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Metaphor and metonymy: A comparative study of Chinese and Western poetics

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Metaphor and metonymy: A comparative study of Chinese and Western poetics

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Content METAPHOR AND METONYMY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF
CHINESE AND WESTERN POETICS
by
Michelle Mi-Hsi Yeh
-A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Comparative Literature)
Sep t-emb e r 1 § 8 2
UMI Number: DP22545
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T H E G R A D U A T E S C H O O L
U N IV E R S IT Y P A R K
L O S A N G E L E S . C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
Michelle Mi-Hsi Yeh
under the direction of h..£J.. Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by a ll its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in partial fulfillm ent of requirements of
the degree of
Go
'GO,
^ 4 3
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
C - vw.
Chairman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ........................................... 1
PART. I. HSING AND CHINESE POETRY
Chap ter
I. THE PROBLEMATICS OF PI AND HSING IN CHINESE
CRITICISM............................................32
II. HSING AS THE METAPHORIC/METONYMIC MODE . . . 57
III. METONYMY AND CHINESE POETRY ..................... 90
PART II. CULTURAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL
IMPLICATIONS: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
IV. THEORIES OF METAPHOR AND POETRY...............127
V. PHILOSOPHICAL EPISTEME OF THE WEST AND THE
CHINESE..............................................153
VI. CHINESE VIEWS OF LANGUAGE AND MEANING .... 172
VII. THE POETIC'"1" AND NATURE: CHINESE POETRY AND
SOME WESTERN ANALOGUES .......................... 200
A P P E N D I X ................................................. 245
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................. 247
ii
INTRODUCTION
In the 1918 "introduction" to One Hundred and
Seventy Chinese Poems, Arthur Waley said:
The "figures of speech," devices such as metaphor,
simile, and play of words, are used by the Chinese
with much more restrain than by us. "Metaphorical
epithets" are occasionally to be met with; waves,
for example, might perhaps be called "angry." But
in general the adjective does not bear the heavy
burden which our poets have laid upon it. The
Chinese would call the sky "blue," "gray," or
"cloudy," according to circumstances; but never
"triumphant" or "terror-scourged.
Forty—three years later, when the popular collection of
translations was reprinted, Waley wrote a disclaimer of
his earlier pronouncement. What is revealing in this case
is not so much the change of view on the frequency with
which metaphor and similar devices are used in Chinese
poetry as the implicit emphasis the Western reader almost
inevitably places on metaphor in discussing poetry. For
the reader who is familiar with English poetry, the poetry
of Shakespeare, the Metaphysical Poets, the Romanticists,
and the Symbolists, it is only natural to expect to find
and to look for metaphor in poetry.
Since Aristotle, metaphor has been regarded as an
important if not indispensable literary or rhetorical
device in the West. Its significance is considerably
elevated by the Romantic poets and critics such as
1
Colerdige and Wordsworth who associate metaphor with the
3
faculty of the imagination. As a unifying and synthe
sizing process capable of producing a coalescence of
opposites, metaphor clearly exemplifies the way the imagi
nation operates. The implication of this view is carried
to the full by the New Critics, who inherit the Romantic
ideal of poetry as an organic unity or autonomous entity.
Metaphor, because of its intrinsic nature of saying one
thing and meaning another, and of bringing about a "dis-
cordia concors creates both semantic complexity and
emotive intensity. It is therefore closely related to
irony, drama, and ambiguity, the qualities most highly
regarded and relentlessly advocated by the New Critics.
As W. K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, two of the most
authoritative spokesmen for the critical school, succinctly
sum up, metaphor represents "the very type and acme of the
i i 4
poetic structure.
To illustrate metaphor as the prominent poetic
mode in English poetry, especially from the Romantic to
the modern period, let us look at the Lucy poem by
Wordsworth:
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
--Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky....
The lyric is deceptively simple; under the surface of
straightforward syntax and plain diction, we find a tightly
knit structure of imagery. In the first stanza, the image
of the "untrodden ways" tells of the seclusion of Lucy.
But it is to be understood in a physical as well as an
emotional or spiritual sense. Whereas the first two lines
address her physical isolation from human society, Lines
3-4 reveal her emotional detachment and spiritual aloof
ness. No human tie is established, be it a rather super
ficial one ("praise") or one that is more intimate and
personal ("love").
The idea of solitude is reiterated by the images
of the violet and the star in the second stanza, but they
also complement and reinforce each other by focusing on
two different yet interrelated aspects of Lucy. The image
of the violet stresses seclusion and obscurity. It is
"half-hidden" from the view. The stone, in addition, like
the violet, is also "half-hidden" in the sense that it is
covered with moss. Thus, it harks back to the "untrodden
ways" in Line 1 and accentuates the notion of obscurity.
The image of a single star shining in the dark, on the
other hand, punctuates the singular beauty and outstanding
presence of Lucy in the eyes of the poet. Furthermore,
that the star is distant, unapproachable, and "cold"
neatly corresponds to the lady in seclusion, who is like
wise detached and unapproachable. Still another function
3
of the star image is that it brings out another implication
of the image of the violet. Namely, the violet is obscured
and at the same time made conspicuous by the stone. The
visual impact of a delicate violet peeking out by a dark,
mossy stone is enhanced by the contrast in color, size,
and texture. Ironically, the obscurity of the environment
only sets off its delicacy and fairness.
Syntactically speaking, the poem contains one
sentence and three noun or adjective phrases (beginning
with "A Maid," "A violet," and "Fair as a star," respec
tively). Structurally, the two metaphors in the second
stanza are the appositions to "She" and "A Maid" in the
first stanza. The poem is therefore built upon the con
secutive replacement of the human figure by the metaphors
of the violet and the star. They serve two important
functions. By introducing variations on the theme— Lucy—
they carry the poem forward. And, secondly, pointing
beyond their literal sense and interacting with each other,
they create a deeper level of meaning as well as higher
tonal density in the poem.
When we compare the above poem with the Chinese
lyric, such as the well-known "River Snow" by Liu
Tsung-yuan T'ang period, the difference
is immediately apparent.
Among a thousand mountains, birds have flown out of
s igh t;
On ten thousand paths, human trace is erased.
4
A lone boat, an old man in straw cape and hat,
Fishing alone on the cold river snow.^
-f * 1 . ^ ^ A-
An immense space unfolds before us in the first two lines * .
A world of emptiness and silence; there is no trace of life
seen or heard. A world of snow. The last two lines,
however, shift the perspective from the immense empty space
to an extremely narrow focus— a boat in which an old man
fishes on the river. The juxtaposition of the wintry world
and the fisherman creates a powerful visual impact through
the sharp spatial contrast. But it also strikes a note of
balance and compatibility in that the two images are given
equal space and emphasis. The detailed description: "straw
cape and hat" gives the fisherman a vivid presence and
palpable warmth against the infinite snowy landscape. In
stead of antithesis, there is co-presence between them.
This underlying rapport is also suggested by the last line
from which the title of the poem is taken: "_/the old man/
fishing alone on the river snow." Is it to be taken as
snow on the river, or is it a river of snow? It seems
that the two cannot be separated; the snow is the river,
the river is the snow. They form a homogeneous, harmonious
whole, just as man and nature do in the poem.
The brief reading to which we subject the poem
nevertheless illustrates the way the poem works. In the
5
poem, the images of mountains and rivers, the boat and the
fisherman, do not evoke and warrant references outside
themselves. Unlike the images of the violet and the star
in the Lucy poem, whose import transcends their literal
meanings, they point within rather than beyond themselves.
To borrow Joseph Frank’s term in describing modern litera
ture, "River Snow" presents a "pattern of internal
references. Whatever significance we derive from the
work, such as the poem as an intuitive apprehension of
harmony between man and nature, it is based on the rela-
tions between and among the images alone. Compared with
the structure of metaphorical substitution (of Lucy by
first the violet and then the star), the Chinese quatrain
seems decidedly one-dimensional, a poem of surface rather
than depth, of pictorial descriptiveness rather than
plurisignation. The use of images is metonymic rather
than metaphoric.
Metaphor and metonymy are probably the most influ
ential pair of terms that Structuralism has popularized
through the works of Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson,
8
Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Lacan.
While the former term refers to the "principle of equiva
lence" based on selection and substitution, the latter
represents the "principle of contiguity" based on combina
tion. Whereas metaphor embodies the paradigmatic or
vertical movement, metonymy is the syntagmatic or horizon
6
tal movement. Because of their simplicity and conciseness,
the two terms have been applied to studies of literature
as well as arts such as painting. In the present study,
they are used to designate two distinct modes of composi
tion or patterns of organization in poetry, responsible
for the production of meaning. In the metaphoric mode,
images are related to one another in terms of similarity
and contrast; they are essentially variations on a common
theme. For example, in the following couplet from "Seeing
a Friend off" by Li Po £-% &_/:
Floating clouds: the wanderer's mind;
The setting sun: an old friend's feeling.^
>5 ^ A $ " i i -
the images are structured metaphorically in each line since
comparison can be detected between the clouds and the
wanderer, and between the setting sun and an old friend
(the poet). Like the rootless clouds, the wanderer drifts
on and feels lost. Like the setting sun, the harbinger of
the night, the poet is saddened by the departure of a dear
friend. On the other hand, in the metonymic mode, images
are related to one another in terms of (non-metaphorical)
juxtaposition and correlation. It is illustrated by this
aria san-ch ' u/ by Ma Chih-yuan ] _ _ of the Yuan
period:
Withered vines, an old tree, evening crows;
A small bridge, flowing river, homes.of men;
An ancient road, west wind, a lean horse;
The sun setting in the west,
____________________________________ ’ 7
A broken-hearted man at the end of the sky.^
Here th.e images comprise a visual representation imbued
with a deep sense of sadness and loneliness. The setting
sun in this case has no metaphorical significance; it
functions as a meaningful component of the experience
captured in a poetic moment, and as such only. The evoca
tiveness or connotation of the poem does not come from any
underlying comparison or analogy, but from the interrela
tions of the images.
By emphasizing the metonymic mode in Chinese
poetry, I am by no means suggesting that metaphor is
rarely used or unimportant in Chinese poetry. But the
point is that, compared with English poetry, metaphor as
a poetic mode has a much more limited significance and is
overshadowed by metonymy in Chinese poetry. To further
illustrate this idea, two poems will be examined, one from
Chinese and the other from English. Both poems are fairly
representative of the common poetic mode in their tradi
tions .
The Chinese poem I choose to look at is "Ch'ang-o"
by Li Shang-yin t^ ie late T'ang period:
On the mica-inlaid screens shadows of candlelight are
8
deep;
The Long River slowly on the decline, morning stars
are falling.
Ch'ang-o must regret stealing the elixir--
Seas of jade, blue sky--night after night.
The title of the poem alludes to the legendary character,
Ch’ang-o, in ancient China who stole from her husband the
elixir of immortality and flew to the moon. Literally,
"ch'ang-o" means "fair and delicate," describing the beauty
of the lady. Thus, she is often referred to as the fair
immortal living in the Moon Palace. The poem begins by
focusing on the luxurious interior of the palace, suggested
by the "mica-inlaid screens." The deep Shadows of candle
light connote both the length of time and a sense of
emptiness. The receding of the galaxy ("The Long River")
and the falling of the morning stars (from the perspective
of the moon above) signal the coming of the sunrise and the
end of the long night. We gather that the lady has stayed
up all night, an indication that she is not happy or
peaceful since she cannot go to sleep. This brings out
the underlying irony of the situation. The "seas of jade”
(referring to the nebulae) and the "blue sky" remain the
same every night; they are eternal. Likewise, the lady
stays forever young and beautiful, but she is also forever
lonely and unhappy.
Thus, the poem subtly presents the dilemma between
the supernatural state which brings immortality and eternal
9
youth and the human state in which one finds relationships,
warmth, but also old age and death. Having chosen the
former, Ch'ang-o has to endure the everlasting loneliness
and emptiness. Immortality, which seemed to promise an
end to human worries and fears, proves to be the cause of
eternal suffering. Night after night, she is to relive
this inner struggle and to experience the pain of being
imprisoned in the inhuman, totally isolated Moon Palace.
In the poem, the focus moves from the interior of
the palace in line 1 to the celestial surroundings of the
palace in line 2. The only discursive element occurs in
line 3, and the poem ends with the images of the night
sky of somber blue and green. While the images in the
first two lines suggest temporal progression and spatial
expansion, those in the last line are deliberately static;
in the realm of immortality, time seems to be frozen and
is meaningless. Overall, the poem works by the correlation
of the images.
For an example of the metaphoric mode, I shall turn
12
to another Romantic poem, Coleridge's "The Eolian Harp."
Written in 1795, the poem is one of the earliest and
certainly the most important Romantic poems. As M. H.
Abrams demonstrates, it provides the image that is to be
come the central symbol of Romantic sensibility and philo-
13
sophy: the "correspondent breeze." Three explicit
10
comparisons are' made to describe the various stages of
the interaction between the wind and the harp. First, the
harp is compared to a coy maiden "half yielding to her
lover"--passive and unmotivated. It is not acting by it
self, but reacting to the external stimulus. However, the
initial encounter becomes more and more lively and dynamic
once it is started.
...And now, its strings
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untam'd wing.'
H t 1 - ‘ ?-■ r, ■ ; • r- •
The music is now compared to the magical tunes played by
Elfins, which (with a shift iri sense perception from the
plane of hearing to that of sight) are further compared to
the birds of Paradise. The imposition of one metaphor
upon another is frequently found in Romantic and later
poetry, but here we also witness a subtle progression of
imagery, from passive (a coy maiden) to active (birds on
the wing). The birds are free, take the initiative of the
action— flying, and corresponds to the wind in being en
gaged in a similar kind of motion. Just as the flying of
the birds canfehardly be differentiated from the wind, the
motion within becomes one with the motion without. The
working of the imaginative mind is identified with the
working of nature:
11
0.' the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where—
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so fill'd;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is music slumbering on her instrument.
A merge occurs here, adumbrated by a merge of sense per
ceptions: "A light in sound, a sound-like power in light."
If the "mute still air" is potential music, then the wind,
which is air in motion, is music itself. The wind and the
harp, the agent and the receiver of the action, the nouri
shing spirit of nature and the creative imagination, are
merged into one.
