch. 190C (K'ai-ming ed.), 3589a.

13 Hsiao-hung, a songstress in the household of his friend the statesman-poet Fan Ch'eng-ta (1126–1193), was given to Chiang K'uei as mistress in appreciation of two tuneful plum-blossom ditties Chiang had composed for Fan, prompting Chiang in an exhilarated mood to sing out the famous lines when his boat, homeward-bound with beauty and laurels, sailed past pavilioned Ch'ui-hung [“Rainbow”] Bridge in the snowy night. See Chang Tsung-hsiao (fl. 1736), Tz'u-lin chi-shih [“Anecdotes of Tz'u Composers”], ch. 13 (Shanghai, 1957), 370, notes.

14 System of musical notation in use since Sung times, and possibly earlier, corresponding to the ancient wu-yin [“pentatonic scale”] and shih-erh-lü [“twelve semi-tones”] and comparable to do-re-mi in the Western diatonic scale. See Yang Yin-liu, Kung-ch'e-p'u ch'ien-shuo [“Elements of Kung-ch'e Notations”] (Peking, 1962), 55 pp.; also Hsü Chih-heng, Chung-kuo yin-yüeh hsiao-shih [“A Short History of Chinese Music”] (WYWK), p. 87 et seq. For a resume of Chinese acoustics, see L. C. Goodrich's review of Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, in JAOS, 82.3 (July-Sept. 1962), 456–457.

15 See Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao, T'ang-Sung-tz'u lun-ts'ung [“Comments on Tz'u of the T'ang and Sung Dynasties”] (Shanghai, 1956), p. 94; cf. Yang et al., Sung Chiang Pai-shih ch'uang-tso ko-ch'ii yen-chiu [“Studies in Chiang K'uei's Original Compositions”] (Peking, 1957), 93 pp., with renderings in modern staff notation.

16 E.g. Wen T'ing-yün's 23-syllable Nan-ko-tzu is in one stanza; Liu Yung's (fl. 1045) 130-syllable Shih-erh-shih is divided into three parts; Wu Wen-ying's (?–1260) 240-syllable ying-t'i-hsü is in four. See Wan Shu (fl. 1687), Tz'u-lü [“Tz'u Meters”] (Ssu-pu pei-yao ed.), I.2b–3a, 2O.6b–7a, and 20.21b–22a resp.

17 Chiang Yung (1681–1762), Yin-hsüeh pien-wei [“Phonological Expositions”] (wood-block print of 1916), p. Ia.

18 P'ing-tse does not apply to the “new poetry” of the Republican era which discards the rules of Chinese prosody. “As Hu Shih himself admitted, die language used in his modern poems moved as awkwardly as the suddenly unbound feet of an old-fashioned Chinese woman” (Hsu, Kai-yu, Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry [New York, Doubleday, 1963], p. xxiii)Google Scholar. In the words of another authority, “the language of new poetry is not the language of the people. It is Europeanized or modernized language, and is therefore not easy on the moudi and ear” (Chu Tzu-ch'ing, Hsin-shih tsa-hua [“Chats on New Poetry”] [Hongkong, 1963], p. 92). “The result of this wholesale borrowing was a literature at once derivative and immature. Few Chinese writers had a thorough knowledge of the Western literatures they were imitating; many relied on translations at second or third hand (usually through the Japanese), especially of Russian authors, who exerted die most influence” (Hightower, p. 115). I am therefore in favor of Chu Tzu-ch'ing's recommendation for “new poetry” to follow the example of folk songs in order to “give it more color of our native soil” and “achieve a new ‘;national poetry’” by “utilizing national forms” (HSTH, p. 86).

19 See Hu Tsai (fl. 1147), T'iao-ch'i-yü-yin ts'ung-hua [“The Hermit-fisher's Critical Collection”], hou-chi, ch. 33 (WYWK), 667.

