ONE—
DEFINING THE SONG LYRIC VOICE:
QUESTIONS OF GENRE

The Formation of a Distinct Generic Identity for Tz'u

Shuen-fu Lin

Toward the end of the Northern Sung dynasty (960–1126),^[1] in an essay titled "Tz'u lun," "A Critique of the Song Lyric," Li Ch'ing-chao (1084–1151?) asserted that tz'u pieh-shih i-chia , that "tz'u constitutes its own household [distinct from shih ]."^[2] This is an important claim for a self-conscious generic identity for the song lyric, one that follows a series of brief comments on the development of the form from the eighth to the late twelfth centuries and on some of the well-known poets from the Five Dynasties (907–60) through the Northern Sung. The significance of this essay cannot be underestimated, for "A Critique of the Song Lyric" is the first piece of critical discourse in the history of Chinese literature devoted especially to a discussion of the aesthetic properties of the genre as a whole.^[3]

[1] This important essay has always been regarded by modern scholars as a work written during the last years of the Northern Sung dynasty. In a recent article, however, Fei Ping-hsün argues that it was likely to have been written early in the Southern Sung period (1127–1279) or even late in Li Ch'ing-chao's life. "A Critique of the Song Lyric" first appeared in T'iao-hsi yü-yin ts'ung-hua—hou-chi , where it carried a preface dated 1167. It was not included in T'iao-hsi yü-yin ts'ung-hua—ch'ien-chi , which had a preface dated 1148, even though this first volume had already included some recorded statements about Li Ch'ing-chao and some comments on her song lyrics. For Fei's arguments, see his article titled "Li Ch'ing-chao 'Tz'u lun' hsin-t'an" in Li Ch'ing-chao yen-chiu lun-wen hsüan (Shanghai: Shang-hai ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1986), pp. 230–42. I don't find Fei's arguments completely convincing and will follow the majority view concerning the date of composition in this paper.

[2] Huang Mo-ku, Ch'ung-chi Li Ch'ing-chao chi (Shantung: Ch'i Lu shu-she, 1981), p. 57. The essay can be found in pp. 56–57 of Huang's book.

[3] Prior to the 'Tz'u lun,' random comments on the song lyric can be found in pref-aces to anthologies or groups of song lyrics and in the anecdotal shih-hua or pen-shih ch'ü . For a general discussion of early tz'u criticism from the late T'ang to the end of the Northern Sung, see Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun (Hangchow: Che-chiang kuchi ch'u-pan-she, 1985), pp. 279–97.

It might be tempting to assume that the song lyric, which had often been associated with "feminine sensibility," had to wait for a woman poet of Li Ch'ing-chao's stature to claim its generic identity. But the properties of the genre as articulated in the essay are by no means arbitrary formulations of her own particular artistic ideals. Although Li Ch'ing-chao applied a very high standard in evaluating the works of representative poets of the song lyric (and almost none of them escaped her unrelenting criticism), the general sense of its identity as a genre as set forth in her essay was in fact widely shared by poets and scholars of the second half of the eleventh and the early twelfth centuries. Despite its brevity, "A Critique of the Song Lyric" thus represents a summation of the dominant aesthetic conventions pertaining to the lyric that had been evolving since the late T'ang, in addition to serving as a response to the special developments that occurred in the poetry and poetics of the genre during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. In what follows I will explore the formation of the song lyric's generic identity in its historical and literary contexts during this period.

Considerations of Genre

Let me first say a few words about the concept of genre as it is to be understood in this paper. Few people today, if any, would subscribe to a prescriptive theory of genres and urge writers and scholars to approximate some "Platonic" notion of pure forms.^[4] Rather, those who still think that generic distinctions are indispensable to both writers and literary scholars generally adopt a descriptive theory of genres. That is, they usually derive the sense of literary kinds from existing works of literature and tend to allow the mixing of established generic norms.^[5] As E. D. Hirsch, Jr., has aptly observed, the "essential elements of all

[4] See Allan Rodway's discussion of "two inclusive classes of kind-criticism" in his article "Generic Criticism: The Approach through Type, Mode and Kind" in Contemporary Criticism , ed. Malcolm Bradbury and David Palmer, Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies, no. 12 (London: Edward Arnold, 1970), p. 87. René Wellek and Austin Warren have observed that classical theory of genre is usually "prescriptive" while modern theory is by contrast "descriptive." See their Theory of Literature , 3d ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1956), pp. 233–35.

[5] Allan Rodway, "Generic Criticism," p. 87.

genres are historical and culture-bound,"^[6] and the evolution of genres within any given literary tradition is always a complex and dynamic process, intimately related to changing historical and cultural contexts. The creativity of individual writers also plays a significant part in the dynamic evolution of genres. But individual contributions are themselves closely related to the complex historical and cultural conditions in which the writers lived. In this discussion, therefore, genres are to be regarded not "as a hierarchy of fixed forms, each individual work belonging to one and only one such category," but "more flexibly as clusters of stylistic and thematic traits that a number of works hold more or less in common and that change irregularly over the course of time."^[7]

It is true that genres were usually conceived by scholars in Sung times as a sort of "hierarchy of forms" and were used more often than not for prescriptive or evaluative, rather than purely descriptive, purposes. Nevertheless, the traits and conventions associated with genres are by no means always rigidly fixed in their formulations. The sense of a genre's identity changes over the course of time in accordance with the evolution of a whole literary culture; certain traits remain always essential to a particular genre's identity from the time of its emergence, while others lose their vitality in the genre's history and are replaced by or integrated with traits from other genres. Thus, the formation of the self-identity of the song lyric can best be approached from an evolutionary perspective. Although the song lyric never stopped evolving during the more than four centuries that elapsed from the early T'ang to the end of the Northern Sung, two periods were of particular relevance to the formation of its generic identity: the period around the year 850, when the song lyric began to evolve in the hands of literati poets into an "independent literary genre,"^[8] and the late Northern Sung, when the song lyric reached a mature and sophisticated stage of development that allowed a self-conscious generic identity to appear. These two periods will serve as the foci of my attention, even though I will be discussing the evolution of the early song lyric as a whole.

[6] E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 107.

[7] One can find a brief but lucid and sensible discussion of the concept of genre in Lawrence Buell, New England Literary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 16–17.

[8] Kang-i Sun Chang has discussed this important development in early tz'u in her book The Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry: From the Late T'ang to the Northern Sung (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 29–32.

Poetry and Music

The term tz'u , or ch'ü-tzu-tz'u (song words) in full, designates the song form that was set to yen-yüeh , or "banquet music," a new kind of music that emerged in China during the late sixth century, a synthesis of music imported from Central Asia and India with native Chinese elements.^[9] Li Ch'ing-chao, however, situates the form within an even larger context by opening her "Tz'u lun" with this remark: "Yüeh-fu and sheng-shih were both well known and especially in fashion during the T'ang dynasty [618–907]."^[10] After making this opening statement, Li Ch'ing-chao then goes on to relate a story about a famous singer of the eighth century, Li Pa-lang, before she focuses on the song lyric itself. Li Ch'ing-chao begins her essay in this fashion clearly in order to emphasize the importance of music and performance in her discussion of the tz'u .

The association of the song lyric with musical settings is, of course, a significant characteristic of the genre. Yet the song lyric was obviously not the first kind of Chinese poetry to be set to music. Relying on written sources, some recent Chinese scholars of the song lyric have divided the long history of the relationship between poetry and music into three stages, beginning with the Shih-ching , or Book of Songs .^[11] From ancient times to the Han dynasty, the usual practice was to adapt music to the

[9] Ibid., pp. 223–40. Chou Sheng-wei, "Ts'ung shih yü yüeh ti hsiang-hu kuan-hsi k'an tz'u-t'i ti ch'i-yüan yü hsing-ch'eng," in Tz'u-hsüeh lun-kao , ed. Hua-tung shih-fan ta-hsüeh Chung-wen-hsi Chung-kuo ku-tien wen-hsüeh yen-chiu-shih (Shanghai: Huatung shih-fan ta-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1986), pp. 14–15. The term ch'ü-tzu-tz'u was not very popular in T'ang times, however. It became widely used only after the Five Dynasties. See Jen Erh-pei's comment on this matter in his Tun-huang ch'ü ch'u-t'an (Shanghai: Wen-i lien-ho ch'u-pan-she, 1954), pp. 219–20.

[10] Jen Pan-t'ang, T'ang sheng-shih (Shanghai: Shang-hai ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1982), 1:8 Sheng-shih was popular from the early T'ang through the Five Dynasties period. The tunes to which sheng-shih was set formed part of banquet music, but they tended to have a regular shape, providing a good setting for poems written in lines of equal length. See Jen Pan-t'ang's definition of sheng-shih in T'ang sheng-shih , p. 46. Jen Pan-t'ang indicates in his long introduction to T'ang sheng-shih that the manuscript of his book was first completed in Ch'eng-tu in 1958. He writes that he reread the manuscript in 1981, although he does not say whether he undertook any revision of it then. Pan-t'ang is probably a sobriquet of Jen Erh-pei (i.e., Jen Na), the author of Tun-huang ch'ü ch'u-tan , which was also written in the 1950s in Ch'eng-tu.

[11] Although these three stages have been recognized by scholars in the past, they have not been studied in any detail until recently. See especially Liu Yao-min, Tz'u yü yin-yüeh (Kunming: Yün-nan jen-min ch'u-pan-she, 1982), pp. 191–218, and Shih I-tui, Tz'u yü yin-yüeh kuan-hsi yen-chiu (Peking: Chung-kuo she-hui k'o-hsüeh-ch'u-pan-she, 1989), pp. 131–50.

framework of verse: "first poetry, then music." The Ch'u-tz'u , or Songs of the South , as well as the yüeh-fu of the Han dynasty and the Six Dynasties are further examples of early poetry with musical settings. Although the custom of "adapting music to the framework of poetry" continued to exist in some fashion throughout this period, there appeared together with the rise of yüeh-fu poetry in the Han the practice of finding poems to set to existing music.^[12] This procedure usually required the musicians to split up lines of verse, add refrains, or in some cases insert a number of nonsensical sounds to fit the text to the tune. In consequence, poetry and music were only loosely combined at best. Nonetheless, music had already begun to gain importance in its relation to poetry.

From the beginning of the eighth century, some popular songwriters began to compose words to banquet music tunes.^[13] This new approach of "filling in words in accordance with the notes" (i-sheng t'ien-tz'u ), or "first music, then poetry," allowed music to determine the shape of poems, resulting in the emergence of tz'u poetry with mixed line-lengths and interesting and complex tonal patterns.^[14] Thus, according to this widely accepted view, the development of Chinese poetry with musical settings from the Shih-ching to the tz'u was a long process in which poetry gradually lost its predominance relative to its musical setting until finally the structure of music was recognized as dominant and poetry was forced to adapt to it. Though not completely without merit, this linear view is clearly too simplistic and reflects, no doubt, the bias of literary scholars. In the absence of archaeological evidence, it is problematic to assert that the earliest practice was indeed consistently "first poetry, then music."^[15]

There is actually another view concerning the relationship between poetry and music in the Chinese tradition. Commenting on the "Ta hsü," or "Great Preface," to the Mao edition of the Book of Songs , K'ung

[12] Liu Yao-min, Tz'u yü yin-yüeh , pp. 23–27; Shih I-tui, Tz'u yü yin-yüeh kuan-hsi yenchiu , pp. 137–46.

[13] Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao and Wu Hsiung-ho, Tsen-yang tu T'ang Sung tz'u (Hangchow: Che-chiang jen-min ch'u-pan-she, 1958), p. 2.

[14] Owing to the structure of the music, a small number of tz'u metrical patterns with lines of equal length does exist. The phrase i-sheng t'ien-tz'u first appeared in the Wen-t'i ming-pien by Hsü Shih-tseng of the late Ming. See Lo Ken-tse and Yü Pei-shan, eds., Wen-chang pien-t'i hsü-shuo by Wu Na, and Wen-t'i ming-pien hsü-shuo by Hsü Shih-tseng (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1962), p. 164. Although this statement appeared long after banquet music was lost, for the majority of tz'u scholars it describes concisely the lyric writers' common approach to the making of poetry and music.

[15] I am grateful to Anthony Yu for raising this important point in his discussion of the relationship between poetry and music at the conference.

Ying-ta (574–648) argued that the two approaches of "making music in accordance with poetry" and "making poetry in accordance with music" had always existed, although he also believed that music had been created first in accordance with the distinctions inherent in human speech.^[16] The belief that two approaches to the making of poetry and music were simultaneously practiced depending entirely on which art form was available first was held by other scholars such as Shen Yüeh (441–513) of the southern Ch'i dynasty, Yüan Chen (779–831) of the T'ang dynasty, and Huang Hsiu-fu (fl. 1001) and Kuo Mao-ch'ien (fl. 12th cent.) of the Sung dynasty.^[17] On the basis of his own work on the sheng-shih of the T'ang dynasty, the modern scholar Jen Pan-t'ang strongly supports this view and argues that only after banquet music was lost were song lyrics ever written completely without any concern with music.^[18] This theory seems more plausible than the linear view in explaining the actual practice of combining poetry with music in traditional China. However, one must not be misled by it into believing that the song lyric contributed nothing new to the history of the making of poetry and music, because the same approaches were used in all forms of poetry with musical settings from the Book of Songs to the song lyric of the Sung dynasty.

The Musicalization of Poetry

The importance of the song lyric in the long history of the relationship between Chinese poetry and music resides in the particular characteristics of the music to which the lyric was set and in the fact that it represents the culmination of generations of poets' attempts to use the distinctive features of the Chinese language to create a kind of music in poetry—what has been called the "musicalization" of poetry by Chinese literary historians.^[19] The musicalization of poetry can be said to have begun in the fifth century, when for the first time educated Chinese became fully aware that their language possessed tonal features—that is, the tones p'ing (level), shang (rising), ch'ü (departing), and ju (entering).^[20] The discovery subsequently led fifth-century poets to ex-

[16] See Mao shih chu-shu , vol. 2 of Shih-san-ching chu-shu (Taipei: I-wen yin-shu-kuan, 1965), pp. 13 and 16.

[17] Jen Pan-t'ang, T'ang sheng-shih , pp. 171, 342–44.

[18] Ibid., pp. 374–79.

[19] In his Tz'u yü yin-yüeh Liu Yao-min uses the term shih-ko yin-yüeh-hua , or "the musicalization of poetry," to refer to the process by which the tonal properties of the Chinese language are used to create a kind of music in poetry.

[20] Ibid., pp. 100–104.

periment with employing tones for euphonic effects. Prior to this, the tones no doubt had some bearing on the rhythm of poetry (because Chinese had probably always been a tonal language), but only on an unconscious level. By contrast, the experiments of the fifth-century poets were a self-conscious attempt to create an "intrinsic music" within the written texts themselves.^[21] Interestingly, this intrinsic music was first created in the form of poetry—shih —that lacked a corresponding musical setting, or "extrinsic music." Shih poetry had emerged in the first century B.C. and was in fact originally associated with folk songs, but it was not until the second century A.D. that it became popular among literati poets, who began to use it as a mode for self-expression in isolation from its original musical setting.^[22] The shih poem is constructed almost entirely of end-stopped lines of equal length (of either five or seven characters each), which are further organized into basic units of couplets, with rhyme occurring at the end of each even-numbered line. It was within this regular and rigid form that the self-conscious poets of the fifth century tried to create a kind of music with the newly discovered tonal features of their native language.

Shen Yüeh has been traditionally credited with having defined the four tones and some of the rules of tonal euphony.^[23] In the "Lu Chüeh chuan," the biography of Lu Chüeh, a contemporary and intellectual companion of Shen Yüeh, it is recorded that Shen Yüeh and others of his time "infused musical qualities into their writings and used the 'level, rising, departing, and entering' tones to regulate their resonance and euphony. . . . Within every line of five characters, all tones and final sounds differ from one another, and within every two lines, each word differs in pitch."^[24] Shen Yüeh himself made a key statement about the "music" of poetry:

One needs to make the notes alternate and the high and low sounds intermix to form a rhythm. If there is a floating sound in the front, there should be an intense sound in the rear. Within a single piece of writing, make the tones and final sounds of the words distinct; within every two lines, vary the light and heavy sounds. Only when one understands this principle can one be allowed to discuss writing.^[25]

[21] Ibid. The terms nei-tsai yin-yüeh , or "intrinsic music," and wai-tsai yin-yüeh , or "extrinsic music," are defined in these pages.

[22] Burton Watson, Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 16.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Chi Yün, Shen-shih ssu-sheng k'ao (rpt., Changsha: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan, 1941), pp. 154–55.

[25] Ibid., p. 151.

Shen Yüeh's goal clearly was to use the four tones of the Chinese language to parallel the five notes on the pentatonic scale of ancient Chinese music, and to use them in such a way as to create a kind of rhythm and melody similar to that of music. By drawing an analogy from music, Shen Yüeh thus drew attention to the aspects of variation and modulation. But he had nothing explicit to say about harmony or regularity of rhythm, and his arguments were limited to the individual line and the couplet, without any concern for the overall structure of an entire poem.

From the above quotation, we can see that Shen Yüeh spoke of the four tones as if they possessed two sets of opposing properties. He used the words "high" (kao ) and "low" (hsia ), "light" (ch'ing ) and "heavy" (chung ), as well as "floating" ( fu ) and "intense" (ch'ieh ) to describe them. In T'ang times these pairs of opposing traits were essentially defined as the distinction between "level" (p'ing ) and "oblique" (tse ) tonal qualities.^[26] There are different theories regarding the exact nature of the level/oblique distinction: it is one based on a contrast—either in duration between long and short, or in pitch between high and low, or in contour between level and oblique—when a sound is enunciated. Words in the level tone belong to the level category and words in the rising, departing, and entering tones all belong to the oblique category.

Although fifth-century scholars were the first to discuss the four tones and their bipartite division, they were by no means the first to observe in writing the distinction between two opposing tonal categories. In a pioneering investigation into tonal patterns in writing, Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao argues that some observation of the distinction between two apparently opposing categories can already be found in poetry and rhymeprose (fu ) composed before the fifth century.^[27] He points out that in the Book of Songs and the Songs of the South , alternation between rhyme words belonging to opposite tonal categories (as distinguished in later historical times) often exists within a single piece; that in the rhymeprose of the Han dynasty, the tonal properties of the words ending lines are often found to alternate from line to line; that in some rhymeprose of the Han, especially of the latter half of the dynasty, alternation between the

[26] For a concise description of this bipartite division, see Yu-kung Kao, "The Aesthetics of Regulated Verse," in The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late Han to the T'ang , ed. Shuen-fu Lin and Stephen Owen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 352–53. According to Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao, Yin Fan in the eighth century was the first person to use the terms p'ing and tse in his preface to the anthology of T'ang poetry he edited, the Ho-yüeh ying-ling-chi . See Hsia's article "Ssu-sheng i-shuo" in idem, Yüeh-lun-shan tz'u-lun chi (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1979), p. 156.

[27] Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao, "Ssu-sheng i-shuo," pp. 149–60.

two tonal categories is also found; and, finally, that in shih poetry of the second century, words in the corresponding key (i.e., the second and fourth) positions within a couplet are often found to belong to opposing tonal categories.^[28] Since we no longer have the music for the works in the Book of Songs and the Songs of the South , there is no way we can determine whether, or to what extent, the tonal patterns observed there (if Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao's findings are indeed valid) were the result of setting words to music. But in light of these findings, it is at least clear that Shen Yüeh's attempt to create an intrinsic music in poetry was built upon centuries of previous experience.

The bipartite division of the four tones came into wide use by poets experimenting with the tones after the second half of the fifth century. By the seventh century, the new genre of poetry called lü-shih , or "regulated verse," had appeared, with its distinctive metrical structure based on the "level/oblique" tonal contrast—a major breakthrough in the musicalization of classical Chinese poetry. In regulated verse level and oblique tonal properties are organized into a rhythmic fabric. Normally, the two adjacent disyllabic metrical units within each line are opposite in level/oblique tonal distinction. Since the second syllable in each disyllabic metrical segment and the last syllable in each line are slightly stressed in reading, their tonal qualities, either level or oblique, are customarily fixed. Other unstressed places are allowed greater freedom in actual practice. This alternation between level and oblique tones in stressed positions constitutes the linear or temporal aspect of the rhythm of regulated verse. The lines in a piece of regulated verse are further organized into four interrelated couplets. The tonal properties of the corresponding lines, especially of the stressed positions, within each couplet must be opposed to one another. Both the combination of metrical units into lines and the juxtaposition of lines into couplets reflect the principle of "maximum contrast."^[29] Between two adjacent couplets the same tonal properties are used in the corresponding stressed positions in the neighboring lines. The repetition of tonal qualities between adjacent couplets and the opposition of tonal qualities within each couplet create a conceptual kind of spatial layout of the rhythm of regulated verse.

The linear and spatial dimensions of rhythm discussed here constitute the intrinsic music of regulated verse, a remarkable advance from the meter of Chinese poetry prior to the late fifth century, which was

[28] Ibid., pp. 150–51.

[29] Yu-kung Kao, "The Aesthetics of Regulated Verse," p. 354.

based largely on the measure of syllables or beats.^[30] This intrinsic music no doubt contributed to the beauty and dynamism of the aural aspect of regulated verse, but it also had its limitations. There were only a few metrical patterns available to poets for the expression of a wide variety of themes and feelings. Moreover, the metrical patterns tended to be extremely regular and rigid. It should be noted here that the quatrain form, chüeh-chü , the other form of T'ang recent-style verse (chin-t'i shih ), which was crucial to the development of literati tz'u before the middle of the ninth century,^[31] shared the same intrinsic music as regulated verse.

Banquet Music

The introduction of banquet music opened up significantly new possibilities for Chinese poetry. Increasingly popular in T'ang China from the eighth century onward,^[32] it was viewed by scholars as yin-sheng (lascivious music), Cheng Wei chih yin ("music of Cheng and Wei," or decadent music), or mi-mi chih yüeh (dissolute and sensual music) that had abandoned much of the moderation contained in ya-yüeh and ch'ing-yüeh , the two previous traditional forms of Chinese music.^[33] Compared with

[30] The structural principles of regulated verse are discussed in some detail in my book, The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K'uei and Southern Sung Tz'u Poetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 97, and in my article, "Intrinsic Music in the Medieval Chinese Lyric" in The Lyrical Arts: A Humanities Symposium , a special issue of Ars Lyrica , ed. Erling B. Holtsmark and Judith Aikin (Guilford: Lyrica Society, 1988), pp. 29–54.

[31] Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry , pp. 25–30.

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

[33] Yin-sheng is used by the Sung scholar Yü Wen-pao in his Ch'ui-chien lu to refer to yen-yüeh (called i-yüeh here). Cheng Wei chih yin is used by the Sung scholar Wang Mingch'ing in his Hui-chu lu to refer to the banquet music popular among the educated elite during the Southern Sung. Their remarks are quoted in Shih I-tui, Tz'u yü yin-yüeh kuan-hsi yen-chiu , p. 154. Li Ch'ing-chao also uses the term Cheng Wei chih sheng , or "the music of Cheng and Wei" (i.e., "decadent" music), to refer to banquet music in her "Tz'u lun." See Huang Mo-ku, Ch'ung-chi Li Ch'ing-chao chi , p. 56. Commenting on ch'ing-yüeh , the T'ang scholar Tu Yu says in his T'ung-tien : "The songs of lascivious whining from the South are already quite chaotic. Nevertheless, they still carry the lingering influence of the graceful, refined, and moderate manner of the gentleman-scholar." See the remark quoted in Shih I-tui, Tz'u yü yin-yüeh kuan-hsi yen-chiu , p. 155. In the Hsü t'ung-tien , the term mi-mi chih yüeh is used to refer to banquet music. See the relevant passage quoted in Liu Yao-min, Tz'u yü yin-yüeh , p. 270. This term probably first appeared in the "Shih-kuo" chapter of the Han Fei-tzu in reference to the dissolute and licentious music made by Music Master Yen for King Chou, the last ruler of the Shang dynasty. See Ch'en Ch'i-yu, ed., Han Fei-tzu chi-shih (Shanghai: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1958), p. 171. Both mi-mi chih yüeh and Cheng Wei chih sheng were originally terms used to condemn the "dissolute anddecadent" music produced in states whose governments were in chaos. When later scholars used these terms to refer to banquet music, it was not necessarily primarily for the purpose of condemnation.

ya-yüeh and ch'ing-yüeh , banquet music possessed a larger compass of tones and tended to be more exhaustive or even to go to extremes in its expression of emotions, whether joy or sorrow.^[34] Thus, as an expressive art form, banquet music was believed to be a far more lively and powerful medium than previous traditional Chinese music. Its social function, moreover, was also of relevance to its particularly expressive power. Banquet music was used primarily for entertainment at official or private banquets in the residences of aristocrats and well-to-do people, as well as in wineshops, song houses, and brothels, and the song lyrics set to these tunes were sung largely—though, until the Sung dynasty, not exclusively—by singing girls.^[35] As a result, early song lyrics, especially those composed by literati, display a general tendency toward the expression of a relatively narrower world of experience and toward a more gentle, delicate, and sensual style of presentation when compared with shih poetry.^[36]

We know that well over eight hundred banquet music tunes and more than two thousand different metrical patterns of song lyrics set to these tunes have survived from the T'ang, the Five Dynasties, and the Sung periods.^[37] Compared with the quatrain and regulated verse, the song lyric offered the poet a much wider range of choices, because its tunes and metrical patterns differed from each other in atmosphere, mood, and tone, and were deemed capable of evoking different emotional responses from the listener. We can say that the tunes and metrical patterns represented different formal structures for the expression of a whole range of feelings; it was up to the poet to select the appropriate form within which to express a particular feeling. But song lyrics, especially those written by the literati poets of the late T'ang and the early Sung, were still to a large extent composed in the rhythm or intrinsic music of recent-style verse. Nonetheless, because of the presence of the

[34] See Liu Yao-min's review of comments on banquet music found in the Wen-hsien t'ung-k'ao and the T'ang shu in his Tz'u yü yin-yüeh , pp. 269–71.