As distinguished from English poetry in which
metaphor is of primary importance, it is metonymy that
plays a prominent role in Chinese poetry. The difference
is further reflected in and supported by poetic theories
produced by the two traditions. The continuous interest
in metaphor and the tremendous body of works on the topic
we have seen in the West is practically absent in its
Chinese counterpart. The relative lack;of metaphor theo- •
ries and studies in Chinese literary criticism may well be
a fair indication of the degree of significance metaphor
enjoys in Chinese poetry.
In an attempt to prove the prevalence of metaphor
in Chinese poetry, Yu-kung Kao and Tsu-lin Mei apply the
Jakobsonian definition of metaphor as the principle of
12
equivalence to T'ang poetry. But they modfy it in an im
portant way; that is, they dispense with the notion of
comparison or substitution that, as I shall argue later, is
implied in Jakobson's formulation and central to the defi
nition of metaphor. As a result, any situation where simi
larity or contrast exists between two units of the poem—
words, images, lines, or couplets--is labeled metaphoric.
It is no wonder that, thus defined, metaphor lends itself
extremely well to analysing the Recent Style poetry, since
the genre requires, formally and prosodically, parallelism
("tuei-o" / or "tuei-j ang" ) . It seems that
the authors are also aware of this implication when they
say: "the couplet, a structural unit central to many forms
of Chinese poetry, requires both semantic and syntactic
equivalences.While they do an excellent job in showing
the function of allusion as a subtle metaphoric device,
the validity of their consideraly loosened definition of
metaphor is questionable.
The potential problem is revealed by comparing
these two examples cited by Kao and Mei, both of which are
taken from "The Yangtze and Hah Rivers" by Tu Fu :
(1) Setting sun, heart_still hale;
Autumn wind, ]_from/ sickness about to revive.
(2) Yangtze and Han, a homesick stranger;
Ch’ien and K'un, one withered pedant.
%r B M ± iSJL M.
13
On couplet (1) the authors say:
The first line implies both similarity and contrast:
"Though my heart is like the setting sun (in the state
of decline), it is still hale," and "My heart, unlike
the setting sun, is still hale." The same applies to
the second line: "Though my sickness is like the
autumn wind (as the harbinger of death), it will soon
be cured," and "My sickness, unlike the autumn wind,
will soon be cured.
On couplet (2) they say:
...the underlying principle is contrast instead of
similarity; the smallness of the human figure is con
trasted with the vastness of the universe. Contrast
also has the effect of creating new meaning; smallness
is not inherent in "homesick stranger" or "withered
pedant," but this semantic feature comes to the fore
when these items occur in the context of objects of
immense size— Yangtze and Han, the two great riverj.
and Ch'ien and K'un, symbols for Heaven and Earth.
While it is true that contrast can be found in both cou- •
plets, there is an essential difference in the nature of
the contrast. Namely, in couplet (1), the contrast is
based on an implicit comparison whereas no such relation
exists in couplet (2). The structure of couplet (1) can be
diagrammed as; sunset 4 old age; autumn wind 4 sickness,
where "4" stands for "similar to and at the same time
different from." However, the structure of couplet (2) is
simply: rivers — stranger; heaven and earth -- pedant
(both "stranger" and "pedant" referring to the poet him
self) .
Now that we have seen the difference between these
two couplets, the next question, then, is: Can contrast
alone constitute a metaphoric relation, or does it have to
14
be based on an ji priori comparison or resemblance? Since
Kao and Mei take their definition from Jakobson, it is
useful to re-examine the original formulation.
If "child" is the topic of the message, the-speaker
selects one among the extant, more or less similar,
nouns like child, kid, youngster, tot, all of them
equivalent in a certain respect, and then, to com
ment on this topic, he may select one of the seman
tically cognate verbs— sleeps, dozes, nods, naps.
Both chosen words combine in the speech chain. The
selection is produced on the base of equivalence,
similarity and dissimilarity, synonymity and antony-
mity, while the combination, the build up of the
sequence, is based on contiguity.^ (my emphasis)
One engages in a metaphoric process when one chooses among
comparable terms. It seems that here Jakobson takes for
granted the fact that metaphor is first of all comparison;
thus, he does ’ not deem it necessary to stress it as he
does the new concept of equivalence. Equivalence does not
come prior to but after comparison. It is a paradigmatic
or vertical process, substituting one term with another
that is comparable— i.e., simultaneously similar and
different. To use "tot" instead of "child" is metaphoric,
but to use, say, "playground" instead of "child" is not,
though we may say there is contrast between "playground"
and "child" in terms of size or spatial dimension.
To go back to the two couplets discussed above, it
is clear that the first one is rightly metaphoric while
the other is not. Contrast alone does not automatically
guarantee a metaphoric relation. There is no similarity
15
or resemblance, implicit or explicit, between the poet and
the rivers, or between him and heaven and earth. The con
trast is a purely spatial or visual one, and such only.
Faced with the seemingly infinite space before him, the
homesick poet feels an acute sense of helplessness and
loneliness. The way each two images are related is hori
zontal or syntagmatic. Therefore, the second couplet is
more properly described as metonymic than metaphoric.
Kao and Mei state that "similarity is always co-
2 0
present with contrast," to which I totally agree. In
fact, by definition, a metaphor always denotes similarity
and connotes dissimilarity or contrast. For, otherwise, it
would be a tautology, a meaningless redundancy rather than
a legitimate metaphor. What I have been concerned with is:
how far can we push the idea of equivalence and still con
sider it metaphor? If the scope of metaphor is expanded
to designate similarity or contrast, not similarity and
contrast, do we indeed still have metaphor? As I have
tried to show above, contrast not founded on similarity or
comparison is not necessarily metaphor; it could well be
metonymy.
The same problem underlies another poem discussed
by Kao and Mei, but in this case it takes a much more
complex and subtle form. The poem in question is Li Po's
"Jade Step Plaint":
16
Jade steps bring forth white dew,
Which, as the night lingers on, wets gauze stockings.
Taking down thje crystal crurtain,
Translucent, /she/ gaze_/s/ the autumn moon.
The poem is used by the authors to illustrate the complex
structure of equivalence (thus, metaphor) at work in T'ang
poetry. According to them, equivalence is found between
and among all the images in the quatrain: jade steps, white
dew, gauze stockings, crystal curtain, and autumn moon, all
2 2
of which are "cold, white, translucent." While it is
true that they convey a unified sensory impression, those
images function on an even more significant level whereby
meaning is generated. The jade steps and crystal curtain
also tell us the milieu in which the poem is situated.
The lady obviously lives in affluent conditions; thus,
material worries are ruled out as the possible cause of her
grief. Furthermore, the clues heighten the pathos of the • •
poem in that her material comfort cannot abate her loneli
ness. That the gauze stockings are wet implies the length
of time through which she has been standing. The original
more forcefully connotes the duration of time; "ch ' in"
translated as "to wet" by Kao and Mei, literally means
"to invade" or "to encroach upon," which vividly suggests
the dews' gradually creeping into or infiltrating the
flimsy stockings. It also evokes the idea of the passivity
17
and victimization of the lady, who is helpless in face of
her sad situation. The aggravating night chill makes her
go inside the chamber, but it does not stop her from
gazing at the moon and grieving through another sleepless
night.
The title of the poem tells us the poem belongs to
the poetic genre called the "court tune" ]_ fcung-f-z 1 u
or ILsM, kung-tiao/ , depicting the life and sentiments of
court ladies. But such knowledge is not necessary for the
reader to appreciate the poem since the impact of the work
comes from within itself. The images not only present a
temporal progression, as noted by Kao and Mei, but they
also reveal a vertical perceptual process. The focus moves
gradually from the jade steps to the white dews on these
steps, to the stockings on the steps, to the curtain hang-
* ■
ing indoor, and finally to the moon above. The correlation
of imagery creates an ambience that is both evocative and
sensual. While the images share some common qualities,
they are not metaphoric since they do not refer to any
figurative sense beyond themselves. It is the way and
order in which they are juxtaposed that makes the poem
so subtly powerful. Therefore, contrary to the assertion
that the poem is metaphoric, I would argue that it is the
logic of metonymy that underlies the structure of the
poem and is responsible for its aesthetic impact.
18
The confounding of the metaphoric and metonymic
modes that we have seen is instructive in» that it may
illuminate a significant aspect of the peculiar nature of
Chinese poetry. Kao's and Mei's study unwittingly shows
that, when the parameters of metaphor are expanded, it
might turn into metonymy. If what I have demonstrated
above is valid, then metaphor and metonymy might not be
directly opposed to each other as defined by Structuralism.
Ttiey could be but the two extremes on the same spectrum.
In Part I of the present study, then, I shall pursue this
implication by examining the concept of metaphor as con
ceived in the Chinese poetic tradition.
The closest counterparts of the term "metaphor" in
Chinese poetics are "pi" /_tt./ ("comparison") and "hsing"
(usually translated as "association"), which arise
from the scholarship of the Book of Songs Shih
ching/. While there are many brief discussions of the
terms scattered in the commentaries on the Book of Songs ,
no fully developed and systematic theory has ever been
proposed. In the first chapter, I shall give a historical
overview of these two terms as defined by traditional as
well as modern critics and scholars. By reconstructing
the major strands of opinions on pi and hsing, I hope to
outline the controversy surrounding the issue of hs ing in
particular and thus to prepare for a more comprehensive
19
definition of hs ing.
In Chapter 2, I shall examine how jri and hs ing are
actually used in the original context of the Book of Songs.
Such an analysis shows that while _ p _ i is solely metaphor
(including simile) , hs ing comprises a much wider spectrum,
ranging from the metaphoric to the metonymic mode. This
not only explains the diverse and sometimes conflicting
views critics have held, but it further implies that there
is no categorical differentiation between metaphor and
metonymy.- One tends to slide into the other. The relation
of diametric opposition between the two modes is more
adequately to be replaced by one of extension and homoge
neity. Metaphor can be seen as" a form of metonymy, and
vice versa.
The fusion of metaphor and metonymy as revealed by
the problematic of hs ing has some far-reaching implica
tions for Chinese poetry in general. It accords with the
lack of theoretical discussions of metaphor per se as well
as the relative insignificance of metaphor in Chinese
poetry and poetics when compared with the West. In addi
tion, this observation prompts one to ask: Why has metaphor
in China never achieved nearly as high a status as it has
in the West? And such questioning leads naturally to a
study of the concept of metaphor and the concept of poetry
in the two literary traditions. The answer that I pro
20
pose in Chapter 4 is that in China metaphor has never taken
on metaphysical import as a cognitive and creative (i.e.,
imaginative) device. By the same token, poetry for the
Chinese does not have the epistemological or ontological
significance attributed to it by Western critics such as
Aristotle, Sir Philip Sidney, Coleridge, and Shelley. As
I shall try to show, the notions of mimes is and poiesis
are quite foreign to the Chinese, who view the origin of
poetry as residing in man's intuitive and spontaneous
response to the world. Poetry neither imitates a trans
cendental reality nor creates one through the imaginative
transformation of phenomenal reality.
Further issues, then, stem from the study of meta
phor and poetry, issues of broader cultural and philoso
phical implications. Specifically, they bear upon three
interrelated areas of concern: the general world view or
episteme, the nature of language and meaning, and the re
lation between man and his environment, or the poetic "I"
and nature, as conceived by the Chinese and Western tra
ditions. They are all interrelated in that metaphor can
be regarded as a form of man's understanding and interpre
tation of reality, and as a means of communicating such
understanding and interpretation.
That metaphor effects a bridging or unifying of
two separate realms or orders of reality, commonly held by
21
Western critics and theorists, is implicated in a basically
dualistic view of abstract ideas and concrete appearances.
Dualism has been seriously challenged since the nineteeth
century. In the work of Jacques Derrida, for instance, the
concept of metaphor as referring to a transcendental signi-r
fied is analysed from a purely philosophical point of view,
and it is maintained that the concept reflects and can
exist only in the Western metaphysical frame of mind. By
contrast, the absence of metaphor theories in the Chinese
tradition bespeaks a quite different epis teme. In Chapter
5, I suggest that Chinese culture embraces an essentially
holistic rather than dualistic, interpenetrative rather
than antithetical, view of reality. It is found in the
Book of Changes ]_ I ching / , the earliest philosophical
system of China; in Taoism, the mainstream of Chinese
thinking of equal magnitude and influence to Confucianism;
and in Ch * an (Zen) Buddhism, the philosophy and way of
life that flourished in T1ang China and helped shape
Chinese thought thereafter.
The second implication of metaphor and metonymy in
Chinese poetry and poetics regards its relation to how
language and meaning are viewed. The notion that language
is inextricably related to the world view of a particular
culture has been vigorously developed since the late
nineteenth century along two parallel lines of studies:
anthropology and philosophy. Based on comparative studies
2 2
of various languages and cultures, anthropologists such as
Benjamin Whorf , Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Claude
Levi-Strauss all in one way or another advance the theory
that language not only embodies but, more importantly,
codifies the way reality is perceived and apprehended by
the user of language. Consequently, cultural differences
are reflected in and can be accounted for by the differen- •
ces in the views of language and of how meaning is gene
rated in language.
Carrying the same implication, though from a
different perspective, philosophers such as Nietzsche,
Heidegger, and Derrida also argue that linguistic para
digms reflect the structure of thinking; grammatical cate
gories rrep r es ettt * cone ep tual categories man imposes on
reality. For them, language is so closely related to
thinking that to change the way one thinks is extremely
difficult, if not impossible, since one has to use the
language without at the same time subscribing to its
underlying presuppositions, to resort to the language
while at the same time undermining its implied premises.
Metaphor, defined in the West as the means of
attaining the abstract concept through the concrete image,
designates : the same modality of language which moves from
the referent to the reference, from the signifier to the
signified. Meaning, then, is something other than and be
23
yond its linguistic manifestation. From the Chinese—
Taoist in particular— point of view, however, the referen
tial structure of language is under question. There is
no simple correspondence between words and their meaning.
Rather, meaning is considered the result of the interplay
between what is said and what is not said. Silence.and
speech form a continuum; they are mutually implicated and
interdependent. This shall be the subject of investiga
tion in Chapter 6.
