How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology PDF
Preview How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology
Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page A NOTE ON HOW TO USE THIS ANTHOLOGY MAJOR CHINESE DYNASTIES SYMBOLS Introduction PART 1 - Pre-Qin Times Chapter 1 - Tetrasyllabic Shi Poetry NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS Chapter 2 - Sao Poetry NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS PART 2 - The Han Dynasty Chapter 3 - Fu Poetry NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS Chapter 4 - Shi Poetry NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS Chapter 5 - Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry THEME: AGING AND HUMAN TRANSIENCE POETIC MODE: FROM THE NARRATIVE TO THE LYRICAL POETIC STRUCTURE: BI-XING AS GLOBAL STRUCTURE POETIC TEXTURE: THE DYNAMICS OF SILENT WRITING AND READING NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS PART 3 - The Six Dynasties Chapter 6 - Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry THE FARMSTEAD POETRY OF TAO QIAN THE LANDSCAPE POETRY OF XIE LINGYUN NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS Chapter 7 - Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry XIE TIAO XIAO GANG YU XIN NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS PART 4 - The Tang Dynasty Chapter 8 - Recent-Style Shi Poetry THE LÜSHI FORM THE LÜSHI FORM AND YIN-YANG COSMOLOGY VISIONS OF THE UNIVERSE AND THE SELF NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS Chapter 9 - Recent-Style Shi Poetry THE LEGACY OF DU FU AMBIGUITY AND FRAGMENTATION IN LATE TANG STYLE NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS Chapter 10 - Recent-Style Shi Poetry WUJUE QIJUE PROSODY OF JUEJU CLOSURE NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS Chapter 11 - Ancient-Style Shi Poetry NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS PART 5 - The Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty Chapter 12 - Ci Poetry NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS Chapter 13 - Ci Poetry NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS Chapter 14 - Ci Poetry NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS Chapter 15 - Shi Poetry NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS PART 6 - The Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties Chapter 16 - Qu Poetry MUSIC AND PROSODY POEMS ON NATURAL SCENERY AND HUMAN SENTIMENT POEMS ON THE LIFE OF A RECLUSE LOVE SONGS POEMS OF RAMBUNCTIOUS WIT AND IMPUDENT HUMOR NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS Chapter 17 - Shi Poetry of the Ming and Qing Dynasties POETIC THEORY AND POETIC PRACTICE POETRY AS DIURNAL PRACTICE NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS Chapter 18 - A Synthesis RETHINKING JUFA: TOWARD AN INTEGRATION OF RHYTHM AND SYNTAX TWO BASIC SYNTACTIC CONSTRUCTIONS: SUBJECT + PREDICATE AND TOPIC + COMMENT THE EVOLUTION OF CHINESE POETIC RHYTHMS AND SYNTAX NOTES SUGGESTED READINGS PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTIONS OF ENTERING-TONE CHARACTERS ABBREVIATIONS OF PRIMARY TEXTS Acknowledgements CONTRIBUTORS GLOSSARY-INDEX Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange in the publication of this book. Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Pushkin Fund toward the cost of publishing this book. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 2008 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data How to read Chinese poetry : a guided anthology / edited by Zong-qi Cai. p. cm. Chinese and English. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-13940-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-13941-0 (paper : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-51188-9 (electronic) 1. Chinese poetry—History and criticism. 2. Chinese poetry—Translations into English. I. Cai, Zong-qi. II. Title. PL2308.H65 2007 895.1’1009—dc22 2007023263 Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A NOTE ON HOW TO USE THIS ANTHOLOGY The goal of this anthology is to help students overcome language barriers and engage with Chinese poetical texts in ways that yield as much aesthetic pleasure and intellectual insight as one gets from the originals. This anthology features 143 famous poems composed over a period of almost three millennia stretching from the early Zhou all the way to the Qing, the last of China’s dynasties, which ended in 1911. These poems are all called “classical poems,” and classical they truly are—in terms of both their pastness and their revered quality. Yet many of them, especially those written by Tang and Song masters, are amazingly modern or contemporary in the sense that they are being fondly read and recited by millions of Chinese people. In fact, when educated