[35] Wang Cho, Pi-chi man-chih , chüan I, collected in T'ang Kuei-chang, ed., Tz'u-huats'ung-pien (Taipei: Kuang-wen shu-chü, 1969), 1:27–28.

[36] See the fine discussion of this point in Kao Chien-chung, "Shih-lun liang Sung wan-yüeh-tz'u ti li-shih ti-wei," in Chung-kuo ku-tien wen-hsüeh lun-ts'ung , vol. 4, ed. Jenmin wen-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she ku-tien wen-hsüeh pien-chi-shih (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1986), pp. 125–26.

[37] Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao and Wu Hsiung-ho, Tsen-yang tu T'ang Sung tz'u , p. 34.

extrinsic musical setting, the intrinsic music of the early song lyric already consisted of uneven line-lengths, strophic divisions, complex rhyme schemes, the alternation of level and oblique tonal properties, and intricate tonal patterns which often deviated from the standard patterns of recent-style verse.^[38] This intrinsic music could reflect more precisely the atmosphere, mood, and tone of the extrinsic music—that is, the banquet music tunes—to which it was set. In the song lyric, therefore, poetry and music became truly parallel and unified arts. Without the restriction of the rigid, regular, and balanced rhythm of recent-style verse, the songwriter could express his ideas and experiences in a more complex process, in verse built up from a mixture of long and short rhythmic units with distinct curves and turns. Despite the fact that in some ways the prosody of the tz'u was just as restrictive as that of recent-style verse, the irregular and curving contours of this new intrinsic music could be said to resemble the spontaneous expression of powerful feelings more closely. If music is, as Susanne Langer puts it, a "morphology of feeling,"^[39] the intrinsic music of the song lyric is itself a structure of feeling as well. But the musicalization of poetry did not stop at the accomplishments of the late T'ang poets.

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.

A New Aesthetics of Tz'u

By the beginning of the Sung dynasty, then, a distinctive tz'u aesthetics had already appeared, different from that of shih poetry in both formal and thematic aspects. The popular song lyrics from Tun-huang can still be subsumed under the broad, traditional definition of the function of poetry—shih yen chih , or "poetry expresses what preoccupies the mind"—but the function of the newly established literati song lyrics are perhaps better, and more narrowly, defined by the phrase tz'u yen ch'ing , "song lyrics express a person's innermost feelings." Traditionally, the

[52] Many scholars have commented on these characteristics of early tz'u , but the most comprehensive review is perhaps that found in Yang Hai-ming, T'ang Sung tz'u feng-ko-lun , esp. pp. 12–29.

[53] See Kang-i Sun Chang's discussion "The Rhetoric of Tz'u : Implicit Meaning versus Explicit Meaning" in her Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry , pp. 35–62.

[54] Yeh Chia-ying, T'ang Sung ming-chia tz'u shang-hsi , vol. 1, Wen T'ing-yün , Wei Chuang , Feng Yen-ssu , Li Yü (Taipei: Ta-an ch'u-pan-she, 1988), p. 175.

concept of chih —"what preoccupies the mind"—actually included ch'ing and referred to the entire spectrum of a person's inner life. In the context of the song lyric, however, ch'ing usually refers to the delicate and more subtle, complex and private aspects of a person's thoughts and feelings, of which the tender emotions associated with the experiences of love are most representative.^[55] With the increasing sophistication of the song lyric form in the Northern Sung, a division of labor gradually came about. The song lyric was widely considered to be the appropriate form in which a poet's tender and subtle states of emotion and awareness could be expressed, while shih poetry continued to be the form employed for the expression of chih , or all the other aspects of a person's emotional and intellectual life.^[56] This division of labor was related not only to the fundamental differences between the forms, but also to the special direction in which literati tz'u had been developing since the late T'ang.

Sung poets of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, such as the hsiao-ling masters Chang Hsien (990–1078), Yen Shu (991–1055), Sung Ch'i (998–1061), and Ou-yang Hsiu (1007–72), essentially continued the tradition established for the song lyric by the late T'ang and Five Dynasties poets. As in the earlier periods, with some exceptions, the song lyrics of the early Sung were considered primarily as works composed for the purpose of entertaining guests at banquets, rather than as poetry written for the purpose of self-expression.^[57] To be sure, these early Sung poets refined the language of the song lyric while they infused it with a certain degree of philosophical depth. Nonetheless, "boudoir sentiments" and "amorous and sensual feelings" remained the dominant subject matter of song lyrics of the ling type, and early Sung tz'u consequently continued to be characterized by softness, sensuality, and ornateness. The mutability of life and things, lovesickness, resentment against separation from one's beloved and the desire for reunion, lamentation for the passing of spring or of joyful events were common themes found in early Sung song lyrics,^[58] themes that were treated in a gentle, delicate, intimate, subtle, or indirect manner.^[59]

In the "hierarchy" of literary forms in Northern Sung times, tz'u was

[55] Yang Hai-ming has discussed this in his T'ang Sung tz'u feng-ko-lun , pp. 37, 137.

[56] Ibid., pp. 136–37.

[57] Kao Chien-chung, "Shih-lun liang Sung wan-yüeh-tz'u ti li-shih ti-wei," p. 131.

[58] Feng Ch'i-yung has provided an excellent discussion of the common characteristics of early Sung tz'u poetry in his article "Lun Pei-Sung ch'ien-ch'i liang-chung put'ung ti tz'u-feng," in Tz'u-hsüeh yen-chiu lun-wen-chi , 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), esp. p. 188.

[59] Ibid.

ranked lower than both shih and wen (prose). The genre was usually referred to as hsiao-tz'u or hsiao ko-tz'u , that is, with the somewhat pejorative adjective hsiao , "little" or "trivial," added to the appellation tz'u , "song lyric."^[60] Interestingly, because of this low position tz'u occupied in the literary hierarchy, scholars were not always severely frowned upon for writing sentimental and sensual song lyrics. Within certain reasonable limits, it was acceptable for a prominent scholar-statesman such as Yen Shu to "speak like a woman" sometimes in his tz'u poetry.^[61] This could not have been the case unless "femininity" and "sensuality" were regarded, even if only unconsciously at this stage, as intrinsic properties of the genre.^[62]

Liu Yung and Man-Tz'u

Concurrent with the evolution of this new aesthetics were two developments in early Sung tz'u that eventually led poets active during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries to an increased awareness of the self-identity of the genre. One was the refinement of the man-tz'u , the longer form of the song lyric. Although song lyrics of the man type had actually appeared in the T'ang dynasty, they were largely centered in the popular tradition and were only occasionally experimented with by a few late T'ang and Five Dynasties literati poets.^[63] This longer song form presumably continued to exist in the popular tradition but was largely ignored by literati poets until the eleventh century. The early Sung hsiao-ling master Chang Hsien was among the first of the literati to experiment with the longer form. His man-tz'u usually excelled in the "imagistic elegance" that was typical of his hsiao-ling poems, but they lacked the narrative and "sequential progression" characteristic of the longer song lyrics composed by later poets.^[64]

[60] The term hsiao-tz'u , for instance, can be found in Ou-yang Hsiu's Kuei-t'ien lu , chüan 2. Ou-yang Hsiu mentions in this book that the scholar-official Ch'ien Wei-yen read hsiao-tz'u only in the privy! Ou-yang Hsiu's remark is quoted in Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , p. 288. The term hsiao ko-tz'u can be found in Li Ch'ing-chao's "Tz'u lun." See Huang Mo-ku, Ch'ung-chi Li Ch'ing-chao chi , p. 57.

[61] P'u Ch'uan-cheng referred to some tz'u songs by Yen Shu as "women's words" (fu-jen yü ). P'u's remark is recorded in Hu Tzu, T'iao-hsi yü-yin ts'ung-hua—ch'ien-chi (rpt., Taipei: Shih-chieh shu-chü, 1966) 26:176.

[62] Yang Hai-ming has discussed these two intrinsic properties in his T'ang Sung tz'u feng-ko-lun , p. 135. For a related discussion, see Grace Fong's chapter in this volume.

[63] Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry , p. 123.

[64] See Kang-i Sun Chang's discussion of Chang Hsien's man-tz'u in ibid., pp. 153–54.

A contemporary of Chang Hsien, Liu Yung was the first major literati poet to devote much energy to developing and refining the man-tz'u , one of his many significant contributions to the development of tz'u poetry. He was the only early Sung poet to have used a very large number of tunes and metrical patterns, manipulating a great variety of forms for the expression of his feelings and experiences. In terms of intrinsic music, he was the first to observe the distinctions among all four tones, paying special attention to the rising, departing, and entering tones.^[65] Liu Yung substantially broadened the song lyric's subject matter as well, writing about the lives of urban dwellers and prostitutes, his own relationships with courtesans, the frustrations of the failed scholar, and the hardships of a wandering one. Lovesickness and the pain of separation still constituted the main themes of his song lyrics, but they were often treated from the poet's own perspective as a man in love, rather than from the assumed perspective of an abandoned woman (although Liu Yung by no means relinquished this conventional strategy entirely). Here Liu Yung continued the fine tradition of the direct, personal song lyric established by Wei Chuang and Li Yü.

Liu Yung's most revolutionary contributions probably lay in his daring use of the colloquial, and sometimes unpolished or even "vulgar," expressions of the common people of the urban centers and in his development of the aesthetics of the man song lyric. His equal competence in poetry and music won the praise of Li Ch'ing-chao, but his sometimes extreme use of colloquial language received harsh ridicule from her: "The language of his tz'u can be as low as dust," she remarked.^[66] The use of colloquial language was, of course, not new to the song lyric, for it was a feature of the popular lyrics from Tun-huang, and Li Ch'ing-chao herself was in fact also fond of using colloquial expressions. What she disliked in Liu Yung's language, therefore, was not its colloquialism as such, but the lack of polish and refinement present in some aspects of his colloquial expressions. Although he wrote a fair number of hsiao-ling , his most startling achievements are to be found in his song lyrics in the longer man-tz'u form.

Liu Yung was the first tz'u poet to develop the technique of p'u-hsü , or "extensive description and narration." This technique is what separates his man-tz'u from his contemporary Chang Hsien's and from his and other masters' hsiao-ling . While focusing still on lyrical expression, Liu Yung's man-tz'u manifest dynamic and complex descriptive and narrative structures. Liu Yung was the first poet to use a large number of

[65] Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao, "T'ang Sung tz'u tzu-sheng chih yen-pien," pp. 58–66.

[66] Huang Mo-ku, Ch'ung-chi Li Ch'ing-chao chi , p. 56.

ling-chü tzu (literally, "line-leading words"), which were occasionally found in the Tun-huang lyrics.^[67] Consisting of one character, or two or three, a ling-chü tzu could be a verb, an adverb, or an adjective appearing at the beginning of a line or group of lines. These "line-leading words" performed a special descriptive and adverbial function by unifying clusters of images, emotive expressions, and descriptive or narrative phrases into a continuous whole. They proved essential in producing a continuous, flexible, and dynamic rhythm in the man-tz'u and were generally used at transitional points in the song lyrics. Thus, line-leading words increased rhythmic flexibility, enhanced semantic continuity, and highlighted the distinct turns in the complex unfolding of the poet's feelings. They helped the poet portray his emotions in a manner more exhaustive than that permitted by the short and comparatively regular framework of the ling .^[68] Through all of these techniques, therefore, Liu Yung established the distinctive aesthetics of the man-tz'u : the rendering of tender, complex, or powerful human feelings into a dynamic, wavelike process or rhythm. Many of his man-tz'u illustrate well Chiang K'uei's (ca. 1155–1221) definition of tz'u as "that which gives full expression to feelings in a roundabout manner" (weich'ü chin-ch'ing ).^[69] One can say that the potential of the tz'u genre (with its intricate, irregular structure) as a lyrical form for self-expression was finally fully realized in the hands of Liu Yung.

The Contribution of Su Shih

Liu Yung's influence on the poets of the late Northern Sung was great, even if he sometimes served mainly as a popular model for poets to react against. Indeed, by the standards of the literati tradition, much of Liu Yung's colloquial language and many of his song lyrics about courtesans could be judged as "vulgar" and lowbrow. Despite the popularity of his song lyrics, therefore, Liu Yung was often a target of criticism in the late eleventh century, and Su Shih (1037–1101) the most important and vigorous critic of his popular style. Su Shih criticized Ch'in Kuan (1049–1100) for imitating Liu Yung,^[70] and he prided himself on

[67] For a useful discussion of Liu Yung's use of "line-leading words," see Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry , pp. 123–47.

[68] For a general discussion of the function of "line-leading words," see my Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition , pp. 133–41.

[69] Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao, ed., Po-shih shih-tz'u chi (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1959), p. 67.

[70] See Kao-chai shih-hua , as cited in Lung Mu-hsün, ed., T'ang Sung ming-chia tz'u-hsüan (rpt. Taipei: Ho-lo t'u-shu ch'u-pan-she, 1975), p. 142.

not manifesting any of the earlier poet's characteristics in his own song lyrics.^[71] Su's self-conscious attempt to avoid writing in the popular style of Liu Yung enhanced awareness among his contemporaries of the nature of the song lyric and fostered the second major development in Northern Sung tz'u : the attempt to create a new, hard, and vigorous language for the form.

Su Shih himself had been a latecomer to this "lower" form of poetry, having begun to write song lyrics in 1072 when he was a full thirty-five years old^[72] and had already established a reputation as an accomplished shih poet. His new interest in the song lyric was most probably connected with his acquaintance with the senior poet Chang Hsien. He wrote his first song lyric during his first year as a local official in Hangchow, where Chang Hsien spent his last years leading an extravagant life.

In an effort to elevate the tz'u from the popular and sometimes "vulgar" status established by Liu Yung, Su Shih frequently compared it to yüeh-fu and shih .^[73] In a letter to Ch'en Chi-ch'ang, for example, he wrote, "Every line in the new song lyrics you sent me is extraordinary. They are the strong works of a shih poet, not just 'little songs.'"^[74] In his colophon to Chang Hsien's collection of shih poetry, he wrote, "The brush Chang Hsien uses for writing shih is well seasoned and marvelous; his 'song words' represent nothing but residual skills [from his shih writing]."^[75] And Su Shih was probably the first scholar openly to correct the traditional disparaging attitude toward the song lyric by comparing it to forms that had hitherto occupied higher positions in the hierarchy of genres.

In the actual practice of writing song lyrics, Su Shih himself was also noted for "treating tz'u as shih " (i shih wei tz'u ),^[76] a statement having several important implications. First, it most basically means that Su

[71] See his "Yü Hsien-yü Tzu-chün shu," as cited in Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , p. 290.

[72] Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry , pp. 15 and 169.

[73] Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , p. 289.

[74] "Ta Ch'en Chi-ch'ang shu," as cited in Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung lun , p. 289.

[75] "T'i Chang Tzu-yeh shih-chi hou," as cited in Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung lun , p. 289.

[76] This appears in a remark on Su Shih's tz'u attributed to Ch'en Shih-tao and recorded in Hou-shan shih-hua . Lu Yu (1125–1210) of the Southern Sung doubted the authenticity of this remark. Nonetheless, Wu Hsiung-ho convincingly points out that Su Shih's younger contemporaries, such as Ch'ao Pu-chih and Chang Lei, made similar statements about Su Shih's tz'u poetry. See the citation of this remark and a brief discussion of related issues in Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , pp. 289–90.

Shih applied techniques commonly used in shih poetry to his song lyrics. As Kang-i Sun Chang has pointed out, "in composing his longer man-tz'u poems Su Shih borrowed a number of poetic devices from his own Ancient Style poetry, whereas his shorter hsiao-ling poems were often influenced by the poetics of Recent Style poetry."^[77] Second, Su Shih made some changes in the fundamental conception of tz'u as a genre. He liberated tz'u somewhat from its previous obsession with "boudoir sentiments" and "amorous and sensual feelings" and made it almost as versatile as shih in depicting the whole range of experience.^[78] Like Liu Yung, therefore, he can be credited with having broadened the potential subject matter for the song lyric, but Su moved in a quite different direction, steering the form closer toward the yen-chih tradition associated with shih poetry. He did not, however, completely blur the generic boundaries between shih and tz'u , for the division of labor can still be discerned in his own poetry. He seemed "to have reserved the tz'u form for expressing complex innermost feelings, and the shih for dealing with miscellaneous types of expression—for example, argumentation, social comment, and occasional writing."^[79] Third, since shih poetry was not associated with a musical setting, Su Shih's approach in "treating tz'u as shih " often destroyed the distinctive intrinsic music that previous masters had evolved in their efforts to adapt the song words to the structure and tonality of banquet music. Although Su Shih was not entirely ignorant of music, he was not an accomplished musician like Wen T'ing-yün, Liu Yung, or Chou Pang-yen (1056–1121). He was, in fact, considered by some as being by nature too much of a free spirit ever to allow his poetic imagination to be restricted by the framework of music.^[80] Moreover, Su Shih not only used strong and vigorous (instead of the conventional soft and delicate) language to write song lyrics, he also asked strong men (rather than the usual gentle singing girls) to sing them.^[81] As a result, the conventional emphasis on the intrinsic femininity and delicate and gentle restraint of the song lyric was displaced, and

[77] The Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry , p. 170. The chapter on Su Shih, pp. 158–206, is also full of useful insights into the relationship between his tz'u and shih .

[78] Shih I-tui points out that about one-third of Su Shih's 345 tz'u are related to singing girls and that among these songs, about forty were verifiably written expressly for these entertainers. See his article "Chien-kuo i-lai tz'u-hsüeh yen-chiu shu-p'ing" in Chung-kuo she-hui k'o-hsüeh 1984, no. 1:159.

[79] Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry , p. 170.

[80] Su Shih's younger contemporary Ch'ao Pu-chih said that Su Shih was "someone who naturally cannot be bound by tunes." See his comment in P'ing pen-ch'ao yüeh-chang , as cited in Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , p. 293.

[81] Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry , p. 160.

a new style of tz'u , later termed the hao-fang , or "heroic abandon" style, was finally developed in the hands of the poet and scholar-statesman Su Shih.^[82]

Before Su Shih established the hao-fang mode, only a handful of song lyrics by Fan Chung-yen (989–1052) and Wang An-shih (1021–86) had displayed thematic and stylistic traits differing significantly from the conventional works of the early Sung poets. Fan Chung-yen's "Yü-chia ao," recalling his own experiences of hardship on the frontier, and Wang An-shih's "Kuei-chih hsiang," his reminiscences of Nanking's past, are particularly important instances of breaking away from the "boudoir sentiments" and "amorous and sensual feelings" of the literati tradition. These two poems resemble Li Yü's works in their expansive, articulate energy; at the same time they also represent an attempt to return the song lyric to the shih yen chih tradition that had been neglected by literati poets since Wen T'ing-yün's time. The return of the song lyric to the traditional, broader concept of shih yen chih , however, was not complete until Su Shih made the tz'u form capable of expressing almost any idea and describing almost any subject.^[83]

Although Su Shih succeeded in elevating the song lyric from a lesser song form to a major poetic genre, his contemporaries were quick to observe that the original identity of tz'u had been lost in his works. Ch'en Shih-tao (1053–1101), for instance, is believed to have remarked, "Tzu-chan [Su Shih] treats tz'u as shih . . . . Although his works are exceptionally skillful, they are not in the 'natural color' [pen-se , that is, original characteristics of the genre]."^[84] Ch'ao Pu-chih (1053–1110), after having referred to Su Shih as someone who ignored the musical aspect of the song lyric because he would not be restrained by it, commented, "Huang Lu-chih [Huang T'ing-chien, 1045–1105] occasionally made 'little song lyrics.' Although they are lofty and marvelous, they do not contain the 'expression of a professional' [tang hang-chia yü ]. They are

[82] The distinction between the wan-yüeh , or "delicate restraint," and the hao-fang , or "heroic abandon," schools of tz'u poetry was made by the Ming scholar Chang Yen. Sung scholars such as Ch'ao I-tao, Chu Pien, and Shen I-fu, however, had already used the term hao-fang to refer to Su Shih's song lyrics. See Yang Hai-ming, T'ang Sung tz'u feng-ko-lun , p. 139. Here I follow Kang-i Sun Chang's translations of the two terms; see her Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry , pp. 160 and 205.

[83] Liu Hsi-tsai says, "There is no idea he [Su Shih] cannot express and no event he cannot put [into his tz'u poetry]" (wu i pu-k'o-ju, wu shih pu-k'o-yen ). See his I kai (Shang-hai: Shang-hai ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1978) 4:108.

[84] See the remark mentioned above that is attributed to Ch'en Shih-tao in the Hou-shan shih-hua , as cited in Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , p. 292.

shih poems that have been set to tunes for singing."^[85] Within the overall context of the passage, this brief comment on Huang T'ing-chien clearly applies to Su Shih's song lyrics as well.

Boundaries of Genre

By the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, there was a clear consensus among the majority of literary scholars that shih and tz'u each possessed its own set of intrinsic characteristics that were to be kept distinct from each other. In point of fact, Li Chih-i, who was active at the turn of the twelfth century, came very close to defining the generic identity of tz'u when he said, "Choosing words well is most difficult in the ch'ang-tuan-chü ['long and short lines,' a common synonym for tz'u ] because it has its own style. If one deviates even slightly from the style, awkwardness and disharmony will ensue."^[86] Granted that his idea that tz'u "has its own style" is based chiefly on his observation concerning diction, Li Chih-i's keen sense of the form's generic identity cannot be doubted.

The increasing critical awareness of the identity of tz'u as a distinct genre in the minds of the literati of the late Northern Sung can be related to the remarkable achievements of Liu Yung and Su Shih. It was Liu Yung who established the man-tz'u , so radically different from shih . Despite its fundamental difference from shih , the hsiao-ling still carried traits—such as "imagistic elegance," relative balance in framework, and subtlety of expression—that could be found in the older and well-established genre. Liu Yung's man-tz'u , however, compelled readers and audiences to become more keenly aware of the differences between the two poetic genres, shih and tz'u . And Su Shih's method of "treating tz'u as shih " in order to realize his ideal of less inhibited but more vigorous lyrical expression challenged his contemporaries to reflect upon the distinguishing characteristics that had heretofore defined the two poetic forms, if only implicitly. By the turn of the eleventh century, the generic identity of tz'u had largely been formed, even though a full articulation of it was not made until a decade or two later with Li Ch'ing-chao's "Critique of the Song Lyric."

[85] See the passage in P'ing pen-ch'ao yüeh-chang , as cited in Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , pp. 292–93.

[86] See Pa Wu Ssu-tao hsiao-tz'u , as cited in Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , p. 294.

Li Ch'ing-Chao's Summation

In an age of cultural florescence like the late Northern Sung, important new developments could easily take shape within a few years. Thus, in addition to being a fuller treatment of the generic identity of tz'u , "A Critique of the Song Lyric" also presented in its conception of genre new developments not yet discussed by such scholars as Ch'en Shih-tao and Li Chih-i. While Su Shih was moving in the direction of "heroic abandon," other poets of the late Northern Sung—notably Yen Chi-tao (1141–1119?), Huang T'ing-chien, Ch'in Kuan, Ho Chu (1052–1125), and Chou Pang-yen—were trying to perfect the finer points of the art of the song lyric within the orthodox tradition of "delicate restraint." Of particular relevance was the meticulous attention Su Shih's younger contemporaries paid to the coordination of the sounds of words and the tunes of banquet music. In 1105 the Bureau of Grand Music (ta-sheng fu ) was instituted by Emperor Hui-tsung (r. 1101–25), imperial patron of the arts, to encourage the study and cultivation of music. Such contemporary developments were paralleled by the interest of many scholars active during the last decades of the Northern Sung in refining the intrinsic music of the song lyric, a trend that is clearly reflected in "A Critique of the Song Lyric."

In discussing the aesthetics of the song lyric, Li Ch'ing-chao places foremost importance on music, arguing that it is the intrinsic music of the tz'u that constitutes the very identity of the genre:

In shih poetry and in prose one has to observe the distinction between level and oblique tones only. In the song lyric, however, one has to distinguish the five sounds [labial, dental, glottal, apical, and nasal], the five notes [kung (do), shang (re), chüeh (mi), chih (sol), yü (la)], the six upper pitch-pipes, and the clear and the turbid as well as the light and the heavy [allotones induced by voiceless or voiced initials, respectively]. Moreover, in recent days, in the so-called "Sheng-sheng man," "Yü-chung hua," and "Hsi ch'ien ying," one can use rhymes not only in the level tone but also in the oblique tones. The rhyme in "Yü-lou ch'un" is originally in the level tone, but it can also be in the rising, departing, or entering tone. If one uses a rhyme in the rising tone when [a metrical pattern] originally uses a rhyme in the oblique tone, the song lyric will have harmony; but if one uses a rhyme in the entering tone, the song lyric will not bear singing.^[87]

No discussion of the song lyric prior to Li Ch'ing-chao's "Critique" had paid such attention to the details of initials, rhymes, tones, and

[87] Huang Mo-ku, Ch'ung-chi Li Ch'ing-chao chi , p. 57.

notes in music as illustrated in the passage above. Li Ch'ing-chao's terse comments on these fine points of tz'u prosody and music might have made immediate sense to her contemporaries, but they are opaque to the modern reader. Today, before any definite conclusions could be drawn concerning the precise relationship between words and music in the song lyric, a vast amount of research would be required both into the nature of the sounds and four tones of Late Middle Chinese as well as into the tonal patterns of tz'u by poets who had equal competence in music and poetry.^[88] Given that little banquet music has survived, I doubt that the real situation will ever be known. In any case, for our purposes here it is important to realize that the attempt to work out a precise correspondence between words and music was a new development in the late Northern Sung and that Li Ch'ing-chao had already made use of it as a criterion in differentiating tz'u from shih .

Some of Li Ch'ing-chao's statements in the passage quoted above can still be tested in her own tz'u poetry. For instance, in her song lyric set to the tune "Sheng-sheng man" (which begins with the line Hsün-hsün mi-mi , or "Seek, seek, search, search," and is discussed by Stephen Owen at length elsewhere in this volume), she uses fifteen apical and forty-two dental sounds as well as a number of words sharing initials or finals. The result of her effort is a song lyric remarkably rich in sound effects. Although we can tell that the sound aspect of this lyric is a precise echo of its sense, we have no way of knowing exactly how the sound and rhythm of the text harmonize with the tune to which it is set, since we no longer have the music.