Finally, if we agree that literature or art in
general is essentially an everchanging dialogue between
man and nature, then metaphor can be viewed as one way of
defining and perceiving such relation. The conspicuous
position metaphor enjoys in Anglo-American poetry, espe
cially from the Romantic to the modern period, creates a
form of dialogue that is certainly different from that
born of Chinese poetry where metonymy plays a more signi
ficant role. Whereas duality between man and nature per
sists in English poetry, Chinese nature poetry presents
a state of tranquility and harmony. In this regard, post
modern American poetry is closer to Chinese poetry than to
its English predecessor in that it represents a move away
from dualism, in particular the dichotomy of subject and
object, and expresses an immanentist attitude toward the
external world. The affinity can be partly attributed to
the Chinese influence on some of the postmodern poets,
____________________________________________ 24
most notably Ezra Pound, Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, the
later Kenneth Rexroth, and Charles Tomlinson. But, per
haps more accurately, the change in poetic sensibility
should be regarded as part of the reaction against the
Cartesian way of thinking that has evolved in modern
philosophy, science, and aesthetics. In Chapter 7, then,
I shall define the essence of Chinese nature poetry. It
will be contrasted to Symbolist poetry where metaphor
plays a dominant role, and related to postmodern American
poetry that endorses a metonymic mode.
The aim of the present study, therefore, is two
fold. First, I hope to illuminate the metonymic mode
that is prevalent in Chinese poetry as distinguished from
the metaphoric.mode in Anglo-American poetry. Second, by
approaching the metaphoric and metonymic modes from a
comparative perspective, I mean to. bring into relief some
of the most prominent aspects of Chinese culture and
Chinese mentality. Back in February of 1915, Pound
announced his program for a renaissance in English poetry
which would be based on a new and genuine understanding of
Chinese poetry. In his own words,
The first step of a renaissance, or awakening, is the
importation of models for painting, scuplture, or '
writing.... The last century rediscovered the middle
ages. It is possible that this century may find find
a new Greece in China. In the meantime we have come
upon a new table of values.
25
The statement has its validity today in that Chinese poetry
still provides useful and vital "models" for poetry in
general. And, as Pound is well aware of, poetry is not
to be understood separately from the overall artistic and
cultural contexts. Finally, it seems to me this "new
table of values" Pound envisaged in Chinese poetry and
culture is still in the process of being defined and ex
plored. It is hoped that the present work will contribute
to this continuing, meaningful undertaking.
*
26
NOTES TO INTRODUCTION
^Arthur Waley, One Hundred and Seventy Chinese
Poems (London: Constable, 1918), p. 7.
^Idem., Introduction to the 1962 edition of One
Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, referred to by Yu-kung
Kao and Tsu-lin Mei, "Meaning, Metaphor, and Allusion in
T'ang Poetry," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 38 (De
cember 1978): 306.
^For an account of Romantic views on metaphor and
imagination, see my discussion in Ch. 4.
^William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, Literary
Criticism: A Short History, 2 vols. (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1957), vol. 2, p. 749.
“*From Selected Poems and Prefaces by William
Wo rdswor th, ed. Jack Stillinger (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1965), pp. 113-4.
^Unless otherwise indicated, all the translations
of Chinese poems and passages in the present study are
mine. All the poems from the T'ang_period herein discussed
are f_rom the Complete T 1 ang Poems 1 |^, Ch ' uan T ' ang
shih/ , 12 vols. (Taipei: Ming-lun, 1971), hereafter re
ferred to as CTS. "River Snow" by Liu Tsung-yuan is from
vol. 6, p. 3948.
^Joseph Frank, The Widening Gyre, Crisis and
Mastery in Modern Literature (Bloomington: Indiana Uni
versity Press, 1963), p. 13.
^Here I am referring to Roman Jakobson's famous
distinction between metaphor and metonymy in "Two Aspects
of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances," in
Fundamentals of Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1956); rpt.
in Selected Writings of Roman Jakobson, II: Word and
Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), pp. 239-59. The dis
tinction between metaphor as the axis of selection and
metonymy, the axis of combination was first made by •
Saussure in Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade
Baskin (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966); it has been further
defined by Levi-Strauss, Barthes, and Lacan: see Elmar
Holenstein, Roman Jakobson’s Approach to Language (Bloom
ington: Indiana University Press, 1976), pp. 137-52; David
27
Lodge, The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy, and
the Typology of Modern Literature (London: Edward Arnold,
1977), pp. 73-124.
9CTS, vol. 3, p. 1804.
_^Ma Chih-yuan, ^Sky-Clear Sand," from Anthology of
Ch ' u J_ A , Ch ' u hsuan / , ed . Cheng Ch'ien (Taipei:
Chung—hua wen—hua, 1953), p. 5.
13-CTS , vol. 8, p. 6197.
^From The Portable Coleridge, ed. with an intro, by
I. A. Richards (New York: The Viking Press, 1950), pp. 65-
67. The entire text of the poem is as follows:
My pensive Sara.' thy soft cheek reclined
Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is
To sit beside our Cot, our Cot o’ergrown
Kith white-flower'd Jasmin, and the broad-leav'd
Myrtle,
(Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love!)
And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light,
Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve
Serenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be)
Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents
Snatch'd from yon bean-field! and the world s_o_ hush'd!
The Stilly murmur of the distant Sea
Tells us of silence.
And that simplest Lute,
Placed length-ways in the clasping casement, hark!
How by the desultory breeze caress'd,
Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover ,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the- wrong! And now, its strings
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untam'd wing!
0! the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where—
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to' love all things in a world so fill'd;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.
28
And thou, my Love I as on the midway slope
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my half-clos'd eye-lids I behold
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,
And tranquil muse upon tranquility;
Fall many a thought uncall'd and undetain'd,
And many idle flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive' brain,
As wild and various as the random gales
That swell and flutter on this subject Lute.’
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely fram'd,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast,- one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?
But thy more serious eye a mild reproof
Darts, 0 beloved WomanI nor such thoughts
Dim and unhallow'd d.ost thou not reject,
And biddest me walk humbly with my God.
Meek Daughter in the family of ChristI
Well hast thou said and holily dispers'd
These shapings of the undegenerate mind;
Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break
On vain Philosophy's aye-babbling spring.
For never guiltless may I speak of him,
The Incomprehensible.' save when with awe
I praise him, and with Faith that inly feels;
Who with his saving mercies healed me,
A sinful and most miserable man,
Wilder'd and dark, and gave me to possess
Peace, and this Cot, and thee, heart-honour ' d Maid.'
l^M. h . Abrams, "The Correspondent Breeze: A
Romantic Metaphor," in English Romantic Poets: Modern
Essays in Criticism qd. M. H. Abrams (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1960), pp. 37-53.
l^Yu-kung Kao and Tsu-lin Mei, "Meaning, Metaphor,
and Allusion in T'ang Poetry," p. 354.
l-’lbid. , p. 290. Poems taken from this essay
follow the authors' translations.
16lb id. , p. 289.
17ibid., p. 290.
18lb id. , p. 289.
^Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics," in
29
Style in Language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Cambridge: Tech
nology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
1960), p. 358.
^Yu-kung Kao and Tsu-lin Mei, p. 290.
Ibid., p. 317. Compare Ezra Pound's translation
of the poem, "The J^wel-Stairs1 Grievance" (Cathay /jLondon:
Elkin Mathews, 1915_/):
The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew,
It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,
And I let down the crystal curtain
And watch the moon through the clear autumn.
22ibid., p. 318.
23EZra Pound, "The Renaissance," Poetry V (February
1915): 228.
30
PART I. HSING AND CHINESE POETRY
31
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEMATICS OF PI AND HSING
IN CHINESE CRITICISM
To discuss metaphor in the Chinese poetic tradi
tion, it is necessary to begin with the Book of Songs,
sometimes simply referred to as the Songs, the earliest
anthology of shih or poetry in its original form of song-
words.^ The collection contains three-hundred-odd songs
ranging from the twelfth to the sixth century B.C., and,
from the various references to it in the Confucian Canon
such as the Book of Histofical Documents g> Shang shu/
and by Confucius himself in the An ale cts Lun yu / ,
it is certain that "the Songs attained during Confucius'
lifetime in the six century B.C. a scope similar to their
present one." However, the first commentary on the Songs,
the "Major Preface" J_ , Ta shu / , was not written until
centuries later. The "Preface," traditionally attributed
to Pu Hsiang _/ fe\_/ (better known as Tzu-hsia of
the fifth century B.C., is now generally believed to be a
much later work by Wei Hung of the first century
A.D.^ According to Fan Yeh J_ , author of the History
of Later Han j _ ^ , Hou-Han shu/, Wei Hung "received
32
teachings from Hsieh Man-ch'ing J_f U t M who learned from
Mao Ch’ang ^3Lr|k__/ • ^ Therefore, the "Major Preface" is
significant more as a representative view of the pre-Han
and Han exegetic tradition than as the expression of a
single critic. The theoretical and critical concepts con
tained in the essay, rather than individual inventions,
should be taken as well-established criteria for studying
the Book of Songs , the first poetry collection of China.
This postulation is solidified by the idea of the
"six principles" liu yi/ of poetry laid out in the
"Major Preface." They are: feng Jj%L/ , fu » Pi /j^/ »
hsing J_^_/ » y _ a _ ASft / , sung • The names of the six
principles as well as theorder in which they appear are
an exact rendering of the "six songs" or "six tunes"
liu shih/ recorded in the Rites of Chou J_j Chou li / ,
where it is stated that they be taught as basic lessons
by the Grand Master J_ , t * a i-shih/ of the "Spring
Officialdom" , t s ' un-kuan /, a governmental agency in
charge of state ceremonies and diplomatic liaisons
Granted that in Chou times the Songs was studied and used
for mainly pedagogical and practical purposes, it is
nevertheless clear that the six principles were well
accepted and long in use before Han.
Beginning with the "Major Preface," the six prin
ciples of the Songs are traditionally arranged in two
33
groups, each, addressing a distinct literary concern. The
first group, composed of feng, y a, sung, names the source,
nature, and function of the poems. Feng ("airs") refers
to lyrics of the common people; ya ("elegantiae") refers
to songs of the courtly class as political commentaries;
sung ("eulogia") refers to hymns performed in ceremonies
in the royal ancestral temple. Thus, feng, ya, sung can be
treated as names of generic categories designating division
of the Songs. The other group, of fju, £i_, hs ing , describes
the mode of expression or literary device a song employs.
Fu ("exposition") is the expository or narrative mode; pi
("comparison") is the analogical or metaphoric mode.
Whereas the meanings of fu and pi are relatively clear and
straightforward, hs ing presents a special problem of defi
nition. Literally, "hsing" can mean a number of things:
"to stimulate," "to arouse," "to initiate," "to arise,"
"to begin," etc., and, as we shall see, critics invariably
draw upon one or more of these meanings in their dis
cussions of h s ing. The prevalent view among traditional
critics and scholars holds that hs ing is similar to pi
and is also a metaphoric mode of some sort. Therefore, our
study of the metaphoric mode•in■Chinese poetry must begin
with a study of and hs ing, in particular the complex
nature of hs ing in relation to pi. Such a study will
include: a review of the representative views of hs ing in
34
the critical tradition; an analysis of the pi and hs ing
modes as they are used in the Book of Songs; and, finally,
an attempt at a more comprehensive definition of the terms.
The problem of hsing surfaces in the earliest
exegesis of the Songs by Mao Heng and Mao Ch ' ang,
which was the authoritative interpretation from Later Han
up to Sung. Of the three poetic modes only hsing was
identified. The fact that it was deemed necessary to
single out hsing among the other modes indicates the diffi
culty involved in explicating the term already recognized
by the Mao editors.
In the Han period, when comprehensive annotations
of the Confucian classics were being written, the general
tendency was to interpret the Songs as socio-political
allegories for the purpose of moral edificationand poli
tical rectification. The didactic approach is best
represented by the Confucian scholar, Cheng Hsuan »
who annotated the Mao exegesis. Cheng Hsuan interpreted
pi and hsing as allegorical modes with pi aiming to casti
gate moral improprieties and hsing to praise and commend
£
the virtuous ruling class. To fit the interpretive
scheme, Cheng's annotations are not unfrequently far
fetched and strenuous. Whatever historical value they
might have, such an approach fails to achieve a genuine
understanding of and hs ing as literary critical concepts.
35
In the "Treatise on Literary Genres" from the
Collection of Literary Writings by Genres j _
Wen-chiang liu-pieh lun / , Chi Yu of the third cen
tury A.D. does just this — he places p i and hs ing in a
literary and aesthetic perspective and defines them this
way :
Fu, speech of elaborate exposition; pjL, words employ
ing categorical comparison; hsing, exclamatory
utterance imbued with feeling.^
^ - t ^ Jt$
There is some notable discrepancy between the definition
of hsing and those of fu and pi. While fu and pi are
clearly established as a poetic technique, h s ing is de
fined in terms of its affective power which can be applied
to poetry in general. In fact, Chi Yu's formulation of
hsing echoes the classical definition-of poetry as "ex
pression of intent" shih yen chih/ articulated
in early Chou documents such as the Book of Historical
Do cuments and the Book of Music Yueh chi / . In the
Mao exegesis, for instance, this ancient concept is thus
elaborated on:
Poetry is where intent resides. In the heart it is
intent; uttered in' language it becomes poetry.
Feeling stirs within, and it takes form in words.
When words are insufficient, one sighs; when sighs are
insufficient, one sings and chants; when singing and
chanting are insufficient, one dances with one's
hands, taps with one's feet.®
if ^ $£ f'>, if g
% tx. P JL ££ i- ^ /5L = t f = -
a-
36
That Chi Yu specifically associates hsing with the emotive
and expressive nature of poetry has a bearing on later
critics in that, rejecting the moralistic approach, he
focuses on the internal structure of hsing , emphasizing
the aesthetic impact of the poetic mode. The implication
that hs ing is closer to feeling and therefore to poetry
in its origin is to be developed and elaborated by later
Q
critics.
The initial study of hs ing from an intrinsic point
of view is further pursued by Liu Hsieh whose work,
The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons j _
Wen-hsin tiao-lung/, is indisputably a landmark in the
history of Chinese literary theory and criticism. Com
pleted before A.D. 502, Liu Hsieh's work is the first
systematic study of literature in its own right and re
presents the maturity of theoretical awareness and criti
cal acumen. An entire chapter is devoted to the -
discussion of p i-hs ing, where we find the distinction
thus made:
...Therefore, pL means to adhere, hs ing to arouse.
