SEVEN RHAPSODIES OF TS'AO CHIH.

• Author: KROLL, PAUL W.

To scholars of the present day the fu or "rhapsody" remains yet a rather neglected genre of Chinese poetry, even though it was of great importance to writers from the Han (206 B.C.--A.D. 220) through the T'ang (618-907) dynasties. Ts'ao Chih (192-232), the most famous of third-century poets, has more than half as many fu extant as shih-poems, but these have been largely and unfairly ignored. This paper presents seven of Ts'ao Chih's fu, with comments on some related matters.

ACCEPTING FOR THE MOMENT the traditional, albeit ultimately specious, allotment of generic "golden ages" in Chinese literary history which assigns the rhapsody (fu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to the Han as that dynasty's peculiarly consummate form of literary expression, we cannot but be puzzled that so few of those rhapsodies--to say nothing of those of succeeding eras--have yet been rendered into English, whereas the same three or four dozen shih [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] from the late Han and early San-kuo period continue year after year to enjoy, if not monopolize, the attention of scholars and translators. What is the reason for this? Is it that the demands made on our modem minds by the rhapsody are too taxing, that, having been bred on the milder food of the shih our linguistic dispositions resist, out of self-regard, the heaped mound of a fu repast? [1] Let us not ask embarrassing questions. The day is short, distractions are many: "Such and so various are the tastes of men."

Of course, rhapsodies are more difficult to read--far more difficult and time-consuming than the average shih. This difficulty, muatis mutandis, also defines the greatest virtue of the fu for those of us who study Chinese poetry of the Han through the T'ang. Namely, one is forced to come to terms with an extensive portion of the literary lexicon. Poets from all times and places, in their several languages, have affirmed one thing--that poetry is, before all else, word-choice. It is, in a very literal sense, both lexicology and philology. As Cicero says, poets vocibus magis quam rebus inserviunt ("are more devoted to words than to topics"). The truth of this helps to explain the frequency with which poets everywhere have commented on their craft as less a matter of creation than of discovery. It is, as Borges has suggested (and others in similar metaphors), most akin to the sculptor's work of freeing from the stone the image already contained therein, as though it were merely waiting to be brought forth. Henc e the sense of "fulfillment," in both senses--of "possession," if you will--that a good writer is aware of experiencing upon working a composition to its close: the feeling that the right words were somehow hovering "out there," patient to be found, or perhaps even calling to one to uncover them, through one or more attempts at inventio--that is, both invention and discovery. This is what, in our postclassical if not post-modem world, the Muse is: not so much a divinity breathing her song into the poet but rather the guiding, inchoate voice of a certain formulation of language pressing him to uncover it. The Muse is thus the active, internal force--one might say the te [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] -- of a language. And here is the real meaning of what we call tradition. Tradition is the registry, the certified catalogue, of the various sanctioned transcriptions, each in its own particular calligraphy, of those formulations. [2]

Now, much of the classical poetic tradition in China, at least from the Han through the T'ang, is in fact embodied in the fu. One need only look at the generic proportions of the sixth-century Wen hs[ddot{u}]an [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the indispensable literary anthology for all T'ang writers, to comprehend the significance of the fu in relation to the shih. Thanks to David Knechtges' ongoing, triumphant translation of the entire Wen hs[ddot{u}]an, even those scholars unable or unwilling to read such works in the original have now been provided with reliable English renderings of the most famous examples of the form, as they are also deprived of any future excuse to overlook this important genre of poetry. [3]

It is the rhapsody's display of the full resources of the language, especially in the variety of fu that Knechtges has called the "epideictic rhapsody," that makes it the broad background against which the tighter, more controlled forms of poetry must be considered. This surely is why the fu (only occasionally supplemented--never replaced--by the shih) was the form of poetic composition most often required in the T'ang chin-shih [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] examination. It is precisely in the more outflung, more associational and organic form inherent to the rhapsody that an author reveals the full compass and consonance of his voice--or the poverty of it. All possibilities are there in play.