20 The four classical tones may be compared to the sounds of drum beaten, respectively, at the center, near the periphery, forcefully at the center, and while deafening with another hand (Ku Fo-ying, T'ientz'u men-ching [“Gateway to Tz'H-writing”] [Hongkong, n.d.], p. 3): dong, drone, torn, thud. (Yin-p'ing and yang-p'ing may also be discerned by using respectively a small drum and a big drum.) Since tz'u was meant to be sung, the importance of harmonizing word-tone to musical note cannot be exaggerated in view of the fixed tone and regulated tone sandhi of the Chinese language and the bearing of tone on meaning.

21 See Tsou Ch'i-mo (fl. 1660), Yüan-chih-chai tz'u-chung,m p. 13b (Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien [“Collected Works on Tz'u Criticism”], T'ang Kuei-chang, ed. [Nanking, 1935]).

22 Ch'ü is an offshoot of tz'u with increased colloquialism and metrical variation to accommodate nomadic airs and facilitate arrangement in musical drama under Mongol rule, after tz'u had “atrophied” when it “got too far from music.” For a comparison between tz'u and ch'ü, see Liu Ta-chieh, Chung-kuo wen-hsüch ja-chan-shih [“History of the Development of Chinese Literature”] (Shanghai, 1958), III, 10–13.

23 Chiao Hsün, Tiao-ku chi, ch. 8 (Kuo-hsüeh chi-pen ts'ung-shu ed.), 113.

24 Ch'en Yin-k'o, “Ssu-sheng san-wen” [“Three Questions on the Four Tones”], Ch'ing-hua Journal, 9.2 (April, 1934), 275–276; cf. earlier remarks in Shen K'uo (1030–1094), Meng-ch'i pi-t'an, ch. 14(Peking, 1957), 152.

25 Since the duration of each song-word may vary, a variety of lyrical forms dissimilar in metrical length and structure may be written to the same melody.

26 Cf. introductory remarks on tz'u in Ssu-k'u t'i-yao [WYWK], ts'e 40, 40; and meager inclusion of tz'u works in comparison with shih. The customary separation of tz'u from the collected works of T'ang and Sung writers also contributes to the loss; e.g. Su Tung-p‘;o’s tz'u are not included in Su Tung-p'o chi but collected separately in Tung-p'o yūeh-fu.

27 Untermeyer, Preface, unpaginated.

28 Translation by Andrew Boyd in Mao Tse-tung, Nineteen Poems (Peking, 1958), p. 22.

29 Mao chu-hsi shih-tz'u chiang-chieh, pp. 31–32; cf. original manuscript in Chinese Literature, 3 (May-June), 1958, 12.

30 EH, 3.3 (March, 1964), 23.

31 Pound, p. xii, fn.

32 See Monk Hui-chiao (d. 554), Kao-seng chuan [“Biographies of Eminent Monks”] (Taipei, 1958), 2. 39.

33 Chinese poetry is intoned according to the four classical tones in “Ancient Chinese” (cf. prosaic effect if intoned in modern Mandarin which has lost the ju tone: Pet kuo …) Cf. Wang Hui-san, Han-yü shih-yün [“Rhymes in Chinese Poetry”] (Peking, 1957), p. 16; and Bernhard Karlgren, Grammata Serica Recensa (Stockholm, 1957), 909a and 9290, s.v. pek and kwek. See also Hsia, pp. 8–13, for metamorphosis of the ju tone.

34 Tz'u-p'u, ch. 36.

35 Mao Hsien-shu (1620–1688), following the precedent of the Sung anthology Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü (SPTK), arbitrarily defines tz'u under fifty-eight characters as hsiao-ling [“minor modes”], fifty-nine to ninety as chung-tiao [“medium modes”], and ninety-one or more as ch'ang-tiao [“major modes”]. See T'ien-tz'u ming-chieh, 1.23a, in Tz'u-hsüeh ch'üan-shu [“Comprehensive Studies in Tz'u”] (Ch'ingdynasty wood-block print).

36 Minor modes may change rhyme, but major modes usually do not. Some lyrics written to Hsiaomei-hua [“Little Plum Blossoms”] and Chiang-nan-ch'un [“Spring South of the River”] which do change rhyme are mainly unorthodox and uncommendable (Tsou Ch'i-mo, p. 6a).