Li Ch'ing-chao also appears to be an extremely tough critic in her essay on the song lyric, and no poet mentioned emerges completely unscathed from her evaluations. In her view, total compliance with the structure of banquet music was an essential requirement in writing tz'u that would "constitute its own household" distinct from shih . Thus, she observes that well-known writers such as Chang Hsien and Sung Ch'i often produce marvelous expressions but that their song lyrics usually suffer from fragmentation. She further notes that the song lyrics by Yen Shu, Ou-yang Hsiu, and Su Shih (in which the intrinsic music often does not correspond to the extrinsic music) are in reality all shih poems with uneven lines. Similarly, the song lyrics of Wang An-shih and Tseng Kung resemble their prose works. Of the well-known Sung poets who also wrote in the song lyric form, only Liu Yung, Yen Chi-tao, Ho Chu, Ch'in Kuan, and Huang T'ing-chien are regarded as understand-

[88] For a preliminary attempt, please see my "Intrinsic Music in the Medieval Chinese Lyric," esp. pp. 43–53.

ing the form's generic identity. Nevertheless, they all fall short in one respect or another as ideal practitioners of the genre. Liu Yung's language she considers "vulgar"; Yen Chi-tao suffers from a lack of p'u-hsü , the technique of "extensive description and narration"; Ho Chu falls short in not having a "classic weightiness" (tien-chung ); Ch'in Kuan focuses on "emotional import" (ch'ing-chih ) but lacks "allusive substance" (ku-shih ); and although Huang T'ing-chien has "allusive substance," he displays many other flaws. It is obvious that Li Ch'ing-chao applies a certain sense of decorum to her evaluation of the language of these writers of the song lyric. But although the p'u-hsü technique was first developed by Liu Yung in the song lyric, it had been extensively used in rhymeprose for some time.^[89] And the other qualities or failings she cites can be found in earlier criticism of shih poetry or prose.^[90] It seems, therefore, that Li Ch'ing-chao might permit a certain "mixing of genres" in some areas of tz'u poetics as well.

Modern scholars have generally been baffled by Li Ch'ing-chao's glaring omission in her essay of any reference to Chou Pang-yen, the major Northern Sung poet and musician who synthesized virtually all previous styles of the song lyric into his own. She does mention Ch'ao Tz'u-ying, an evidently well-known songwriter and an official at the Bureau of Grand Music, of which Chou Pang-yen was once superintendent. Why does she discuss the works of a less accomplished writer or even of little-known figures such as Sung Hsiang (Sung Ch'i's brother), Shen T'ang, and Yüan Chiang, but not the truly major poet of the time? Perhaps Li Ch'ing-chao was not aware of Chou Pang-yen's achievements when she wrote her "Critique of the Song Lyric."^[91] Or perhaps the omission of Chou Pang-yen indicates that Li Ch'ing-chao found it difficult to criticize him.^[92] Indeed, Chou Pang-yen's song lyrics do not

[89] I am grateful to David Knechtges for pointing this out at the conference.

[90] For instance, the term ku-shih is used by Liu Hsieh in the "T'ung-pien" chapter of Wen-hsin tiao-lung in a discussion of wen ; see Chou Chen-fu, ed., Wen-hsin tiao-lung chu-shih (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1981), p. 330. Yin Fan also uses this term in a discussion of Meng Hao-jan's poetry; see Yin Fan, Ho-yüeh ying-ling-chi , in Yüan Chieh et al., T'ang-jen hsüan T'ang-shih (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1958), p. 91. Terms such as tien (usually in the compound tien-ya ), li , and i are frequently encountered in Chinese literary and art criticism.

[91] Yang Hai-ming, "Li Ch'ing-chao 'Tz'u lun' pu-t'i Chou Pang-yen ti liang-chung t'an-ts'e" in his T'ang Sung tz'u lun-kao (Chekiang: Ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1988), pp. 304–10.

[92] Yeh Chia-ying has expressed this opinion in a letter to Miao Yüeh. She has also suggested that Li Ch'ing-chao might not have completely agreed with Chou Pang-yen's approach to the song lyric and therefore did not praise him in her critique. See the re-mark as quoted in Miao's essay "Lun Li Ch'ing-chao tz'u" in Miao Yüeh and Yeh Chia-ying, Ling-hsi tz'u-shuo (Shanghai: Shang-hai ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1987), p. 339.

suffer from the faults Li finds in the works of Chang Hsien, Liu Yung, Yen Shu, Ho Chu, Ch'in Kuan, and Huang T'ing-chien. He further developed the technique of p'u-hsü innovated by Liu Yung in a refined and elegant language with "classic weightiness" and "allusive substance," although his main subjects remained "lovesickness" and "separation." Above all, his song lyrics illustrate a perfect harmony between intrinsic and extrinsic music; as a poet, he paid closer attention to all four tones than had any previous songwriter.^[93]

But however sophisticated and refined, Chou Pang-yen's works represent a synthesis of the orthodox aesthetics of the genre of the song lyric as it had developed during the Northern Sung. Although Li Ch'ing-chao's omission of him from "A Critique of the Song Lyric" is a curious one, her articulation of the characteristics of the genre marks a crucial moment in its critical history, a comprehensive awareness of its identity as a distinct literary form. Only as a result of the cumulative contributions of a number of poets could she assert, therefore, that the tz'u now claimed a domain of its own.

[93] Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao, "T'ang Sung tz'u tzu-sheng chih yen-pien."

Meaning the Words:
The Genuine as a Value in the Tradition of the Song Lyric

Stephen Owen

The word "genuine" constitutes the skeleton beneath the song lyric. When the emotions are genuine and the scene is a genuine one whatever has been written is always excellent and it's easy to consider it complete
K'uang Chou-I, Hui-Feng Tz'u-Hua (1936)<sup>[1

]</sup>[Note: "consider it complete," t'o-kao, "to get out of draft stage," a cliché for finishing a literary work, implying a reflective process of revision. Does this mean the lyricist revises until the words "sound" genuine, or until they "are" genuine?]

Only a Song

With conscious purpose the layered curtains hide our most intimate words .

YEN CHI-TAO, TO "CHE-KU T'IEN"^[2]

The phoenix cover and the lovebird curtain are nearby
Where I would go if I could get there.
Shrimp-whisker brushes the floor and the double doors are still.
I recognize the shuffle of embroidered slippers
Invisible in the bedroom,
Her forced laugh, her voice
Light and lovely, like a woodwind.

Her makeup done,
She idly holds a lute.
Her favorite love songs—
Into every note she seems to put her fragrant heart.
Listening outside the curtain
Gets me so much heartbreak!

[1] K'uang Chou-i, Hui-feng tz'u-hua , ed. Wang Yao-an (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1982), p. 6.

[2] Ch'üan Sung tz'u , ed. T'ang Kuei-chang (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1965), p. 227. Hereafter CST .

Misery such as this
Only she could share.

Liu Yung, To "Listening Outside the Curtain" ("Ko lien t'ing")^[3]

Moments of accidental "overhearing" were a common motif in the song lyric: sometimes overhearing words, but often overhearing song. Words overheard were clearly not directed to the accidental listener; however, the song overheard is a more interesting case, raising many questions of whom the song words are for, if anyone, and what kind of claim they make on the heart of the singer. Overhearing song, the listener may be stirred to think on his own case, or he may feel a sudden rush of sympathy for the singer, finding himself in the ancient role of chih-yin , "the one who knows the tone," the person who knows how the music and the song word reveal what is in the singer's heart. In poetry we can trace this motif back to "In the Northwest There Was a Building High" ("Hsi-pei yu kao-lou") from the "Nineteen Old Poems," in which a passerby overhears a woman singing a song of sorrow for a lost or absent man and feels immediate sympathy for her. In his conclusion, however, the passerby wishes that they might become a pair of birds and fly away together—hearing a song in which a woman is longing for another man, the overhearer is both touched and attracted, and inserts himself in the place of the beloved.

Liu Yung's song is a very special mode of overhearing: it is eavesdropping. And this eavesdropper is so personally implicated in what he hears that a group of questions, usually repressed, comes to the surface

[3] Translation by James R. Hightower, "The Songwriter Liu Yung," pt. 1, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 41 (1981): 375. CST , p. 30.

of the lyric: how true the singer's words are, what kind of truth those words claim to have, whom the words are meant for. To the singing girl's guest on the other side of the curtain, the man who is the direct recipient of the conversation and song, these words all seem as if directed to him and true—or at least he is willing to suspend disbelief and take them as true for the moment. In this case, however, the eavesdropper knows—or thinks he knows, or wants very much to believe—that there is a difference between true words of love and a merely conventional performance of love's words. There is someone else sitting in the place that he wishes to be his own. His unease at being replaced, in discovering how individuals can apparently be interchanged in what is supposed to be a very particular relationship, is somehow connected to the way in which the same song can be reperformed—for different guests, by different singers, in different circumstances. From the outside the eavesdropper discovers how fine and almost invisible is the boundary between "meaning it" and a skillful performance of "meaning it."

The lyric begins with the site where the unseen performance will be concluded: the invisible bed, itself named by conventional synecdoche as layers of coverings—quilt and bed-curtains—both further hidden behind the curtains of the room outside which he listens. Such coverings are peculiar barriers, creating a maddening closeness (chih-ch'ih ) that cannot be crossed yet permits the clear passage of sounds, sounds whose intent and truth are uncertain, open to interpretation.

He reads the event in its sounds. First, against the stillness of the room there are the sounds of things brushing the ground: the swish of the "shrimp-whisker" fringe of an inner curtain as she enters the room, then the scraping of her slippers as she comes forward to entertain the invisible guest. That intensely audible proximity paradoxically intensifies his sense of his distance from her: yao-yao , less "invisible" than "remote and indistinct." The next phase of her performance is pleasant banter, laughing chitchat. Here we might observe that any sounds or words from the invisible guest are silenced in the words of this song, for the eavesdropper makes himself the singular audience of this intimate performance, even though he is an audience displaced, receiving sounds apparently directed toward someone else. Her voice is "forced"—or so it seems to him. Is this some quality he thinks he detects in the sounds or only an assumption he wants to make? If the guest were to become aware of such "forcedness," the performance would fail by becoming patently false. Whether compulsory performance or willing performance, her words have already become a kind of music, the "woodwind" that will complement the strings of the p'i-p'a in the next stanza. It is

verbal music that is ch'ing-ch'iao , "light and artful": a positive quality in terms of an artisan's skill, but questionable in a human who cares.

As we move into the second stanza, she becomes as if visible—probably an inference he makes, hearing the music and knowing the set phases of the performance. He has, no doubt, been there before himself, sat in the very place the guest now sits, taken all the words as genuine, which compels him to question the genuineness of what he overhears now. The phases of the "entertainment" are a set sequence: the entrance, the conversation, the song, bed—with a coda often consisting of lover's vows that this place in the heart will be occupied by no other. Liu Yung has heard such vows and believed them.

Although the phases of the love encounter differ from one culture to another, traditions of love poetry often place special emphasis on the stage just before consummation. The penultimate phase is often the displaced double of union, sexual or spiritual, and at the same time the deferment of consummation and ending. As a medieval treatise has it, Gradus amoris sunt hii: visus et alloquium, contactus, basia, factum ("The phases of love are these: seeing and then talking together, touching, kisses, the act"). And there is a long tradition of classical and European poems on the penultimate phase of kissing, at once the imitation, the prelude to, and explicitly the deferment of the sexual act. In the Chinese "phases of love" the penultimate stage is usually singing; and although the lyrics often remind us that the lovers go to bed after the song is done, we should remember that this bedding is part of the lyrics of a song, at once promise and deferment.^[4] Through song the woman, who is supposed to be reticent and shy, is given a voice and authorized to speak what is supposed to be heart's truth (and since these women were paid singers, to hear such songs as if they were true would be reassuring). The Chinese poetic tradition was as fascinated by the expression of female desire as the Western poetic tradition has been fascinated with male desire. Once the song has permitted the woman ritually to speak the desire that is elsewhere silenced, the couple can go to bed.

On her p'i-p'a she plays "melodies of love-longing," hsiang-ssu tiao (love songs), which Liu Yung claims are her "favorite type," ai-p'in . And at this point the conventional bedroom scene of the Chinese love song begins to go astray, revealing the motives of this man standing outside the curtain, one who believes himself to be the true lover. He knows that she likes this kind of song and by such knowledge shows his own intimacy with her. Moreover, by commenting that the song she plays

[4] Cf. Chou Pang-yen, "Ying-ch'un yüeh" (CST , p. 616).

belongs to her "favorite type," the eavesdropper calls into question the truth of the words she is singing to the invisible guest, their genuineness as address—perhaps she chooses a love song at this moment because she "likes" such songs in general. But he does not know why she likes this kind of song—whether only because it is a song, or because she enjoys the love game, or because she cares about him.

The observation that she seems to lodge her heart in every note is even more troubling and ambiguous. He seems to hear her confiding real feeling into the song she is singing, but feeling for whom—the guest who sits before her, or for him, the absent beloved who is secretly standing outside the curtain? On another level, we are not certain how to understand the "seeming": is this a function of his perception—that it seems to him that there is true feeling in the words, though of course he cannot be sure—or is the "seeming" the quality of the performance itself, an appearance of feeling when feeling is, in fact, lacking? Song, which was supposed to be the voice for the heart's truth that must otherwise be kept veiled, here becomes the source of uncertainty and pain, heard from the other side of the curtain.

At this point the speaker explicitly positions himself on the other side of the curtain, introducing himself into the scene with the situation that is also the title of the melody for which he composes the lyrics. Like so many song lyrics, this song is reflexive, concerning song and the truth of song. Both the lyricist and the invisible guest receive the "declaration," kao , of her song; the guest believes he understands the message and is surely filled with joy and desire; the eavesdropper and we, the audience of his song, receive the message but don't know what it means—we can't be certain. If there is genuine love in the words of her song, is it for him or for the guest; or is it perhaps only a song, the pleasure in the craft and the skilled performance of a feeling that is not there?

The next phase of the "performance" should be the bed; at this point song lyrics often speak of the lovers' going together inside the bed-curtains, her shyness at undressing, the bedcovers' rolling like waves. But the poet has displaced the waiting bed, unoccupied, to the beginning of his song; and in place of describing the final movement to consummation, which must cause him pain, the eavesdropper simply writes his pain: ying-te , this is "all he gets out of it," the experience of eavesdropping. In this phase he can no longer pretend to presence; the difference is too clear: another "gets out of it" joy and pleasure, "all he gets" is hurt.

These last lines in Liu Yung's song have their own mark of authentication, slipping into a more colloquial voice, as song lyrics often do at

the end. As previously there had been a question of the woman communicating her true feelings through her song, the problem now is communicating what he feels. Although there was uncertainty about her song, his own song closes with the bold claim of her "knowing," chih-tao . Most important, he explicitly rejects the general promiscuity of song: the truth of his feeling could only be known when together with her—or expressed here negatively as a rhetorical question: "Unless together with her could it be known?"

He offers a song for a song, an attempt to sing back through the curtain and replace doubt with sure understanding and intimacy, doubt about the communication of her feelings with certainty about the communication of his own. Yet when he is "together with her," this peculiar circumstance, the occasion of doubt and pain that produces in turn the ostensibly true song, will be past.

Or perhaps there is nothing deep here, nothing that finds footing in the heart. Perhaps Liu Yung is writing only a clever variation on a common boudoir scene, something "light and clever," ch'ing-ch'iao , for any skilled singer to sing. Now we may recall, with some unease, that this song, whose tune is listed among the melodies of the T'ang Music Academy, the chiao-fang , belongs to that class of lyrics that elaborate the situation implied in the title, just as lyrics to the tune "Tsui kung-tzu" often describe a wife's reaction when her husband returns home drunk from carousing. We wanted to believe his words, we thought he "meant it"; now we doubt.

Even if this is so—and in our modern distrust, we guess it may well be—we cannot help hearing the question of the song's genuineness, even within the conventions of song. Is he merely performing or does he "mean it," and if so, how?

The Reliable and the Unreliable

When I meet her, can I interpret whether she cares or not?

YEN CHI-TAO, TO "HUAN HSI SHA"^[5]

The true word, the word meant, has great power: it brings lovers together and keeps them together across spans of time and physical distances. Other things may fade: the memory of a face. Dreams may try to span distances but cannot. In "Ts'ai-yün kuei," after describing the scene of his travels, Liu Yung moves in the second stanza to recollection

[5] CST , p. 239.

of the beloved, as he so often does.^[6] There are two powerful remainders: the lingering smell of her body and a "line" or "sentence." The one is dissipating, but the other stays clearly in mind.

Since we parted, most painful of all,
barely detectable in my sleeves and gown's fold,
there is still her lingering scent.
And I'm sure that she, on phoenix pillow, under lovebird quilts,
cannot help brooding on it through the long nights.
But the only thing that really pulls at my heart
is that one line, when we were about to go our ways,
that I cannot forget.

We do not know the content of the line, only a claim of its power. And perhaps the content of the line cannot be adequately reproduced in these lyrics he now writes, where they would become mere words of song, deprived of their connection to a person and a moment, open to repetition by anyone.

But the words of lovers may sometimes prove to be untrustworthy, as in the problematic conclusion to Liu Yung's "Ch'iu-yeh yüeh."^[7] The opening stanza is a conventional situation in which the poet reencounters the beloved, but instead of their steamy and joyous reunion, something goes wrong.

Back then we met only to part
And I told myself there was no way ever to see her again.
But the other day I met her unexpectedly at a party.
While we were drinking she found a chance
To draw her brows together and sigh,
Rousing any number of old sorrows.

Her eyes brimming with tears,
In my ear she whispered

[6] CST , p. 36.

[7] Translation by James R. Hightower, "The Songwriter Liu Yung," pt. 2, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42 (1982): 18. CST , p. 23.

A thousand secret reproaches:
"Too bad you had things in your heart
There was no way to see."
I would like to believe she is telling the truth
And has no other ties.
Maybe I'd better just curb my fancy
And go on with her forever.

If the speaker is uncertain what is in the other's heart, the song's readers or audience are equally uncertain who is speaking and what is being said. Hightower's decision in handling the conclusion here is only one among several possibilities. For example, we might easily extend the woman's speech two more lines, so that instead of having the man doubt her sincerity in turn, we finally have only her distrust of him, at which he is so ashamed that he decides to stay true to her.

"I'm certain that in your heart
things were concealed.
I would like to believe what you say is true,
and that you were not involved with anyone else."
At this I can't help reining in my fancies
and going on with her forever.

Another, no less plausible interpretation would have the entire end in the voice of the male speaker, distrusting her, yet deciding he can't help returning to her in the end.

I'm certain that in your heart
there are certain things concealed.

I'd like to believe she is telling the truth
and that she's not involved with anyone else.
Yet I can't help stopping these fancies
and going on with her forever.

Someone distrusts the words of someone else; each reader or member of the audience may tell the story according to his or her own anticipations. Although the decision is less urgent for us, we stand in the position of Liu Yung outside the curtain, hearing the repeatable words of the song and not knowing to whom they are directed.

We might want to believe the lyricist when he tells of his pain at hearing his beloved entertain another man; but he may be only inventing a situation to elaborate the title of an old melody. In his lyrics he wonders if the beloved "means the words" in the song she sings. But the singer may be no more than a bird that repeats the same syllables with meaningless and mindless skill. In the famous Tun-huang version of "Ch'üeh t'a chih" ("Tieh lien hua") the exasperated woman locks away the magpie that keeps bringing the good news of her husband's return, words without any truth to back up their repeated syllables: "You bring good news, but when has it ever had any basis?" sung-hsi ho-ts'eng yu p'ing-chü . As the magpie later complains, the words were only to cheer her up, pure rhetoric—perhaps like the singer's profession of love in the song. And at last the magpie wishes for the husband's return so that the message of its words will be substantiated and it will be set free.

The love song is both the stylized imitation of love and at the same time the words in which a truth of love can be spoken. The singer is both a professional, paid to enact passion, and a human being, to whom love, longing, and loss can actually happen. We would be overly credulous to believe every statement of love-longing is indeed love; we would be foolishly cynical to believe that every statement of love-longing is purely professional or part of a hollow game. And we can't tell the difference. We may, as readers eight centuries later, say it doesn't matter; but it did seem to matter to the lyricists whose songs we now can only read, who were ever looking for evidence that the singer really meant it. We can say, with more acumen, that the fantasy and role-playing of these love games easily blurred into genuine feeling; but the participants themselves were concerned with an unambiguous experience of genuineness. Because overt statements and gestures were always potentially unreliable, they looked closely for the accidental slip, or some gesture or expression coming from the woman when she thought she was unobserved, free of the pressure of performance. If voyeurism is an impor-

tant motif in the song lyric, it comes from an intense concern with the genuine; and that concern in turn follows from a suspicion of mere artfulness, of being manipulated.^[8] The lyricists knew that the singer's skill could instigate unskillful passion in the listener:

Before the song comes to its most tender moment,
        her brows take on a seductive expression;
as the drinking companions grow tipsy,
        their eyes become still wilder.

                                           Ho Chu, to "Che-ku t'ien"^[9]

She is not speaking what is in her heart: she is performing a text; she knows the words that are coming and strikes a pose for their appearance.

Yet there might be a moment, barely noticed or dimly seen, when role and true feeling come apart, as in the following lyrics to "Ts'ai sang-tzu" by Yen Chi-tao:^[10]

I saw her then, under the moon,
        in the western mansion,
trying to smooth over her tear-streaked powder unobserved;
and when the song was over, she knit her brows again;
I regret I could not see her perfectly,
        across the smoke rising from the censer.

Since we parted, the strands of willows
        dangling beyond the mansion
have how many times changed their spring green?
Yet I, weary traveler in the red dust,
will always recall that woman in the mansion,
        her powder streaked with tears.

[8] For a discussion of voyeurism in poetry, see Paul Rouzer, "Watching the Voyeurs: Palace Poetry and Yuefu ," Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 11 (1989): 13–34.

[9] CST , p. 516.

[10] CST , p. 251.

The curtains that hid the singing beloved from Liu Yung here in Yen Chi-tao's lyrics become a partially transparent veil of smoke. He thinks that he has seen her trying to wipe away the tracks of tears unobserved and frowning once she relaxes the professional pose assumed in song (those brows having been trained to assume a seductive frown when she reaches the most tender moment in the song). But k'an wei chen , he can't see clearly enough, can't tell for sure (the chen here being the term of the "genuine"). These gestures and expressions on her face are marks of hidden distress, a code of loss and love-longing, but for him or for someone else?—we cannot be sure, and perhaps even he could not be. It almost doesn't matter: the particular object of love here seems less important than the moment when genuine response appeared, an uncertain vision that is fixed in memory and celebrated in this song. Such a moment, like the reliable words of Liu Yung's beloved in the earlier lyric, is something that survives time's passage, that stands in contrast to the world of public life in the red dust.

Tears or the inexplicable frown were among the oldest tropes of genuine feeling rising to a concealing surface, as in Ho Ning's famous "Ts'ai sang-tzu," where after a lovely young girl has been described,^[11]

For no reason she knits her brows,
making her mother suspicious that she has springtime longings.

Or in Ho Chu's "Su chung-ch'ing":^[12]

Facing the wind again, she sings of the circular fan,
her true feeling fixed on which man?
Lightly she jokes,
then barely frowns:
you can tell it's love.

Song lyric teaches a close attention to the most subtle expressions—"barely frowns"—for it is in such ripples in the surface of public

[11] Lin Ta-ch'un, ed., T'ang Wu-tai tz'u (1933; rev. ed., Shanghai: Wen-hsüeh ku-chi k'an-hsing-she, 1956), p. 102. Hereafter TWTT .

[12] CST , pp. 530–31.

appearance that reliable marks of true feeling are to be found. And yet once these become motifs in song, these too can be feigned.

One of the most striking examples of the inexplicable frown is in Chou Pang-yen's "Wang Chiang-nan":^[13]

At the party with singers
the most wonderful things are those glances of love.
Jeweled coiffures glitter, from which jade swallows hang aslant;
embroidered shawls, soft and glossy, gauzes steeped in perfume.
There should always be plenty of what people like.

For no reason at all
how come she furrows her brows?
Lightly made-up, as if seen in a painting.
Yet her brilliant conversation is better than hearing her sing,
not to mention the swaying dance.

The opening stanza of the lyric is the opulent naming of paraphernalia that is typical of one type of party song, concluding with a wonderfully crass statement of indulgence—the more of what people (sc., men) like, the better. Into such unreflective pleasures intrudes the frown "for no reason at all." Other lyricists may be quick to interpret the frown's meaning, a certain index of love; but Chou Pang-yen offers it to us as a question: "How come?" And in leaving the frown as a question, he raises a larger question of interiority. The frown is the mark of interiority—silent expression, as words are voiced expression. But there are two kinds of words: those produced from oneself and the formalized words of a song. Chou first gives us the "pretty as a picture" cliché to objectify the frowning singer, but then be qualifies this "speaking picture" with one of the more unexpected statements in the tradition of party song: her conversation is superior to her song, even though song is the phase that will lead to bed (or the bushes). The frown undercuts the

[13] CST , p. 615.

momentum of the party song; the appearance of the genuine complicates the love game.

Repetition

Attention to the presence of genuine feeling and the marks by which it could supposedly be recognized sustained many conventional motifs in the thematic repertoire of song lyric. The inherent contradiction here should be obvious. Insofar as figures of genuineness became categorical terms in a stylized language of feeling, they could be used—as the terms in any language can be used—to lie. Through such thematization of the genuine, we can see the pervasiveness and depth of the concern; but the genuine itself can never adequately appear in its thematization, which is open to repetition and "use."

The genuineness of repeatable words is inherently suspect. And yet the song lyric was a form in which repetition in performance was essential. Here we must distinguish two versions of repetition: there is one in which the repeated words belong to the singer's present; and there is another in which repetition recalls words said at a given moment in the past, in which the singer is enacting words recognized as belonging to another person and another time.