What adheres to meaning uses close categorical analogy
in order to point to a situation. What arouses
emotion relies on the subtle to formulate conceptions.
Arouse emotion and forms of hsing will be established;
adhere to meaning and examples of pi will be pro
duced. Pi stores up indignation to castigate with
words; hsing uses examples to satirize.^
'fcfcfhpC * > A KA iL. Pt^JLS.
f c t - A ' J % H t &') ^ i i l L
37
Except for the last sentence which shows the influence of
the didactic-allegorizing approach to the Songs that
dominates Han exegeses, the above passage suggests a fresh
and fruitful insight into p i-hs ing« The difference
between the two can be discussed in two ways: 1. in terms
of the semantic structure of the poetic mode; 2. in terms
of aesthetic effect. Liu points out that hsing works by
"arousing" or evoking feeling while pi works by "adhering"
to an analogy. "Arouse" implies an open structure whose
meaning goes beyond its immediate semantic context; "ad
here," on the other hand, implies a closed structure
whose meaning is created by and contained within the re
lation between two terms. "Arouse" and "adhere" also
apply to the poetic effect hs ing and pi exert. Hs ing,
evocative of feeling, is more affective or emotive; pi,
solely based on analogy, is more oriented toward intel
lectual or logical understanding. In conclusion, Liu
considers hsing more subtle than p i: "pi is explicit,
hs ing implicit" _ / > - £ . - $ & ^
Liu's insight into p i-hs ing, however sketchy and
undeveloped it may be, is nevertheless taken up by his
contemporary, Chung Hung . Though there is no
historical evidence that Chung Hung was influenced by The
Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, his critical
work, the Classes of Poetry /_^bd, Shih p ' in / , completed
after A.D. 513, seems to echo Liu Hsieh in its treatment
° f pl-hsing.
In the introductory chapter, Chung Hung speaks of
the "three principles" rather than "six principles" of
poetry. To discuss fu-pi-hsing in isolation from feng-ya-
sung indicates Chung's recognition of them as constitutive
elements of poetry that warrant special critical attention.
This is how he defines the three terms:
Words come to an end, but meaning lingers on, ]_that
i - s . / hs ing. Usin£ an object as a comparison to one's
intent, /_that is_/ p i . Writing down a situation in a
straightforward manner and describing things with
language, ]_that is_/ fu.^
^ ifa_ m *rp
X'fr % % % *5n
Rath-er than the usual order, now hs ing is placed first,
which, may suggest that Chung Hung*considers it the most
important. Despite the brevity of the passage, Chung
shows the awareness of a subtle but essential difference
between hsing and the other poetic modes in terms of se
mantic structure. Hs ing , according to him, is more pro
found since its meaning is not limited or exhausted by
words, a point first suggested by Liu Hsieh, but now
expressed in a more explicit way in the use of "lingers
on" yu-yu / .
In this connection, Chung Hung does not proceed
to develop the idea. On the contrary, in what imme
diately follows, he, putting aside the distinction, uses
pi and hsing conjointly as a compound to refer to the
39
metaphoric mode in general, and he recommends that they be
used together with f_u in a balanced way. For, "if one uses
pi-hsing alone, the problem is obliqueness of meaning.
When meaning is oblique, words stumble. If one uses fu
alone, the problem is shallowness of meaning. When meaning
is shallow, the writing is loose" J _ ^ ^ - j s p i
f t ' ) &\&L - I : - 13
That "words do not exhaust meaning" J_ % 7f^j& , yen
pu chin yi/ is an ancient Chinese concept that is probably
first articulated in the Commentary on the Appended Judg
ments of the I ching » Hsi-tz'u chuan/, which will
concern us at a later time.^ But Liu Hsieh and Chung Hung
are the first critics to apply and relate it to the hsing
mode in particular. Even though both critics fail to de
velop this idea, they make a significant contribution to
the study of pi-hsing by calling attention to their in
ternal structure. The structure of hs ing can be called one
of "semantic emanation" which is responsible for the pro
found, affective impact hs ing creates on the reader. These
two aspects are inseparable, and later critics, following
the steps of Liu Hsieh and Chung Hung, tend to dwell on
either or both of them.
In the Styles of Poetry J_ Shih shih/, for
example, the Buddhist monk and literary - critic, Chiao-jan
compares and hs ing with regard to the way they
convey meaning respectively:
40
To refer to the image is p i. To refer t‘ o connota
tion is hs ing, which is significance behind imagery.^
What Chiao-jan is saying here reiterates observations made
by Liu Hsieh and Chung Hung. Another example is Li
Chung-meng ° ^ t^ ie Sung period who says:
Describing objects in order to state emotions is
called fu; both emotions and objects are therein
exhausted. Examining objects in order to invest them
with emotion is called £i_; the emotion adheres to the
object. Being stimulated by objects in order to
arouse emotion is called h s ing; the objects stir the
emo t ions.
^ ^ ^ ^
Finally, Chen Ch1 i^-yuan J_ of Sung speaks of hs ing
as "Implicit," "subtleV" and "broad," while pi is "ex
plicit," "straightforward," and "narrow" r f r i f c t - l i J t
HfifctA dh ^ ^ Thus far, the critics not only have
reached a clear distinction between p i and hsing, but, as
implied in their views, they also have placed hsing above
pi In terms of their literary merits.
As mentioned earlier, the Mao exegesis was held
the orthodox text for the interpretation of the Book of
Songs for over a thousand years. However, it was chal
lenged and somewhat superseded by the Comprehensive Com
mentaries on the Songs '/ Shih chi-chuan/ by Chu Hsi
, the leading Neo-Conf ucianis t philosopher of the
twelfth century. The difference between the two texts is
41
clearly shown in the way they classify the songs. For
instance, forty-eight of the hsing songs in the Mao text
18
are deleted and nineteen are added by Chu Hsi. Also
unlike the Mao editors who identify a song in one mode
only, Chu Hsi sees fu-pi-hsing as three constitutive
elements of poetry. A song can consist of more than one
poetic mode and is often a combination of two or more.
The most significant contribution, however, lies in the
way Chu Hsi further defines hsing in distinction from pi.
Drawing upon the verbal meanings of "to arouse"
and "to initiate," Chu interprets hsing as an opening
device, a device of "entering the topic" , . 1 u -1 * i / .
Namely, the poet sees certain things which in turn arouse
his emotion and induce poetic creation. Logically, then,
hs ing often occurs at the beginning of the poem; it is
used "to speak of something else so as to incite the words
of the song" . 19 This "something
else" can be an analogy, or it can be descriptive images
that do not metaphorically relate to the theme of the
poem. As Chu Hsi states it:
Generally sneaking, hsing does not quite rely on the
[£ igurative./ sense; it specifically uses the upper
line to give rise to the lower line. Pi is solely to
compare_that thing to this thing; sometimes ]_the com
parison/ is not stated, sometimes the rest of the poem
results from the thing being compared to. The modes
are quite different.
^ * tq 2 , | Vi stl
_________________________ 42
Elsewhere he also says, "/hsing/ often borrows one thing
to give rise to /_another_/; ]_it_/ does not rely on the
^figurative/ sense" £ -g / • Therefore,
"though pi is more precise, hsing is more profound in its
s ignif i cance " and "though £i
is precise, it is shallow. Though hs ing is broad in mean
ing, it is deep" £ttr^I^t;p;£'ps-'% •21 While
Chi Yu, Liu Hsieh, and Chung Hung before him have noted
the* open structure of hs ing and its profound emotive im
pact on the reader, Chu Hsi is perhaps the first critic to
offer an explanation as to how this can be achieved. As
a device of "entering the topic," hs ing sometimes works in
terms of association rather than strict metaphor or com
parison. The poet may start the poem in response to the
living situation he is in; the initial spontaneous response
then gives rise to a deeper thought which constitutes the
main theme of the poem. Therefore, when analogy exists
between the opening lines and the theme of the poem, both
the vehicle and the tenor must be present, while pi may
simply present the vehicle alone and the entire poem is
the development of the implied comparison. This idea is
summed up by Chu Hsi in the following passage:
To name the thing /theme or tenor/ is hs ing; not to
name it is jo£. ...To use p_i is to carry the comparison
all the way through without stating it. Hs ing and pi
are similar but different.^
T ^ \^\
43
In The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, t r i
Liu Hsieh remarks that "the meaning of hsing has perished"
^ The statement is ambiguous since it could
apply to the use of hsing as political satire or-; the- pro
blem of hs ing as a metaphoric mode. The latter implication
is supported by the fact that his discussion of j djL is more
detailed and elaborate than that of hs ing and is carried on
in a surer tone. Similarly, K'ung Ying-ta
T ' ang who compiles the Rectification of the Orthodoxy in
the Mao Text of the Songs > Mao-shih cheng-yi/
_ _ 2 ^
calls hs ing "obscurity of reason" _ A i l § ! . p j | k , li-yin /. But
he fails to provide an explanation. The problematic of
hs ing, beginning with the Mao exegesis, is clearly recog
nized by Chu Hsi when he says that "old discussions leave
hs ing only half defined" » 2 5
and much consideration is given to the topic as his
writings on literature show. Two significant assumptions
can be derived from them. First, hsing includes pi, not
the other way around, and, second, hs ing can be associa-
tively oriented rather than strictly based on a one-to-one
correspondence between two terms.
Chu Hsi 's view has great influence on later
critics. Yen Ts 'an °f Southern Sung, for example,
takes up this view and further divides hs ing into two
types: one is the "hsing which includes pi"
the other the "hsing which does not include pi" . / .
44 I
— O f .
tt__/. According to him, the latter, the associative
type, is less frequent than the former, metaphorical type
in the Book of Songs. The same theory is more or less
echoed in Yao Chi-heng / of Ch 1 ing , Ku Chieh-kang
, Chung Ching-wen > Liu Ta-pai / . - H i ) A.®_/ >
Ch ' u Wan-li /JliJS,! ! ? _ _ / , Hsu Fu-kuan , etc. , all of
2 7
the modern era.
The above summary, reconstructed from a breif re
view of important discussions on hsing, is not wholly
satisfactory since Chinese critics in general are prone to
making brief, impressionistic notes of personal responses
to and reflections on poetry. • ' As a result, they seldom
produce systematic expositions of a theoretical issue.
The controversy of hsing remains, and, specifically, we
may want to ask: what is the nature of association in com
parison with metaphor? Is association an adequate defi
nition of hs ing ? If not, how should it be defined? But
even before we can pursue these questions, we must take
into account another approach to hsing, one that can be
called the prosodic approach as distinguished from the
various semantic approaches I have outlined above.
The prosodic approach treats hs ing has basically
a prosodic device devoid of semantic relevance. It can be
traced to the Sung period, to Cheng Ch'iao who
invented the idea. In the Profound Meanings of the Six
45
Classics 5 Liu-ching ao-yi/ , he establishes the
oral origin of poetry in the Book of Songs:
Poetry, _/is_/ poetry of sound. It arises from one's
dispositions and feelings. The three hundred poems
of the ancient times are all meant to be sung. They
are sung to the tunes indigenous to the various
states.®
sf -3k -St +3L - f e ^ f
- 3 *. f c ) 1 S\ * f i f c
The passage raises three point's regarding Chinese poetry:
first, poetry is oral at its beginning; second, poetry is
the personal expression of the poet; and, third, the
different names of states and kingdoms (fifteen in all)
under which the songs are classified designate the dif
ferent tunes to which they were originally sung. Thus,
according to Cheng Ch'iao, "poetry is in sound, not in
— — 2 9
meaning" • Having established the
oral nature of poetry, he then relates hsing to it. In
a work on music, he says,
The origin of poetry is in sound, and the origin of
sound is in hsing. Birds, beasts, plants, and trees
are the sources of hsing. The Han scholars who
talked about poetry neither discussed sound nor did
they know anything about h s ing. Therefore, the
studies of birds, beasts, plants, and trees have
O A ' C
perished.
While it is somewhat puzzling what hs ing has to do with
the "studies of birds, beasts, plants, and trees," the
above passage spells out an original concept of-hsing as
46
the source of sound and therefore poetry. It can be said
t^ iat hs ing is fundamental and indeed prior to the produc
tion of poetry as songs.
It should be noted that Cheng's approach does not
necessarily conflict with the semantic approach of, for
instance, Chu Hsi. In fact, Chu Hsi accepts Cheng's idea
though he does not particularly dwell on it. As an opening
device, hs ing bears images that do not always have meta
phorical significance. And one of such possibilities is
that it serves a purely prosodic function. Therefore,
later critics often combine the two approaches in explain
ing hs ing as a poetic mode. The main reason for this is,
I think, not a compromise in theoretical stand but a
matter of necessity and practicality. Instances of hs ing
as purely prosodic are very rare in the Songs; one almost
always has to go beyond the prosodic aspect in order to
achieve a comprehensive understanding of the literary
work. Even in his own practice, Cheng Ch'iao who origi
nates the concept finds it hard to follow. When inter
preting a song, he still resorts to the semantic
significance rather than prosody and rhythm of the hs ing
mode .
Cheng's theory of hs ing, nevertheless, has created
considerable reverberations in modern scholarship. In
his discussions of hs ing . Chu Tzu-ch'ing strongly favors
«
3 1
Cheng's view and cites local folksongs for illustration.
________________ 4 7
As he sees it, rhythm or sound is the most basic way of
versifying and is therefore the first to be utilized by
primitive people. It is the prosodic correspondence and
rhythmic harmony, rather than semantic import and rhetori
cal consideration, that create an immediate aesthetic im
pact on the people in the early stages of a poetic
tradition. Ho Ting-sheng //l^ also agrees on this
point, calling hs ing the "accompanying sounds" or "foil
sounds" » ch 1 en-sheng / that have nothing to do with
32
the theme of the poem. Somewhat paraphrasing Cheng
Ch’iao* he defines hs ing as spontaneous and improvised
sounds that randomly name birds, beasts, plants, and
trees. What he means, I think, is that, as the poet re
sponds to the external environment, seeing birds, beasts,
etc. , he utters sounds that correspond to what he sees
though they bear no necessary releveance to the subject
matter of the song.
The most thorough and perhaps convincing discus
sion of hsing as a prosodic device is found in recent
studies. Unlike traditional critics, modern scholars draw
primarily on archeological evidence and secondarily on
Western literary and theoretical traditions to back up
their assertions. To give an overview of the argument, it
is necessary to begin with the beginning, that is, the
root of the term, hsing.
