Literati Tz'u

According to Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao's research, Wen T'ing-yün (812–72), a major poet represented in the Hua-chien chi , an anthology of early literati tz'u , was one of the very first poets to observe the distinction between level and oblique tonal categories in an attempt to bring music and poetry closer together.^[40] Jen Erh-pei, however, has pointed out that earlier popular songwriters represented in the Tun-huang manuscripts had already begun to pay attention to such distinctions in tz'u prosody^[41] and

[38] For an analysis of this unity of intrinsic and extrinsic music in a tz'u by Wen T'ing-yün, see my "Intrinsic Music in the Medieval Chinese Lyric," pp. 38–42.

[39] Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (New York: New American Library, 1951), p. 202.

[40] Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao, "T'ang Sung tz'u tzu-sheng chih yen-pien," in idem, T'ang Sung tz'u lun-ts'ung (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1962), p. 53. Shih I-tui mentions that in an unpublished manuscript the contemporary scholar Sheng P'ei has presented many new findings concerning the use of the four tones in the early song lyric that correct some of Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao's observations. I hope that Sheng P'ei's manuscript, titled Tz'u-tiao ting-lü , will be published soon. For shih I-tui's brief discussion of Sheng P'ei's work, see his "Chien-kuo i-lai hsin-k'an tz'u-chi hui-p'ing," Wen-hsüeh i-ch'an 1984, no. 3:134–35.

[41] Jen Erh-pei, Tun-huang ch'ü ch'u-t'an , pp. 91–92, 111–12.

that some of their song lyrics could have been composed as early as the High T'ang (712–65).^[42] Moreover, attention to distinctions among the four tones—rather than simply between level and oblique properties—can also be discerned occasionally in the Tun-huang song lyrics.^[43] It is probably fair to say that these popular songwriters were the first to attempt to bring music and lyrics closer together and that after Wen T'ing-yün, late T'ang, Five Dynasties, and early Sung literati poets who were concerned with both poetry and music also began to pay attention to the level/oblique distinction in their song lyrics. From the late eleventh century onward, Sung poets who had dual competence in poetry and music began to observe not only the level and oblique properties, but also the distinctions among the four tones as well as the timbre of the sounds of Chinese, such as initials, finals, and allotones. I will discuss some of these developments during the Sung dynasty later in this paper.

In terms of the song lyric's intrinsic music, the mid-ninth century is significant in yet another respect. Before this time, the tz'u poetry written by literati "was greatly conditioned by the poetics of the chüeh-chü quatrain."^[44] Literati poets of the early ninth century generally selected metrical patterns that were identical or very close to the patterns of the seven-character quatrain. After that date, however, literati poets began to write lyrics in accordance with a wider variety of metrical patterns, especially the two-stanza hsiao-ling (short song) forms of the tsa-yen , or "mixed meter," type. Although ninth-century poets did not adopt the longer metrical patterns available in the popular song lyric tradition, they had moved significantly away from the tradition of the highly regular recent-style verse and toward the development of unique structural principles for this new kind of poetry.

The mid-ninth century also saw the narrowing of subject matter in the song lyric of the literati tradition. The popular song lyrics preserved in the Tun-huang caves encompass a wide range of subjects. We find among them descriptions of war, conscription, frontier hardships, social injustice, the ambitions and frustrations of young students, and the quiet pleasures of the recluse, as well as Buddhist religious hymns,

[42] Ibid., pp. 228–31.

[43] Jen Pan-t'ang has observed that in all four song lyrics set to the tune "P'o chentzu" (which he believes to have been written in the High T'ang period) preserved in the Yün-yao chi , the two words that end each stanza are consistently words in "departing-level" tones. See his T'ang sheng-shih , p. 158.

