How to Read Chinese Poetry A Guided Anthology

(Amelia) #1

376 t He y uan, m i ng, anD q i ng Dy na s t i e s


The effect of the emphasis on the femininity of illness in the opening couplet
does not result in the image of a fragile beauty languishing in sorrow. Instead,
the persona turns to “chew over” the meaning of the Book of Poetry and Classic of
History, with a mind free from mundane cares in a quiet environment. Her mind/
intellect is rendered sensually as taste: she “chews” the classics, is inspired by the
“flavor” of illness, and “savors... hidden leisure.” Her intellectual discernment
rendered through the metaphor of taste almost fuses with her sense of smell and
motion when she writes uninhibited poems with the fragrant ink. She claims that
these “wild” lines of poetry are akin to extraordinary music on the ancient in-
strument, and concludes that it is through illness that she has reached “inspira-
tion” and spiritual transcendence—the “hidden leisure beyond things.” This atti-
tude takes her beyond a mundane experience of illness to a spiritual dimension in
everyday existence. Such is the transformative power of poetry.
Grace S. Fong

notes


  1. A comprehensive catalog is Hu Wenkai, Lidai funü zhuzuo kao (Women’s Writings Through
    the Ages) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985). For the database and digitized texts of
    ninety-six collections, see Ming–Qing Women’s Writings: A Joint Digitization Project Between
    McGill University and Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University (http://digital.library.mcgill
    .ca/mingqing).

  2. The compilation of Ming shi poetry was begun in 1990: Quan Ming shi (Complete Shi Poetry
    of the Ming), 3 vols. to date (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990–).

  3. Dorothy Ko discusses the publishing boom in this period and its effects on the reading pub-
    lic in her seminal work Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century
    China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 29–53.

  4. There is by now a substantial body of scholarship on women’s literary culture in the Ming
    and Qing. For an up-to-date bibliography, see Wilt Idema and Beata Grant, The Red Brush: Writing
    Women of Imperial China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004).

  5. For an overview of the major figures and their theories, see Zhang Jian, Ming Qing wenxue
    piping (Ming–Qing Literary Criticism) (Taipei: Guojia chubanshe, 1983), and James J. Y. Liu, Chinese
    Theories of Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).

  6. Due to limitations of length, this chapter does not include poetry written by men and women
    during the increasing social and political instabilities caused by internal rebellions and European
    incursions in the nineteenth century, which augmented the tradition of poetic witnessing and
    personal recording.

  7. On Li Mengyang’s poetic theory and practice, see Yoshikawa Kōjirō, Five Hundred Years of
    Chinese Poetry, 1150–1650: The Chin, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties, trans. John Timothy Wixted (Prince-
    ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 140–149.

  8. Charles Egan discusses a frontier poem, “Following the Army” (C10.11), in chapter 10.

  9. Guo Qingfan, ed., “Xiaoyao you” (Free and Easy Wandering), in Zhuangzi jishi (Zhuangzi,
    with Collected Commentaries ) (Taipei: Qunyutang chuban gongsi, 1991), 1:6, n. 3.

  10. Yuan Hongdao made this statement in describing his younger brother Zhongdao’s poetry,
    in “Xu Xiaoxiu shi” (Preface to Xiaoxiu’s Poetry), in Yuan Hongdao ji jianjiao (The Works of Yuan
    Hongdao, with Annotations and Collations) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1981), 1:184.

  11. Zhu Yizun, Jingzhiju shihua (Remarks on Poetry from the Dwelling of Quiet Intent) (Beijing:
    Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1998), 2:478–479.

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