As already mentioned, h s ing literally means "to
48
stimulate," "to arouse," "to ini tiate , " "to arise," or
"to begin." Etymologically, the graph of hsing depicts
Vw ^ « A
four hands holding or lifting a tray: • It is
associated with the word "p ' an" /_?&/ whose archaic meaning
is "moving around" or "dancing in a circle." Therefore,
hs ing, in its original form, might well refer to either
the ejaculation of primitive men when lifting something, of
the same nature as "heave-ho," or the sounds or-phrases
uttered in high spirit in festive dancing. The two inter
pretations, not wholly unrelated, bear out two important
aspects of hsing: 1. hsing is derived from communal acti
vities, be it labor or dancing; it is born of and comes to
signify communal spirit; 2. hs ing produces an "uplifting"
effect, both practically and psychologically speaking.
Based on the given etymological grounds,
Shih-Hsiang Chen proposes that the word "hsing" is closely
related to the word "shih" or poetry, whose etymon signi
fies "the beating of rhythm with a foot resting on the
ground." In defining the hsing mode in the Book of Songs,
he therefore rejects the idea of hsing as a metaphoric
device, but rather sees it as "motif" in the form of
"refrain" or "incremental repetitions" that bring about an
uplifting effect on people. Hs ing as refrain, he argues,
is often composed of stock phrases handed down from pri
mitive culture whose original context has been lost. Its
poetic function in the Songs , therefore, is a phonetic or
49
prosodic one, manifested in alliteration, alternate rhyme,
etc. The scope of hsing consequently is enlarged so that
it becomes "a guideline for establishing the general
generic character of the Songs.
Chen's meticulous and erudite study contributes to
our understanding of hs ing in two significant ways: by
tracing the root of the word, it sheds light on the origi
nal association of hsing with the origin of Chinese poetry;
and, secondly, this premise entails closer attention to the
prosodic richniess of refrain and stock phrases pervasive
in the Songs, an aspect too often ignored by literary
critics. Following the same line of argument, Ching-hsien
Wang, in his study of the Songs as formulaic poetry de
rived from an oral tradition, treats hsing as stock phrases
that contribute to the musical effect of the poetry.
According to him,
. . .when - f u , pi , hs ing were noted , the commentator 1 s
sensibility was dissociated from "music," and the
virtual aim was to let Jfu, jvi, hs ing confirm or illu
minate all the different allegories. With such an
allegorical tradition so dominating Shih Ching studies
that aesthetics seldom has been considered, to read
the poems anew would be difficult if we confined our
selves to the traditional fu-pi-hsing approach. ... I'd
suggest that a close examination of the recurring
stock phrases scattered throughout the corpus may en
hance our understanding of the poems as they must
have originally been apprehended.^
While it is true that the tendency to allegorize the Songs
out of moralistic concerns dominates the exegetic tradi
tion of the Book of Songs, critical views based on
literary and aesthetic concerns can nevertheless be found
50
and can provide an adequate initial ground for further
study, as I have attempted to reconstruct it in the above.
Despite the credit due the awareness of the musical and
prosodic elements embedded in the Songs, to define hsing
solely on those terms entails some serious problems. While
hs ing defined as "refrain" or "incremental repetitions," a
formal or structural device, is responsive to the radical
meaning of the term, it does a great injustice to hsing
as a theoretical and critical concept in Chinese literary
history, which Wang tends to neglect. But, as he also
points out in the "Introduction":
The original bearing of liu shih _/six tunes_/ is
apparently related to the musical technicality. That
f eng, ya, s ung differentiate melodic tempo, hence
poetic rhythms, while f u, p i, hs ing specify the three
modes of rhetorical device is a demonstrable assump
tion. 3 6
No matter what their original meanings might have been,
the crucial thing is that fu-pi-hsing have been used to
designate "three modes of rhetorical device" and their
literary significance lies exactly in this regard. To
overemphasize the etymological import of h s ing apart from
the exegetic and critical tradition since the "Major Pre
face" seems to be irrelevant and unnecessary.
It seems to me, then, that the prosodic approach
does best in complementing, not superseding, the semantic
approach to hsing. The two address two different dimen
sions of poetry and are not necessarily opposed to one
another. While the use of refrain or stock phrases is
51
characteristic of the Songs, t h e c u s e-o f .the metaphoric
mode is just as fundamental and should be dealt with as
such. A study of hs ing as the metaphoric mode, such as the
present one, can certainly be enriched by a strengthened
awareness of the prosodic features of the Songs.
Our discussion in this chapter has uncovered the
multifarious nature of'.hsing. in the Chinese critical tra
dition. By examining representative views spanning over
two thousand years, we have arrived at the three most
influential definitions of hsing as a poetic mode. First
of all, like p i, hs ing is metaphorical, but it is distin
guished from pi in that it is more emotive and hence more
profound. Secondly, hs ing is not necessarily metaphori
cal; it can be based on a spontaneous, associative ex
perience of the poet. And, lastly, hs ing as non-metaphoric
is explained as a prosodic feature traced to the very
origin of poetry as oral representation. To unravel and
to account for such complexity of the issue, I shall next
turn to the concrete manifestations of[hsing in the Book
of Songs.
NOTES TO CHAPTER I
^The term "shlh" was probably used to designate
the corpus of poetry before Confucius' time. In Chuang-
tzu, Ch. 14, we find the following account: "Confucius said
to Lao-tzu, fI have been studying the Six Classics — the
Songs , the Historical Documents, the Book of Rites, the
Book of Mu sic, the Book of Changes, and the Spring and
Autumn Annals'" (translation based_on Burton Watson's
The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu /New York: Columbia
University Press, 1968_/, p. 165).
^Shih-Hsiang Chen, "The Shih-ching: Its Generic
Significance in Chinese Literary History and Poetics," in
Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, ed. Cyril Birch
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), p. 9, n.
9. The article will hereafter be referred to as "The
Shih-ching."
^The authorship of the "Major Preface" has long
been a controversy. As many as eight different authors
have been con j ec,tured_throughout history. On this issue,
see Hu P'u-an , "Maj_or Preface, Minor Preface"
, Ta-shu hsiao-shu/ in Studies of the Book of
Songs / . Shih-ching hsueh/ (Taipei: Commerical
Press, 1970), pp. 16-30.
^From "Biographies of Confucian Scholars"
Ju-lin chuan/ iri the History of Later Han, cited by Lo
Ken-tse , in History of Chinese Literary Criticism
J_ > Chung-kuo wen-hsueh p'i-p'ing shih/,
rpt. ed. (Taipei: Tien-wen, 1961), p. 74.
^ lb id. , p. 7 6.
^Cheng Hsuan defines fu-pi-hsing this way: "In fu,
the words are set out; they display in a straightforward
manner the good and evil of'contemporary governmental
teachings. Pi J_is use// when one sees a present mis
conduct, one does not dare to castigate directly and se
lects a categorical analogy to speak of it. Hsing is
used when on'e sees a present excellence, one disdains
flattery and s_elects a good thing as an example to en
courage it'.' a ®
^ _/• From
53
Cheng’s Commentaries on Rites of Chou / T S f r a u l l . Chou li
cheng shu /, cited by Hu_Nien-yi in "Fu-Pi-Hsing
in the Book of Songs* 1 ] _ . Shih-ching chung te
f u-pi -hs ing / , Supplement to the Literary Heritage /
Wen-hsueh yi-ch 'an tseng-k'an/, First Series,
(Peking: Tso-chia Press, 1955), p. 4.
^Chi Yu, "Treatise on Literary Genres," excerpted
ill the Collected Writings of Chinese Literary Criticism
/. ^ 7 Chung-kuo wen-hsueh p*i-p*ing _
tsu-liao huei-pien/ , 8 vols . , ed . Yen Ch * in-ping
(Taipei: Cheng-wen, 1978), vol. 1, p. 194. The collected
writings will hereafter be referred to as CWCLC.
3"Major Preface^" in Cheng's Commentaries on the
Mao Text of the Songs J_ , Mao-shih cheng-chien /
(Taipei: Shin-shing, 1981), p. 1.
^See my discussion of Chu Hsi, Cheng Ch'ao, and
Shih-Hsiang Chen below, pp. 42-3, 45-8, 48—50.
■^Liu Hsieh, The Literary.Mind and the Carving of
Dragons . eds. '.Kuot Shao-yu and Lo Ken- ts e , 2 vols.
(Peking: Jen-min wen-hsueh, 1978), vol. 2, p. 601.
11lb id.
12
Chung Hung, Classes of Poetry, annotated by
Ch*en Yen-chieh / / (Taipei: K'ai-ming, 1958), p. -4.
13 lb id.
^See my discussion of the Book of Changes as a
hermeneutic system in Ch. 6.
•^Styles of Poetry, collected in CWCLC, vol. 2,
p . 87 .
16From Hu Yin /!$% 7, "Letter to Li Shu-yi" f^_%z
, Yu Li Shu -yi shu / , cited in Kau£ Shao-yu and Wang
Wen-sheng in "Discussion on Pi-Hs ing" Lun pi-
hs ing / , in Literary Criticism _ / > Wen-hsueh p'lng-
l'un / 4 (1978): 51. 1
■^Quoted in Hu P'u-an, p. 36. See n. 3.
-j Q ©
See Hsieh Wu-liang > Research on the
Book of Songs Shih-ching yen-chiu/ (Taipei:
Commercial Press, 1967), p. 11.
^Quoted by Mi Wen-k'ai / and P'ei
54
P^_u-hsien > Appreciation and Study of the Song's
Shih-ching hsin-shang yu yen-chiu/, 3
vols. (Taipei: San-min, vol. 1, 1964; vol. 2, 1969; vol. 3,
19 79) , vo1. 2 , p. 7.
2^Chu Hsi, The Complete Works of Chu Hsi ] _
> Chu Wen-cheng kung ch'uan-chi/, excerpted in CWCLC.
vol. 4 , p. 2 7 3.
r \ - | —
Idem., Categories of Words Yu lei/, ex
cerpted in CWCLC, vol. 4,p. 275.
^^CWCLC, vol. 4, p. 274.
^Liu Hsieh, vol. 2, p. 602 .
^Koted by Shih-Hsiang Chen, "The Shih-ching,"
p . 2 0 .
25Cited in CWCLC, vol. 4, p. 259.
2 6 yen Ts'an, Notes on Poetry _ / _ • ! $ ■ Shih chi / ,
cited by Chao Chih-yang Afcfo 7 ^ \ / , in Discussions of Fu-Pi-
Hsiang in the Book of Songs Shih-ching
fu-pi-hsing tsung-lun/ (Shin-chu: Feng-ch'eng, 1974),
p. 120.
22For a concise summary of these critics' views
on hs ing, see Chao Chih-yang, pp. 121-30.
2 8lb id. , p. 118.
2 9 Ibid.
30ibid .
31cbu Tzu-ch'ing, "Opinions on Hs ing in_the Songs"
Kuan yu hsing-shih te yi-chien/. in
Essays on Ancient History ] _ , Ku-shih pien/, 3 vols.,
ed. Ku Chieh-kang, rpt. ed. (Taipei: Ming-lun, 1970),
vol. 3, pp._683-5; also, Discourse on Poetry as Expression
of Intent _/^* f l > > Shih-yen-chih pien/, rpt. ed . (Taipei:
K'ai-ming Bookstore, 1964), pp. 49-106.
8 2 Ho Ting-sheng, "On Hsing in the Songs" Z "3* " I f -
, Kaun-yu shih te ch’i-hsing/, in Essays on Ancient
His tory, vol. 3, pp. 694-705.
^For a thorough discussion of the etymology of
"hs ing, 1 1 see Shih-Hsiang Chen's article, "The Shih-ching."
55
34Ibid., p. 26.
33Ching-hsien Wang, The Bell and the Drum, Shih
Ching as Formulaic Poetry in an Oral Tradition (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1974), p. 6.
3^lb id . , p . 3 .
CHAPTER II
HSING AS THE METAPHORIC/METONYMIC MODE
Th.e preceding chapter examines hs ing as a literary
concept in the history of Chinese criticism. We have seen
that there is no consensus among critics and the use of
the term is at best vague and general. In what follows I
propose to analyse the hsing mode as it actually appears
in the Book of Songs. Such a reading will enable us to
determine the function and delineate the scope of hsing in
its original context. As has been demonstrated in the
above theoretical discussion, it is best to turn to pi as
a useful point of departure. By comparing how pi and
hsing are used respectively, we hope to arrive at a more
precise and comprehensive definition of hsing.
Let us first look at Song no. 5 which is most
representative of the pi mode:
The wings of the locusts, how multitudinous.'
It is felicitous that your sons and grandsons should
be numerous !
The wings of the locusts, how they hum when flapping!
It is felicitous that your sons and grandsons should
be in a continuous line!
The wings of the locusts, how crowded!
It is felicitous that your sons and grandsons should
be many!
r e S i \ 3~ 34k
57
I*-- ^ ‘ ia, ft- - ' 3 ' j L i&i 3- 3^ i»g_
fr,=l ^4^/j- 3t*1 3-zi-jL ^46.4'
The poem presents an explicit metaphor based on the juxta
position of the vehicle and the tenor. The locust, known
for its fertility, is compared to the wife (or consort to
the king, as some commentators suggest). The parallel
clearly exists between two objects or things, or between
the intrinsic qualities attributed to the two things.
This type of metaphor can be called "object-oriented"
metaphor, since the two terms of the comparison specifi
cally refer to two concrete things or properties. The
metaphorical relation can be expressed by the formula of
simple equivalence: A-= B, where A represents the ferti
lity of the locust and B the fertility of the woman.
"Object-oriented" metaphor is the most common type in the
songs classified as pi.
object-oriented metaphor, though in this case only the
vehicle is present:
Big rats, big rats, do not eat our millet.’
For three years we have served you, but you have not
been willing to heed us.
We are going to leave you for the happy land yonder.
Oh happy land, happy land.1 There we shall find our
place ....
Here, again, simple equivalence can be found between the
Song no. 113 gives another example of pi as
58
vehicle: rats, and the unnamed tenor: corrupt government.
A more complex form of pi is found in Song no. 64:
She threw me a quince, I requited her by precious chu
j ade .