37 Nineteen Poems, p. 59.

38 Cf. “heaven” in Boyd's translation which has different connotations.

39 See Snow, Edgar, Red Star Over China (New York, Random House, 1938), p. 121Google Scholar. Significantly, these two emperors had also “fascinated” Sui Yang-ti, who reigned 605–617 (Sui-shu, ch. 4 [KM], 2354C), the canal builder and militant romanticist whom Mao might also have admired.

40 Allusion to a letter from the Khan of the Hsiung-nu to the Court of Han Wu-ti (Han-shu, ch. 94A [KM], 598b): Hu che, t'ien chih chiao-tzu yeh [“We barbarians are the favorite sons of heaven”]. Hence euphemism for “barbarians.” Boyd's capitalized “Beloved Son of Heaven” seems misleading.

41 Allusion to she-tiao-che [“vulture shooters,” i.e. “Hsiung-nu marksmen”] in Shih-chi, ch. 109 (KM), 243a, where tiao is glossed ta chih, “big vultures,” black-plumed and prolific, whose feathers could be used for arrow tufts. (While the official translation is on the whole interpretative, its rendering of ta tiao into “golden eagle” is questionable.) “To bend the bow” (wan kung) alludes to Hsiung-nu warriors in Shih-chi, 110.244a; hence “lacking in culture.”

42 See Hsieh Wu-liang, Tz'u-hsüeh chih-nan [“Guide to Tz'u Studies”] (Taipei, 1961), p. 29, citing Chang T'ai-chu [Chih-chung] (fl. 1692).

43 Giles, Herbert A., A History of Chinese Literature (New York, Appleton, 1901), pp. 223224.Google Scholar

44 Preface to Mei Yao-chang [Sheng-yü], Wan-ling chi (SPPY). Cf. Su Tung-p‘o’s personal experience in exile which Mao Tse-tung might also have shared in Yenan: “At night I sleep with my neck shrunken like a frozen turtle” (from the poem Encountering Snow on the River, in Chi-chu fen-lei Tung-p'o shih [“Annotated and Classified Poems of Su Tung-p'o”], Wang Shih-p'eng [1112–1171], ed. [SPTK], 7.21b); and “Poets usually are in straits; choice lines come from cold and hunger” (from Missing the Sight of a Heavy Snowfall while Lying III, ibid. 7.2a), which recalls Tu Fu's (712–770) “The poet's choice lines hail from cold and hunger” (ibid.).

45 Nineteen Poems, p. 58.

46 Quoted in Yü. Wen-pao (fl. 1240), Ch'ui-chien hsü'-lu (Ch'ui-chien-lu ch'üan-pien [Peking, 1959] P. 38). For attribution to Yüan T'ao, see P'eng Sun-yü (1631–1700), Tz'u-tsao [“Tz'u Elegance”] (Ts'ung-shu chi-ch'eng ed.), 1.2; also transcribed in Hsü Ch'iu (1636–1708), Tz'u-wan ts'ungt'an [“Collected Critiques on Tz'u”] (TSCC), 3.39.

47 Hung-ya p'a-pan (Yü, ibid.) or hung-ya t'an-pan” (P'eng, ibid.), clappers for beating time in Chinese music, made by stringing togedier three pieces of hard, clear-toned, dark-red sandalwood. Cf. illustration in Chung-kuo ku-tai yin-yüeh-shih chi-yao [“Selected Works in the History of Ancient Chinese Music”] (Peking, 1962), I, 843. The word ya is explainable by Couvreur's gloss, en forme de dent, for p'ei-yü yu ch'ung-ya in Li Ki (2 vols., Ho Kien Fou, 1899), I, 709 fn.

48 Celebrated line in the second stanza of Parting in Autumn to the tune Yü-lin-ling [“A Bell Ringing in the Rain”], which typifies the insinuative school of tz'u represented by Liu Yung (fl. 1045), In whose hands tz'u has developed in length and topical range.