This appears figured in one of the strangest passages in all of Liu Yung's song lyrics, in which two voices are superimposed, each repeating the same words. One of those voices is repeating words that matter, that are recognized as belonging to another person and to time past; the other voice is a mockery of performance, the merely skillful repetition of sounds that have no footing in the heart:

She leans on the railing beside the pool, sad, no companion.
What's to do about these living alone feelings?
Together with the parrot in the golden cage
She says over the things her lover said.^[14]

[14] "Kan ts'ao tzu" (CST , pp. 14–15). Translation by James R. Hightower, "The Songwriter Liu Yung," pt. 2, p. 10. The rare use of nien , "to recite," is interesting here in that it has another usage in tz'u , in the prose nien-yü or "recited preface," that may precede the performance of a lien-chang (tz'u sequence). Here the performer speaks the words of the author, words explicitly the author's own. In contrast to the lyrics themselves, where the speaker is often indeterminate, in the nien-yü the singer "performs" someone else's words, as the woman does above when she "recites" what the beloved said.

The human version of the parrot's repetition, speaking in an eternal present, is, of course, more complicated. The repeatable party song often takes precisely this aspect of its performance as a theme, speaking for complete absorption in the present moment, forgetting past and future; such songs appeal to the human yearning to become animal and to take the animal's anonymous pleasures, to be free of memory. Yet their absorption in the moment is something desired, articulated against the human truth of memory and anticipation.

As an example, we may quote the famous version of "Huan hsi sha" by Yen Shu.^[15] This represents a normative language in song, to be sung by any singer to any guest at any party; its version of "the moment" is any moment and every moment. The singer may "mean the words" or she may be only skillfully repeating the words; but the words belong to no fixed moment in human history when they were or were not genuine:

Only a moment, this season's splendor,
this body, a bounded thing;
to part now as if it didn't matter
easily breaks the heart;
so don't be hasty, refusing
the party's wine, the banquet's song.

Mountains and rivers fill our eyes, but care
is wasted on things too far;
besides which, this grief at spring passing,
at wind and the rain bringing down flowers;
it is better by far to take as your love
the person before your eyes.

As the performer who sings such a song can be endlessly replaced, so too can the body, the anonymous "person before the eyes."

Most of Ou-yang Hsiu's song lyrics are similar to Yen Shu's in this respect, including a party song to "Yü-lou ch'un" beginning "North and south of West Lake, a vast sweep of misty waves."^[16] However, when Su Shih hears Ou-yang Hsiu's ("the Drunken Old Man's") lyrics being performed a generation later, we note that a significant change has

[15] CST , p.90.

[16] CST , p. 133.

taken place. When the lovely woman stands before Su Shih and sings the pleasures of the party, instead of taking delight in "the person before his eyes," Su Shih responds quite differently:^[17]

In lingering frost I've lost sight
of the sweep of the long River Huai;
I hear only the trickling current
of the clear Ying.
The lovely woman still sings
the songs of the Drunken Old Man;
but forty-three years have gone by
like a sudden sheet of lightning.

Ou-yang Hsiu's song lyric no longer inhabits an eternal present; hearing it recalls its maker and a particular time in the past.

We might consider the analogy between the two modes of understanding song above and the versions of song in Liu Yung's "Listening Outside the Curtain." As Liu Yung listened to the beloved, he wondered if and how the beloved "meant the words"; he recognized those lyrics she sang only as a category, "her favorite type" (ai-p'in ), "love songs" (hsiang-ssu tiao ). In the second version, the question is whether Liu Yung "means the words" of his own song lyric, a question that can be answered only by understanding the words of the song in terms of the circumstances of its composition (this question of meaning the words in regard to the circumstances of composition can be posed here, as it cannot be posed in Yen Shu's "Huan hsi sha"). This is a reading of the song lyric on the model of shih . Whether the singer ("the person before your eyes") does or does not invest genuine feeling in the repeated words must remain forever suspect; the most immediate and familiar model for genuine words was one of words bound to a particular moment in the past, words that always recalled the circumstances of their origin.^[18]

Between Li Yü at the very beginning of the Northern Sung, and the

[17] CST , p. 283. The first stanza of a "Mu-lan hua ling," the same tune pattern as Ou-yang Hsiu's "Yü-lou ch'un," and matching his rhymes.

[18] We might note how important this act of displacement into the past became in the thematics of later love songs. Later, and often even in Liu Yung, genuine romance was rarely the problematic, perhaps dubious "person before your eyes," but more often a love recollected and its sites revisited.

time of Su Shih, the song lyric underwent a transformation from a normative and typological song form to a highly circumstantial form, sometimes truly occasional and sometimes not.^[19] I would suggest that the problem of genuineness was an important factor in this transformation.^[20]

To remark on the interest in genuineness and its consequences for both reading and composition, is in no way to suggest that such lyrics actually are genuine, either in the sense that the author "means the words," or in the sense that they are necessarily occasional or grow out of real life experience. In "Listening Outside the Curtain" Liu Yung may simply have been elaborating an incident suggested in an old tune title; however, as he persuasively dramatizes his own "genuine" concern for the genuineness of the beloved's song words, he drives the reading of song lyric toward being more like that of shih . Later, when the singer performs this lyric by Liu Yung, the words will be understood as representing Liu Yung's sentiments, and no longer those of the singer. This has two important consequences. First, it contributes to the formation of the legend of the great lover Liu San-pien (Liu Yung) as a biographical frame for reading the lyrics. Second, the reperformance of such lyrics contributes to a dramatized Liu San-pien, who eventually became a popular figure in Chinese theater.

The Categorical and the Particular

Insofar as meaning the words (or the appearance thereof) became a value in song lyric, those texts that somehow managed to embody "genuineness" within the words themselves would be particularly valued. Here we should stress the lyric's difference from shih . Shih could

[19] This transformation has been amply documented by many historians of tz'u , such as Kang-i Sun Chang in The Evolution of Chinese Tz'u Poetry: From Late T'ang to Northern Sung (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). The normative and typological tends to be associated with hsiao-ling , while the circumstantial tends to be found in man-tz'u ; however, this formal division is not at all a strict one: Li Yü writes circumstantial hsiao-ling , while Liu Yung writes typological man-tz'u . I use the term "circumstantial" as referring to a category broader than the "occasional," which it includes. Thus, we might consider many of Chou Pang-yen's lyrics as circumstantial, but not truly occasional; that is, although we may doubt that such lyrics were composed for a particular experiential occasion, they create a strong sense of a particular, non-repeatable moment.

[20] It is significant that Yen Chi-tao, the last master of the Northern Sung typological party song, was also the lyricist for whom the question of genuineness posed the largest problem. In his song lyrics he raises the possibility of the beloved's lack of true feeling and potential falseness with remarkable frequency.

make the assumption of genuineness (which is not to say that all shih are genuine or aim for that value). In contrast, genuineness was a problem in the song lyric.

In addition to a circumstantiality that increasingly bound (or seemed to bind) the words of the song lyric to some moment in the past, the song lyric sought other ways to embody the particularity of feeling and experience. The desire to write genuine feeling into language, in the text rather than in the performance, inevitably encountered a basic limitation of language. Words like "love," "longing," and "sadness" are general categories and only crude ways of articulating particular and constantly changing states of feeling. Using categorical language, the song lyric sought ways to speak of states of feeling more particular, more immediate, and more variable than language readily permitted.

As we might expect, both the particularity of feeling and the inadequacy of categorical language came themselves to appear as themes within the song lyric. Older statements of the inadequacy of language, such as the anecdote of Wheelwright P'ien in the Chuang-tzu or T'ao Ch'ien's famous fifth poem of "Drinking Wine," tended to declare the absolute ineffability of "what" was known. In contrast, the lyricists usually accepted the essential validity of categorical language and faulted only language's capacity to convey adequately the precise quality of feeling. Comments on the particularity of feeling occur frequently in the song lyric tradition, as in the famous passage from Li Yü's (attrib.) "Wu yeh t'i" (or "Hsiang-chien huan"); first he gives the category ("the sorrow of being apart"), then declares its singularity:^[21]

Cut but not severed,
put in order, but then a tangle again—
that's the sorrow of being apart.
It is a flavor all of its own kind in the heart.

Or when Liu Yung speaks of a sensation of being ill at ease after sex, he says: "It's a disturbing quality of feeling all of its own kind."^[22] And Li Ch'ing-chao, perhaps echoing Li Yü, describes an elusive apathy in spring's bad weather: "It's a flavor of tedium all of its own kind."^[23]

[21] TWTT , p. 231.

[22] "Yü-ch'ih pei" (CST , p. 21).

[23] "Nien-nu chiao" (CST , p. 931).

In the passages from Liu Yung's song lyrics quoted earlier, the lover does not give the precise words the beloved said; he or she can only declare that there are words remembered and repeated. In the same way, the lyricist cannot "name" the distinction of the feeling; he can only gesture toward it, often using the phrase pieh-shih , "all of its own kind."^[24] It is significant that Li Ch'ing-chao picks up that phrase pattern, indexing singularity, when making the first statement of tz'u 's own singularity as a genre in the "Tz'u lun." "Tz'u ," she says, "is something all of its own kind." She is not able to define the particular quality of the genre with precision; rather, she can only point to its distinctness.

Perhaps the finest, and certainly the most famous, statement of the

problem of categorical language and the particularity of emotion is to be found in Li Ch'ing-chao's "Sheng-sheng man":^[25]

Searching and searching, seeking and seeking,
so chill, so clear,
dreary, and dismal, and forlorn.
That time of year when it's suddenly warm, then cold again,
now it's hardest of all to relax.
Two or three cups of weak wine—
how can they resist the sharpness of the wind that comes with evening?
The wild geese pass—
that's what hurts most—
and yet they're old acquaintances.

Chrysanthemum petals fill the ground in piles,
looking wasted, damaged—
as they are now, who could bring herself to pluck them?
Keeping by the window,
how can I wait alone until the blackness comes?
The wu-t'ung tree, and on top of that the fine rain,
until dusk,
drop after drop.
In a situation like this
how can that one word "sorrow" grasp it?

To see how song lyric claims for itself the capacity to immediately convey genuine feeling, we should begin with the vernacular question at the end, which appears at first glance to be a simple critique of language's capacity to represent feeling. The precise phrasing, however, redeems the closing lines from being merely a restatement of the commonplace critiques of language. The first and most obvious element is the specific reference to the single categorical word: i-ko ch'ou tzu . Not only is the problem explicitly located in the single word, the term used is tzu , "the written word."^[26] Yet this reference to tzu , the written word, is made within a sentence whose syntax and diction mark it strongly as colloquial; and even though the text as we have it is written, not performed, it presents itself to us not so much as "the written language," but as using the written language to represent speech.

The second important element in this passage is the term used to indicate what the written word cannot do: liao-te , "fully get it," with a strong sense of finishing or completion.^[27] The single word (i-ko [ch'ou] tzu ) is not essentially wrong, only radically incomplete; and thus her rhetorical question is filiated to a long tradition of statements on lan-

[26] This is not to suggest that Li Ch'ing-chao is thinking of "writing" per se here. Rather, when she wants to isolate a single term from the more or less natural phrasings of speech (yü-tz'u ), this is the only term she has recourse to.

[27] For parallel usages see Lung Ch'ien-an, Sung Yüan yü-yen tz'u-tien (Shanghai: Shang-hai tz'u-shu ch'u-pan-she, 1985), p. 39.

guage's quantitative inadequacy (e.g., the Hsi-tz'u chuan's "yen pu chin i" ). Liao-te is the militantly vernacular phrase (yü-tz'u ) replacing the more classical word (tzu ) chin , "to exhaust," conventionally used negatively in statements of poetic value: that a poem should "contain inexhaustible meaning in reserve," han pu-chin chih i .

"Meaning" (i ), of course, is not the issue here, not what she hopes to convey, but rather "this situation," che tz'u-ti . Che tz'u-ti is gestural, ostensive, referring to something present and particular, unlike the more abstract "meaning" (you might even say: tsen i-ko "i" tzu liao-te ). "Situation," tz'u-ti , encompasses both the inner state and its external determinations, without raising the issue of the conventional dichotomy in poetics between "scene" (ching ) and "feeling" (ch'ing ).

We now come to that venerable question in the philosophy of language, which is how it is possible to speak the "what" of "what language cannot convey." With the colloquially ostensive "this," che , she gestures toward it; but by this point in the song lyric the object of her gesture is no mere blank space. We cannot tell whether the "situation" to which she gestures is the full sequence of experiences given earlier in the lyric or the precise moment that is their outcome. But a tacit claim is made through the gesture that we should recognize "this situation"—that the lyric has already adequately given us the object of the ostensive "this." "Tz'u is something all of its own kind," says Li Ch'ing-chao, implicitly articulating the genre against shih , which, though still recited, had already become very much "written poetry." Song lyric should enable the reader or listener to "fully get it" through language, if not in any particular word. Shih may chin i , "exhaust the meaning"; song lyric turns the phrase into the vernacular with significant substitutions: [chiang] tz'u-ti liao-te , "fully get the situation."

From the time of Chang Tuan-i's Kuei-erh chi of the 1240s, traditional critics recognized that Li Ch'ing-chao's "Sheng-sheng man" was an exceptional song lyric, and I do not believe it is rash to assume that Li Ch'ing-chao recognized in writing it that it was a great lyric. Rather than despairing of language's power to convey the immediacy of feeling, the closing passage may be taken as an oblique expression of her pride of accomplishment (the reader shakes his or her head and says: "Yes, how can a word express this? "). Here, then, is a rare case in which the theme of the problem of expressing genuine feeling in words is conjoined to what tacitly claims to be a successful example of genuine feeling embodied in words. At this point our discussion moves from the relatively simple task of describing the question and showing that it was an explicit concern in song lyric to the far more elusive problem of how

song lyric "does it," how it actually gives the sense of genuine feeling in words—not only in categorical words, but in some of the most hackneyed images and motifs of the tz'u tradition.^[28]

The remarkable series of doublets (tieh-tzu ) that opens the lyric has always caught the attention of critics. Since such accumulation of doublets was generally avoided, we may wonder what made them so effective in this case.^[29] In addition to describing qualities (often implicitly unifying external and interior conditions), such doublets may also suggest intensification and continuous action.

We may note that although every pair in the first three lines is formally a doublet, each line represents a rather different kind of doublet; by placing them together, Li Ch'ing-chao uses their formal identity to make them work in similar ways. Hsün-hsün and mi-mi are doubled verbs, each not surprising in itself, but neither commonly doubled and unusual in being put together. When we find paired doublets, it is usually with bound mood terms, such as we have in the third line (where, again violating convention, we have a series of three, rather than a pair of doublets).^[30] Verbal doublets, such as hsün-hsün and mi-mi , tend to suggest continuous and intensified action; however, by pairing these verbal doublets in the manner of mood doublets and by placing them in a matrix of mood doublets, the "action," intense and continuing, tends to take on the quality of a mood or a state of mind.

The next pair of doublets, leng-leng and ch'ing-ch'ing , are physical sensations of qualities in the external world, but also carrying strong

[28] Although the close stylistic analysis that follows tries to show how tz'u "does it," the present author is painfully aware of the incongruity between his topic (conveying immediate and genuine emotion) and the inevitable heavy-handedness of stylistic analysis, more appropriate in the classroom than in writing. Therefore, any reader who wishes at this point to skip ahead to the next section is forgiven beforehand.

[29] Rather than being categorical names for conditions (such as "sorrow"), such doublets give a more differentiated sense of a condition's quality: "how" it is. About such doublets as they were used in the Shih-ching , Liu Hsieh said in the "Wu-se" chapter of Wen-hsin tiao-lung: i-yen ch'iung li . . . liang-tzu ch'iung hsing , "One phrase gave the fullness of the principle [of the thing] . . . two characters gave the fullness of its form." (Note how the question of adequate presentation returns here, though using ch'iung , rather than the roughly synonymous and more commonplace chin .) The Southern Dynasties poet Chiang Yen could write a poetic exposition on "Grief" ("Hen fu"), giving many examples; likewise, one could look up the categorical emotions in an encyclopedia, which would provide a storehouse of precedent cases. However, the doublets, such as ch'i-ch'i or ts'an-ts'an , are not such categories: one cannot write a poetic exposition on one of them as a "topic," nor can they constitute headings in an encyclopedia.

[30] By "bound term" I mean two-syllable words whose individual syllables are normally, though by no means always, compounded.

mood associations. Like the verbal doublets in the first line, each of these is normally a single syllable (or compounded with another word). Making these syllables into doublets suggests intensification of the sensation (hence the translation "so"). Each doublet in the third line, ch'i-ch'i ts'an-ts'an ch'i-ch'i (in the Sung the first and third were phonologically distinct), primarily describes a quality of feeling, though often with ties to external circumstance. These are bound terms, and as mentioned above, it is common to find them in pairs, but not in groups of three.

Each line of doublets is, in some way, twisted away from habitual usage; and by placing them in a common matrix, they are made to be "of the same kind." What would normally be distinguished as action, physical sensation, and mood here blur together. Thus, the initial "action" is joined to sensation and mood and becomes itself an interior state; on the other hand, the terms of mood are linked to physical sensation and the (mental) restlessness of the opening line. The matrix works to break down conventional distinctions between the exterior (wai ) and interior (nei ).

Most important is the initial hsün-hsün mi-mi , "searching and searching, seeking and seeking." Of all actions, these verbs of seeking require an object in order to be complete. Seeking, to be itself, must seek something . Without an object, it becomes more of a condition than an act. Moreover, made into doublets, the verbs connote intensified and continuous seeking, lacking an "end" in several senses. Moving to the second and third lines, the seeking is left incomplete, without an object; and the strong associations of isolation and the absence of another in the second and third lines echo that sense of incompleteness. Thus, emotion here is given the form of intensely purposive movement, but only the pure form, lacking objectified purpose.

That time of year when it's suddenly warm, then cold again,
now it's hardest of all to relax.

Weather and human emotion are often associated (in Western literature as in traditional China, where both are qualities of ch'i ). From the intense steadiness of the opening, where the chill was an ongoing condition, there is all at once a volatility.^[31] The mode of the opening was con-

tinuation of the same; all at once we enter "suddenness" and alternation of opposites (warmth and chill). From a language of vague poetic mood, we suddenly enter a discursive language: placing, explaining, commenting. In contrast to the opening, where interior and exterior conditions were undifferentiated, here external changes are observed, changes of the weather that also anticipate changes of sensation and feeling: as in the conjunction of the second and third lines, physical sensation blurs into state of mind. Emotion (the Greek pathos , "what is endured," kan ) is involuntary, being the object of forces over which one has no control. The voice, restless but unable to attach her restlessness to any object, tells us explicitly that she cannot settle down, cannot "get hold of herself," cannot relax.

The opening was pure condition; these lines introduce a self-consciousness in which she is aware of the weather as something external, its variability due to the changes in the season. She can conceive of the possibility of relaxing, even though it is beyond her powers. In contrast to the opening lines, here she attempts to "define" her position, to explain her restlessness in terms of this particular moment of the year; now relaxing is "hardest of all," a comparative difficulty. Insofar as song lyric can embody feeling in language, it does so through movements —not in statements per se, but in the way one statement "sounds" in relation to other statements. The movement here from the immediacy of the first three lines to the "explanation" offerred in these two lines is the dominant "move" of this lyric: using words to try "fully" to grasp a condition that is both changing and beyond one's control.

"Suddenly warm, then cold again": she stresses the unexpected suddenness of the changes (even while restricting them to this particular time of the year). This is neither a steady "in-between" condition nor a set of predictable alternations, but sudden and unexpected change, all the more forceful because she anticipates the possibility of sudden

change without knowing when it will occur.^[32] No wonder it is hard to "relax," chiang-hsi , combining rest, relief from pressure, and taking care of oneself.

As she futilely tries to get the situation under control in words ("It's that time of year, you know"), she also tries to control it by action—not the sudden spells of welcome warmth recalling departing summer, but the chill that always returns with the evening wind in autumn. She takes wine against it, wine that might promise both warmth and relaxation; but it is inadequate in quantity and strength. We should take careful note of how she phrases the failed intention of the act: tsen ti . She wants to "oppose" or "counterbalance" those external forces that can work upon her, that affect her mood through physical sensation. But this gesture of opposition also fails, either in fact or in anticipation (if we read the lyric as the course of a day, with evening falling later).

The wild geese pass—
that's what hurts most—
and yet they're old acquaintances.

"The wild geese pass," yen kuo yeh : the beauty of the line depends on the yeh . It isolates the fact, separates the statement from the flow of discourse. It is given to us a neutral observation (another consequence of the quality of yeh , as opposed to more emotional particles), something safely external. But immediately this mere fact impinges on her mood. Suppose we combined the first two lines into a shih line: yen kuo cheng shang hsin , "The passing of the wild geese hurts most" (or "is what hurts right now"). That would be a simple statement of feeling. But yen kuo yeh / cheng shang hsin first delivers something ostensibly as a neutral fact, then seems to "discover" a consequence of the fact, a relation to it. The cheng ("most of all" or "at this moment") attempts to localize response, to give the real source of the mood by focusing response on the preceding scene. But that too fails adequately to explain why she feels as she does. Ch'üeh-shih chiu-shih hsiang-shih , "and yet they're old acquaintances." She generalizes, compares past and present, contrasts how she ought to feel (welcoming old acquaintances) with how she does feel (cheng shang hsin ). She takes an old cliché of song (the wild geese appearing as old acquaintances) and uses it against the feeling, but it rings hollow. We don't believe it is a valid consolation; she doesn't believe it is a consolation. The poetic cliché is as thin and weak as the wine. Its

[32] "Anxiety," as Freud defines it against "fear" and "fright" in Beyond the Pleasure Principle , depends on knowing that you may well encounter something without knowing exactly when.

value in the song is not "what" it says but its function as gesture, as a futile attempt to interpret the emotional force of the fact.

Chrysanthemum petals fill the ground in piles,
looking wasted, damaged—
as they are now, who could bring herself to pluck them?

The first stanza was too full of motions and countermotions to bear a strong stanzaic shift (huan-t'ou ). The fallen flowers are, of course, the counterpart of the aging woman. And the realization that no one will pluck them brings in the absent figure of the man or friend, someone who might pluck blossoms—even these last blossoms of the year—but only at their proper time.^[33] Inevitably in the background of such a scene we find T'ao Ch'ien, who did pick the chrysanthemums in their season, who watched the birds fly off to South Mountain (their passage did not "hurt"), and from such a scene attained an aloof pleasure, rising above the shifting "flavors" of depression that beset Li Ch'ing-chao. And we may recall also that in the same poem, the fifth "Drinking Wine," T'ao concluded with the difficulty of finding the right words for what was in his mind.

"As they are now, who could bring herself to pluck them?" She sees herself in her figurative double, and in being herself unwilling to pluck the tattered blossoms, she recognizes her helplessness, being the object of outer forces—the weather, the passage of time that wastes persons and flowers, and even in the most hopeful situation, dependency on someone to pick and appreciate. Li Ch'ing-chao is not passive, but she is impotent: she is the object of outer forces, scenes, actions. She opposes them by constructs of words and deeds, but she is always defeated, always overcome. Although tempting, the question of the author's gender is not, I think, of paramount importance here; such helplessness, the condition of emotion (ch'ing ), is equally a convention in the lyrics of many male poets—though one might argue it is an essentially feminized stance.

Keeping by the window,
how can I wait alone until the blackness comes?

[33] One may note the relation between this passage and the earlier attempt to unify the exterior and interior qualities. Here as she looks out into the exterior scene, she finds the figure of the bedraggled flowers as the self's double; and as she has no inclination to lay claim to the blossoms, so she herself is unclaimed (the refusal to pluck balancing the seeking of the opening). There is an interesting relation between poetic modes of isolation and the solipsistic project of unifying interior experience (ch'ing ) and the external world encountered (ching ).

The wu-t'ung tree, and on top of that the fine rain,
until dusk,
drop after drop.

Although her mood may be restless and uneasy, her body is fixed to one spot, gazing out the window that gives her one scene after another that reminds her of autumn. The shou-che , "keeping to," is as if willful, drawn to this frame of disturbing visions. Then, instead of another depressing item in the visual iconography of autumnal melancholy, the next thing that is to appear is night's blackness, an absence of vision. In such darkness, for all its ominousness, she might have been able to escape from those visual impressions that impinge on her mood and cause pain. But even though the visual world might be muted, there is an equally oppressive aural world, sounds traditionally associated with melancholy and loss.

The song lyric aims for a "way of speaking" that sounds genuine, and often it depends for its effects on particles. The eventual darkening of the scene is the external fact. The vernacular tsen sheng te , "how can I wait," places her in an intense relation to the fact. More subtle, but no less important, is the keng-chien , "on top of that." She might simply have said wu-t'ung yü , "rain on the wu-t'ung tree"; but keng-chien "adds" the elements, as if they were not a unified scene but some itemization of the causes of her painful impressions, like the "drip-drip drop-drop," tien-tien ti-ti , each single one drawing attention to itself and adding to the store of pain.^[34]

Li Ch'ing-chao, intensely aware of the tradition of the song lyric, is here troping on the second stanza of the sixth of Wen T'ing-yün's "Keng-lou-tzu" lyrics:^[35]

On the wu-t'ung tree
rain of the third watch
has no concern how feelings at being apart are at their most painful.
on every single leaf
sound after sound
drips on the empty stairs until daylight.

[35] TWTT , p. 62. The admiration for this passage in the twelfth century is suggested by the fact that it was singled out for praise in the T'iao-hsi yü-yin ts'ung-hua—hou chi , chüan 17 (dated 1167), one of the few comments on Wen's song lyrics in the Sung.

From the indeterminate "seeking" of the opening, to "keeping to" her window, to the rains lasting until dusk, the lyric reinforces the idea of "continuing," bound in uncertain anticipation of some hidden end. Outside is a drama of autumn, which she somehow feels compelled to watch and listen to until the true darkness of night, with the dripping rain serving, like the water clock, as the monotonous marker of time. At last she brings in her act of interpretation, the failure of naming, gesturing to "this situation," which can be crudely classified as "sorrow" or "melancholy," but whose particularity belies the "single word." The name should "complete," should fully account for the phenomenon; yet here the name is held up for comparison with the "situation," which throughout embodies incompleteness, continuing, uncertainty, seeking in vain some end that will make it a whole and thus to be understood and named.

