c i P oe t ry : long s ong ly riC s 263The descriptive power of his song lyrics benefited most, however, from his under-
standing of the intrinsic musicality of the manci from the popular tradition. The
collection of his works is appropriately titled Collection of Musical Pieces (Yue zhang
ji): he set many of his songs in specific musical keys (diao), rarely done by other
scholar-poets, to ensure that they were sung in the right way to achieve optimal
effects. His sensitive awareness of the musicality of the song lyrics of the popular
tradition, especially the contours of the sound patterns or structural shapes of the
songs, as realized in the performances by musicians and singers, taught him how
to organize an extended poetic presentation. One of the most effective organiza-
tional devices he developed was the lingzi (leading word). Used at juncture points
in a description or narration, leading words comment on the perceptional experi-
ences, facilitate continuity, ease transitions, help create the desired rhythm, con-
trol sound flow, and, perhaps most importantly, reveal the relationship between
the component parts of the descriptive or narrative whole, whether this relation-
ship is linear, multilayered, or both.1
Most of Liu Yong’s innovations became the generic features of the manci. He
left to the ci poets who followed a powerful poetic vehicle capable of tasks unimag-
inable in the xiaoling, such as the multifaceted description of scenery, the presen-
tation of the twists and turns of complicated human feelings, and the narration of
the drama of human relationships.
Liu Yong’s contribution to the establishment of manci conventions was unani-
mously acknowledged by the ci practitioners and critics who came after him. None-
theless, his manci works were considered by many as vulgar and his language as
excessively low. The true reason for such harsh criticism was that both his conduct
in private life and the self-image he created in some of his songs showed him as
a songwriter from the pleasure quarters more than as a member of the educated
elite.
Among his critics was Su Shi (1037–1101), whose versatile talent and compre-
hensive achievements secured him a leading position in almost every sphere of
the cultural and literary activities of his time. Although Su Shi was critical of Liu
Yong’s language, which was the living language used by the singers and enter-
tainers of the time, he admired Liu Yong’s art. In his own creative experiments
with the new manci form, he carried on the work that Liu Yong had started.
What Su Shi did to the song lyric was quite appropriately summarized as “treat-
ing ci as shi,” and he was both praised and criticized for this practice. The conse-
quence of his experiment was augmented by his position as a formidable figure on
the literary scene, with a sensitive personality and a stock of personal experience
enriched by his eventful involvement in the political life of his day. After him, no
one could say that the ci was only a low genre.
Some critics questioned whether the new type of song lyric he introduced could
still be called ci. For example, in her essay “A Critique of the Song Lyric” (Ci lun),
his younger contemporary Li Qingzhao (1084–1151) dismissed his ci works as
“nothing but shi poems with irregular lines.” A fine musician and an accomplished