The “Nineteen Old Poems” are the earliest known coherent group of pentasyllabic
poems, first collected in the Wen xuan (Anthology of Refined Literature), compiled
by Xiao Tong (501–531), the crown prince of Liang. The authorship and dating of
these nineteen poems have long been a subject of debate. Eight of the poems have
been attributed to the Former Han poet Mei Sheng (d. ca. 140 b.C.e.) and at least
one to the Later Han poet Fu Yi (d. ca. 90) by some premodern scholars. How-
ever, most modern scholars have discredited these attributions and believe that
the poems were written toward the end of the Later Han by anonymous literati
living in the capital city of Luoyang. Another perplexing issue about this collection
is its relation to the Han yuefu (chap. 4). Some of the poems have been collected
in yuefu anthologies, and one poem contains segments that were still performed
as late as Jin times. Despite the lingering presence of some yuefu motifs, however,
the waning, if not complete disappearance, of oral performance is clearly evident.
The “Nineteen Old Poems” introduces new themes and transforms old ones
in ways that reflect the rising self-consciousness of the literati. Whether speaking
directly or through a female persona, the anonymous poets consistently brooded
over their inner experience and searched for the meaning of their lives on an ab-
stract philosophical level unseen in earlier shi poetry. The new syntactic and struc-
tural features of this collection also yield ample internal evidence of self-reflective
literati writing instead of singers performing or others orally communicating the
poems. In view of such profound thematic and formal changes, modern critics
generally agree that this collection marks an important transition from a perfor-
mative to a self-reflective tradition in the evolution of pentasyllabic shi poetry. For
this reason, it is often hailed as a fountainhead of Chinese lyricism and given a
prominent place in the history of Chinese poetry.
To prepare for our discussion of pentasyllabic poetry in this and the next three
chapters, we should look first at its metrics. As illustrated in the table, pentasyl-
labic poetry has five major rules:
1. There are five characters per line.- The number of lines in a poem is variable.
- Lines are usually organized into couplets.
- Rhyme usually occurs at every other line—in other words, at the end of the
closing line of each couplet (as indicated by the triangular rhyme marker ▲).
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❀ 5 ❀
Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry
The “Nineteen Old Poems”