In the song lyric the conventional name always sits uneasily and imperfectly on experience that can only be lived through, or it has more detail and nuance than the appropriate categorical word. At last the categorical word may come to be used ironically, implying its own failure to account for the complexity of "this situation."

Every phase of the heart, every yearning:
there is no adequate way to tell them all—
it's just "love-longing."

                 Yen Shu, to "Su chung-ch'ing"^[36]

Taxis and Quotation

The song lyric sought the means to embody and convey apparently genuine and particular phases of feeling in categorical words.^[37] It was

[36] CST , p. 97.

[37] Literary genres are inevitably the recipients of historically diverse interests, and it is wrongheaded to try to characterize them by any single question. Often genres take shape around sets of antithetical values; and it is through such contradictory pairings,rather than by any single quality, that the genre takes on a distinct in relation to other genres. In song lyric the concern with embodying genuine feeling was bound to an antithetical interest in obvious artificiality, figuration, and overt marks of conscious craftsmanship. Careful craftsman and helpless victim of passion are frequently conjoined; it is less a contradiction to be reconciled than an antithesis whose poles lend energy to the genre.

early discovered that this could be accomplished, not by the words themselves, but by the relations implied between phrases, lines, and stanzas.^[38] The words themselves belong to a common normative language, but the quality of movement from one normative verbal segment to another may imply an interior motion of mind or feeling, a motion that can seem immediate and private. This is to suggest that the verbal embodiment of subjectivity was achieved not "in" words but "in between" words (and since the smaller groupings of words were often conventional, primarily between phrases and lines). The relations between these verbal segments are the empty spaces, which make the workings of the song lyric so elusive to describe.^[39]

In a large sense this is a question of taxis ("arrangement," the sequencing of words and periods); however, I would like to distinguish the general question of taxis from a more particular case, which I will call, for want of a better term, "quotation." By "quotation" I mean an interplay between segments recognized as "classical" or "poetic" (in the sense of shih ) and more discursive, often vernacular elements. In "quotation" the received poetic language loses its exclusive authority: by being embedded in a longer discursive unity, it is as if placed inside quotation marks.

The taxis of T'ang shih was based on a tradition of rhetorical exposition that had roots in a shared assumption about the order of the world, both the order of the physical world and the normative order of experience. Such assumptions supported the role of shih as a social and secular rite, particularized by the moment, place, and person; all that was particular found a reassuring place in normative pattern.^[40] There was room

[38] Sometimes this occurs in the relation between individual words; however, in tz'u the primary semantic unity is more often the compound or phrase than the individual word. In this tz'u approached, in its own way, the polysyllabic and phrase-oriented vernacular.

[39] "Empty," hsü , was the attributive of feeling (ch'ing ), and linguistically was associated with the subjective quality of a statement, most commonly (though not always) achieved in the "particle," or "empty word," hsü-tzu .

[40] To give just one example of normative taxis in shih , shih generally made an assumption of temporal linearity: first things come first, second things second, and so on. Unmarked flashbacks are rare. However, in tz'u , governed by the time of subjective con-sciousness, rather than the time of external world, unmarked flashbacks are not at all uncommon.

within the form for non-normative sequences of lines and subjective associations, but these usually had to be reconciled with a normative structure of exposition.^[41] In much of the best eighth-century poetry everything private and subjective was reconciled with normative order.

This gross generalization is in no way meant as an adequate description of all poetry in the T'ang. During the ninth century that older structure of exposition broke down; middle and late T'ang poetry differ from High T'ang poetry far more in taxis even than in diction. However, such a generalization can serve as the starting point from which to consider large shifts in literary history and generic economies. From the mid-T'ang moving into Sung there was a strong interest in making shih into a medium that could persuasively embody the particularity of a mind's movements and of experience (subjectivity). One solution was the "rambling" shih , in which the elements and their sequence were not bound together by any recognizable structure other than the accidents of experience and the quirky associations of mind.^[42] Another example was the witty poem, in which a clever interpretation, articulated against the normative and commonplace response, was the signature of the singularity of this poet's mind. In different ways both of these tendencies in mid-T'ang and Sung shih were shared by the song lyric.

Tz'u 's formal asymmetries made possible certain moves, however, of which the more linear shih , with its internally complete couplet, was incapable. Tz'u could isolate a phrase, add a single long line as if an after-thought; it could formally enact a sudden shift, an odd association, a flashback, an image left hanging. Shih tended to balance and complete utterances. Tz'u tended to shifts that left things incomplete, to asymmetries, to elements standing alone.^[43] It would be impossible in shih to put together the sequence of phrases that appears in the following characteristic example of a tz'u passage, which concludes Wang Yü-ch'eng's "Tien chiang ch'un":^[44]

[41] It is significant that the T'ang poet with the most idiosyncratic sense of taxis was also the poet with the strongest influence on the tz'u tradition and the poet whose collection was designated not simply as poetry, but as "song and poetry" (ko-shih ): this was Li Ho.

[42] There are interesting analogies here to Surrealist literary theory, and the conviction that subjectivity can appear only in the complete abrogation of normative order.

[43] An exception in shih might be the closing image, a device adopted extensively by tz'u . Yet this is usually less an asymmetry than a framed figure for contemplation, a summation.

[44] CST , p. 2.

All that has happened in my life—
at this moment staring fixedly.
Who understands my state of mind here on the stairs?

We know that there is a relation between "all that has happened" in the speaker's life and his fixed gaze, but tz'u allows the components simply to be thrown together in ways that are impossible in shih (even when the two hemistiches of a line of a regulated couplet are thrown together in such an indeterminate relation, as occurs sometimes in the poetry of Tu Fu, Tu Mu, and Li Shang-yin, the indeterminacy tends to be counterbalanced by the second, often parallel line). Such rapid alternations and open juxtapositions are common in tz'u . They imply subjectivity because they cannot be unified as a sequence on the level of rhetoric or a simple proposition; they point to a subject who makes the connection for his own unstated reasons. They are a signature of what is private and interior. And it is significant that Wang Yü-ch'eng makes an explicit claim of just such inaccessible interiority in the final line.

The abrupt shift or indeterminate paratactic juxtaposition is only one way in which taxis is used to point to a subjective unity behind the words. The rich possibilities of non-normative taxis , invited by a given melody pattern and the ways in which lines are grouped by a rhyme unit, often require that we posit a unified movement of mind to hold the disparate elements together. To return to a passage quoted earlier, a (very weak) shih poet might write: li-ch'ou chien pu tuan , "The sorrow of being apart can be cut but not severed." That is a simple claim or proposition. The question is how such a propositional line differs from:

Cut but not severed,
put in order, but then a tangle again—
that's the sorrow of being apart.
It is a flavor all of its own kind in the heart.

In the first two lines here the topic, the "sorrow of being apart," is withheld.^[45] Heard or read, these two predicates are apprehended as re-

[45] The analogous syntactic form in shih offers a striking contrast, as in the line from Tu Fu's "Pei Ch'ing-pan": "The green is the smoke of beacon fires, the white is bones."Ch'iu Chao-ao, ed., Tu-shih hsiang-chu (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1979), p. 316. In this case the displacement of the topic to a position after the qualification suggests the order of empirical experience: first one sees the colors, then identifies what they are. This is the way in which problematic syntactic sequence was explained in Ch'un-ch'iu commentary. Writing inscribes the external empirical order that governs perception.

ferring to a topic in the speaker's mind, a topic of which the auditor or reader has not been informed; that is, the speaker takes for granted something only he can know. This is a signature of interior monologue rather than address to others: the two predicates are given as if they are what comes to mind, what is important. Then when he provides the topic of the predicates in the third line, he does so not for the explanatory necessity of address characteristic of shih , but as a subjective claim, that in fact these two predicates explain the essence or the entirety of "the sorrow of being apart." Our hypothetical shih line, "The sorrow of being apart can be cut but not severed," offers a predicate that is only one aspect of the topic (presumably many more things could be predicated on "the sorrow of being apart"). This version offers a more extreme claim: "Cut it, but it's not severed; try to put it in order, but it becomes a mess again—that's the sorrow of being apart." The precise quality of the taxis here is open to other interpretations, but each interpretation must be more gestural and dramatic than our hypothetical shih line. Any particular decision on how the lines sound is less significant than the fact that some interpretation of the tone of the lines is demanded by the taxis of the tz'u , as it would not be by our weak shih line. Whether read as a surprising discovery, a hyperbolic definition, or an exclamation of exasperation, all are truly "voiced" versions, whose voicing is articulated against the unvoiced proposition: "The sorrow of being apart can be cut but not severed."^[46]

The final line adds another qualification, in which the experience of this emotion is objectified for evaluation.^[47] Here the vernacular plainness and unsurprising quality of the observation is played off against the importance and weight given to final lines. The poet's voice speaks as if curiously distant from an emotion that he has just informed us is over-

[46] By "voiced" here I mean something like what a good actor must do with a speech in poetic drama. The passage may offer a rich variety of possibilities in assigning stresses, pauses, ironic intonations—and anyone who has seen many performances of a well-known play knows how deeply such decisions can change the character and the effect of a particular speech. Some versions of dramatic "interpretation" are more effective and credible than others; but all are superior to an unvoiced poetic drone in reading the lines.

[47] The reader should not overlook the close similarity of this final "move" to the conclusions of Li Ch'ing-chao's "Sheng-sheng man" and Wang Yü-ch'eng's "Tien chiang ch'un."

whelming. The emotion has become a "flavor," implying both immediacy but at the same time reflective distance—it is an agony to be savored and judged. What is most important is that the categorical emotion, "the sorrow of being apart," is not itself the subjective condition, the state of mind, embodied in the lyric; rather, the subjective condition is in the poet's self-consciousness and changing relation to the categorical emotion, the way he thinks about it or feels about it. The categorical emotion is only the object on which the speaker broods, precariously balanced between torment and reflective distance.

Song lyric works with clichés, normative responses, and commonplace categories of feeling, such as "the sorrow of being apart." However, the real interest of the genre lies in representing particular experience, often involving a reflective relation to the normative category of feeling. Precisely through the objectification of one's own state of mind a changing relation is possible; for example, not simply "being in love" but exasperation at finding oneself helplessly in love. The song lyric's continual reflection on the categories of feeling is not a dispassionate distance, but the means by which the interiority and shifts of feeling can be represented. The mere fact that the sorrow of being apart "is a flavor all of its own kind in the heart" is uninteresting in its own right; what animates it is the tone in which we imagine the statement is made and, inferred from that, the way the speaker feels about the categorical fact.

The second means of embodying the particularity of feeling in categorical words is "quotation." Although we use the term in reference to a way of speaking rather than as actual citation of a text, it sometimes is citation, quoting a passage from earlier poetry or a commonplace. As with categorical statements of feeling, the nature of such "poetic" elements is qualified by the way in which they are embedded in more discursive language, often including particles (hsü-tz'u ) or vernacular elements.^[48]

Let us consider a very ordinary, conventionally "poetic" line of seven-character regulated verse: i-chiang ch'un-shui hsiang tung liu , "A riverful of spring water flowing to the east." If this line had been set in the right context, an early T'ang or High T'ang poet could have made it a convincing closing for a poem, a universal truth of Nature that would in some way serve as the displaced embodiment of the poet's response. By the ninth and especially by the tenth century, such a closing line

[48] Northern Sung shih eventually evolved its own means of animating earlier poetic discourse by "quotation," most notably in the poetry of Huang T'ing-chien. The possibility that Huang's shih style was based on an aesthetic device primarily characteristic of song lyric awaits further examination.

would have become painfully banal, a device that had become all too familiar. But what happens if we qualify the line with a short phrase, not only set apart from the familiar rhythms of the seven-character line, but also markedly different in diction? Ch'ia-ssu i-chiang ch'un-shui hsiang tung liu , "It's just like a riverful of spring water flowing to the east." The poetic line has been "framed," put into the quotation marks of a speculative simile (we can exaggerate the effect in English by using an extra set of quotation marks: "It's just like 'a riverful of spring water flowing to the east'"). The conventionally "poetic" image loses its autonomy in the longer line, its status as simple natural fact. The first, seven-character line version had presented "what is"; the longer, qualified version reduces natural fact to only an image occurring in the poet's mind. The poet might have drawn this speculative simile from experience or poetry—we cannot know. We know only that it comes to mind at this moment as an appropriate "image." "Just like," ch'ia-ssu , he says, admitting there are degrees of appropriate comparison, and that in his purely subjective opinion, this "image" is the most apt.^[49] This "empty" (hsü ) frame contextualizes the image, and in doing so, marks the difference between a poetic, permanent, and natural fact, and the circumstantial application of that fact in a private, subjective comparison. The beauty of the line is in its tone, humanizing the conventional image and making it immediate—"It's just like . . ."

This line of subjective comparison comes as a response to a question posed by the speaker himself. First we might consider how the lines would sound if the answer had been left unqualified by the circumstantial frame phrase:

I ask you, how much sorrow can there be?—
a riverful of spring water flowing to the east.

English translators are often wise to join such questions and answers with a dash after the question mark, to indicate a discontinuity of level between the question and the answer. The autonomy of the "poetic" image, set against the more discursive question, gives the second line a

[49] There is an interesting question regarding exactly what the "line" of Li Yü's famous tz'u is: whether it is the text as we have it with the ch'ia-ssu , or the seven-character line "quoted" in the text. In the Hsüeh-lang-chai jih-chi (T'iao-hsi yü-yin ts'ung-hua—hou-chi , chüan 59), Huang T'ing-chien is supposed to have quoted it as the seven-character line, rather than the full nine characters of the text. Such reference to lines of tz'u by their "poetic" segments is not uncommon in the Sung.

peculiar authority, an answer that seems to occur in nature rather than in the human mind. Human questions seem to be answered by the world before your eyes or by a silence that lets the questioner know the answer is beyond words. This abrupt shift from question to image had been a favorite device of T'ang poetry.^[50]

If we were to leave our "riverful of spring water flowing to the east" unqualified, we would have precisely such a poetic form. When the response is "framed," the human, with human uncertainty, poses the question, and then offers a merely human answer, a subjective opinion, a comparison. Nature as an external presence has been written out of the poem; it survives only as a possibility in mind, a "poetic image."

There are permanent things, things that are real and belong to the world but that are strangely foreign to mind. They survive in mind as "poetic images." The fact that such natural things are somehow no longer immediate is understandable if the person happens to have been removed from or to have lost such permanent presences—for example, a ruler deposed and taken away from his palaces and that Yangtze riverful of spring water. For such a person the world's permanent poetic "things" survive only as remembered images, to be "quoted" by mind:

Carved balustrades and stairs of jade—
        I'm sure they are still there.

In this case the order of poetic image and subjective qualification is reversed: first the things are given—two parallel compounds—then the

supposition—ying yu tsai , "I'm sure they are still there"—qualifying the image as does the comment ch'ia-ssu , "just like."^[51] In the line that follows, this poetic element embedded in a supposition is further framed by another thought, marking itself as a movement of mind in response to the supposition:

It's only the color of a young man's face that changes.

The beauty of this song does not lie in its hackneyed images, but in the relation created between the framing phrases and the embedded images. Chih-shih , "It's only the color of a young man's face that changes"—but it's not true: all things change and have changed, even lovely palaces in Chin-ling, as a ruler who once had his capital in that city of ruins must have known all too well. Chih-shih , "It's only that . . ." is an untruth that becomes a subjective truth, a mark of feeling rather than an opinion; and we read the words as such.

The formal sequence of these two lines is a poetic image that is qualified by a subjective frame and finally moves to purely private and interior response.^[52] The initial image is permanent, parallel, and "poetic"; then comes the first frame comment, the supposition that joins the speaker to the "poetic"; finally there is the second qualification, which is purely subjective truth.

[51] The variant i-jan may be preferred by some. This will produce a loose heptasyllabic song line, also common in tz'u (the reading ying yu would be uncommon in T'ang ko-hsing or sheng-shih ). My concern here is not which is the correct reading but that the version ying yu tsai occurs. For an extensive discussion of the variants, see Daniel Bryant's essay in this volume.

To offer another example of such a sequence (in a tz'u we might strengthen this pattern by placing two examples of the pattern in the same position in two different stanzas), we could think of something permanent, a common poetic image, a parallel pair of compounds such as:

Spring flowers, autumn moonlight—

Like the "carved balustrades and stairs of jade," these are not what is before a person's eyes—in this case, because no one can see "spring flowers" and "autumn moonlight" at the same time. Like the preceding palace scene, these occur in mind, words drawn from older poetry. Then, duplicating the formal structure of the lines above, we would add the first framing qualification—here not a supposition but a rhetorical question that sets the "poetic" images in the context of the speaker's cares:

when will they end?

Like ying yu tsai , "I'm sure they are still there," this qualification establishes a relation to the poetic image and specifically addresses the question of permanence, the limits of subjective knowledge, permanence as inference. Finally there is the second frame comment that marks off the purely subjective truth, knowledge as idea:

How much of what is past can we know?

or:

I wonder how much has gone by?

There is an obliquity between this and the preceding line (what does "knowing what happened" have to do with the question of the eternity of "spring flowers" and "autumn moonlight"?). We can explain the relation between this and the preceding line in many ways, but that relation is not immediate; it requires explanation. As we suggested earlier, such obliquity is the signal of a private movement of mind.

Such purely subjective comments are, in traditional linguistic categories, "empty," hsü —and they need constantly to be reattached to something physical and tangible. If the poetic truth of the permanence of spring flowers and autumn moonlight is realized subjectively in the rhetorical question "when will they end?" then that subjective comment requires a supplement, a grounding in some particular event of cyclical

repetition—say, the return of spring's east wind that will once again bring back spring flowers:

In the small building last night,
       spring wind once again.

Important here is the yu , "once again," the marker of repetition that explains why the preceding lines came to mind. Equally important is "last night," tso-yeh , locating the recurrent cycle as a particular event known from the perspective of an individual's place in time. The particular event is understood in its repetition and sameness with the past; from the perspective of today it is ranked with other past occurrences of the same (the spring wind arrived last night as it arrives every year). And since one repetition (the return of spring) can be captured by the retrospective mind, perhaps others can also be recaptured, images that go with the autumn moonlight and thus complete the opening opposition between "spring flowers" and "autumn moonlight." Let us round this out as a poetic couplet:

In the small building last night, spring wind once again.
To my homeland I turn my head in the bright moonlight.

One return and recurrence, that of the spring wind, leads to another, the possibility of return home, and the gesture, the turning of the head, that embodies desire. But if the desire is too strong, the impossibility of fulfillment makes it painful, and the gesture is repressed. Instead of actually (figuratively) "turning his head" to look back to his homeland, the gesture is only "quoted" in poetic words:

In the small building last night, spring wind once again.
To my homeland I dare not  turn my head in the bright moonlight.

The "dare not," pu k'an , stands out as the intruded qualification that transforms the poetic gesture into the thought of a poetic gesture, a subjective relation to a poetic gesture.

Let me now draw the disjecta membra of Li Yü's famous song lyric, "Yü mei-jen," together:^[53]

[53] TWTT , p. 221.

Spring flowers, autumn moonlight—when will they end?
How much of what is past can we know?
In the small building last night,
spring wind once again.
To my homeland I dare not turn my head
in the bright moonlight.

Carved balustrades and stairs of jade—
I'm sure they are still there,
it's only the color of a young man's face that changes.
I ask you, how much sorrow can there be?—
it's just like a riverful of spring water flowing to the east.

The question is why is this a beautiful piece of poetry (though its beauties may be utterly invisible in the translation above). By the standards of shih it should be neither beautiful nor even very interesting: everything about it is worn and hackneyed. The answer to the question of why it is beautiful should tell us something not only about the aesthetics of this song, but also about the aesthetics of song lyric in general.

As was the case with Liu Yung, the persuasive dramatization of genuine feeling tends to bind the song lyric to a moment in time; it contributes to the formation of a character, real or legendary, who could have written it. Liu Yung was only the second character created by good song lyrics; the first was Li Yü. One easy answer to this question of why the song is beautiful has to do with the tradition of anecdotal framing, the tradition of reading this song in the context of Li Yü's life. The art form in this case is not the song by itself, but rather the song in the context of an assumed story—irrespective of whether that story is historically true or not. That story is the supplement that the song seems to require, readers and exegetes finding the circumstances that can restore fullness to the words.

It is true that the beauty of Li Yü's song cannot be entirely separated from the later frame of story that has grown up around it, the exiled and captive ruler longing for his former kingdom. But the primary source of the song's appeal is within the song itself. It lies precisely in the way in

which a voice quotes and comments on the received images of poetry, changing them in the process and making them animate again.

Whether this song actually represents genuine feeling and "meaning the words" is beyond my knowledge and the knowledge of anyone else. Even Li Yü himself, were the question posed, would no longer be able to answer it perfectly. In one scenario the lyric just came out that way—the poet, a captive in Pien-ching, was overwhelmed by remembrance of his lost southern kingdom, which survived in memory as poetic images. In this scenario the form of the song lyric and the force of feeling in his situation came together to produce a lyric with a genuineness of voice almost impossible in shih . In another scenario (uncomfortable precisely because of the fact that genuineness was both a value and a problem) we can imagine Li Yü, under house arrest in Pien-ching, as the master craftsman, essentially happy and well fed—though a bit nostalgic. He works over the words again and again until at last it "sounds genuine." For "the word 'genuine' constitutes the skeleton beneath the song lyric. When the emotions are genuine and the scene is a genuine one, whatever has been written is always excellent and it's easy to consider it complete [t'o-kao : to complete one's revisions]."

Song Lyrics and the Canon:
A Look at Anthologies of Tz'u

Pauline Yu

Writing tz'u is difficult; selecting tz'u is even more difficult^[1]

Poetry Anthologies and Canon-Formation

The intimate connection between anthologies of poetry and the shaping of Chinese literary history and theory is well known; it is one that may follow naturally from the fact that the earliest specimens of the genre appear in a text whose provenance in a sage's act of selection represents one of the first assertions to be made about it. The various accretions of prefatory material to the Shih-ching (Book of Songs), moreover, established other precedents for later collections—and critical discourse as well—by virtue of their interest in the origins, lineage, and contexts of literary works. Following upon this canonical forebear, these collections engaged issues that proved central to the Chinese poetic tradition, including questions concerning the definition and nature of literature, its relationship to history, theories of periodization and genre, and modes of interpretation and evaluation.^[2] And indeed, as this list may suggest, anthologies served, both overtly and covertly, as important loci for attempts at defining the secular poetic canon itself.^[3]

[1] Ch'en T'ing-cho (1853–92), Pai-yü-chai tz'u-hua , in Ch'ü Hsing-kuo, ed., Pai-yü-chai tz'u-hua tsu-pen chiao-chu , 2 vols. (Tsinan: Ch'i Lu shu-she, 1983), 1:761 (hereafter cited as Tsu-pen chiao-chu ). In the Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , ed. and printed by T'ang Kuei-chang (24 volumes in four boxes, preface dated 1934; hereafter cited as Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien ), this statement can be found in vol. 22, 8.8a.

[2] For a discussion of these questions, see Pauline Yu, "Poems in Their Place: Collections and Canons in Early Chinese Literature," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50 (1990): 163–96.

[3] Although he is drawing on a number of forebears, Kao Ping (1350–1423) offers the most cogent example of this process in his T'ang-shih p'in-hui .

The role played by anthologies in the process of canon-formation has not gone unnoticed by a variety of critics. In her preface to an anthology of English and American women poets, for example, Louise Bernikow observes that "what is commonly called literary history is actually a record of choices. Which authors have survived their time and which have not depends on who noticed them and chose to record the notice. Which works have become part of the 'canon' of literature, read, thought about, discussed, and which have disappeared depends, in the same way, on the process of selection and the power to select along the way."^[4] Although Bernikow is specifically concerned with the gendered nature of literary-historical empowerment in England and America, her argument for the social and historical construction of value by means of editorial selection offers insights into Chinese literary history as well. In the case of the short lyric poem or shih , the primary questions center on the inclusion or exclusion of individual poets, as they do for Bernikow, with choices being made among writers working within, generally speaking, a common social and linguistic milieu and, perhaps more important, employing a genre blessed with an unimpeachable genealogy. This being so, given the variety of disagreements that ensue nonetheless regarding the critical issues mentioned above, it should come as no surprise that the same lack of consensus holds, a fortiori , for anthologies of the song lyric, or tz'u . This is a discourse, moreover, that must concern itself above all with the question of its own legitimacy. As a genre whose own status within the tradition was ineluctably compromised by the questionable nature of its origins, a genre that for centuries did not even possess a fixed name, the song lyric found itself continually in the position of having to justify itself vis-à-vis that tradition. We can find traces of this gesture in the collections that have written—and rewritten—the history of the form for us, which has been colored from the beginning by the polemics of marginality.

One clear index of the marginal status of the song lyric is the slender and evidently ravaged nature of the body of texts that has survived. It is well known that literati of the late T'ang and Sung dynasties did not choose to include their tz'u in the collections of their own works that many of them were beginning to assemble themselves; contemporary accounts of their writings often do not bother to mention that they worked within the genre.^[5] Individual collections of tz'u that were com-

[4] Cited by Elaine Showalter in her review article, "Literary Criticism," Signs 1 (1975): 438.

