Song Cycles of Cathay

...All the educated write verses...

...We see the sage bending over his tome or in eager discourse with his disciple...

...The attitude of the singer is often akin to that of the lover who wears his heart upon his sleeve...

...All of these things we literally see as in Chinese painting—even where the poem is devoted to a mood, we can see the subjective figure...

...The young nobleman, attended by his retinue, rides off to the war...

...We see Li 'Po taking wine with his fellow-poet Tu-Fu: we see Tu-Fu "Laughing at Nature " We see The River's Brim— The Cottage, The Flying-Fish, A Drifting Lotus-Petal...

...Their art is a complete thing...

...Poems kept in this manner are soon wafted from mouth to mouth, become famous and, in the end, popular...

...Chinese poems are like a panorama of Chinese mural paintings...

...the lorn wife studies the moon—to the ancient Chinese as eloquent a symbol as to the Carthaginians—whose pale beams stream through her window...

...it considers every aspect and mood of their own experience of the soul and of nature...

...If a scholar passes and finds the poem worthy the trouble, he makes a copy of it which he keeps for his friends, and eventually he puts it with others similarly discovered...

...K. F. Kiang, formerly the professor of Chinese literature at the University of California, now president of the Southern University of Shanghai...

...There are many interesting and curious facts in the development of Chinese and Japanese poetry, but the most important one—a kind of summum bonum—is that of all poetic literatures as rendered into English, it seems to be the most self-revealing...

...Here is the most striking example in all art of the inseparable union of the two arts, although the same general parallel exists in all nations...

...Of Japanese poetry, the same general story may be told...

...The compendium of Confucius was adopted by the Chinese as a kind of poetical "bible" and for at least three centuries after, there seems to have been little incentive to poetical expression...

...The interest in Chinese poetry on the part of English scholars has increased greatly within the past fifty years, and has resulted in the very excellent work, both in translation and paraphrase, of Professor Herbert Giles, Clifford Bax, Helen Waddell, Bain-bridge Fletcher, Judith Gautier (in French) Cecil dementi, Ezra Pound, Witter Bynner, Amy Lowell, and a few others, finally culminating in the splendid performances of L. Cranmer-Byng and of Arthur Waley...

...Japanese poetry is a later growth...

...Lord Macartney's mission in 1792, the first embassy from the throne, brought back many curious and beautiful objets d'art and a renewed interest in a land which had been forgotten since Marco Polo...

...He writes his verses on the wall of the entrance to a quarter, most often without signing them...

...No master of poetry in any age but could have learned from these Chinese masters...

...although the very earliest Japanese compositions antedate even the introduction of the art of writing...

...Chinese poetry must in all cases be compared with Chinese painting...

...It seems, indeed, as if Chinese poetry —the oldest in the world, as I have remarked—were perennial...

...They seem, whatever their shortcomings, always sufficient unto themselves...

...44 THE COMMONWEAL November 17, 1926 SONG CYCLES OF CATHAY By JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH "TF EVER an age needed beautiful songs," remarks I Lord Dunsany in his introduction to the poems "*¦ of Francis Ledwidge, "our age needs them...

...This new interest is directly responsible for the recent work of Lafcadio Hearn, Curtis Hidden Page, Yone Noguchi, of the Fenellosas, Ezra Pound, Witter Bynner, Clara Walsh, Shigoyishi Obata, and Arthur Waley...

...The hunter rides off to the chase on his fleet and sturdy Tartar horse, that Pegasus of Chinese poetry...

...A small number of independent translations were now attempted from the most curious and difficult of all tongues, some of which may undoubtedly still be found in the British Museum and the Ashmolean Library...

...Some of the odes in the Shi-King—a monumental work composed of some three thousand separate poems, covering the whole period of about a thousand years during which the old states were formed and feudally related down to the eighth century B. C. and from which Confucius compiled a selection of 311 odes, are accepted by the highest authority as between twenty-five hundred and three thousand years old...

...The claim of this vast and important body of original literature found little recognition from the Latin races, obviously from the difficulties of the language— and little attention was paid to this ancient treasure-house even by the inquisitive English till about the end of the third quarter of the eighteenth century...