49 From Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang's translation in Feng Yuan-chun, A Short History of Classical Chinese Literature (Peking, 1959), pp. 71–72, based on version in Tung-p'o yüeh-fu (Shanghai, 1957), shang, 9b, which differs from Tz'u-p'u (ch. 28) and Tz'u-lii (ch. 16) in the wording of lines 5 and 6 (see n. 57 below).

50 The first beat carries the principal accent of the lines that follow, and tz'u writers often resort to the forceful ch'ü tone (Lung Yii-sheng, ed., Tang-Sung ming-chia tz'u-hsiian [“Tz'u Selection from Famous Writers of the T'ang and Sung Dynasties”] [Hongkong, 1958], p. i).

51 Prof. Paul L-M. Serruys, C.I.C.M., tells me that the “Ancient Chinese” form for this word is miwet. I take this opportunity to thank Father Serruys for his helpful suggestions.

52 Su Tung-p'o himself is anteceded in the use of feng-liu by Hsieh An (320–385). See Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü (SPTK), hsia, 42a notes. In Shang-shu, “Yüeh-ming,” Asia, 5.12a, feng is glossed chiao, to “edify” or “set the mode.”

53 “It passes on just like this, not ceasing day or night!” (Legge, I, 222). Cf. Tennyson's The Brook. and Jerome Kern's 01' Man River: literary experience is shared by all men in all times and all places.

54 From the farewell poem Roaming Tien-mu Mountain in Dream (Li Tai-po chi [WYWK], ts'e 4. 50).

55 Suzuki, D. T., Manual of Zen Buddhism (London, Rider, 1950), p. 50Google Scholar. Su Tung-p'o tells us that his mistress Wang Chao-yiin (1063–1096) quoted this gāthā as her last words (su Tung-p'o chi, ts'e 14, 34, “Epitaph of Chao-yün”).

56 Literally “ashes dispersed, smoke extinguished” (hui fei yen mieh), an expression borrowed by Tung-p'o from The Sutra of the Perfection of Enlightenment, which alludes to rubbing two pieces of wood to produce fire. When fire is produced, the wood is consumed, and the fire is extinguished. Thus we awake from dreaming about dreaming dreams, and attain perfection of enlightenment when all illusions are ended, illusions which have arisen from avidya, “the ignorance which mistakes seeming for being, or illusory phenomena for realities.” See Monk Tsung-mi, Yüan-chüeh-ching lüeh-shu [“Brief Commentaries on the Sutra of the Perfection of Enlightenment”] (Shanghai, I hsüeh, n.d.), shang, 17a; also Soothill, and Hodous, , A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms (London, Kegan Paul, 1937), p. 379b, s.v. wu-ming (avidyā).Google Scholar

57 In the version in Tz'u-p'u and Tz'u-lü, lines 5 and 6 are given as:

“Luan shih ch'uan k'ung, Ching t'ao p'a an,”

which recalls Chu-ko Liang's “Luan shih p'ai k'ung, ching t'ao p'a an” in Huang-ling-miao chi [“Yellow Crag Temple Memorial”] (Ch'üan shang-ku san-tai Ch'in-Han san-kuo liu-ch'ao wen, Yen K'o-chün [1762–1843], ed., “Ch'üan san-kuo wen,” 59.8a–b).

58 Hence “may be” in line 4. Cf. Hu Tsai, hou-chi, 28.619, for Tung-p‘o’s doubts. For a verification of the historic battlefield, see Wang Hui, “Su Tung-p'o Ch'ih-pi-fu ti-ming k'ao” [“An Investigation into the Geographic Names in Su Tung-p‘o’s Rhymeprose on Red Cliff”], Jen-sheng semi-monthly, 314 (Dec. 1, 1963), 22–23.

59 Chou Yü (175–210) was married in 198 at the age of twenty-four, and was thirty-four at the time of the decisive battle which frustrated Ts'ao Ts‘ao’s attempt at unification and set the stage for the era of the Three Kingdoms. See San-kuo-chih, Wu-chih, ch. 9 (KM), 1049b-c.