[5] Ch'i Huai-mei gives three examples of literati whose catalogs of works given in thedynastic histories do not identify them as also having written tz'u . See "Hua-chien chi chih yen-chiu" in Tai-wan sheng-li Shih-fan ta-hsüeh kuo-wen yen-chiu-so chi-k'an 4 (1960): 516.

piled, such as the Chin-ch 'üan chi ascribed to Wen T'ing-yün (812–70), were both few and aleatory. As Lung Mu-hsün observed some time ago, the relatively small number of individual tz'u collections from the T'ang through the Chin dynasties that are known to have existed—only a few hundred in all—suggests the low esteem of a genre that the literati evidently took great pleasure in but did not deem worth their time and effort to collect.^[6] Needless to say, the survival rate has been unimpressive.^[7] And poets whose primary activity consisted of working within the genre of tz'u have been treated rather capriciously by some literary historians. Biographical information on them, for example, is more often than not both scant and riddled with error. Not only were they likely, over time, to be provided with wrong birthplaces or wrong dates, but they were sometimes even placed within wrong dynasties.^[8]

The same holds true for the anthologies of tz'u that are known to have been compiled, even during the genre's period of greatest florescence. Although the count varies slightly from source to source, there appear to be only nine anthologies that have survived from the T'ang and Sung dynasties, with an additional thirteen whose existence has been recorded but that have long since disappeared.^[9] The losses are difficult to imagine, as is the treatment accorded to the survivors. What is even more remarkable is the fact that only two of these anthologies—the Hua-chien chi and the Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü —appear to have been widely known to readers of the Yüan and Ming dynasties. All of them were subjected to violations of their textual integrity, ranging from revisions, additions, and deletions of individual poems to division into varying numbers of fascicles, reorganization according to entirely different systems of categorization, and reappearance of identical titles for utterly different volumes. And in many cases, with a few notable exceptions, the very notion of textual integrity is arguable, given the lack of any dis-

[6] In his "Hsüan tz'u piao-chun lun," Tz'u-hsüeh chi-k'an 1, no. 2 (August 1933): 1.

[7] Exhaustive research documenting the traces of individual collections from the T'ang through the Chin dynasty has been conducted by Jao Tsung-i in his Tz'u-chi k'ao , vol. 1 (Hong Kong: Hsiang-kang ta-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1963).

[8] As noted by T'ang Kuei-chang and Chin Ch'i-hua in "Li-tai tz'u-hsüeh yen-chiu shu-lüeh," Tz'u-hsüeh 1 (1981): 8.

[9] This is the count given by She Chih in "Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi hsü-lu," pt. 2, Tz'u-hsüeh 2 (1982): 234. His list begins with the Yün-yao chi and goes on to include the following: Hua-chien chi, Tsun-ch'ien chi, Yüeh-fu ya-tz'u, Mei yüan, Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü, Hua-an tz'u-hsüan, Yang-ch'un pai-hsüeh chi , and Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u .

cernible order to or rationale for inclusion of the contents. Editorial claims regarding the desultory manner of compilation are familiar from the shih anthological tradition but more often than not belie a careful and systematic, if unarticulated, program; in the case of tz'u collections, however, there may be good reason to believe them.

Small wonder, then, that the now-familiar slogan (motivated by assumptions of the cyclicality of both dynasties and genres) juxtaposing T'ang shih and Sung tz'u requires some qualification. Already discredited as faulty periodization by those who have unearthed the roots of the song lyric in the T'ang and examined the richness of its reflorescence in the Ch'ing, it is equally susceptible to the critique that the nice balance of the juxtaposition belies a true incommensurability in status between the two elements. At the same time, however, the assumption regarding the evolution of genres underlying this mode of periodization resurfaces continually as one of the most persuasive arguments for validation of the tz'u . In what follows I will examine the discourse of legitimation as it takes shape in the prefaces to the major anthologies of T'ang and Sung song lyrics that have come down to us as well as in other textual material surrounding them. I should clarify from the outset that my discussion will focus more on the theoretical and rhetorical concerns of the various editors, articulated both explicitly and implicitly in their collections, than on the questions of what texts were available to them and how that affected the representation of works in their anthologies. Consideration of the relationship between the accessibility of sources and the actual practice of selection is clearly necessary but must await another study.

The Legitimizing Effort of the Hua-Chien Chi

Ou-yang Chiung (896–971) provides us with the first critical statement on the tz'u in his preface (dated 940) to the Hua-chien chi edited by Chao Ch'ung-tso. Although this volume was not the first collection of song lyrics to be compiled, it was long assumed to be,^[10] and as the first statement on tz'u by and for members of the literati class it was clearly instrumental in establishing precedents for subsequent discourse on the genre. In both language and allusions, the ornate parallel prose of the text evokes the preface to Hsü Ling's (507–83) Yü-t'ai hsin-yung by stressing the virtues of embellishment and craft in a milieu of languorous ex-

[10] The Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu tsung-mu t'i-y'ao , 5 vols. (rpt., Taipei: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan, 1976), for example, identifies it as the oldest anthology of tz'u (5:4457).

travagance. After opening, for example, with the declaration that "engraved jade and carved jasper mimic [nature's] transforming craft with a different art; cut flowers and scissored leaves steal spring's allure and vie in freshness,"^[11] it situates itself within a line of love poetry that extends from the legendary encounters between King Mu and the Queen Mother of the West, through the yüeh-fu tradition, to the song lyrics of Li Po and insists that the poets of the present day need not feel ashamed before these predecessors.

This link to yüeh-fu is stressed throughout the later literature on tz'u ; it is a logical one, given the shared connections of the two forms with musical performance. Moreover, just as yüeh-fu had been institutionalized in both governmental structures and literary practice (having become literati practice), so might the tz'u , too, hope for some similar sort of legitimation. Ou-yang Chiung does not allude to the putative origins among the people common to both forms; all of his forebears belong rather to elite circles, even though, ironically enough, the title of the song supposedly sung by the Queen Mother of the West to King Mu, "Pai-yün yao," was given to the collection of anonymous popular tz'u whose very style and sources Ou-yang Chiung wishes to distance himself from, the Yün-yao chi . Having sketched the opulent setting of the poetry of the Ch'i and Liang dynasties to which the tz'u in the Hua-chien chi bear such strong resemblances, he hastens to distinguish the latter from the eventual contamination from the pleasure quarters suffered by the former: "When the palace-style [poetry] of the southern states was riffled with the songs of the northern wards, not only was the language uncultured, but while elegant, it was without substance." To this phenomenon, recalled at the end of the preface as the "ditties of the lotus boat," he opposes the contents of the Hua-chien chi , explicitly labeled as the "song lyrics of poets" (shih-k'o ch'ü-tzu-tz'u ).

That these are song lyrics of "poets," rather than of "beauties from the southern states" (nan-kuo ch'an-chüan ), reveals Ou-yang Chiung's well-known desire to elevate the social status of the tz'u . One might also note that the poems themselves are organized by their authors, who are arranged—in good canonical fashion—in chronological order of birthdate, a principle that of course implicitly identifies a writer as belonging to a class for whom one would trouble to ascertain such dates. As if to

[11] From Hua Chung-yen, ed., Hua-chien chi chu (Honan: Chung-chou shu-hua-she, 1983), p. 1. Lois Fusek's translation of the preface is complete and annotated, if somewhat loose, in Among the Flowers: The Hua-chien chi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp. 33–36.

emphasize further the social distinction between these "poets" and other likely composers of tz'u (for example, women, monks, and similar social marginalia), they are referred to by official title or, in the absence of a respectable position, as "scholars in retirement" (ch'u-shih ).

Leading off the collection both in position and, with sixty-six lyrics, in number of poems (and literally referred to later as its "cap") is Wen T'ing-yün. As Wu Hsiung-ho points out, during the Five Dynasties the peripheral state of Shu appears to have offered writers of tz'u a relatively more peaceful setting for their pursuits than would have been possible in the capital on the war-ravaged central plain, a presumption suggested by the unearthing of a variety of musical instruments from the grave of Wang Chien, who established the Western Shu dynasty in Ch'eng-tu (907–25).^[12] It should come as no surprise, then, that almost all of the eighteen poets included were natives of or officials in Shu, the most notable exception being Wen T'ing-yün. Wen is also the only poet mentioned by name in the preface, and his anomalously prominent position suggests that Chao Ch'ung-tso was conducting an effort toward valorization on several fronts: valorization of his region's songs, which are being situated in a line going directly to the center of the empire and an era preceding the political disintegration of the T'ang; of the genre itself, being plied with evident accomplishment by a true shih-k'o , a member of the educated elite, no matter how unsuccessful and profligate he may have been; and of Wen's refined and pedigreed style, which, though by no means the only one included in the anthology, clearly dominates the collection.^[13] Thus, despite the lack of any articulated intent to promulgate a particular school, we can see here the desire to recuperate the tz'u as "literature"; even if situated at best on the fringes, it could certainly partake of the compromised respectability of the Yü-t'ai hsin-yung . At the same time, because of this emphasis on sanctioned authorship, its thematic scope was significantly circumscribed in comparison with the broad range of topics addressed in songs of more popular origin—for example, the texts discovered in the Tun-huang

[12] In T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun (Hangchow: Che-chiang ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1985), p. 175.

[13] Thus, for instance, although the tz'u by Huang-fu Sung (mid-9th cent.) selected by Chao Ch'ung-tso for the Hua-chien chi clearly echo Wen's style, Marsha Wagner provides examples of a quite different sort, also composed by Huang-fu, in The Lotus Boat: The Origins of Chinese Tz'u Poetry in T'ang Popular Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 146–47. Her book argues persuasively for the mutual infiltration of elite and popular influences in the development of tz'u , but I am focusing rather on the motivations behind the literati discourse on separation.

caves.^[14] The range of tunes employed is also different from that associated with entertainment originating from and intended for a broader social spectrum; the popular tunes whose titles are included in Ts'ui Ling-ch'in's mid-eighth-century Chiao-fang chi , for instance, generally correspond with the tunes to which lyrics are composed in the oldest known anthology, the Yun-yao^[*] chi , compiled before 922 and preserved at Tun-huang.^[15] It may well be that such sacrifices were deemed essential toward defining the new genre as an activity appropriate to members of the literati class.

Additional conclusions follow from considering the Hua-chien chi within the context of other collections. One is the evident murkiness of the line between shih and tz'u that is suggested by the fact that many of the lyrics included in the anthology also appear in T'ang collections of shih .^[16] Another is the curious system by which its contents are arranged; though ordered chronologically by author, the five hundred poems are simply divided into ten fascicles of fifty songs each, which in several instances necessitates breaking up the corpus of selections from an individual poet. Later commentators' displeasure with this system has been virtually unanimous, but the very fact that it appears to be so utterly mechanical suggests the lack of any further programmatic drive motivating the collection. Thus, although the anthology might have hoped to establish the writing of tz'u as an acceptable literati activity, it did not aspire to claim for it the canonical functions of shih . As Wu Hsiung-ho points out, what is therefore notable about the Hua-chien chi lies as much in what it does not say as in what it does. Accordingly, for example, although known for his views on the moral obligations of the shih poet, Ou-yang Chiung breathes no word of them in his preface here, and Niu Hsi-chi (fl. 930), who rails against "lascivious" writing (wen ) elsewhere, is nonetheless represented by eleven lascivious song lyrics in this collection.^[17]

Implicit in these two examples is perhaps one of the major obstacles that confronted any attempt to establish the tz'u within the canon: the fundamentally binary nature of Chinese discourse in general and of literary discourse in particular. It is well known that discussions of liter-

[14] This point is well made by Yang Hai-ming, who notes that the later distinction suggested by Li Ch'ing-chao (tz'u pieh shih i-chia , "tz'u constitutes its own household [distinct from shih ]") is in fact one that pertains specifically to the shih and tz'u of the literati alone. See his T'ang Sung tz'u lun-kao (Hangchow: Che-chiang ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1988), p. 52.

[15] Ch'i Huai-mei, "Hua-chien chi chih yen-chiu," p. 515.

[16] As noted in the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu tsung-mu t'i-yao , 5:4457.

[17] Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , p. 284.

ary function and style developed and explored the distinction between wen and pi , patterned and plain writing, respectively, during the Six Dynasties, to be replaced by a pairing of shih and wen , poetry and prose, in the T'ang. To shih , as the classics put it, was accorded the function of "expressing what was intently on one's mind" (yen chih ), the direct manifestation of genuine emotion that could provide access to the fundamental character and political disposition of the poet. And wen —as scholars from Han Yü to Niu Hsi-chi had already claimed, and Sung neo-Confusions would argue further—was to serve as an instrument of pedagogical transformation, a vehicle for the Tao. This schema, with its emphasis on personal expression and moral purpose, left little space for the song lyric, which, given its nature as something in the voice of, and often voiced by someone other than, the poet, was of necessity distanced from an original chih and might at best, as Wu Hsiung-ho points out,^[18] claim a share of what Lu Chi in his "Wen fu" had ascribed to the shih , the ability to "trace sentiments with exquisite ornateness" (yüan ch'ing erh ch'i-mi ). As has been the case with marginalized genres and figures elsewhere, a freedom is hereby made possible, but a vulnerability to frustration and attack as well.

This is nowhere so clear as in colophons to various editions of the Hua-chien chi . At the end of the Shao-hsing period edition of 1148, for example, Ch'ao Ch'ien-chih remarks that these are "all long-and-short verses of talented scholars from the end of the T'ang. The sentiments are sincere and the melodies transcendent, the thoughts profound and the language delicate. Although the writing is ornate and of no salutary [benefit] to the world, it can nonetheless be called skillful."^[19] What he grants with one hand he then just as quickly snatches away with the other. Less equivocal and more controversial are two colophons by Lu Yu (1125–1210) that appear in Mao Chin's (1599–1659) reprinting of his family's Sung dynasty edition of the text. The first observes that the collection "consists entirely of writings of people from the T'ang and Five Dynasties. During precisely this period, when the world was in great peril and the people were struggling ceaselessly to stay alive, scholar-officials degenerated to this point. This is worth sighing over!"^[20] The second offers a somewhat more extensive account of the decline of poetry over the course of the T'ang and likens the introduction of writing songs for the purpose of entertainment to the attitude of reckless

[18] Ibid.

[19] Included in Li I-mang, ed., Hua-chien chi chiao , 2d ed. (Hong Kong: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan, 1973), p. 221.

[20] Ibid., p. 232.

abandon characteristic of the Six Dynasties, an attitude that Lu Yu feels permeates the Hua-chien chi . Thus, song lyrics represent an inferior genre following only upon the degeneration of the shih , and he finds it difficult to understand how individuals can apply their talents to it: "Brush and ink flow with equal speed, so to be able [to write] one and not the other can never be fathomed by reason."^[21]

Lu Yu's incredulity notwithstanding, poets did write song lyrics, himself included. What his comments share with the praises of Ou-yang Chiung is a tension generated by an impulse toward what Michel Foucault terms a "total history," described as follows:

The project of a total history is one that seeks to reconstitute the overall form of a civilization, the principle—material or spiritual—of a society, the significance common to all the phenomena of a period, the law that accounts for their cohesion—what is called metaphorically the "face" of a period. Such a project is linked to two or three hypotheses; it is supposed that between all the events of a well-defined spatio-temporal area, between all the phenomena of which traces have been found, it must be possible to establish a system of homogeneous relations: a network of causality that makes it possible to derive each of them, relations of analogy that show how they symbolize one another, or how they all express one and the same central core; it is also supposed that one and the same form of historicity operates upon economic structures, social institutions and customs, the inertia of mental attitudes, technological practice, political behaviour, and subjects them all to the same type of transformation; lastly, it is supposed that history itself may be articulated into great units—stages or phases—which contain within themselves their own principle of cohesion.

To this Foucault opposes the notion of a "general history" that allows one to conceive of discontinuity and rupture, that "speaks of series, divi-

[21] Ibid., p. 233. Interestingly enough, the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu tsung-mu t'i-yao takes issue with both of these statements. To the first it counters that Lu Yu "has not yet reflected upon the basic reasons behind the imperiled state of the world." And in reference to the second it observes that Lu Yu "does not know that literary genres and styles may be high or low and human learning and vigor may be strong or weak. When one's learning and vigor are incommensurate with genre and style, then there won't be enough to carry it off. If learning and vigor are commensurate with genre and style, then there will be more than enough to carry it off. Regulated verse descended from ancient verse; thus, during the middle and late T'ang much ancient verse was not skillful, and of regulated verse there were at times some fine compositions. Song lyrics in turn descended from regulated verse; thus, during the Five Dynasties poets' shih did not match those of the T'ang, and tz'u alone flourished. This is like being able to lift seventy catties: lift a hundred catties and you'll fall down; lift fifty catties and you can move around as you please. Why is it that this cannot be fathomed by reason?" (5:4457–58).

sions, limits, differences of level, shifts, chronological specificities, particular forms of rehandling, possible types of relations."^[22] Foucault's version of a "total history" aptly characterizes the typically historicist assumptions of Chinese literary history (and hermeneutical practice as well) that motivate the tracing of generic development. In this view change comes not as discontinuity or rupture but as mutation or transformation (pien ) from within, with value connotations—if articulated at all—of decline rather than progress. Thus, a new form like the song lyric possesses an immediate genealogy that is also immediately problematic: on the one hand, the identifiable lineage can ratify the genre by situating it within a network of relations and evolutionary forebears and yet, on the other, it can undermine it as a sheer symptom of decay. Typically, therefore, the introduction to the section on tz'u in the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu tsung-mu t'i-yao begins by discussing the unsavory origins and ignoble backgrounds of the first practitioners of the genre but then, because it does not question the notion of the evolution of genres through a succession of transformations (pien ), it cannot deny that the heritage of the song lyric goes back to the Shih-ching . It is, however, but the "aftertone of the yüeh-fu and the last outflow of the poets of the 'Airs.'"^[23] Moreover, as we have already seen, any attempt to valorize the form must be conducted on preexisting terms, those of the canon. In the case of the tz'u , of course, those terms are set by the discourse on shih , and one of the major issues with which critics and anthologists therefore grapple is how—or indeed whether—to work within them.

Southern Sung Revaluations and a New Orthodoxy Defined

Whether one traces any surviving anthologies to the Northern Sung depends on how one dates the Tsun-ch'ien chi ; it is an argument that has been waged for centuries and about which I offer no new information. This collection of 260 lyrics by thirty-six poets is referred to as a collection from the T'ang in the same breath as is the Hua-chien chi by Chang Yen (1248–1320?) in his Tz'u-yüan .^[24] The authors included date from the T'ang and Five Dynasties period and include emperors and high ministers from T'ang Ming-huang onward, arranged, appropriately,

[22] From The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language , trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972), pp. 9–10.

[23] 5:4418.

[24] In the opening of the second fascicle of the work, included in Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien 2.1a.

largely in descending order of status. Its compiler had clearly seen the Hua-chien chi and essentially followed the earlier collection's sequence of poets; duplications, supplementations, and revisions (often erroneous) are all clearly evident, accumulated through at least three layers of editorial accretion. Some Sung dynasty sources assumed it was a T'ang collection; Ku Wu-fang's preface to the edition he printed in 1582, on the other hand, suggests that he was responsible for its compilation, and Mao Chin believed that Ku had indeed selected the poems.^[25] Internal evidence, however, seems to indicate that it was compiled during the first half of the eleventh century.^[26] In any event, the Tsun-ch'ien chi —like other collections (no longer extant) that were compiled in the wake of the Hua-chien chi and given similar titles referring to banquet contexts—does not appear to have aspired to do more than serve as a convenient songbook. Moreover, its hitherto disputed textual history renders it of little value for the purposes of this discussion.

Whatever the Hua-chien chi 's success in establishing the writing of tz'u as an acceptable literati activity, Northern Sung poets regarded it essentially as a pastime for or about entertainment, and not as a serious form comparable to shih or wen .^[27] This is true despite the fact that the history of literary criticism tells us that many Sung dynasty shih-hua have tz'u-hua embedded within them, and that what could be regarded as the first critical work on tz'u , the Pen-shih ch'ü of Yang Hui (1017–88), dated to 1071, was written close in time to Ou-yang Hsiu's (1007–72) Liu-i shih-hua , one of the first examples of its genre.^[28] Certainly the dearth of

[25] She Chih, "Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi hsü-lu," pt. 1, Tz'u-hsüeh 1 (1981): 282–83, and the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu tsung-mu t'i-yao , 5:4458. See Daniel Bryant's essay in this volume for an extensive discussion of the anthology's authenticity.

[26] The Tsun-ch'ien chi includes a poem attributed to Li Yü to the tune of "Tieh lien hua" that three Sung sources identify rather as having been composed by Li Kuan, who lived during Jen-tsung's reign (1023–64). At the other end, there is a colophon to the Yang-ch'un chi by Ts'ui Kung-tu that can be dated to the Yüan-feng period of Shentsung's reign (1068–78). I am relying on Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao's argument that the collection was compiled in the T'ang (based on Sung statements to this effect in the Li-tai shih-yü tz'u-hua , the Hua-an tz'u-hsüan , and Chang Yen's Tz'u-yüan ), his consequent chiding of the Ssu-k'u editors' unwillingness to trust the sources enough to date it definitively, and his subsequent recanting of his position after having been persuaded by Wang Chung-wen that it should indeed be dated to the Northern Sung. See his "Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu tz'u-chi t'i-yao chiao-i," in idem, T'ang Sung tz'u lun-ts'ung (Hong Kong: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1973), pp. 263–65.

[27] Yang Hai-ming cites examples of this attitude in his T'ang Sung tz'u lun-kao , p. 58.

[28] As noted by Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , pp. 285–86. Only fragments of the Pen-shih ch'ü , which is mentioned in Hu Tzu's (fl. 1147–67) T'iao-hsi yü-yin ts'ung-hua , have survived, having been pieced together by Chao Wan-li; She Chih speculatesthat it had probably disappeared by the end of the Yüan dynasty ("Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi," pt. 2, p. 235).

anthologies from the Northern Sung should not be blamed solely on the ravages of time; it attests as well to a persistent ambivalence, one that is examined by Ronald Egan elsewhere in this volume. It remained for poets in the Southern Sung to make the case for a different attitude to the genre.

These strategies can be seen in the surviving anthologies from that period and take different but related forms. One involves the concerted effort to situate the song lyric within a tradition that could be called ya ("elegant" or "refined," but with distinct classical and canonical overtones as well) and subsequently to identify this quality as in fact the "orthodoxy" (cheng ) of tz'u . This strategy not only aims to valorize the song lyric vis-à-vis the dominant shih form, but, even more important, to establish a distinctive and central tradition within the genre of tz'u itself. Another focuses on the individual authorship of tz'u , to shift attention from the conventional and socially conditioned circumstances of its composition and function to its potential as a vehicle for personal expression. These efforts coalesce—during the Southern Sung itself but even more so during the Ch'ing—in the drive to establish schools (p'ai ) with a model master at the head of each (much as Wen T'ing-yün could be identified as the head of the Hua-chien chi tradition). And what they share is the fact that whether the terms with which they are working are borrowed from prior discourse on shih or represent new coinage of the realm of tz'u , they are removed, significantly, from the former's grounding in history and moral intent, facilitating a consequent obsession with questions of language, form, and style.^[29] To what extent these concerns may have undermined the effort toward legitimation that was, in any event, being conducted on alien turf remains to be seen.

Early efforts in this direction are transparent from the record, for among the handful of Southern Sung anthologies whose existence has been noted, two contain the word ya in their titles. Both were evidently compiled shortly after the move south, a transition that no doubt further stimulated the search for legitimacy. One, entitled the Fu-ya ko-tz'u , was edited by someone who refers to himself simply as the "Retired Scholar of T'ung-yang" (T'ung-yang chü-shih) and has not yet been

[29] These strategies can be seen as ways of formulating three of the four aims Lung Mu-hsün isolates as characteristic of anthologies: to be used for singing (pien-ko ), to transmit the person (ch'uan-jen ), to establish a tradition (k'ai-tsung ), and to dignify a form (tsun-t'i ); "Hsüan-tz'u piao-chun lun," p. 27. These three aims represent, of course, strictly literary—and literati—concerns.

identified. The preface is dated 1142 and has been preserved, but the collection itself, which included over 4,300 song lyrics in fifty fascicles from the T'ang through the Northern Sung, has been lost. Its size would seem to have precluded any really rigorous selectivity, but the preface indicates that its primary concern was rather with establishing a creditable genealogy for the genre.^[30] And, indeed, the "return to elegance" announced by the title attests to an awareness that some canonical center to the culture had been lost but, more important, proclaims that it has successfully been recuperated. Another collection, the Yüeh-fu ya-tz'u compiled by Tseng Tsao (preface dated 1146), is clearly attempting to link the song lyric with a genre that had already acquired the mantle of respectability. It singles out ya-cheng as its standard for selection and voices its determination to exclude works that are erotic or jocular and thus leaves out, for example, song lyrics by Liu Yung. Notable, however, is the distinct lack of any discernible "elegance" or "correctness" to its haphazard method of arranging its contents, which consist of song lyrics by thirty-four identified poets of the Sung and over one hundred anonymous pieces. It is not mentioned in any texts from the Yüan or Ming.^[31]

Yet a third and slightly earlier collection employs a somewhat different strategy toward similar ends. Titled Plum Garden (Mei yüan ), it was compiled, according to its preface, by Huang Ta-yü (cognomen Tsaiwan) in 1128, although the edition now extant includes lyrics of later date as well. Like the Hua-chien chi , it contains five hundred works (of poets from the T'ang through Sung dynasties) arranged in ten fascicles, all of which treat the same subject: the compilation of the collection, Huang tells us, had been inspired by a plum tree planted outside his study. Although this topical focus might suggest simply an interest on his part in producing a volume appropriate to a specific social context, it is important to note as well the particular quality of elegance that the plum blossom represents. As the Ssu-k'u editors observe, the collection contributes to the burgeoning effort during the Sung to single this flower out,^[32] and in such a way, we might add, that allowed it to become an emblem for the virtues of the scholar. The Mei yüan thus simultaneously emphasizes an elegance of style and suggests an interest in attesting to an elegance of the song lyricist's character as well.^[33]

[30] See Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , pp. 303–5.

[31] She Chih, "Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi," pt. 1, p. 283.

[32] 5:4458–59. See also Maggie Bickford's study, Bones of Jade , Soul of Ice: The Flowering Plum in Chinese Art (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1985).

[33] For further information on this volume, see She Chih, "Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi," pt.1, p. 285, who notes that despite the unremarkable and—not surprisingly—repetitive quality of many of the lyrics in the collection, it is extremely useful as a source for works, or versions of them, that do not appear in any other anthology of song lyrics. I should like to thank Professor Yang Hai-ming for stressing the importance of the Mei yüan in his comments during the discussion of my conference paper.