[44] Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry , p. 26.

physicians' mnemonic rhymes, and so forth.^[45] As Wang Chung-min, a modern expert on songs from Tun-huang, notes, "Those pieces that depict boudoir sentiments and 'flowers and willows' [i.e., courtesans] do not amount to even half of the entire corpus."^[46] This thematic situation contrasts sharply with that of the literati song lyrics included in the Hua-chien chi , which are concerned almost exclusively with the theme of love.^[47]

Thematically, then, poets of the Hua-chien chi were "following the conventions established by the Kung-t'i-shih or Palace Style poetry."^[48] Since the pieces depicting "boudoir sentiments and 'flowers and willows'" already constitute a fairly large portion of the Tun-huang songs,^[49] it can be said that the Hua-chien chi poets simply were drawn to the theme of love and made it their predominant subject matter.^[50] But once "boudoir sentiments" (kuei-ch'ing ) and "amorous feelings" (yen-ch'ing ) were isolated as favorite subjects, they remained one of the most enduring elements of the "intrinsic genre," to borrow Hirsch's useful term, of the song lyric. A remark by Shen I-fu of the late Sung can be cited to support this observation: "Writing tz'u is different from writing shih . Even if the subject is flowers, one should still make use of feelings of love, or somehow involve boudoir sentiments. . . . If one only writes directly about flowers without employing any amorous or sensual words [yen-yü ], he is not abiding by the rules of the songwriter."^[51] In the hands of the literati poets of the ninth century, the song lyric was indeed transformed from its original popular song form into a medium used almost exclusively for the expression of love, displaying the common features of sensuality, narrowness, intimacy, delicacy, and ornateness (yen , hsia , shen ,

[45] Ibid., pp. 18–19; see also Wang Chung-min, Tun-huang ch'ü-tzu-tz'u (Shanghai: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan, 1950), p. 8. For a fuller discussion of the subject matter of Tun-huang tz'u songs, see Lin Mei-i, "Lun Tun-huang ch'ü ti she-hui hsing" in idem, Tz'u-hsüeh k'ao-ch'üan (Taipei: Lien-ching ch'u-pan shih-yeh kung-ssu, 1987), pp. 45–86.

[46] Wang Chung-min, Tun-huang ch'ü-tzu-tz'u , p. 8.

[47] Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry , p. 18.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Although songs exploring these themes do not make up half of the corpus, they are still quite large in number when compared to songs on other themes. Yang Hai-ming has observed this in his book T'ang Sung tz'u feng-ko lun (Shanghai: She-hui-k'o-hsüeh-yüan ch'u-pan-she, 1986), p. 33.

[50] Yü P'ing-po has made this observation in the preface to his book T'ang Sung tz'u-hsüan , which is collected in Tz'u-hsüeh yen-chiu lun-wen-chi (1949 –1979 nien ), ed. Hua-tung ta-hsüeh Chung-wen-hsi ku-tien wen-hsüeh yen-chiu-shih (Shanghai: Shang-hai ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1982). See his comment on p. 149.

[51] Shen I-fu, Yüeh-fu chih-mi , in T'ang Kuei-chang, Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , 1:233.

wan, mei ).^[52] For a long time after the mid-ninth century, even though individual poets did continue to develop their personal styles, these characteristics remained intrinsic to the genre.

Wei Chuang (836–910), for instance, usually employed the explicit mode of the first-person speaker—in the voice of either a man or a woman—in his song lyrics, in contrast to Wen T'ing-yün's preference for the implicit mode of presentation.^[53] Wei effectively turned the song form into a direct, personal lyric. But his song lyrics are as narrowly restricted as those of Wen T'ing-yün to the description of the experiences of love. Feng Yen-ssu (903–60) was especially skillful in revealing delicate emotions in finely crafted images of nature. Yet the emotions revealed are also usually those of women separated from their beloved. Even in the powerful short songs from the last years of Li Yü's (937–78) life, the pain he suffered from having lost his kingdom is still expressed chiefly through the themes of separation, love, and reminiscences of his past life of indulgence. It is true that, compared with the works by other early literati poets, Li Yü's song lyrics are certainly characterized by his passionate nature and expansive, articulate energy, and they definitely influenced the hao-fang , or "heroic abandon," type of songs developed later in the Northern Sung, as Yeh Chia-ying has observed.^[54] Li Yü's hsiao-ling , however, did not abandon the "obsession" with the amorous and the sensual that characterized the song lyric of the late T'ang and the Five Dynasties.