It's not that JC requited^ but that forever it should
serve as _/_a token of _ ! love.
She threw me a peach, I requited her by precious yao
jade.
It's not that 1 requited_j_ but that forever it should
serve as / _ a token o£_/ love.
She threw me a plum, I requited her by precious cho
j ade.
It's not that I_ requited^ but that forever it should
serve as J_a token of_/ love.^
^ ^ rK. ■#&_ i ^ 3-
txL - f i . X&k. -faji h A . i%_ 3-lk t t _
Critics, like Chu Rs,i of Sung, Ts 'uei Hsu and Yap
Chi—heng of- Ch^ing, and Wen Yi-to °f the modern
era have all held that the exchange of gifts described in
the song refers to an ancient custom, a ritual of love
still in practice in Chou times.^ The woman throws a
fruit (usually of the pulpous kind) at the man of her
fancy. If he accepts her love, he then takes off the jade
tassel (an ornament attached to the sash) and gives it in
return as a token of lovers' vow or "seal of love"
t ing-ch1ing/. The practice of fruit-throwing is recorded
in the Book of Rites, the "External Chapters" of the Han
Exegesis of the Songs Han-shih wai-chuan/, and
as late as the History of Chin » Chin shu/, though by
59
the fourth century the original symbolism has somewhat .
loosened to a lighthearted expression of affection woman
has for man.^ That jade is used as a seal of love or
emblem of betrothal has just as long a history; in popular
fiction and drama it is frequently employed as a stock
device.
Such historical background, certainly enriching
the understanding of the poem, might not be necessary for
the reader to appreciate the work. The vivid images and
the correlation of those images in themselves are enough
to make the reading of the poem an enjoyable experience.
The fragrant, pulpy fruit can be properly interpreted as
symbolic of the female because of its fertility that is
the fertility of the earth, the archetype of Mother
Nature. This quality, we might add, is always singularly
emphasized and praised in the female in the early stages
of culture. Jade, on the other hand, is an ancient
Chinese symbol of the ideal gentleman-scholar; the purity
and luster of its color, its texture of smoothness and
hardness are both compared to the purity and integrity of
the gentleman-scholar.
The relation between the images thus impregnated
with connotations is plainly metaphorical. The metaphor
can be expressed by the formula A:B = C:D, where A is the
quince, the peach, and the plum, B the different kinds of
precious jade, C the (lady's) love received, and D the
60
(poet’s) love given in return. Just as jade is given in
return for the fruit, so the poet returns his love for
that of the lady. The momentum of the metaphor arises
not only from the equation between two simple terms (e.g.,
the peach = the lady’s love) but also from the equation
between two sets of terms or two relations (e.g. , the
peach:jade = the. lady's love:the poet's love). Compared
with the above examples of £_i, the poem is cast in a much
more complicated and sophisticated form, but the metapho
rical relation is still object-oriented.
In the commentaries of K’ung Ying-ta, p i is de
fined as a comparison with a conjunctive such as "as" or
"like" (equivalent to the Chinese "j_u" /£D_/, "ssu" /Wv/,
"j o" , etc. ).^ Therefore, K'ung sees p i as strictly
simile and defines hs ing as metaphor. However, even the
few examples of pi we have seen so far clearly show that
pi is metaphor in its true form. The mistaken observation
has been corrected by critics who generally agree on pi
as metaphor comparing two things. The most thorough
explication of pi is given by Liu Hsieh, in the chapter on
pi-hsing from The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons
Liu names two kinds of pi: one is called "comparison of
significance" pi yi/ , and the other is called
"comparison of category" , pi lei /. The first
designates a metaphor in which a concrete term is com
pared to an abstract term, such as the peach blossom as
61
th.e metaphor of feminine beauty in Song no. 6. The second
type of pi designates a metaphor in which two concrete
terms are paralleled with each other; the two, though both
concrete, belong to two disparate categories, such as rat
and man in Song no. 113. As Liu states it, "though things
belong to Hu ^_the North/ and Yueh ^the Soutjh/, they are
joined together like the liver and the gall-bladder"
With the above understanding of pi in mind, we now
turn to examples of hs ing in the Songs. Let us first look
at Song no. 159:
The fishes in the fine-meshed net are rude and bream;
I see this young man, in blazoned jacket and em
broidered skirt.
The wild-geese fly along the islet;
When the prince goes back, you shall not return to us.
I will stay with you one more night.
The wild-geese fly along the high land;
When the prince goes back, you shall not return to us.
I will pass one more night with you.
Therefore, you in the blazoned jacket,
Do not go back with the prince.'
Do not make my heart grieve!^
§.f ^
Th_e song is supposedly composed by the local people of the
eastern region of the Chou empire, where the Duke of Chou,
the virtuous and sagacious minister to the crown-prince of
62
Chou, resided for a few years to suppress a rebellion.
Upon the return of the Duke to the capital, the people
were saddened and entreated him to stay longer. The poem
begins with an analogy between the brightly colored fish
and the brightly dressed man. It is a metaphor based on
two concrete things belonging to two disparate categories.
Thus, the hs ing mode is no different from the p i mode as
object-oriented metaphor. The next two lines present anot
another analogy, between the wild-geese on the wing and
the Duke departing. It is still an object-oriented meta
phor; that both the birds and the man are leaving and seem
never to return forms the basis of the metaphorical rela
tion .
shable from the pi songs we have seen earlier, Song no.
139 provides a subtle point of departure:
In the moat by the Eastern Gate, one can soak the
hemp ;
That beautiful and quiet lady, I can sing to her face
to face.
In the moat by the Eastern Gate, one.can soak the chu
hemp ;
That beautiful and quiet lady, I can sing to her face
to face.
In the moat by the Eastern Gate, one can soak the
hs ien rush;
That beautiful and quiet lady, I can talk to her face
If the above example of hs ing is not distingui- ,
63
It is beyond question that metaphorical relation exists
between the two motifs repeated in each couplet. That the
moat is good for soaking hemp is paralleled with the
notion that the lady is good for being sung to and talked
with. It is a felicitous situation in each case, and it
is in this felicitous situation only that the metaphor
resides. If we compare the metaphor in this song and
those labeled pi , the difference is subtle but definitely
present. In the pi mode, a one-to-one correspondence
between individual terms can easily be identified, and it
is responsible for the overall effect of the metaphor.
For example, locusts correspond to women, rats to politi
cal corruption, precious jade to love, etc. Here, how
ever, no equivalence can be drawn between the moat and
the lady, or between soaking hemp and courtship. Analogy
is to be found only between two relations (one between
the moat and soaking hemp, the other between the lady and
love). Namely, just as it is appropriate to soak hemp in
the moat, so it is appropriate (for the poet) to serenade
the lady. The metaphorical structure can be expressed by
the formula A:B = C:D. But if we compare this song with
Song no. 63 to which the same formula was earlier
applied, we find that even though the structure is similar,
whereas A=C and B=D can be inferred in Song no. 63 (fruit
= love received, jade = love in return), the same cannot
be said of Song no. 139 under discussion. Therefore, the
64
hsing mode, rather than object-oriented, can be callhd
"situational" or "relational" metaphor; that is, the
dynamism of the metaphor is derived from relational
analogy alone, not from analogy between individual terms.
If the above example of hsing is frequently found
in the Songs, it is not the only form hsing appears in.
In a recent article, Pauline Yu points out that the
difference between p i and hs ing is that p i compares one
object to another while hs ing compares one situation to
another.^ However, while this is generally true of the
songs labeled pi and hsing, a more thorough study reveals
that jkl is not limited to object-oriented metaphor, and
hs ing not limited to relational metaphor. The latter
case can be easily proved by Song no. 159, the first
example of hs ing cited above, where the colorful markings
of the fish are equated with the colorful clothing of the
Duke of Chou. Or, it is seen in Song no. 28 where the
swallows on the wing are compared to the young man de
parting .
As to- the case of pi, the following example will
suffice to make the point that pi is not always object-
oriented metaphor:
How does one hew a haft?
One cannot do it without an axe.
How does one take a wife?
One cannot do it without a match-maker.
To hew a haft, to hew a haft—
The pattern is not far away.
65
I meet this young woman—
By the pien and tou vessels.
# i t n BL-kJ. ■ * 4 - f -
^ 3- X
In the first stanza, a parallel is clearly drawn between
hewing a haft and finding a wife. In each situation, some
help or guideline is needed. Just as one needs an axe to
cut a haft, so one needs a match-maker to arrange marriage
The second stanza develops this analogy: the model for a
haft is on the axe with which one cuts (thus "not far
away"), and the ideal wife is found beside the vessels
containing presents of food for wedding sacrifice, a part
of ancient marriage ceremony. The metaphor in the poem is
decidedly not object-oriented, since no equivalence can be
drawn between the haft and the wife, or between the axe
and the sacrificial vessels. Rather, the metaphor is
based on the analogy between two situations or contexts.
Therefore, the song should be considered a relational
metaphor.
Consequently, in view of the above discussion,
the classification of object- and relation-oriented
metaphors is insufficient to differentiate the two poetic
modes, pi and hsing. We may say that pi is essentially
and dominantly object-oriented; in rare cases it also
66
appears in the form of relational metaphor. Hs ing as a
metaphoric mode, on the other hand, is more often rela
tional than object-oriented. But to further distinguish
the two, we must look to other, more definitive features.
First of all, we note that hs ing as metaphorical
frequently presents a reverse analogy, or irony, in its
12
original meaning of "dissimulation" or contrast. We
see it, for instance, in Song no. 52:
Look at the rat, it has its skin;
A man without manners—
A man without manners, why does he not die?
Look at the rat, it has its teeth;
A man without demeanor—
A man without demeanor* why does he tarry to die?
Look at the rat, it has its limbs;
A man without decorum—
1
A man without decorum, why does he not quickly die? J
" i ® J & _ A . r f n
^ 6 /v I^Tl -it—
i^h it, ;f |
t e a. f f n v#, % k.
A-. ffh & A
If pi usually dwells on th.e similarity between two terms ?
hs ing often capitalizes on the dissimilarity or contrast
between them. In the poem above, the ironic tone sur
faces as the contrast between man and the rat, generally
considered a low and mean creature, is reiterated: a man
of no manners or decency is more despicable than the rat.
67
We recall that K'ung Ying-ta identifies pi with simile;
what he has in mind might well be that pi deals with
similarity while hsing deals with dissimilarity as in this
poem.
The same structure and tone are found in Song no.
115 :
On ttie mountain there are thorn-elms;
In the swamp there are white-elms.
You have your robe and skirt, but you do not wear
them sweep their trains;
You have carriages and horses, but you do not gallop
them or drive them on.
You wither and die, and other men will enjoy them....
\ J | e -
~ b - -k . w i ] :
The song can be paraphrased this way: just as it is
natural for the thorn-elms to grow on the high land and
the white-elms to grow in the swamp, so it is natural for
one to enjoy one's worldly possessions while one is alive.
The theme of carpe diem is enhanced by the irony presented
in the form of a reversed relational metaphor.
The contrast between the natural and the human
realms plays an important role in the Songs , and it is
again employed in Song no. 124:
The ke creepers grow and cover the thorns;
The lien creepers spread to the uncultivated tracts.
My beautiful one has gone away from here,
With whom can I associate? — alone I dwell^
68
~7 ~ r ~ * * -^: ^S\ J^L.
Here th-e metaphorical situation is purported to be ironic.
The creepers that cling to the trees and the field en
hance the solitary state of the poet and the sadness of
the situation. The growing and flourishing of nature only
underlines the languishing of the bereaved lover.
But the last example of hs ing also points beyond
metaphorization. In fact, the metaphor may not be
immediately apparent. The images of the creepers can
simply be a description of the natural surrounding the
poet is in. They suggest a sense of vastness; it is the
vastness of nature as opposed to the loneliness of the
poet. The helpless situation of the poet is sharply con
trasted to the cohesion and solidarity of nature. The
same can be said of the previous song, where the poet
*
perceives the elms and utters the thought of enjoying
life while one can. The contrast between the permanence
of nature and the transience of human life is not readily
identifiable. The question is then: does- this descriptive
detail, with rich affective suggestiveness, contribute to
the total effect of the poem 'just as much as the meta
phorical relation interpretated above? The answer, I
think, is affirmative. For the poem works not only
through comparison or substitution that is essential to
metaphor, but also through the evocativeness of the images
69
taken literally. Referring back to the term used by Chu
Hsi, we may say that the opening lines of the song serve
16
the function of "entering the topic" not necessarily in
terms of analogical correspondence, but rather by way of
association.
To further pursue this aspect of'hsing , let us
look at Song no. 234:
What plant is not yellow; what day do we not march?
What man is not_going to regulate' and dispose the
/regions o_f/ four quarters?
What plant is not dark; what man is not pitiable?
Alas for us men of war, we alone must be' as if we
17
were not men.... ' -
Th_e song is a good example of the thin line between hs ing
as metaphoric and hsIng as associational or metonymic.
The former interpretation is supported by the refrain
which compares the withered plant to the fatigued soldier.
Like the plant withering in severe weather, turning from
yellow to dark, the soldier is exhausted from the conti
nuous warfare which keeps him from having a family and
settling down. On the other hand, we can call the image
of the plant a means of "entering the topic" with no
necessary analogical implications. The poet sees the
field as he marches on and laments the hardship. Instead
*
of metaphorical, the structure of the poem can be meto
nymic because the image of plant is juxtaposed with that
70
of the soldier in a contiguous way, not as a figurative
substitution of the soldier. The image, therefore, has a
double meaning, simultaneously literal and figurative.
The metaphoric structure based on equivalence and trans
position is loosened and relaxed to allow the literal
sense to assert itself. This ties in with the notion of
hs ing as an open s emantic structure as opposed to the
closure that is pi, first suggested by Liu Hsieh and
Chung Hung.'*'^
Song no. 145 presents yet another case for the
problematic demarcation between.hsing as metaphoric and
hs ing as metonymic. Here is the first stanza only:
By the shore of the marsh yonder,
There are sedges and lotus plants.
There is a beautiful person.
How I am in pain—
Awake or asleep, I don't know what to do.
Tears and snivel are flowing....