A century later, we find renewed interest in placing the song lyric within the shih tradition of individual expression, an interest opposed to the anonymity of the lyrics in the Yün-yao chi and already evident in the arrangement of the Hua-chien chi —and the Tsun-ch'ien chi as well—by author. Essential to the effort to legitimize the genre, however, was the status of its representatives. As mentioned earlier, the strict chronology of the Hua-chien chi marks it as a collection that includes only the members of society for whom dates—and thus social position—could be ascertained. One Southern Sung anthology that shares this concern is Huang Sheng's Hua-an tz'u-hsüan , which combines two separate collections of ten fascicles each, the T'ang Sung chu-hsien chüeh-miao tz'u-hsüan and the Chung-hsing i-lai chüeh-miao tz'u-hsüan . There are two short prefaces dated 1249, one by Huang Sheng and the other by Hu Te-fang, and the statements by both of them are highly reminiscent of those made in prefaces to T'ang anthologies of shih . Hu's opens by emphasizing the rigorousness with which the editor selected the tz'u in the collection from a pool of extremely high quality:

Ancient yüeh-fu are no longer composed, and long-and-short verses [tz'u ] have emerged in their wake. The venerable officials and superior scholars of our dynasty take pleasure in letters, and many have also turned to these [tz'u ]. They are scattered among various collections, however, and are not easy to examine as a whole. In this anthology Yü-lin [Huang Sheng] has been generous in scope and frugal in selection, sending out marvelous tones from a multitude of musical harmonies and bringing forth perfect gems from the midst of a myriad of treasures all on display. Thus, whoever obtains this volume will be able to see in their entirety the wonders of tz'u poets. His [Huang Sheng's] accomplishments are prodigious indeed!^[34]

Huang Sheng's own preface self-consciously situates what he is doing within the brief history of the genre:

Long-and-short verses began in the T'ang and flourished in the Sung. T'ang tz'u are all included in the Hua-chien chi , and Sung tz'u for the most part can be seen in what Tseng Tuan-po [Tseng Tsao] edited. And the Fu-ya collection selects from both T'ang and Sung; it goes up to the end of

[34] Huang Sheng, Hua-an tz'u-hsüan (rpt., Hong Kong: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1973), p. 4.

Hsüan-ho [1126], with more than 4,300 poems in all. Ah, how complete it is! Now, in addition, since the revival of the dynasty writers have emerged one after the other all the way up to the present day. Every individual has tz'u , and each tz'u has different forms. Those who know this but haven't yet seen them, or who have seen some but not all, are countless. In my leisure time I have collected from among several hundred poets and am calling this Selections of Surpassingly Fine Song Lyrics .^[35]

And he goes on to catalog the variety of styles that he is seeking to represent.

Critics generally agree on the judgment Huang Sheng's title passes on his own powers of discernment (although what might strike the contemporary reader as a balance of representation has also been criticized by some as a lack of discrimination). Notable as well is the attention he devotes to establishing proper social and literary-historical credentials for his poets (and his volumes) by arranging them in chronological order; supplying information as to cognomens, sobriquets, and offices held, titles of individual collections, and relevant background details to the poems; and offering his own critical evaluations as well as those of contemporary readers. Such meticulous editorial concern is particularly noteworthy in view of the fact that no contemporary anthologies of shih provide such an impressive critical apparatus (although collections of individual poets certainly do). It is more extensive for the Southern Sung anthology than for the earlier one, and his standards for inclusion have become more socially stringent as well, for, unlike the earlier volume, it contains no song lyrics by monks or women.

Lung Mu-hsün observes that the Hua-an tz'u-hsüan is clearly directed toward "transmitting the author," as indeed this careful attention to biography would suggest. He notes further that this concern leads Huang at times to make questionable judgments about the authenticity of individual lyrics, guided as he was by his own notions of an author's personal style.^[36] Given this penchant for a directly personal mode of expression, as opposed to one focused on the skillful performance of a role, it should come as no surprise that the poets who are best represented in the anthology as a whole are Su Shih and Hsin Ch'i-chi, with thirty-one and forty-two lyrics, respectively. Yang Hai-ming also notes that fondness for Hsin Ch'i-chi's patriotic tz'u in particular is reflected in the selection of lyrics on similar topics by other authors as well.^[37] This interest in the potential for the song lyric to serve as a means of personal

[35] Ibid., p. 158.

[36] Lung Mu-hsün, "Hsüan-tz'u piao-chun lun," p. 13.

[37] Yang Hai-ming, T'ang Sung tz'u lun-kao , p. 291.

and specifically political expression suggests the powerful temptation to appropriate for the tz'u elements of the critical tradition that had grown up around the shih . Huang Sheng's exploration of these possibilities still takes place, however, within the context of an interest in style more elusively and aesthetically conceived. And it was, in any event, not a particularly influential nor widely appreciated direction; if Huang wished seriously to promulgate a particular mode of composition, he was neither polemical enough in his comments nor one-sided enough in his selection to succeed. Despite the recognized quality of the selection, no Sung edition of the Hua-an tz'u-hsüan survives, the earliest extant version dating from 1574.^[38]

Chou Mi's (1232–98) Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u shares with Huang Sheng's collection(s) a disappearance from the literary record that is even more curious and, most obviously, a remarkably similar title. Indeed, one of the main reasons for putting Huang's collections of Surpassingly Fine Song Lyrics from two dynastic periods together and renaming the volume was to distinguish it from Chou's Surpassingly Fine Excellent Song Lyrics (among whose nearly four hundred tz'u by 132 poets he includes his own, perhaps a bit immodestly, in greatest number; most poets are represented by only a handful of works apiece). From the very beginning, critical esteem for this anthology has been as impressive as the precariousness of its transmission. Chang Yen in his Tz'u-yüan , for example, writes that

In recent times the achievements of tz'u poets have been numerous. For example, the Yang-ch'un pai-hsüeh chi^[39] and the Chüeh-miao tz'u-hsüan [by Huang Sheng] can indeed be looked at, but what [their editors] have selected is neither quintessential nor unified. How can they compare with the quintessential purity of what Chou Ts'ao-ch'uang has selected in the Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u ? It is regrettable that its printing blocks have not been preserved; I'm afraid some meddler has also hidden away the printed editions.^[40]

[38] This edition is rarely seen. See She Chih, "Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi," pt. 2, p. 229.

[39] An anthology in eight fascicles edited by Chao Wen-li that includes song lyrics in what would later be characterized as the wan-yüeh style, arranged not by author but apparently by tune (but unsystematically at that). Its title alludes to the two songs mentioned by Sung Yü in "Tui Ch'u-wang wen" whose difficulties elude the talents of most musicians (Wen-hsüan , ch. 45; noted by Lois Fusek, Among the Flowers , p. 33 n. 5). Chao places his volume explicitly in the tradition of the Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü , claiming to be including the song lyrics omitted by the earlier collection; the two anthologies were aiming primarily to serve as songbooks, and they share a reputation for a certain editorial laxity. For a brief discussion, see She Chih, "Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi," pt. 2, pp. 230–31.

[40] Ch. 2; in T'ang Kuei-chang, Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , 2:9a.

And this was written at most only two decades after the compilation of the anthology.^[41] Rediscovered during the Ch'ing, the Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u then acquired a useful set of annotations with literary, biographical, and historical information—some of it, typically, arrived at inductively from reading the lyrics themselves—from the hands of Cha Wei-jen and Li O (1692–1752) in 1749. In his colophon to the text Li O makes comments similar to those of Chang Yen: "Sung anthologies of Sung tz'u , like Tseng Tuan-po's Yüeh-fu ya-tz'u and Huang Shu-yang's [Huang Sheng's] Hua-an tz'u-hsüan , yield [to the Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u ] in terms of quintessential purity. It sets the standards for tz'u poets."^[42] This opinion is echoed by the Ssu-k'u editors, who add: "Collections of song lyrics by Sung poets have also for the most part not been passed down to the present day. And even the names and surnames of the writers were not known to the world in their entirety. These scattered pearls and chips of jade have all been preserved thanks to this [the Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u ]. Among anthologies of song lyrics, it is by far the best edition."^[43]

Although the Ch'ing edition of the Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u we have today treats the song lyrics included with a literary-historical eye trained on the reading of shih , these critics also recognize that Chou Mi's primary concern lay rather with defining and promoting a distinctive style of tz'u that could, in effect, be considered canonical. Although no preface by him has come down with the collection, this program was evident to later readers in the poets and song lyrics represented in the volume. Cen-

[41] There is a preface to the Tz'u-yüan by Ch'ien Liang-yu that is dated 1317, and some scholars have therefore assumed that the work was completed within two or three years of that date. Wu Hsiung-ho, however, has argued on the basis of both internal and external references that it was written between 1297 and 1307. He also notes that the latest poem in the Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u can be dated to 1295 and that the collection itself was thus probably compiled shortly thereafter, since Chou Mi died in 1298. See his T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , pp. 315–16, 344–45.

[42] Included, with other prefatory material, in Chou Mi, Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u chien (Shanghai: Shang-hai ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1983), p. [xvix].

[43] Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu tsung-mu t'i-yao , 5:4460. Anthologies like the Yang-ch'un pai-hsüeh chi mentioned above were notorious for the inconsistency and carelessness with which they treated names of tz'u poets included, thus providing small confirmation for Kao Shih-ch'i's opinion, evidently based on Chou Mi's accomplishments, regarding the relative ease of collecting poets of one's own time: "I have discussed how when anthologies examine the past from the present they suffer from being too far away. This is what the Ku-liang [chuan ] calls listening to a distant tone and hearing what is fast and not hearing what is slow. When compared with how contemporaries can research and learn extensively, consider and examine carefully, eliminating infelicities and correcting what is farfetched, later generations have it ten times more difficult." From his preface to the Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u , included in Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u chien , p. [xvi].

tral to it were the terms being explored by many Southern Sung writers, as noted above, of ya and cheng , with their associations with notions of elegance, classicism, correctness, and orthodoxy.^[44] Chang Yen, for example, opens the second section of his Tz'u-yüan with the statement that ancient forms of music all "come from ya-cheng ," and states somewhat later that "in song lyrics one desires elegance and correctness."^[45] In marked contrast to Huang Sheng, who had considered lyrics of what were later to be characterized as the hao-fang and wan-yüeh styles to be "surpassingly fine" in equal measure, for Chang Yen and Chou Mi only the latter meet the criteria of classical elegance and orthodox correctness. Thus, Chang writes that "among the writings of Hsin Chia-hsüan [Hsin Ch'i-chi] and Liu Kai-chih [Liu Kuo, 1154–1206], the song lyrics with heroic [hao ] spirit are not elegant song lyrics."^[46] And as if in agreement with this opinion, Chou Mi includes only three of Hsin's lyrics in his anthology, none of which is written in the patriotic, "heroic" mode with which the latter is associated, but rather in the wan-yüeh style that was becoming marked as the essence of the genre.^[47]

Conflicting Positions

It would be convenient to be able to say that the effort to gain acceptance for the song lyric into the Chinese literary canon was immediately successful and confirmed by the textual record. Unfortunately, however, the evidence indicates that although it was clearly common practice by the end of the Sung for literati to compose song lyrics, the collections that proved most popular in succeeding dynasties were not those that

[44] For a succinct account of the differing but related poetics within which this concept developed, see Grace Fong, Wu Wenying and the Art of Southern Song Ci Poetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), esp. pp. 44–56.

Since the notion of cheng was traditionally paired with that of pien in critical discourse going back to the "Great Preface," it should come as no surprise that one persistent tangent pursued by tz'u critics was the determination of the moments in which the history of poetry, or that of the song lyric, witnessed transformations as well. They commonly defined the tz'u itself as a transformation of the regulated verse or of the chüeh-chü and also located various subsequent "mutations" within the genre itself. These included, for example, those identified as having occurred after Wen T'ing-yün, after Su Shih, after the Northern Sung, and after the Southern Sung.

[45] Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , 2:1a and 9b.

[46] Ibid., 2:10a. Emphasis mine. The distinction between the hao-fang and wan-yüeh styles was made by the Ming dynasty Chang Yen in his Shih-yü t'u-p'u of 1594–95, in which he states in the introduction that in general the latter is the orthodox style for tz'u . As noted by Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , pp. 157–58.

[47] As noted by Yang Hai-ming, T'ang Sung tz'u lun-kao , p. 291.

promulgated the most literary, elegant, or classical vision of tz'u . As mentioned above, the only two anthologies that seem to have circulated at all during the Yüan and Ming dynasties, each in multiple editions, were the Hua-chien chi and the Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü ,^[48] with the others literally disappearing from sight. Nor does the handful of collections produced during this period deviate noticeably from the model set by the latter. The principles of selection are similarly unclear,^[49] and so are the methods of organizing the lyrics, although they tend to be arranged either by topic or by tune length. In the case of the Tz'u-lin wan-hsüan of Yang Shen (1488–1559), for example, the tz'u selected vary widely in quality and appear in no discernible order, with songs by the same author scattered widely throughout the volume. There is no system to the nomenclature, with individuals referred to variously by given name, cognomen, or sobriquet, and there are frequent errors in attribution of authorship.^[50]

[48] The full title of this volume as it appears on the earliest extant edition, dating from 1392, is Tseng-hsiu chien-chu miao-hsüan ch'ün-ying ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü . Broad in coverage and of unknown editorial hand, this Sung collection has been criticized roundly for the lack of rigor in its selection. It is notable both for its arrangement by topic, which suggests close ties to an entertainment context and function as a source for songs appropriate to a particular situation, and for the remarkable disregard for this aspect of textual integrity over time. On the first point, Yang Hai-ming cites the Ch'ing scholar Sung Hsiang-feng's (1776–1860) observation that the versions of many lyrics as they appear in the anthology often differ from those in the poets' individual collections, disclosing revisions that were evidently made to render them more suitable for singing (T'ang Sung tz'u lun-kao , pp. 289–90). And as for the second, one Ming edition of 1538 tinkered with the text by reducing the number of topics, placing the songs in a different order, and revising many of the annotations. Another volume, edited in 1550 by Ku Ts'ung-ching and titled Lei-pien ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü (which enjoyed the widest circulation but was itself subject to further emendations), completely rearranged the songs from categorization by topic into categorization by tune pattern and length, reflecting, among other things, a loss of almost all of the actual music by the Ming and the consequent need to have the songs' prosodic forms presented in a more marked fashion. As the Ssu-k'u editors point out, the versions of the songs in this edition were used as bases for character counts of tunes in later prosodic registers of tz'u (Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu tsung-mu t'i-yao , 5:4459). For further information on the Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü , see She Chih, "Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi," pt. 2, pp. 226–27.

[49] One notable exception, however, is the Ming-hung yü-yin compiled during the Yüan by P'eng Chih-chung (Hsien-yu-shan tao-shih), an anthology of "Taoist" tz'u written by thirty-six poets from the T'ang dynasty on. Many of the song lyrics included have to do with meditation, fasting, and alchemy, and a fair number of the tunes employed appear to be sui generis, having been devised for a particular occasion or topic. See Chao Tsun-yüeh, "Tz'u-chi t'i-yao," pt. 4, in Tz'u-hsüeh chi-k'an 3, no. 1 (March 1936): 41–44.

[50] She Chih, "Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi hsü-lu," pt. 3, Tz'u-hsüeh 3 (1985): 276. The Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu tsung-mu t'i-yao (5:4480) also takes issue with both the claims and the qualityof Yang Shen's collection, criticizing the credibility of his assertion in the preface that he had gone through the collections of five hundred T'ang and Sung tz'u poets; the fact that the anthology turns out to include poets from the Chin, Yüan, and Ming dynasties as well resolves this problem of numbers but then opens the way for another critique regarding the lack of correlation between the preface and the contents of the volume. The editors also object to what they consider to be the crudeness of Yang's comments on the lyrics themselves.

Yang Hai-ming observes that this phenomenon reveals what kind of tz'u —those with no loftier aspirations than to suit an entertainment context—were valued throughout this period.^[51] There seems obviously, at the same time, to have been a remarkable fall-off in the composition and preservation of all types of tz'u in general; the introduction to a seventeenth-century collection of tz'u by women, for example, laments the loss of what it estimates to have been half of all song lyrics ever written and bewails the difficulty ("ten times greater") of collecting tz'u when compared to shih , for which individual collections are both of higher quality and more accessible.^[52] The familiar theory of the evolution of genres would account for the virtual disappearance of the song lyric by pointing to the supersession of ch'ü , but that, of course, tells us very little.

What does seem clear, first, is that the movement whose development we have been tracing is one whose outlines are visible probably only in hindsight. We have in truth but scattered bits of evidence: two anthologies with the word ya in their titles; later critics' approbation and discussion of a collection about whose aims its own editor, Chou Mi, was silent; and a few isolated critical statements, however articulate. Second, the discourse on tz'u seems as yet unable to resolve its potentially contradictory aims, either of accommodating itself to the legitimating terms established by the shih tradition or of insisting on its own distinctiveness as a genre, heralded by Li Ch'ing-chao's oft-cited statement in her "Tz'u-lun" that the song lyric was of a different species altogether—an attitude evident in Chang Yen's Tz'u-yüan as well. The accommodation was as yet halfhearted, for the attractions of a space and mode within which to speak those things that could not be spoken in shih were powerful ones, yet the insistence on absolute differentiation ran the risk of utterly marginalizing that mode. Third, the lack of a systematic attempt at this point to canonize either the genre itself or its

[51] Yang Hai-ming, T'ang Sung tz'u lun-kao , p. 289.

[52] As cited by She Chih, "Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi hsü-lu," pt. 4, Tz'u-hsüeh 4 (1986): 246–47. The volume is the Lin-hsia tz'u-hsüan , edited by Chou Ming; three prefaces to the collection are dated 1671.

specific practitioners should hardly surprise us, given the fact that that process was just seriously getting under way for shih . Yen Yü's Ts'ang-lang shih-hua , which ground the historical, theoretical, and critical lenses within which T'ang poetry was to be examined, was itself but a product of the Southern Sung, and Kao Ping's T'ang shih p'in-hui , the first anthology to develop Yen Yü's model at length, did not appear until the beginning of the fifteenth century. Indeed, one might partially attribute the lack of attention paid to tz'u during the Yüan and Ming dynasties to the obsession with both defining the canon of shih and, implicitly, defending the latter's traditionally venerated position against the increasingly powerful encroachments of the claims of wen , or prose, as the truly serious vehicle of expression (demonstrated quite graphically, for example, in the elimination of a test of shih composition from the civil service examination until the middle of the eighteenth century). As suggested earlier, the tendency for discussions to set their terms in binary relationships—in this case, shih and wen —left little space for tz'u , the tertiary other. Thus, even in the Ch'ing dynasty we find an anthologist resorting to an involved argument that first creates a legitimate space for tz'u but then consigns it to the margins of respectability.

This text, Fu Hsieh-t'ung's Tz'u-kou ch'u-p'ien , which exists only in manuscript, displays the potentially contradictory attitudes just outlined. In the middle of his preface, for example, Fu presents a history of the song lyric from the Hua-chien chi that catalogs the variety of styles developing throughout the Sung and asserts, in a gesture designed to accommodate difference, that "[Huang] Hua-an's Chüeh-miao tz'u-hsüan both continues the Hua-chien chi and also paves the way for the Ts'ao-t'ang . Now alluring thoughts and intricately beautiful language are stimulated and proceed in many ways," and just as the ancients regaled themselves on delicacies of many different sorts—leeks, mullet, broth, and wine, all served at the same meal—so can tz'u "be joined together with shih and wen to please all tastes." He then reviews poetic forms of the past, from the Shih-ching through the yüeh-fu of the Han and up to the T'ang chüeh-chü , defining each as the song lyric of its respective era. In doing so, he provides the tz'u with nearly hegemonic validity.

Fu makes clear that his primary interest is in the music of tz'u , whose vanishing he can only lament. "Therefore," he continues, "since what is included in this cannot seek to accord with the ancients by means of their music, it must use the syntax and diction of contemporary tz'u to accord with the syntax and diction of ancient tz'u . As for the melodies and pitches, they will await someone who knows the tones." In his "General Principles" for the anthology, however, Fu invokes this con-

cern with rhyme and pronunciation to downplay what might have been the literary aspirations of the collection. He offers it as the reason behind his relatively casual manner of compilation, which, he claims, simply sets the song lyrics down as he read them, in no particular order and without regard for, or indication of, an author's official status or biography. And he concludes with a remarkably straightforward assessment of the prevailing disesteem for the genre—"tz'u is certainly the Lesser Path [hsiao tao ]"—and explains: "Writers of shih and wen for the most part regard filling in song lyrics as an inferior form, and students of the classics also see it as an activity that is not pressing. Therefore, while those who have found it interesting to dip their writing brushes in it are numerous, specialists in this path are few."^[53]

Canons and Canonicity in the Ch'ing

Given the lack of a canonical definition of the origin and function of tz'u analogous to that possessed by shih (however restrictive the latter may have proved for both practice and interpretation), it is small wonder that so much critical energy came to be expended on providing some self-definition for the song lyric. Nor, furthermore, that the urgency—if not insecurity—endemic to its situation ran the risk of ossifying those definitions into rigid, exclusionary "schools" for whom only certain individuals could serve as exemplary models or "patriarchs." Nor, finally, that this discussion developed into a preoccupation with aspects of prosody, language, and style that marked a domain to which the other genres did not care to lay first claim.^[54]

[53] Included in Chao Tsun-yüeh, "Tz'u-chi t'i-yao," pt. 3, Tz'u-hsüeh chi-k'an 2, no. 3 (April 1935): 83, 88–90. Li O, who together with Cha Wei-jen had provided annotations to Chou Mi's Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u , comes to a similar conclusion in his preface to the Ch'ün-ya tz'u-chi . He argues there that because the song lyric is intrinsically a low form, if it does not possess elegance as its woof (wei ), it will lose its correctness (cheng ). As cited by Lung Mu-hsün, "Hsüan-tz'u piao-chun lun," p. 20.

[54] It should go without saying that this emphasis on the stylistic distinctiveness of tz'u was shared by all critics, whatever their aspirations for the position of the genre. One Ch'ing anthology, for example, that explicitly places itself in the tradition of the Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü —against which scholars promoting a more elegant notion of the form railed bitterly—provides one of the most succinct statements to this effect. This is the Ts'ao-t'ang ssu-hsiang in four fascicles, edited during the K'ang-hsi period by Ku Ts'ai. The title of the volume, of course, acknowledges its model, as does its specification of a certain number of topics and organization into chüan by length of tune (with hsiao-ling defined as consisting of any lyric up to 59 words, chung-tiao as 60 to 92 words, and ch'ang-tiao as anything longer; Ku observes that Chu I-tsun criticized these limits, but Ku defends himself by saying that "since these names exist, it can be done"). At the same time, however, theintroductory principles to the collection offer interesting refinements on some of the standard war-horses of the critical tradition. On the theory of the evolution of genres, for example, Ku writes that "when shih died out and then tz'u were composed, it was not that shih died out, but that the means of singing shih died out. And when tz'u died out and Northern and Southern ch'ü were composed, it was not that tz'u died out, but that the means of singing tz'u died out." He also presents a rhetorically effective argument for the specificity of the song lyric as a genre:

If one can use T'ang shih to write tz'u , then one's tz'u will be excellent; however, tz'u are definitely not shih . If one can use Sung tz'u to write ch'ü , then one's ch'ü will be excellent; however, tz'u are definitely not ch'ü . For tz'u has a form and structure peculiar to tz'u , and a music and sentiment peculiar to tz'u . If it resembles shih then it will be too literary, and if it resembles ch'ü then it will be too unpolished, and both of these are defects. As a comparison, if one uses the Shih [-chi ], the Han [shu ], and the Eight Great Masters to write pa-ku-wen , it will certainly be excellent, but will pa-ku-wen thereupon become ku-wen ?

Included in Chao Tsun-yüeh, "Tz'u-chi t'i-yao," pt. 1, Tz'u-hsüeh chi-k'an 1, no. 1 (April 1933): 96, 95.

Wu Hsiung-ho, in discussing the aftermath of the Ming dynasty Chang Yen's distinction between wan-yüeh and hao-fang , argues that it was made both with a very personal sense of style in mind—as opposed to a more generalizable doctrine—and also on the basis of a limited acquaintance with tz'u poets of the Sung, and that it was only later that critics like Wang Shih-chen (1634–1711) transformed features originally intended merely to characterize particular individuals into schools with identifiable "patriarchs."^[55] Even more central to this new discourse on the song lyric was Wang's contemporary Chu I-tsun (1629–1709), who has traditionally been credited with the resurgence of tz'u to the critical and literary-historical arena after several centuries of relative slumber.^[56]

[55] In his Hua-ts'ao meng-shih , for example, Wang Shih-chen identifies his fellow natives of Chi-nan, Li Ch'ing-chao and Hsin Ch'i-chi, as the exemplars of the two styles, respectively. Wu's discussion also touches on the various ways in which other critics disagreed with or modified the distinction (T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , pp. 158–64).

As Wu points out earlier, the notion of "school" goes back to Lü Pen-chung's (1136 chin-shih ) grouping of twenty-five poets into the Chiang-hsi shih-p'ai with Huang T'ing-chien as its patriarch, based on similar practices already common in Ch'an hagiography (p. 152). A version of this can be seen in Wang Cho's linking of tz'u poets with either Su Shih or Liu Yung in Wang's Pi-chi man-chih (ca. 1145–49) (ch. 2, included in Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , 1.1b; also noted by Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , p. 155). But the precedent for establishing genealogies is, of course, of much older vintage, having been set early in the sixth century by Chung Jung in his Shih-p'in , which identified poets being ranked as belonging to the tradition of either the Shih-ching or the Ch'u-tz'u .

[56] Impressive evidence to this effect strikes the eye immediately when one opens T'ang Kuei-chang's Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien . Of the eighty-five tz'u-hua included, eleven date from the Sung, two from the Yüan, four from the Ming, and all of the rest from the Ch'ing.