60 Su Tung-p‘o’s philosophic outlook may be seen in his lyric to Ch'in-yüan-ch'un (Tung-p'o yüch-fu, shang, 12a):

“Yung she yu shih, Hsing ts'ang tsai wo.'“1

[“Opportunity depends on fate, But action rests with me.”]

61 See Man-chiang-hung in Mao chu-hsi shih-tz'u, p. 48:

“I wan nien t'ai chiu, Chih cheng chao hsi.”

[“Ten thousand years is too long, We contend for this day.”]

62 Giles, p. 225. Cf. Heart Sutra: “All things here are characterized with emptiness: they are not born, they are not annihilated; they are not stained, they are not immaculate; they do not increase, they do not decrease” (Suzuki, p. 26). “He who has perceived the meaning of change,” elucidates Richard Wilhelm, “fixes his attention no longer on transitory individual things but on the immutable, eternal law at work in all change” (The I Ching or Book, of Changes, tr. Cary F. Baynes [Bollingen, 1950], I, xxxv).

63 See Sung Hsiao-tsung's (reigned 1163–1189) Eulogy in Su Tung-p'o chi, ts'e 1, 5.

64 Among the battlecries of the “new culture” movement of 1919 were: “Down with Confucius & Co.!” and “Into the cesspool with all thread-bound [traditional] books!” (cf. Wm. Theodore de Bary et al., Sources of Chinese Tradition [Columbia, 1960], pp. 815 and 840.)

65 Nineteen Poems, p. 7, “A Letter on the Writing of Poetry.”

66 Since the corpus of Chinese literature is written in literary Chinese with the exception of only a few novels and song-tales, it is inaccessible to generations after the “literary” revolution except children of traditional families which could afford private Chinese tutors.

67 Kuo Mo-jo, “On Reading Chairman Mao's Newly Published Plum Blossoms to the tune Pu-suantzu,” Wen-hui-pao (Hong Kong), March 17, 1964, p. 3.

68 My sister Vidyā reports the steady decrease of “new poems” vis-à-vis “the old style” in Kuo Mo-jo's Tung-feng chi [“East Wind Collection”] (Peking, 1963), from 1959 to a mere handful in 1963.

69 “Author's Preface to the English Translation” in Kuo Mo-jo, Selected Poems from the Goddesses, tr. John Lester and A. C. Barnes (Peking, 1958). Cf. the following verse from “Morning Snow” dated Dec. 1919:

“Nature, how bold your sweep.

The symphony that is Nature.

Hero-poet.

Proletarian poet.”

with the translators' footnote: “The words in italics are in English in the original text” (ibid. p. 33).

70 At Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, on Feb. 3, 1964, Chou quoted the third couplet of Liu's seven-syllable lü-shih entitled “Reply to Po Chü-i's Rhyme at the Banquet on the Occasion of Our First Meeting in Yangchow” (Liu Meng-te wen-chi [SPTK], wai-chi, 5a-b):

“Past the sunken ship a thousand sails speed;

Before the sick tree a myriad plants bloom.”

using “sunken ship” and “sick tree” to signify “doomed imperialism,” and “thousand sails” and “myriad plants” to indicate “the revolutionary peoples of the world.” (Cf. Wen-hui-pao [Hong Kong], April 2, 1964, p. 2.) On March 31, 1964, Jen-min jih-pao [“People's Daily”], p. 4, cited the same lines in a joint editorial with Hung-ch'i [“Red Flag”] entitled “The Proletarian Revolution and Khrushchev's Revisionism.” The title explains the new application.

71 Often miscalled “rice paper” in the West, hsüan-chih is made from the bark of the branches of the mulberry-like ch'ing-t'an tree [“Pteroceltis tatarinowii, Maxim.”] found in the vicinity of Hsüanchow in southern Anhwei. Its superb fineness, immaculate whiteness, absorbency and agelessness make it the prize of Chinese painters and calligraphers since the time of T'ang. Cf. Mu Hsiao-t'ien, An-hui wen-fang ssu-pao shih [“History of Anhwei Province's Four Precious Articles of the Studio”] (Shanghai, 1962), p. 4 fn. The tree, however, is found not “only in southern Anhwei,” as Mu asserts, but also in other parts of China.

