anC i e n t-s t y l e Sh i P oe t ry : C on t i nuat ion anD C Hang e s 227rules, showcasing a voice that ranged widely from subtle musicality to outra-
geous exclamation; for him, true ancientness could best be attained by making
frank use of poetic conventions rather than pretending that they were in any way
natural. A bit later, Bai Juyi (772–846), interested in founding a poetics that
really could transform society, seems to have borrowed a bit of both: in keep-
ing with Chen Zi’ang’s spirit, he espoused language that spurred later readers
to note (sometimes disparagingly) his poetry’s similarity to prose; at the same
time, like Li Bai, he made poetic genres and conventions work for him in unex-
pected ways.
In these examples, the artful authenticity that is the hallmark of the guti shi
provides a unique window onto the strivings of poets as they sought to blend the
necessity of design with the ideal of pure, unmediated expression; ancient values
with subjective experience; and the philosophical with the personal.
The first example is a poem written by Chen Zi’ang, author of a group of thirty-
eight poems now collectively known as “Ganyu,” most often understood as
“Moved by Things Encountered.” Chen Zi’ang is best known—because of both
these poems and statements made in his preface to a poem called “Xiuzhu pian”
(Tapering Bamboo)—as a prime initiator of an amorphous poetic reform move-
ment that would eventually be known as fugu (return to the ancients), protesting
the ornamentation of the recent poetry of the Qi and Liang dynasties. His life as an
active and outspoken member of the court of Empress Wu Zetian (r. 690–705) is
marked by the highs and lows, the periods of exile and return, that constituted the
making of a righteous official of the day; this experience helped secure the ideo-
logical legitimacy of his oeuvre and its reformist stance. Guided in his actions and
in his writings by a blend of Confucian ethics and Daoist and Buddhist spirituality,
he experienced the wanderings of the knight-errant, the trials of the soldier on the
frontier, the reclusion of the Daoist adept, and, in the end, the death in prison of
the political idealist at the all-too-young age of forty-one.1
Since as early as the ninth century, there have been many interpretations of the
title of these poems, “Ganyu,” with the most common being “Moved by Events I
Encounter.”2 All interpretations convey that, in contrast to the perceived artifi-
ciality of recent-style poetry, these poems are to be read as the “natural” product of
spontaneous feelings.
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Moved by Events I Encounter, No. 6 感遇 (găn yù)I behold the transformations of the dragon— 吾觀龍變化 (wú guān lóng biàn huà)
2 Now, the Yang essence is at its fullest. 乃是至陽精 (năi shì zhì yáng jīng)
How dark and dense the stone forests— 石林何冥密 (shí lín hé míng mì)
4 Nothing in the shadowy caves can hinder its course. 幽洞無留行 (yōu dòng wú liú xíng)
The ancients who attained the way of the Transcendents— 古之得仙道 (gŭ zhī dé xiān dào)
6 Indeed were the equals of Primordial Transformation. 信與元化並 (xìn yŭ yuán huà bìng)