...Often and again, he suggests the strain of Austin Dobson: Oh, the song where not one of the Graces tight-laces, Where the music like the piper a-playmg comes Maying This it is that makes Chinese poetry perennial...

...Judith Gautier, writing of half a century ago, says: "Sometimes an independent author addresses himself directly to the people...

...This is an ancient homily on Chinese morals and manners which gives the original text on the left-hand page, with the translation opposite...

...Its subtleties are seldom cryptic even to the average intelligence...

...There is little epic hint in all this—and there is no machinery as of Olympus for instance, such as is presented us by the Greek masters...

...nearly all other aesthetic impulse in that country deriving for the most part November 17, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 45 directly from Chinese sources...

...It is this visual quality (call it surface is you will—but it is none the less subtle—and has endured throughout the ages) that 46 THE COMMONWEAL November 17, 1926 gives Chinese poetry its own niche—its place apart and immortal...

...Goldsmith conceived a very ingenious and timely idea in making his Citizen of the World (a series of essays which attracted wide attention in London at the time) a Chinese gentleman traveling in Europe...

...Sir William Jones at this period was drawn to the great field of classic oriental literature which he made his principal life-work...

...and Professor K. T. Mei of the Chinese department of Harvard, himself a promising young Chinese poet...

...Chinese poetry is the largest body of verse in the world, coming from a people of whom Ampere remarks: "Of all nations, the Chinese seems to be fondest of poetry...

...Since the opening of China to English commerce there have been occasional bits of translation of poetry by lonely English consuls and missionaries—but few of these have reached America, and it is probable that only a very small number of them would be found to possess any special literary value...

...The single item of the kind which the writer has come across in his necessarily restricted American reseaches, is a curious little tome at Columbia University which bears the native title, Han Kiou Choan, and the classic imprint of R and J. Dodsley, London, 1761...

...The reawakening seems to carry out that historical parallel between the two nations which has persisted from the beginnings of Japanese culture...

...Japanese poetry is, on the whole, the most original expression of this ingenious and curious people...

...Native Chinese authorities both in this country and China are apparently taking a new hold on the subject, and volumes may now be expected in due course from Professor Hu Shih of the National University of Pekin (who, I am told by a Chinese authority here, is writing "a new poetry in Chinese"—I devoutly hope it is not in vers libre...

...We see the troops going to war...

...they ask and have accepted nothing from any other source...

...the fisherman goes with net and spear to the lake to seek lampreys...

...The main body of Japanese poetry is but little imitative...

...But there was a reawakening and since then, the poets of China have sung in many and beautiful strains...

...Its virtues and its faults lie more open even to the most untrained sense than those of any other body of poetry in the world...

...The young son is conscripted and is driven off to fight for the emperor amid the lamentations of his old parents...

...The general interest in the field likewise is increasing, and more volumes have appeared in the past decade than in the half-century that went before...

...People stop and read them and discuss them...

...We see the emperor in his palace, surrounded by his counselors...

...Chinese poetry is not only the largest, but the oldest body of poetry in the world...

...We see the peach tree in bloom, the cherry flower—we behold the stately bamboo, the locust, the plantain...

...It is thus posterity and a certain plebiscite which determines a poet's claim to distinction " "In olden times," says Pan-Kou, "the sages themselves did not compare with the poets in estimation...

...This statement applies in later times to the uneducated as well...

...Occasionally we have the tragic mood, but for the most part the note is naive, always has charm, and is sometimes refined to the last degree...

...we see the pretty girl out walking, daintily gathering her robe about her feet, and smiling that shy, modest yet subtle smile that only oriental femininity seems to know...

...They never falter within their own range...

...Hi Shih the beautiful is pounding clothes at the brook as the emperor passes by and claims her for one of his wives (King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid...

...Thus it is that one can exclaim again with Dobson that: It will last till men weary of pleasure m measure...

...the defense of the Great Wall...

...Its earliest written origins are traceable to about the beginning of the fourth century B. C, when the first Korean teacher arrived in the country, and the art of written expression began...

...the son of heaven is sitting upon his throne, as in Judith Gautier's poem, and we are permitted to behold him in all his glory...

...the sage climbs to the hut of the hermit lost in the clouds —the hermit who can still teach him wisdom...

...The translator is J. Wilkinson...