72 The same publisher also in 1958 put out the thread-bound, hüan-chih, wood-block-print edition of Lu Hsün shih-chi, a collection of the pai-hua [“vernacular”] master's classical poems in wen-yen [“literary Chinese”]. (“When now and then his creative urge took a poetical turn, he simply resorted to wen-yen, a handy vehicle for a man with his cultural upbringing” [T. A. Hsia, “Aspects of the Power of Darkness in Lu Hsün,” JAS, 23.2, Feb. 1964, 198].)

73 Prof. Hsia that no “simplified” characters had slipped into Mao Tse-tung's Selected Works.

74 Translated from the Chinese in Mao chu-hsi shih-tz'u, p. 47. As early as May, 1964, the English-language monthly Chinese Literature announced that it “will publish in a coming issue” the “ten [new] poems by Mao Tse-tung.” At the end of the year, they are still pending.

75 Few lü-shih rhyme in the “deflected” tse tone: e.g. Monk Ling-i's (fl. 764) five-syllable Sitting in the Night on Hsi-hsia Mountain; and Kao Shih's (d. 765) seven-syllable Reply to Magistrate Yen on Double Ninth Day, earlier listed as ku-shih (cf. Kao ch'ang-shih chi [SPTK], 5.9b). See Liang Ch'ia (fl. 1545), Ping-ch'uan shih-shih (wood-block print of 1610), 4.3b and 4b.

76 “Antithesis,” remarks Liu, James J. Y., “is an important and characteristic poetic device in Chinese. Like any other device, it can be abused, and when it is, it degenerates into a mechanical pairing off of words. But at its best it can reveal a perception of the underlying contrasting aspects of Nature and simultaneously strengthen the structure of the poem” (The Art of Chinese Poetry [London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962], p. 150).Google Scholar

77 For a summary of lü-shih, see Hightower, pp. 65–67. Cf. tabulated comparison of all major shih forms in Hsin-pien hsiang-chu Chung-hua wen-hsüan [“New Annotated Chung-hua Literary Selections”] (Hongkong, 1957), II, 108–109; also diagram showing lü-shih tone sequence and rhyme pattern in Masaru, Aoki, Shina bungaku gaisetsu (Tokyo, Kobundo, 1944), p. 100Google Scholar, of which the Library of Congress possesses a copy stamped, of all places, “[Japanese] Army N.C.O. School Library.”

78 Chao I (1727–1814), Kai-yü ts'ung-k'ao, ch. 24 (Shanghai, 1957), 498.

79 Ibid. See also Wei Ch'ing-chih (fl. 1265), Shih-jen yii-hsieh [“Gems of Poetical Criticism”], ch. 8 (Shanghai, 1958), 179.

80 Cf. counsel given by Yang Wan-li (1127–1206) in Wei, 6.134.

81 Shih-chi, 8.37a.

82 Lyric to Huan-ch'i-sha (Tung-p'o yüch-fu, hsia, 9a). Mao Chin (1598–1659) omits this lyric in Sung liu-shih ming-chia tz'u [“Collection of Tz'u by Sixty Famous Sung Writers”] (WYWK), “Tung-p'o tz'u,” p. 2, on his assumption that it is written by Li Yü (937–978), the last emperor of Nan-T'ang. But I am inclined to disagree in view of the close parallel between this line, “Feng ya ch'ing-yün t'ieh-shui fei, and “Ch'üeh hsün yün-chi t'ieh-t'ien fei in Su Tung-p'o chi, ts'e 10, 71, written under more propitious circumstances on “Being Recalled to Office and Returning North [from Exile].”

83 “press Communique of the 1963 Session of the National People's Congress,” CQ, 17 (Jan.-March, 1964), 252.