The reasons behind this renaissance, and Chu's particular contributions toward it, are too numerous and complex to be examined here.^[57] Among others, one might cite the widespread fascination during the early Ch'ing with antiquity in general and the Sung dynasty in particular; the regional interest of Chu, a native of western Chekiang, in the many Southern Sung poets from that same geographical area;^[58] his discovery and reprinting of Chou Mi's Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u ; and the contemporary preoccupation, profoundly conservative at its core, with collecting, defining, and mastering the entire literary tradition. This effort shapes his Tz'u-tsung , compiled by 1678.

It is well known that Chu compiled this anthology in twenty-six fascicles (with four more added by Wang Sen [1653–1726]) of song lyrics from the T'ang through the Yüan dynasties on the basis of a limited number of individual collections, and even fewer anthologies, that were circulating at the time. His introduction comments on the losses that he knows to have occurred (to which later scholars have added), lists the volumes he has been able to peruse, and catalogs the various options other editors have employed in recording the name, title, place of birth, and so on, of the poets included. Also well known is Chu's desire to revise significantly the image of the tz'u prevalent at the beginning of the Ch'ing, requiring a small, profound, and oft-cited revision of literary history: "People now say that one must praise the tz'u of the Northern Sung; however, only in the Southern Sung did tz'u reach the ultimate craft, and only at the end of the Sung did it reach the ultimate transformation. Chiang Yao-chang [Chiang K'uei] is the most outstanding [poet of the genre]. What a pity it is that of Pai-shih's [Chiang K'uei's] yüeh-fu in five fascicles today only twenty-odd pieces have survived."^[59]

Wang Sen's preface to the Tz'u-tsung articulates the theoretical program of the anthology at somewhat greater length. He begins by offering a famous attack on the view of literary history that had characterized the song lyric as the "remnant" of the shih , an attitude encapsulated in the very title of the much-reviled Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü . Long-and-short verses, he opens, have been around as long as shih , so the tz'u can boast a lineage as venerable as that of its better-placed cousin. Moreover, the

[57] Madeline Chu touches on some of these issues in her article "Interplay between Tradition and Innovation: The Seventeenth-Century Tz'u Revival," in Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 9 (1987): 71–88.

[58] Chu articulates this interest clearly in his preface to Meng Yen-lin tz'u , as cited by Lung Mu-hsün, "Hsüan-tz'u piao-chun lun," pp. 18–19.

[59] Chu I-tsun, Tz'u-tsung (1691; rpt., n.p.: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1973) 1.5b.

familiar evolution from ancient verse to yüeh-fu to regulated verse to tz'u , he declares, has produced forms that are like horses with "separate bits but galloping side-by-side, not one in front and the other behind. To say that shih degenerated to become tz'u or to consider tz'u as the remnant of shih is not an argument that penetrates the whole."^[60] After touching on the vibrant but qualitatively mixed early history of the genre, he identifies his patriarch: "Chiang K'uei of Hsiang-yang emerged, with lapidary verses and refined words that return to purity and elegance. There-upon Shih Ta-tsu and Kao Kuan-kuo flanked him on either side. Chang Chi and Wu Wen-ying took him as master first, and Chao I-fu, Chiang Chieh, Chou Mi, Ch'en Yün-heng, Wang I-sun, Chang Yen, and Chang Chu studied him afterward."^[61] Whatever disagreements one might have with the hierarchy Wang provides here—and they have been numerous—the point remains that he is singling out tz'u poets from the Southern Sung who embody in different ways ideals of elegance and refinement that he and Chu are seeking to establish as the preeminent style for the genre.^[62] Their instrument will be this anthology, which he hopes "may eliminate at once the vulgarity of the Ts'ao-t'ang ; those who write to music will then know the orthodox tradition [tsung ]."^[63]

The language Wang employs here and the critical order of evaluation he presents are reminiscent not only of descriptions of the Kiangsi poetry group,^[64] but of Kao Ping's categorization of the T'ang poets as well, which in turn was heavily influenced by Yen Yü's example. And the selection of song lyrics for the volume itself, however hampered by the limited number of sources and deficient in text-critical oversight,^[65] also reflects the priorities that the two compilers established. Whereas some poets only have one song lyric each included, those from the

[60] Chu I-tsun, Tz'u-tsung 1.2a–2b.

[61] Ibid. 1.3a–3b.

[62] Chiang K'uei was a particularly appealing model because, as Lin Shuen-fu puts it, his life was one "almost entirely devoted to the cultivation of art." See The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K'uei and Southern Sung Tz'u Poetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 58.

[63] Chu I-tsun, Tz'u-tsung 1.5a–5b.

[64] As noted by Lung Mu-hsün, "Hsüan-tz'u piao-chun lun," p. 17.

[65] Ting Shao-i, who compiled a Ch'ing tz'u-tsung pu in 1894 (rpt., Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1986), says that he has corrected many—but not all—of the errors in the Tz'u-tsung , which he attributes both to the unavailability of good editions of Sung and Yüan tz'u and to Chu's failure to compare versions from one edition to the next. In his T'ing-ch'iu-sheng-kuan tz'u-hua , as cited by She Chih, "Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi hsü-lu," pt. 5, Tz'u-hsüeh 5 (1986): 257.

Southern Sung mentioned in the introduction and preface are heavily represented in the anthology; the thirty-two tz'u of Chiang K'uei, for example, probably constituted a significant proportion of the total number of works by the poet that Chu had seen, and the lesser members of the group are present in similar depth. The collection's insistence on the stylistic distinctiveness of the song lyric as a genre confirms what John Guillory, drawing on Bakhtin, has argued to be fundamental to the process of canon-formation, the marking of a language that can be defined as the specifically "literary" coin of a hermetic, privileged community and the final expunging of the popular or "vulgar" traces of the form.^[66]

Arguments waged, however, concerning the precise nature of that language. However unsuccessful Chu I-tsun may ultimately have been in eliminating "heterodox"—whether "vulgar" or "heroic"—styles of tz'u and controlling the quality of lyrics written according to "orthodox" models, his influence on the subsequent history of the genre is undeniable. Although critical opinion agrees that followers of the Che school eventually declined into a vacuous or, worse, "lascivious," preciosity, Chu's framing of the discourse was adopted by later scholars who were adamantly opposed to his aims. The very fact that critical discussion coalesced into schools with distinct programs may reflect to a certain extent the power of Chu's example. Moreover, many of his key assumptions remained intact, albeit developed in very different ways. Thus, scholars associated with the Ch'ang-chou school that flourished a century later might have rejected his notion of what was orthodox but not the presumption that some orthodox or canonical style existed and should be promulgated. Chou Chi (1781–1839) in his Tz'u-pien , for example, clearly identifies a tradition beginning with Wen T'ing-yün that he considers cheng and one starting with Li Yü that is pien , and he meticulously lists the poets that fall under either category. Other critics, following a model developed earlier for discussing and classifying painters, which itself was borrowing a precedent established in Ch'an Buddhism, divided tz'u poets into a Northern and a Southern tradition (tsung ) and, much as had been the case in the visual arts, found the latter decidedly superior.^[67]

The Ch'ang-chou critics differed significantly from the earlier Che school, however, in the manner by which they sought to establish the canon of the song lyric. Rather than insisting on the peculiar distinctiveness of tz'u , scholars like Chang Hui-yen (1761–1833) and Chou Chi

[66] See his "Canonical and Non-canonical: A Critique of the Current Debate," ELH 54 (1987): 483–527.

[67] As noted by Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , p. 163.

sought to rehabilitate the genre by appropriating for it the hermeneutics that had developed in connection with the Shih-ching , thereby accommodating it to the established shih tradition. Thus, the inscription of the male gaze and the ascription of male desire to the languishing woman in lyrics by poets like Wen T'ing-yün could be re-viewed as the figuration of political concern about the state of the empire and the frustration of a loyal official at his inability to do anything about it. The details of this program have been discussed at length by Chia-ying Yeh Chao^[68] and need not be recapitulated here. Suffice it to say at this point that although Chang Hui-yen has been faulted both for his outrageously improbable allegorical interpretations and for assuming that a valid comparison could be made between the song lyric and the Book of Songs at all, the former had already been accepted practice for several centuries and the latter could be supported, as we have seen, by several textual precedents within the literature on tz'u as well.

Later Redefinitions

Other tz'u scholars in the nineteenth century followed Chang's and Chou's leads in different ways. The rich literature on and of the song lyric in the nineteenth century attests to the transforming influence of the Ch'ang-chou school, and I shall mention only two examples. The first is a general discussion introducing an unpublished anthology in eight fascicles, the Tz'u-kuei (dated 1863), compiled by Yang Hsi-min, who makes a number of points that suggest his decision to situate the song lyric unambiguously within the shih historical and critical tradition. First, he interprets the shih-yü epithet in such a way as to insist on the connection, rather than the differentiation, between the two forms: "Long-and-short verses are remnants of shih . This being so, shih then is the source and tz'u the tributary. If the source is not distant, how can the tributary be long?" And he goes on to stress the fact that tz'u poets like Wen T'ing-yün, Wei Chuang, Yen Shu, Yen Chi-tao, Ch'in Kuan, and Ho Chu could all write shih poetry as well; that Su Shih and Huang T'ing-chien were especially renowned for the latter; and that tz'u poets whose other writings are not worth reading are "like tributaries without the source." Second, he de-emphasizes the distinguishing feature of the song lyric, its musical performance, by arguing that "even though the ancient poems all were written to music, later poems without music are

[68] In "The Ch'ang-chou School of Tz'u Criticism," in Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucius to Liang Ch'i-ch'ao , ed. Adele Austin Rickett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 151–88.

numerous and are not therefore prevented from being good poems. But a tone and rhythm that come naturally cannot be lost. With tz'u the situation is the same. If you can sing, you will certainly be good; but if you cannot sing, are you therefore not a tz'u poet?" He then observes that few people can understand the musical notation Chiang K'uei provided for his song lyrics.

Yang Hsi-min also argues that critical concepts apply with equal validity to the two genres. For example, he writes that "some people think that in tz'u one esteems having the meaning within and the words on the surface [i nei yen wai ], but those who understand this are few. They fail to realize that having meaning within words is true of all writing of subtlety, and not just the song lyric." The most compelling incorporation of the shih tradition can be seen in a statement that appears more than once in his discussion, a statement to the effect that "in studying tz'u one should begin with yüeh-fu of the Han, Wei, and Six Dynasties, and then take Wen [T'ing-yün], Wei [Chuang], the two Yens, Ch'in [Kuan], and Ho [Chu] as the canonical orthodox tradition [cheng tsung ]."^[69] Chao Tsun-yüeh notes that this is modeled on Kao Ping's discussion of T'ang poetry, but the precedent in fact goes back to Yen Yü, who was particularly concerned with the question of systematic study of past models.^[70]

As the admiring reference above to Su Shih and Huang T'ing-chien should suggest, Yang Hsi-min's tastes run precisely to the Northern Sung tz'u poets whose standing Chu I-tsun and his school had been anx-

[69] Chao Tsun-yüeh, "Tz'u-chi t'i-yao," pt. 2, Tz'u-hsüeh chi-k'an 1, no. 2 (August 1933): 83–84.

[70] Yen Yü's prescription, of course, appears in different forms and is considerably longer. One version recommends the following:

First, one must thoroughly recite the Ch'u-tz'u and sing them morning and night so as to make them his basis. When he recites the "Nineteen Old Poems," the "Yüeh-fu in Four Sections," the five-syllabic poetry of Li Ling and Su Wu and of the Han and the Wei, he must do them all thoroughly. Afterward, he will take up the collected poetry of Li [Po] and Tu [Fu] and read them [the poems] in dovetail fashion as people of today study the classics. Next, he will take up comprehensively the famous masters of the High T'ang. Having allowed all this to ferment in his bosom for a long time, he will be enlightened spontaneously [tzu-jan wu-ju ]. Although he might not attain the ultimate of study, still he will not go off the correct road.

From Ts'ang-lang shih-hua chiao-shih , ed. Kuo Shao-yü (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1962), p. 1. Trans. (with slight revisions) Richard John Lynn, "Orthodoxy and Enlightenment: Wang Shih-chen's Theory of Poetry and Its Antecedents," in The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism , ed. W. T. de Bary, Studies in Oriental Culture, no. 10 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), p. 220.

ious to diminish. Ironically enough, Yang employs the same verb hsi , "wash away," "eliminate," that Wang Sen had used in speaking of the Tz'u-tsung's accomplishment vis-à-vis the Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü , to describe the contribution made by major Northern Sung poets: "Ou[-yang Hsiu], Su [Shih] and Huang [T'ing-chien] are unrestrained and unconventional, genial and liberal, heroic and strange. They eliminated at once the practice of writing about latticework and gauze; this is how the orthodox was transformed and became [a new] orthodoxy." He also takes Tsou Hsü-shih (Tsou Chih-mo, 1658 chin-shih ) to task for criticizing Northern Sung poets' failure to write long tz'u in great numbers. This reflects a poor understanding of literary history, Yang argues, for all forms of a genre are not always simultaneously to a poet's hand at any given moment in time. To say that Su and Huang could not write long tz'u makes little sense if Liu Yung was the first to develop the form. Like Chu and other early Ch'ing critics, Yang concludes, Tsou is too one-sided: "When shopping for food, he only knows how to buy what is inexpensive; he has never heard the subtleties of tz'u ."^[71]

An earlier passage of the text articulates in a different manner Yang's rejection of the narrow, doctrinaire exclusivity that he finds characteristic of critics at the beginning of the dynasty:

Now writing has its roots in inborn emotions and is assisted by learning; when both are present, then as soon as one sets the brush down to send forth words, the workings of heaven will start of themselves. Nothing has been determined with regard to long composition or short piece, nor between the "clear and empty" [ch'ing-k'ung ] and the "solid and substantial" [chih-shih ] styles. The Shih [-chi ] is not the same as the "[Li-]sao"; the "Sao" is not the same as the Chuang-tzu ; the Kung [-yang ] and Ku [-liang ] are not the same as the Tso [-chuan ] and the Kuo [-yü ]—how can one therefore settle on one explanation?^[72]

Although considerably more eclectic and flexible in his judgments, Yang Hsi-min has clearly been influenced by the views of Chang Hui-yen; he nonetheless feels that the latter's school has still not paid suf-

[71] In Chao Tsun-yüeh, "Tz'u-chi t'i-yao," pt. 2, p. 85. Tsou Chih-mo's position is also presented by Grace Fong in her Wu Wenying and the Art of Southern Song Ci Poetry , p. 164. One might, of course, take Yang to task in turn for assuming that genres have life histories of their own that evolve independently of human agency, but given the established discourse, it would have been difficult for him to think otherwise.

[72] Chao Tsun-yüeh, "Tz'u-chi t'i-yao," pt. 2, p. 84. Ch'ing-k'ung and chih-shih were terms first used by Chang Yen in his Tz'u-yüan to establish the superiority of Chiang K'uei as the exemplar of the former style. Along with the Ming dynasty Chang Yen's distinction between wan-yüeh and hao-fang , they stand at the center of the critical terminology developed to refer specifically to the song lyric.

ficient attention to a significant dimension of tz'u history. Thus, on the one hand he notes that in selecting songs for his anthology he has looked for those with pi-hsing , "comparison and evocative images," in other words, metaphorical imagery that would lend itself to the interpretive operations favored by the followers of Chang Hui-yen's method. He also credits Chang for having liberated scholars of tz'u from the fetters of Chu's Tz'u-tsung by "going against the current" to bring Wen T'ing-yün to prominence, thereby "opening up a new realm" in which tz'u incorporates pi-hsing . On the other hand, however, he then chooses to focus his critical attention on a group of poets different from that favored by the earlier critic: "But the path of [Ou-yang] Liu-i, [Su Tung-]p'o, and [Huang Shan-]ku has not yet been traversed by many wooden clogs. For an era to have brave heroes, it must not shrink from asking where the ford is."^[73] And there is no question that this relatively broad-minded attitude has indeed been evident throughout his entire discussion.^[74]

Finally, we can see a balance between the positions of Chu I-tsun and Chang Hui-yen explored quite literally in the writings of the late Ch'ing critic Ch'en T'ing-cho. Ch'en is best known as a proponent of the theories associated with the Ch'ang-chou school, which he discussed in his Pai-yü-chai tz'u-hua of 1892 and illustrated in his anthology Tz'u-tse . Less than twenty years earlier, however, in 1874, Ch'en had edited a collection entitled Yün-shao chi and explained the principles behind it, which at that time were wholeheartedly those of Chu I-tsun, in a work called the Tz'u-t'an ts'ung-hua . A recent reprinting of the Pai-yü-chai tz'u-hua provides extensive documentation on these two efforts, so I shall not discuss them in detail here. The two pairs of texts do, however, not only articulate quite clearly the general principles of both the Chu and the Chang schools, but also present us with positions that are somewhat more supple than those of either faction.

The Yün-shao chi , which exists only in draft form, includes 3,434 songs by over 1,100 poets from the T'ang through the Ch'ing dynasties. Interestingly enough, given Ch'en's repeated insistence in the Tz'u-t'an ts'ung-hua on the distinctiveness of tz'u , the anthology is modeled on Shen Te-ch'ien's (1673–1769) Ku-shih yüan in being organized chronologically by dynasty and, within each section, by the social status

[73] Ibid. The last allusion, of course, is to Lun-yü 18/6.

[74] As has been noted by others, the more supple and balanced rethinking of Chang Hui-yen's ideas had already been evident in the critical work of Chou Chi. See Chia-ying Yeh Chao, "The Ch'ang-chou School," pp. 176–83, and Grace Fong, Wu Wen-ying and the Art of Southern Song Ci Poetry , pp. 167–73.

of each author.^[75] (Women come at the end, preceding only a fascicle of "miscellaneous forms" [tsa-t'i ] that includes some lusty "mountain songs" [shan-ko ] that Ch'en evidently could not bear to leave out.) The preface to the collection borrows shamelessly from Chu I-tsun's introduction to his anthology,^[76] although it does admit that its model is the Tz'u-tsung . There is the same recounting of the evolution of tz'u , an argument similar to Wang Sen's against the notion of tz'u as the remnant of shih ("tz'u is that by which one remedies the deficiencies of shih ; it is not the remnant of shih "),^[77] and the declaration that he "considers ya-cheng to be the orthodox tradition."^[78] Song lyrics from the Southern Sung are represented in greatest number within the collection; Ch'en's Tz'u-tan ts'ung-hua in fact announces that he regards the Southern Sung as the "orthodox tradition,"^[79] and there are references throughout to the importance of prosodic rules and to his esteem for the wan-yüeh and marginalization of the hao-fang styles, all of which stems from Li Ch'ing-chao's critical dictum regarding the distinctiveness of tz'u and the theories of Chang Yen and Chu I-tsun. At the same time, however, Ch'en cannot resist confessing to a fondness for the songs of Wen T'ing-yün, whom Chu had not valorized but whose style Ch'en feels many critics of his time have failed to understand, and for the song lyrics of the Northern Sung. The Che school, of course, had given pride of place to the Southern Sung, but Ch'en writes that he personally prefers the loftiness and naturalness of the earlier tz'u , which are, admittedly, more "vulgar" and "impure" than those of the following era. If one thinks of the former as analogous to the "Airs" and the latter as the "Elegances," he argues, then there is room for both.^[80]

Less than two decades later Ch'en T'ing-cho declared that Chang Hui-yen's Tz'u-hsüan was ten times finer than Chu I-tsun's Tz'u-tsung .^[81]

[75] Tsu-pen chiao-chu , 2:855. This system had an earlier precedent within the tz'u anthological tradition, for the Chung-hsiang chi , a collection of song lyrics by women compiled by Ch'ien Yüeh in the last decades of the seventeenth century, arranged its over four hundred works by author in descending order of social status, from wives of high officials to singing girls. As noted by She Chih, "Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi," pt. 4, pp. 249–50. The same ordering principle can be found, of course, in certain anthologies of shih .

[76] This is graphically presented in a chart in the recent reprinting; see Tsu-pen chiao-chu , 2:894 n. 10.

[77] Ibid., p. 805.

[78] Ibid., p. 806.

[79] Ibid., p. 846.

[80] Ibid., p. 816.

[81] Ibid., 1:11 (Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , vol. 1/2a), and 2:533 (Tz'u-hua tsung-pien , vol. 5/11b). Ch'ü Hsing-kuo discusses the reasons behind Ch'en's change of views—key amongwhich may have been his fondness for the song lyrics of Wen T'ing-yün, whom Chang Hui-yen also esteemed—in the appendix to Pai-yü-chai tz'u-hua tsu-pen chiao-chu , pp. 896–97.

The influence of the Ch'ang-chou school is evident throughout this work in its insistence on treating tz'u and shih in the same critical terms. Both genres, for example, share a list of traits to be avoided:

No matter whether one is composing shih or composing tz'u , one cannot have the style of a rotten Confucian, nor the style of a common person, nor the style of a talented scholar. Though people realize that the rotten Confucian and the common styles are impermissible, they don't realize that the talented scholar's style is also impermissible. . . . As soon as people see the rotten Confucian and the common person's styles, they detest them; but when it comes to the talented scholar's style, there's no one who sees it who doesn't take pleasure in it. Thus, the defect therein is even more profound.^[82]

In addition to linking shih and tz'u here from a negative perspective, Ch'en T'ing-cho also insists on their relationship and comparability for other purposes as well. More than once in the Pai-yü-chai tz'u-hua , therefore, Ch'en remarks on the analogies between their stages of evolution: "If we compare tz'u to shih , the T'ang is like the Han and Wei; the Five Dynasties is like the Western and Eastern Chin and Six Dynasties; the Northern and Southern Sung are like the T'ang; the Yüan and Ming are like the Northern and Southern Sung; and Ch'ing tz'u are like Ch'ing shih ."^[83] As the two can be periodized, so can they be collected in similar manners. The Pai-yü-chai tz'u-hua includes the general preface to Ch'en's Tz'u-tse that describes the selection and organization of its 2,600 songs into four categories: "great elegances" (ta-ya ), "heroic songs" (fang-ko ), "calmed emotions" (hsien-ch'ing ), and "distinctive modes" (pieh-tiao ), with the first group defined as the orthodox and the other three as its subordinates.^[84] Not only are the titles of the groups drawn largely from specific texts in the shih tradition, but the arrangement and the discussion that frames it echo those found in Po Chü-i's famous letter to Yüan Chen concerning his collected poems.^[85]

Running throughout Ch'en's text is the assumption that "shih and tz'u have the same form and different functions"; this in fact, as he con-

[82] Tsu-pen chiao-chu , 2:561; Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , vol. 5/18a.

[83] Tsu-pen chiao-chu , 2:576; Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , vol. 5/19b.

[84] Tsu-pen chiao-chu , 2:538–39; Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , vol. 5/12b–13a.

[85] "Yü Yüan Chiu shu," in Po Chü-i hsüan-chi , ed. Wang Ju-pi (Shanghai: Shang-hai ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1980), p. 359.

tinues in this passage, links them more closely than tz'u and ch'ü , which "have different functions, and forms that are also slightly different. This cannot fail to be discriminated."^[86] Ultimately, however, there is a recognizable priority assigned to shih , and on several grounds. The diction of the shih , for example, is inviolable: "Within a shih one cannot write in the language of tz'u , but within a tz'u there is no prohibition against the language of shih ."^[87] The mastery of one must also precede that of the other: "Shih and tz'u have one principle; nevertheless, someone who is not skilled at tz'u can be skilled at shih , but someone who is not skilled at shih decidedly cannot be skilled at tz'u . Therefore, in studying tz'u it is important first to master shih . If in writing shih one has not yet planted one's feet firmly anywhere and yet rushes off to study tz'u —I've never seen anyone manage both."^[88] And finally, there is the intractable fact of temporal precedence: "Shih has its own realm, and tz'u has its own realm: the two share one principle. There are realms that have been opened up by shih poets, however, that tz'u poets have not yet seen, owing to the fact that one came before the other in time." Ch'en goes on to single out various shih poets whose "realms" have in fact been explored by counterparts in the tz'u tradition, but he insists that none has matched the achievements of T'ao Ch'ien and Tu Fu; that possibility, however, may certainly yet be fulfilled.^[89]

Conclusion

The discussions that take place in these anthologies encapsulate the conflicts endemic to discourse on the song lyric up through the Ch'ing dynasty. On the one hand, the tz'u could be located squarely within, indeed at the very heart of, the lyric tradition and legitimated through treatment analogous to that accorded to texts by shih poets and through the appropriation of terms borrowed from the shih tradition. On the other, however, critics were on the whole neither able nor inclined to deny the special roots of the tz'u in a history of performance and song that would not necessarily wish to lay claim to the political and moral seriousness of other written forms. We have seen how persistent was the effort to eradicate, as much as possible, the questionable elements of

[86] Tsu-pen chiao-chu , 2:778; Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , vol. 8/11a.

[87] Tsu-pen chiao-chu , 2:573; Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , vol. 5/20b. This position runs directly counter to the dominant opinion, mentioned above, against importing the diction and methods of shih into tz'u .

[88] Tsu-pen chiao-chu , 2:673; Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , vol. 7/1a.

[89] Tsu-pen chiao-chu , 2:781–82; Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , vol. 8/11b–12a.

the history of tz'u and establish—though not without considerable disagreement—a canon within its own tradition. But much as contemporary critiques of dominant traditions have discovered the fineness of the line between difference and marginalization, so the emphasis on the distinctive aesthetics of tz'u ran the risk of consigning it to the privacy—and the isolation—of a room of its own. That the process of legitimation eventually explored more accommodating paths as well may account for what, by the end of the Ch'ing, could be recognized as its success. Early in the twentieth century, May Fourth rewritings of Chinese literary history that discovered and valorized what could be seen as popular genres within the written tradition consolidated this rehabilitation. What should be kept firmly in mind, finally, is the recognition of this entire history as a discursive process, one that does not necessarily reflect the actual dimensions of the interest in and composition of tz'u . And in the end, what may have appealed most powerfully was precisely what resisted appropriation and could never be acknowledged: the song lyric's claim on a private space of the affections within which to speak that which could not be spoken in the shih , whose canons of discourse were inexorably framed by public and political values.