Chinese are called on to recite some poems, what they recite are most likely classical poems rather than those written by modern or contemporary poets. Moreover, many of them continue to write poems in classical forms. So, unlike classical Western poetry, classical Chinese poetry may be regarded as a living tradition, enhanced by the audio-video gadgets of the information age. A student of Chinese language and culture can and should be an active participant in this great tradition. To aid in the learning process, we introduce here a new approach to the presentation and the interpretation of Chinese poetical texts. The learning of Chinese poetry should, we believe, begin with a deep, intense engagement with poetical texts—both in the original and in translation. But most major English-language anthologies of Chinese poetry offer only the English translation. Under such circumstances, students cannot possibly understand how diverse poetic elements work together in the original. In translation, many Chinese poems, especially those written in a highly condensed style, can easily appear hackneyed. Real engagement with poetical texts should be nothing less than an intense visual, oral, and aural experience. Like Chinese readers, students should be able to see the physical shape of a poem in Chinese, read it out loud, and hear it read fluently in the original. So, departing from the common practice of presenting only English translations, we provide Chinese texts, romanizations, a sound recording, and word-for-word translations as well. With only a few exceptions, the poems presented in this anthology are translated by the contributors. The inclusion of the Chinese texts reveals the nonalphabetical nature of Chinese writing. The romanizations make apparent the monosyllabic and tonal nature of Chinese characters. They carry tone marks that will aid students in reading the poems aloud or reciting them in modern standard Chinese (Mandarin). In some chapters, we also give samples of reconstructed ancient and medieval pronunciations to show how the poems were probably pronounced when they were composed. Some pronunciations are lost in modern Chinese and are preserved only in southern dialects, such as Cantonese. Reading ancient and medieval poems in those dialects restores some of the lost aural nuances. The sound recording (available online at http://www.cup.columbia.edu/static/cai-sound-files) adds an invaluable dimension to the reading of the poems, turning the silent characters into living speech. We urge readers to listen to the recording repeatedly in order to get a good sense of Chinese metrics. In Chinese poetry, the prescribed rhythm of sounds does not merely yield musical pleasure and “an echo to the sense,” as Alexander Pope said about English poetry, but it is the sense itself because it dictates how words are arranged to generate meaning. The word-for-word translations, provided for all the tonally regulated poems, afford a direct look at the noninflectional nature of Chinese and demonstrate how the absence of inflectional tags changes the entire dynamic of reading. Instead of being told the poet’s feelings and thoughts, we are often expected to experience them ourselves while creatively engaging words and images in a dynamic interplay. This is particularly true of the highly condensed and allusive works produced by the literati poets. For learners of Chinese, the word-for-word translations provide a handy collection of glosses that should facilitate their learning of characters. A number of other features of this anthology are crucial to a full comprehension of Chinese poetry. To begin with, each of the 143 poems is accompanied by a detailed commentary, allowing readers to gain a deep appreciation of the intricate interplay of word, image, and sound in Chinese. In analyzing the 143 poems, we have applied various modern methods of close reading and have drawn from contemporary critical theories dealing with oral performance, gender, power, and aesthetics. In addition, this anthology offers two systems of cross-reference. Names and terms in boldface type alert readers to relevant entries in the glossary-index, which contains additional information and references to related subjects of interest. The thematic table of contents offers an equally extensive system of cross-references at a broader level. It surveys the intellectual and cultural milieu of the poems as well as the development of themes, prosody, diction, syntax, and structure in Chinese poetry. By means of these aids, we hope to provide the kind of anthology thus far available to only Chinese readers, one that will help raise the knowledge and appreciation of Chinese poetry among English-language audiences to a new level. Z. C.
The list of books you might like