One of the most evident, exhilarating, and often--to us--troublesome possibilities exploited in the fu is the appearance in a single poem of a Corinthian profusion of synonyms, the value of which is dependent upon the reader's understanding and appreciation of the different nuances, however slight they be, of those synonyms. In Anglo-Saxon poetry we find a like feature (though not quite so lavishly indulged), there called by specialists "variation"; it is well and seriously studied by AngloSaxonists who do not stint efforts at drawing out the fine distinctions of meaning between synonymous words or phrases. Only patient attention of this sort will save the translation of a fu from lame redundancy and deadening monotony when faced, for instance, with a sequence of terms all identically glossed by traditional commentators as kao-ch[ddot{u}]n mao [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (the semblance of lofty peaks) or shui-liu mao [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (the semblance of rushing water), or the dozen different words helplessly defined as "blue" or "green" by standard dictionaries, or the several kinds of architectural structure normally but negligently homologized as "pavilion." Examples are endless. And it is well to remember, if we are to confront such problems conscientiously, the words of Samuel Johnson in the preface to his great Dictionary: "Words are seldom exactly synonymous; a new term was not introduced, but because the former was thought inadequate." In fact, paradoxical as it may seem, the non-native speaker (and let us remember that there are no native speakers anymore of Classical Chinese) may be in the most favorable position to distinguish and capture those subtle differences between words, precisely because of the imperative of translation. As Dr. Johnson says again, "To interpret a language by itself is very difficult; many words cannot be explained by synonyms, because the idea signified by them has not more than one appellation; nor by paraphrase, because simple id eas cannot be described."

This consequent sort of careful verbal labor being a task in which most persons, even many academics, are unwilling to engage, in this supremely contradictory age, the rhapsody can be seen to possess a positive pedagogical value (quite apart from its intrinsic importance), in demanding our fullest linguistic attention if it is to yield to us its special excellences. Failing in this, we debase and despoil the character of the language itself--its capacity for infinite variation, for producing ever new formulations and differentiations of verbal experience, its capacity for inscribing the singular play of the human mind. Seen in this light, it becomes clear that those scholars and writers are correct, who have declared that the manipulation of language is the highest activity of mankind itself. In the case of Chinese poetry, to bring us round again to our subject, I have come to believe more strongly all the time that our apprehension of the virtues and achievements of shih poetry is radically enhanced by an a ctive awareness of that other, more generous but too often ignored face of traditional verse, the fu. What should we think of scholars who presumed to judge the genius of Horace merely from his satires, Dryden only through his plays, Macaulay solely by his essays? To judge the "poetry" of most Chinese men of letters from the Han through the T'ang in disregard of their fu often promotes more or less comparable distortions.

Take Ts'ao Chih [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (192-232) as a case in point. Surely one of the great names in all of Chinese poetry, surely the greatest in the first two and a half centuries of our era. Although his extant literary remains include examples in numerous genres of poetry and prose, it is his shih poems (including y[ddot{u}]eh-fu shik [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) that have been the almost exclusive focus of scholarly attention, particularly in the West. [4] Excellent as these poems are and have long been held to be, they represent but a part of Ts'ao Chih's poetry. There are left to us some seventy-seven shih (the number may vary by one or two, depending on editorial treatment of certain works), better than half of which have been discussed and translated so often that they have passed into the collective consciousness of scholars as standing for Ts'ao Chih's essential literary achievement. There survive also some forty-five fu (with the same proviso applied to the shih) or fragments thereof. But of these, only one, the justly famous "Lo-shen fu" [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] has been remarked in any serious fashion. [5] Here I should like to begin to redress the balance, if only slightly, by presenting translations of six of these little-known rhapsodies, plus a new version of the "Lo-shen fu."

One other matter must be mentioned. When one says anything about Ts'ao Chih's works, it is de rigueur by now...