3)^ -^T — A_ 4 -£rn 5- 4
^ **» 5^
The structure of the poem is very similar to that of the
previous one; the lotus (orchid, water lily in the second
and third stanzas) can be taken as a metaphor of the
beautiful person (either man or woman). But the first two
lines can also be treated as a literal description of the
locale where the loved one lives and thus associated with
him/her. The images of fragrant plants and beautiful
flowers carry affective overtones that enhance their
association with love and the lover, but they do not have
71
to be figurative so as to make the poem work. The natural
images evoke the thought of the loved on in a contiguous
way rather than through substitution.
This is clearly seen in Song no. 202 where the son
grieves over not being able to provide his parents with
adequate means in times of social turmoil and economic
hardship. The song ends in the hsing mode:
The South Mountain has peak after peak,
The whirl-wind rushes;
Among the people there are none that are not happy,
Why am I alone harmed?
The South Mountain has top after top,
The whirl-wind rushes;
Among the people there are none that are not happy;
I alone cannot have a good end.^
^ T f .
As in the previous poems, natural images are juxtaposed
with the human; only this time nature is presented in its
bare and stern aspect. If we try to interpret the lines
as metaphoric, we may equate the natural images with the
oppressive socio-political situation that causes the
poet's suffering. Just as nature renders the poet physi
cally helpless, so does the government leave him in dire
need. However, such an analogy, whether object-oriented
(nature = government) or relational (natureiman = govern-
ment:man), fails to account for the fact that the poet is
72
not making a statement about the human situation in
general, but he is lamenting his own fate in contrast to
nature as well as other people. The analogy between
nature and politics works only if we ignore this point.
It probably makes more sense to see the natural images in
a contiguous way; the raw force of nature evokes a sense
of helplessness in man; he alone of all people is suffer
ing. Thus, hs ing as the metonymic mode sometimes does
override hs ing as the metaphoric mode. Granted that
borderline cases exist where both interpretations can be
applied, hs ing as distinctively metonymic can be found in
some songs. The second stanza of Song no. 126 exemplifies
j us t this:
On the slope there are lacquer trees,
In the swamp there are chestnut trees.
Now that I have seen my lord,
We sit side by side and play the lute.
If we do not enjoy ourselves now,
As time passes we shall grow old...
7 h * § | L mAk A i
Th-e metaphorical relation between the lacquer and chest
nut trees and the couple playing music together is so
tenuous that to call it metaphorical seems rather far
fetched and missing the point. In fact, no analogy can
be found between the nature images and the theme of carpe
diem expressed by the poet. The images of surrounding
nature but set up the atmosphere or ambience in which
_____________________________________________________ 73
human subject is presented.
This aspect of hs ing has hardly ever been noticed
by both traditional and modern scholars. So far, only
Chang Ch'ao-k'e > a modern critic, makes a remark
in the same vein. It is found in his short article,
O O
"Hsing in the Book of Songs and Its Origin." Though the
primary purpose of the work is to stress the fact that
Chinese poetry originated in the labor class, it contains
some pertinent statements regarding the function of hs ing.
There are three ways hs ing is used. Sometimes it is pure
metaphor, sometimes it serves as a prosodic link, and
sometimes it helps create and enhance the proper atmo
sphere of poetry through description of nature. Two
examples to the effect of the last remark are given, Song
9
no. 14 and Song no. 35. According to Chang, in the
former song, the chirping of the insects serves as a
"foible" hong-t'o/ to the restless heart of the
speaker; in the latter, the sound of wind and rain serves
as a "foible" to the helplessness of the abandoned wife.
The term he uses, "foible," falls short of satisfaction,
however, since it does not specify how h s ing as foible
works. In Song no. 14, for instance, the second and
third stanzas present a different context: gathering fern
on the South Mountain, the wife thinks of the trepidation
at the beginning of her marriage and the later relief and
r y /
joy at being accepted by her husband. There is hardly
74
any point of contact between the image of gathering fern
and chirping insects. Rather, they are juxtaposed only in
order to convey the idea that the worry of the newly
wedded woman is constantly with her, at night or at work.
Therefore, I propose to use the term "metonymy" instead
to describe the cont iguous structure of hsing.
Three more instances of hs ing as the metonymic
mode will be given below to support the argument that the
poetic mode should not be taken as a rare case of excep
tion but it has an undeniable presence in the Songs.
Swift is that falcon, dense is that northern forest.
When I have not yet seen my lord, my grieved heart is
full of intense feeling.
How is it, how is it? You neglect me truly too much.'
On the mountain there are luxuriant oaks, in the
swamp there are liu-po trees.
When I have not yet seen my lord, my grieved heart
has no joy.
How is it, how is it? You neglect me truly too
much .'...25
)J^ =»*,*£_ + ^ ^ 3 - -It
-*D A?) -poA*] ^
The nature images of the falcon, the forest, and the trees
in the song are not metaphoric since they do not stand for
or point to something other than themselves. One might
say that contrast exists between nature, free and viva
cious, and the distressful wife, or between nature as
presence and the absent husband. But this is rather
75
reading meaning into the poem. The images do not really
cohere to form a single frame of reference except that
they provide views of the natural surroundings. There is
no necessary cross-reference among them. They compose a
perceptive field imbued with feeling. Therefore, the song
is metonymic rather than metaphoric.
The second example is Song no. 172:
The t'ai herbs are on the South Mountain,
The lai herbs are on the North Mountain.
The lords_are pleased,
/They are/ the foundation of the state.*
The lords are pleased,
/May they have/ long life of no end!
Mulberry trees are on the South Mountain,
Poplar trees are on the North Mountain.
The lords_are pleased,
_/They are/ the glory of the state!
9 f i
of no bounds!...
and edible herbs that were
times. Thus, they suggest
the occasion for which the song is composed originally.
The next four lines of each stanza are the praise and
blessings extended to the guests by the king hosting the
banquet, that they are the foundation of the kingdom and
that they may enjoy longevity. The images of plants and
Tlae lords are pJLeased,
_/May they have/ long life
3- ^ ^
-^= % 3" ~
y-. % -3- 4in
TJxe t * ai and lai are f ragrant
served at banquets in ancient
76
trees in the opening lines of each stanza are therefore
connected to the rest of the stanza in a contiguous way:
herbs — banquet — guest — kingdom. In this connection,
I disagree with commentators who interpret the same images
as metaphors. According to them, the mountain stands for
the king; that the mountain is covered with herbs and
trees refers to the king’s being supported by capable
2 7
subject whom he entertains. This, I feel, is over
reading, since, if the king is the mountain, then the sub
ject are the herbs which, however, are being served to
them. The interpretation represents the critic's effort
• •
to read as much meaning into the poem as possible. But
in the case of the image, of the herbs, the two meanings
are not compatible with one another,, and the metaphoric
reading seems to me far-fetched and forced. The song is
rightly metonymic, not metaphoric.
The last poem we shall look at is Song no. 140:
Willows by the East Gate,
Their leaves are swaying.
Dusk was the time agreed on—
The stars are shining.
Willows by the East Gate,
Their leaves are swinging.
Dusk was the time agreed on—
The stars are sparkling.^
The song is apparently sung by the despondent poet who
waits at the rendezvous for the girl who never shows up.
77
Though brief, the poem dramatically presents the situa
tion: the lovers made a date at dusk, but now the stars
are shining bright— it is long past the appointed hour.
The last two lines of each quatrain indicate the trasi-
tion of time from the dusky evening to the dark night.
The time element also contributes .to the first two lines
describing the locale. That the willows are swaying
suggests that there is a wind, and in light of the last
two lines it can be assumed that it is the chilly wind of
the night. What those images conjure up, then, is the
gloomy picture of the lone poet standing in the chilly
wind, with the leaves blowing, in utter darkness lit only
by the stars. The fact that he persists in waiting de
spite the chill, the late hour, and, what is the most
poignant, his knowing that she will probably never show
up, enhances the sadness -and despair of unrequited love.
The way the poem works is by the correlation of images:
willows — wind — stars, another example of h s ing as the
metonymic mode.
All the poems discussed above provide a repre
sentative overview of the scope of hs ing as it is used in
the Book of Songs. Set against traditional criticism,
the present study modifies and expands themeaning of hs ing
in some fundamental ways, which can be summarized in the
following respects. First, the dominant form of p i is
object-oriented metaphor where one term (concrete or
78
abstract) is compared to and equated with another (con
crete) term. Only rarely does £i_ appear as relational
metaphor in which an analogy is drawn between two pairs of
terms or situations only rather than between two simple
terms. Hs ing, on the other hand, is more often based on
relational or situational comparison.
Secondly, whereas pi is almost always obverse
metaphor, hs ing often assumes the form of reverse meta
phor or irony drawing upon dissimilarity and contrast
between two simple terms or two sets of terms. Based on
Roman Jakobson's formulation of the poetic function as
projecting "the principle of equivalence from the axis of
0 Q
selection into the axis of combination," hs ing as irony
is also rightly subsumed under the metaphoric mode, since
it already implies an ei priori comparison. The difference
between irony and obverse metaphor is that the former
entails the extra effect of understatement.
The above two observations we have arrived at
point to the confusion surrounding the issue of pi-hsing
since such definitions are by no means exclusive attri
butes of the terms. We can say that pi tends to be
obverse and object-oriented metaphor, while h s ing tends
to be relational or reverse metaphor. But the opposite
can also be found in a very limited number of cases. The
fact that the two modes do sometimes overlap also explains
the disagreement among commentators and critics in
79
labeling a poem or certain lines as p_i or hs ing. For
instance, Song no. 104 is considered hs ing by the Mao
30
editors, but Ghu Hsi calls it £_i. The song in question
alludes to a historical event regarding the younger
daughter of the king of the Ch ' i state who was married to
the king of the Lu state. That the princess had an in
cestuous relationship with her brother, later the king
of Ch'i, was an open secret of the time. But Ch'i being
one of the most powerful kingdoms and Lu being one of the
weakest, the husband was unlikely to put a stop to the
shameful situation. Thus, the p.oet uses the analogy of
a broken net that is unfit and unable to contain a big
fish to refer to the weak husband and the princess of
Ch’i. (History bears out the grim foresight of the poet:
the king of Lu was indeed murdered by the king of Ch'i
upon disclosure of the liaison.)
The song is based on a comparison that can be
called both object-oriented and relational, since equiva
lence exists between the tenor (king of Lu, princess of
Ch’i) and the vehicle (the net, the fish), as well as
between the two situations or relations: just as the
broken net cannot contain the heavy fish, so the weak
husband cannot contain the improper wife. It is there
fore appropriate to identify the song as either pi or
hs ing.
Furthermore, it is interesting to note that , hs ing
80
is not only confused with jkL , whi ch is fully uhders tand-
able , but also with fju in some cases. For instance, Song
no. 14 is labeled hs ing d.n the Mao exegesis, but it is
O 1
considered f_u by Chu Hsi. The Mao text interprets the
natural phenomenaldescribed in the poem as analogous to
the human situation. Chu Hsi, however, takes the images
of nature as a literal descriptive of the living context
in which the poem is written.
This brings out the third characteristic of hs ing
that is not found in pi; that is, hs ing is also the meto
nymic or contiguous mode. Images are juxtaposed and
correlated which do not necessarily have any analogical
relation to one another, but they nevertheless evoke
certain associations that carry emotional or intellectual
overtones. Namely, the basic difference between hs ing as
metaphoric and hs ing as metonymic is that in the former
images do not have meaning independent of the metaphorical
context; meaning is imposed on the image through metapho
rical substitution. In the latter, on the other hand,
images are significant in themselves; taken literally
they contribute to the total effect of the poem through
contiguous association. As such hs ing could be confused
with fu, both of which may consist of concatenation of
images.
Some critics translate hs ing as the as sociational
mode, but the term is still ambiguous and thus inadequate.
81
Both metaphor and metonymy are essentially an associa-
tional process. To distinguish them we need to be more
specific about the kind of associational process that is
involved in metaphor and metonymy respectively.
In traditional Western rhetoric and poetics,
metonymy is treated as a figure of speech. Metonymy,
originally meaning a "change of name" or "misnomer,""
refers to the substitution of the material for the object,
the cause for the effect or vice versa, the container for
that which is contained, the inventor's name for the in-
12
vention, etc. As such it is subjugated to the category
of metaphor as a transference of name. In fact, it is
one of the three types of metaphor, the others being
simile,^a- sort of explicit metaphor, and synecdoche,
where the part stands for the whole. Modern linguistic
and literary studies, however, elevate the status of
metonymy from a figure of speech, a subdivision of meta
phor, to a literary mode and a fundamental structural
principle of language in contrast with metaphor. Whereas
metaphor is association by comparison, metonymy is asso
ciation by contiguity. The former is based on the prin
ciple of selection and substitution; the latter involves
that of combination and correlation. This differentiation
of metaphor and metonymy as two distinctive, universal
linguistic processes is best represented by Structuralist
linguistics which defines metaphor as a paradigmatic,
82
diachronic, or vertical movement, and metonymy as a syn-
33
tagmatic, synchronic, or horizontal movement.
Metonymy as it has been and will be used in the
present study is largely based on this definition. When
applied to. hs ing , it is believed to be more precise and
appropriate than "association" since, as pointed out
earlier, association can be either metaphoric or meto
nymic. The same objection is raised to the use of "mon
tage" in reference to the hs ing mode; namely, there are
different types of montage in cinematography, among which
are metaphoric and metonymic ones.^
In their study of the Book of Songs , Mi Wen-k'ai
and P'ei P'u-hsien identify hs ing in two ways: as the
"asso ciational mode" lien-hsiang shih/ and as the
—. - O C
"capping mode" tai-mao shih/. Their examples
illustrate that the first term : ■ corresp onds to the idea of
metaphor; it is misleading due to the vagueness of the
term "association." The second term defines hs ing as an
opening device, a prologue or introduction J_ 4] -3~ , yin-tzu/
to the subject matter of the poem. This idea is in tune
with Chu Hsi's definition of hsing as a device of "enter
ing the topic" which does not always have a figurative
sense. The problem with such use of terms is that it
implies that the opening lines are tacked on and can be
dispensed with, a supplement that is extraneous to the
main part of the poem dealing with the real subject
________________________________ 83
matter. This definition can be refuted by the simple fact
that hs ing does not necessarily appear at the beginning of
the poem, though in the Songs it is probably the usual
position. It can occupy any other place in the work, for
example, as refrain that creates an incremental impact.
