The form of the song lyric discussed in chapter 12 is, as suggested by the Chinese
term xiaoling, comparatively short and small in scale. In this chapter, we shall look
at another form of the genre, the “long song lyric” (manci). Our examination will
reveal that the differences between these two forms are found not only in their
length but, more importantly, also in their structure and their capacity for poetic
description and expression.
The origin of the manci, like that of the xiaoling, can be traced back to the popu-
lar song-verse tradition of the Middle Tang (ca. 750), but, unlike the xiaoling, it
took much longer for the manci to be appropriated by literati poets and to be devel-
oped, in the Song dynasty, into a major poetic genre. An important reason is that
the musicality of the manci—or manqu ci (slow-paced song verse)—is much more
complicated than that of the xiaoling. Whereas the professional songwriters were
masters of tones and beats but lacked the literary caliber to advance the poetic
quality of their works, the educated elite—when they deigned to practice this “low”
genre, with its irresistible melodious appeal—found its musical features too com-
plicated for dilettantes. Refining this art form and bringing its literary potential to
the full required the combination of a popular musician’s ear and a scholar’s pen.
This rare combination was nowhere to be found until the eleventh century, when
Liu Yong (987–1053) appeared on the scene.
Even when he wrote about love, the most stereotyped subject of the song lyric,
Liu Yong did not just repeat clichés and recycle stock poetic situations. In lyrics on
the new subjects he introduced to the genre, he produced descriptions of various
aspects of urban life, a detailed delineation of personal feelings of a frustrated
scholar, and the landscape seen through the eyes of a melancholy wanderer. The
poetic form of the shorter xiaoling could not meet his needs. He therefore turned
his eyes and ears to the longer form offered by the manci.
While other literati poets, with few exceptions, were interested in or, rather,
capable of writing only xiaoling when they composed song lyrics, Liu Yong wrote
mostly manci. Not satisfied with merely putting words to the existing tunes, he
composed new tunes to better carry his words. For him, a manci should not be
an elongated xiaoling but an organism permitting an elaborate description and
narration to develop with a certain order and logic. To achieve this, he drew on the
descriptive syntax of the rhymed prose (fu) of past ages, on the one hand, and, on
the other, learned from the flexible everyday language of the popular tradition.
❀ 13 ❀
Ci Poetry
Long Song Lyrics (Manci)