84 Cf. Lo Yin's (833–909) Nuan-ch'i ch'ien-ts'ui tz'u-ti ch'un [“A breath of warmth stirs, unfolding spring”] (Wei, 8.185).

85 In Chinese poetics, the fifth syllable in a seven-syllable line is called chü-yen [“line's eye”], which holds the focus of attention and demands due refinement of diction. (Cf. ch'ü [“chase”] in line 5, and p'a [“fear”] in 6.)

86 Cf. Li Po's line, “Flies and shell-embroidery [crafty fabrication] make slanderous noise (Li T'ai-po chi, ts'e 5, 38), which alludes to two passages in Shih-ching. See text below.

87 Mao chu-hsi shih-tz'u, p. 48.

88 Karlgren, , The Book, of Odes (Stockholm, 1950), p. 171Google Scholar; tr. 172. Ch'ing-ying [“lucilia caesar”], the stocky, pot-bellied, hairy, dung-infesting green fly (cf. Tz'u-hai, p. 1461f), is metaphorical for slanderers in Chinese poetry because it “stains the immaculate” by alighting on it (Chiao Yen-shou [fl. 80 B.C.], I-lin [Taipei], 13.2b).

89 Legge, IV, 348.

90 CQ, 17 (Jan.-March, 1964), 267.

91 Ibid. 268

92 The exasperation of “Hsiang-po” is exceptional to the Ode's temperance.

93 I ch'ang erh san t'an (Li chi, “Yüeh-chi,” 11.7a; gloss 7b).

94 Lu Hsün, The True Story of Ah Q, tr. Hsien-yi Yang and Gladys Yang (Peking, 1960), p. 20.

95 Translated from the Chinese text in Mao chu-hsi shih-tz'u, p. 45.

96 Cf. Hawkes, David, tr., Ch'u Tz'u: The Songs of the South (Boston, Beacon, 1962), Preface and translation.Google Scholar

97 Ssu-k'u t'i-yao, ts'e 40, 80–81, s.v. Mei-yüan.

98 See Mao Hsien-shu, 1.12b; cf. Lo Pin-wang chi (SPTK).

99 I base my assumption of Seng-chiao's date on the fact that he had exchanged rhymes with Wang Chih (fl. 1126). Cf. Ch'iian-Sung tz'u [“Tz'u of All Sung Dynasty”], T'ang Kuei-chang, ed. (Changsha, 1940), 284.12.

100 Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü, shang, 40b–41a.

101 Little is known about Yen Jui, the “camp courtesan of T'ien-t'ai [Chekiang],” except that she was associated with the prefect T'ang Yü-cheng, and involved in his litigation which “reached the ears of Fou-ling ['Abundance Mausoleum'] (Chang Tsung-hsiao, 19.518–519). It was the custom in Sung times to refer to deceased emperors by the names of their mausolea, and Hsiao-tsung (reigned 1163–1189) was interred at Yung-fou-ling. Further checking Kuang-hsü T'ai-chou ju-chih [“Taichow Local History of 1899”], I found the prefects during this reign period included one T'ang Chung-yu, cognomen Yü-cheng, in 1181–2. Hence my dating for Yen Jui. All references to “courtesans” in this paper, conceivably, are not courtesans per se, but talented women “trained to provide entertaining and lighthearted company esp. for a man or a group of men” (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, s.v. geisha).

102 Chang, loc. cit.

103 ibid, 19.509, s.v. Lu Fang-weng's mistress, Sheng-cha-tzu.

104 Transcribed in Mao chu-hsi shih-tz'u, p. 46.

105 Cf. Su Tung-p‘o’s Nien-nu-chiao which uses, without flaw, three chiang and three jen; two kuo two sheng, two ku, two ju and two ch'ien (Yü Wen-pao, p. 37).

106 CQ, 19 (July-Sept. 1964), 186, citing Chou Yang's speech.

107 Time Magazine, Oct. 16, 1964, p. 48.

108 T. A. Hsia, loc. cit.

109 Mcncius, “Wan-chang,” shang, IV, 2.

110 P'eng Sun-yü, 1.9.