More importantly, hs ing as the opening lines is an in-: k
tegral part of a poem; as we have seen in the poems
studied earlier, the effect of the work is achieved by
virtue of the fact that it works holistically. Therefore,
t aking into consideration all critical t erms used to de
fine hs ing, I believe metonymy best serves the purpose.
It is true that hs ing as pure metonymy is rather
rare in the Songs. Nevertheless, the issue of concern
here is that hs ing as a critical concept is problematic
exactly because it encompasses such a wide range of
meaning to include both metaphor and metonymy. Lo
Ta-ching of the Southern Sung period rightly
observes that hs ing includes p i but not the other way
around, though like many traditional Chinese critics he
3 6
does not bother to find out why or how this is so. Our
discussion suggests an answer to the question; the ambi
guity and complexity of hs ing can be explained by the
fact that it ranges from the metaphoric to the metonymic
mode. There are many borderline cases where the images
can be interpreted as both analogous to the theme of the
poem and simply descriptive but evocative. In such
84
cases, the line between metaphor and metonymy is blurred;
when taken metaphorically the images take on more than
analogical import, and taken contiguously they suggest
something beyond purely literal or pictorial description.
As the former, hs ing is similar to p i; as the latter it
could be confused with fu, which as the narrative mode
also contains descriptive elements. The notion of hs ing
as an open structure of meaning suggested by early Chinese
critics can be accounted for by the fact that hs ing cannot
be circumscribed by the concept of either metaphor or
description per se.
This also brings up a general question regarding
theoretical validity and practicality. Namely, we may
wonder if it is felicitous or adequate at all to apply a
concept from another literary tradition to the Chinese.
Whereas the structural characterization of metaphor and
metonymy is helpful for our study of hs ing , hs ing does not
wholly conform with the Western Structuralist concept that
the two modes are categorically opposed to one another.
It seems that hs ing suggests quite the contrary, that the
metaphoric movement can coincide with the metonymic.
Hs ing as the former tends to shade into the latter, and
there are times when the two work more effectively toge
ther than separately. The metaphoric mode can be seen as
a special type of metonymy, and vice versa.
85
NOTES TO CHAPTER II
^All poems from the Book of Songs are based on
Bernhard Karlgren's translations in The Book of Odes ,
Chinese Text, Transcription, and Translation (Stockholm:
Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950). Some minor
changes are made where deemed appropriate. References to
the numbers of the songs are according to Karlgren’s
translations and the Harvard Yenching Concordance to
Shih-ching. The page numbers listed below are also from
Karlgren's volume. The one under discussion here is no.
5 , p . 4 .
2 No. 113, pp. 73-4.
3No. 6 4, p. 44.
^The custom is recorded in several ancient texts:
Tzo's Commentaries on the Annals. J_ Tzu shih ts ' un-
ch'u/. Book of Rites, and Han Exegesis of the Songs. For
those accounts, see Mi Wen-k'ai and P'ei P'u-hsien, vol. 2,
pp. 5 8-9.
_ ~*In "Biography of P ' an Yueh" P ' an Yueh
chuan/ in the History of Chin, it is recorded that: "Yueh
is handsome and graceful. When he was young, he used to
walk in Lo-yang with a cross-bow pellet. The women who
saw him would form a circle around him holding their
hands, and throw fruits at him. So he went home with a
full cart load" (quoted by Mi Wen-k'ai and P'ei P'u-hsien,
vol. 2, p. 59). In .a poem written by Li Po and presented
to his clan-cousin J_ » t zu-1i / , who was on his way to
make a proposal to a girl named Ts'uei, we find this
ending couplet : "It caii be foretold that on your future
path / Fruits_ thrown J_at yoia/ will fill a cart"
■S& (CTS, vol. 3, p. 1790).
£
K'ung Ying-ta, cited by Chu Tzu-ch'ing, Pis course
on Poetry as the Expression of Intent, p. 84.
^Liu Hsieh, vol. 2, pp. 601-2.
8No. 159, pp. 103-4.
^ No. 139, p. 89.
^Pauline Yu, "Metaphor and Chinese Poetry,"
86
Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 3 (July
1981): 215
11
No. 158, p. 10 3
1 9
Irony," from Greek "eironeia," originally means
"dissimulation," especially through understatement. See
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alexander
Preminger (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974),
p. 407.
13No. 52, pp. 33-4.
14No. 115, pp. 74-5.
^ N o . 124, pp. 79-80.
^See Ch. 1, pp. 10-11.
^No. 234 , pp. 184-5.
1 f t
See Ch. 1, pp. 6-8.
"^No. 145, pp. 90-1.
2^No . 202, pp. 152-3.
21No. 126, p. 81.
2^Chang Ch'ao-k'e, "Hs ing in the Songs and Its
Origin" , Shih-ching shih te hsing chi
ch*i ch'i-yuan/, in Supplement to Literary Heritage,
second series, pp. 33-9.
2 3
The first two stanzas of no. 14 are as follows
(Karlgren, p. 9):
Yao-yao the insects in the grass; jumping are the grass
hoppers .
When I have not yet seen'the lord, my grieved heart is
agitated.
When I have seen him, when I have met him, my heart
calms down.
I ascend that southern mountain, I gather the fern.
When I have not yet seen the lord, my grieved heart is
s ad .
When I have seen him, when I have met him, my heart is
pleased.
aX-
87
The first two stanzas of Song no. 35 are as follows (Karl-
gren, p. 21):
Gusts of the East wind bring clouds and rains;
I have striven to be of the same heart; you should not
feel anger.
One gathers the f eng plant, one gathers the f ei plant,
Without regard to their lower part.
My reputation has nothing contrary to what it should be;
I will die with you.
I travel the road lingeringly; in the core of my heart
I am unwilling to go.
Not far but only a short distance— you saw me to the
threshold.
Who says that the t'u plant is bitter? It is sweet as
the chi plant.
You feast your new wife, like an elder brother, like a
younger brother.
)5i . v i - yt- ^
&£-%% % 't i Jtv p j egp
^^The word "kou" C'to meet") in classical
Chinese can also mean "to intercourse." Some scholars
hold that the song refers to the Chou custom of "trial
period" in marriage. The trial period is for three months,
during which if the husband finds^the wife unagreeable,
he may send her back to her family and thus vitiate the
marriage. If he accepts her, then they will hold a cere
mony at the ancestral temple.
^ N o . 132, pp. 85-6.
26No. 172, p. 116.
2 7
Cheng Hsuan, for instance, entertains this inter
pretation, see his Commentaries on the Mao Text of the
Songs, pp. 65-66.
2 8No. 140, p. 89.
r \ q
Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics," in
Style in Language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Cambridge: Massa
chusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1960), p. 358.
^Song no. 104 (Rarlgren, p. 67) is as follows:
88
The burst fish-traps are by the dam;
The fishes are bream and kuan • : f i s h .
The young lady of Ch ' i goes to her new home;
Her suite is like clouds.
The burst fish-traps are by the dam;
The fishes are bream and tench.
The young lady of Ch ' i goes to her new home;
Her suite is like a shower.
The burst fish-traps are by the dam;
The fishes go freely in and out.
The young lady of Ch'i goes to her new home;
Her suite is like a stream.
-A v f &, jkS jMk ^
^ v %, *pt ■ *fL
^See n. 2 3.
3 2
"Metonymy," from Greek "metonumia," meaning
"change of name" or "misnomer." See Princeton Encyclopedia
of Poetry and Poetics, p. 499, s.v.
3 3
See "Introduction," n. 8.
^For instance, William McNaughton associates
hs ing with juxtaposition and montage in The Book of Songs
(New York: Twayne, 1971), p. 106.
"^Mi Wen-k'ai and P'ei P'u-hsien, vol. 1, p. 28.
3
_ Lo Ta-ching, f_rom Ambrosia of the Crane Grove
_ / He-lin yu-lu/, cited in CWCLC, vol. 4, p. 528.
89
CHAPTER III
METONYMY AND CHINESE POETRY
In their study of the Book of S ongs referred to
in the preceding chapter, Mi Wen-k’ai and P ’ei P ’u-hsien
briefly touch on the historical development of the three
poetic modes, f_u, pi, hsing. ^ According to them, whereas
fu and pi have continued to command a notable presence in
Chinese poetry after the Songs, hs ing has practically dis
appeared. Fu developed into a distinct poetic sub-genre,
characterized by elaborate, hyperbolic description in
vivid, sensuous imagery and elevated diction. It came to
designate a literary form somewhere between poetry and
prose, and it is usually translated as "rhymed prose" or
"rhapsody." We may say that the transformation of fix has
considerably detached itself from the original context as
the narrative or expository mode. As to pi, it evolved
into "symbolist" or rather allegorical poetry in which the
surface meaning refers to and runs parallel to the deeper
meaning of the poem. For instance, in a poem which
ostensibly laments the fate of the abandoned wife, the poet
may well be sighing over his own misfortune in a political
career. This tradition can be traced to the Songs and,
more significantly, to the Songs o f Ch * u > Ch 'u-tz'u/
___________________________________________________________________________ 90
of the third century B.C. , where the fragrant herbs and
beautiful flowers are symbolic of the king or the loyal
minister (the poet himself), and the lowly weeds and • - >
odorous plants are symbolic of scheming bureacrats who
slander the loyal minister and curry the favor of the king.
Furthermore, the tendency to interpret a poem as a poli
tical or social allegory is as old as the Mao exegesis and
has fared rather well with traditional critics in general.
Pi, thus taken as the allegorical mode, serves the purpose
of "expressing the intent by projecting it in things"
^ * 5 1 S i ^>'j t’o-wu yen-chih/. However, to use pi in such a
manner relies considerably on biographical and historical
evidence, and it is concerned more with the motive under
lying the work than with its intrinsic, aesthetic value.
To interpret pi this way, therefore, narrows the original
meaning of the term and fails to take into account the use
of metaphor per se.
Finally, as to the development of hs ing , Mi and
P'ei maintain that it is still found in the folksongs of
the Han period, after which, however, it virtually dis
appears in Chinese poetry as a whole. The statement is
made based on the idea that hs ing is an opening device, a
prologue which is not intrinsically related to the main
part of the poem but is associated in some way to it. This
assertion I have already refuted in Chapter 2, mainly on
the ground that "association" itself is a vague term and
91
that hs ing is not limited to the opening of a poem.
There have been a few attempts at relating hs ing
to Chinese poetry after the Book of Songs. Of those, most
of them are extremely brief and lack an overall theoretical
framework. The only systematic study of this sort is by
Ch ’ en Hang of the Ch'ing period, who wrote a book
called the Commentaries on Pi-Hsing in Poetry J_
— 2
Shih pi-hsing chien/. In this work he comments on four
hundred and sixty—three poems chronologically arranged and
ranging from the Han to the T'ang period. In the preface
written by Wei Yuan, > it is stated that the purpose
of the work is to interpret the poems in the same way the
S ongs has been, so that "to know the use of p i-hs ing is to
know where the intent _/of the poetJ goes" ^
— 3
. While it is admirable of Ch' en Hang to
apply the concepts of pi and hs ing to the Chinese poetic
tradition, the value of his investigation is dubious due to
the narrow definitions of the terms based on which it is
done. It is clear that for Ch'en hs ing is synonymous with
pi; the two are used as a compound to refer to the alle
gorical or symbolic mode in which the surface meaning of
the poem points to the underlying motive of the poet. It
is essentially no different from the didactic approach so
frequently adopted by traditional commentators on the Songs
such as Cheng Hsuan and K'ung Ying-ta. We need only look
at one example to realize the limitations of Ch'en's point
92
of view.
I cross the river to pluck lotus.
In the orchid marsh, many scented plants.
I pluck, but whom should I give them to?
For my lover resides in a distant land.
Turning my head, I look toward home
Along the vast and endless road.
Our hearts are one, yet we dwell apart;
Worrying and grieving, we grow old.1 ^
it % / C* ' ^ ^ 4 % W.
The poem, a folksong of the Han period, is a beautiful love
song expressing the grief at one's separation from one's
love. In Ch'en's commentary, however, the poem is believed
to be written by Mei Ch'eng of the first century
B.C. in exile. Specifically, Mei Ch'eng is exiled from the
Wu region south of the Yangtze River (often simply referred
to as "the River") to the Liang region, north of the River.
Thus, in the poem, he is thinking of his king to whom he
would like to dedicate his talents.and service. There are
a couple of problems in Ch'en's interpretation, however.
First, in Line 1, the crossing of the river in order to
pluck flowers is a completely voluntary act. To interpret
it as a political exile is to turn it into a forced move,
something that does not seem to have any support in the
poem. Secondly, Line 7 reads: "Our hearts are one, yet we
dwell apart." If the poem is indeed addressed to the king
by the official in exile, it does not make much sense to
say that they are of one heart. The verdict of exile
93
already indicates rejection of the subject by the ruler and
a gap between them. Ch'en seems to be well aware of this
contradiction, but he tries to explain it away by saying
that the poet out of "gentleness and kindness" Z >
wen—jou tun-hou/ covers it up in the poem. This explana
tion is not very convincing since, for one thing, it lacks
contextual evidence to bak it up. Quite on the contrary,
it is imposed on the poem by the commentator. In addition,
the last line continues and reinforces the idea of reci
procal love expressly stated in Line 7. The worrying and
grieving makes the separated lovers grow old. Being of one
heart, they also share the misery and sorrow.
What we have seen, then, illustrates the kind of
distortion and manipulation that often creeps into the
exegesis of hs ing in order to fit the didactic-allegorizing
interpretive scheme of the critic. The foregoing chapters
have shown that hs ing is much more complex and comprehen
sive than either the allegorical mode or a mere device for
starting a poem. In the Songs, it ranges from the strictly
metaphoric mode to the metonymic mode which breaks down the
rigid differentiation between metaphor and metonymy. The
present discussion aims to show that hsing as the meta
phoric/metonymic mode is commonly present in Chinese poetry
in general. Hs ing as metonymy, in particular, plays an
important role, which has seldom been analysed. For a
sense of continuity, the poems will be arranged in roughly
chronological order from the Han to the T'ang dynasty.
This is by no means intended to be a thorough study of
metonymy in Chinese poetry as a whole, but it is hoped that
the examples subjected to a close reading will clarify and
support the point that the sliding of metaphor into meto
nymy is frequently found in Chinese poetry and that meto
nymy tends to be the dominant mode of perception in a
large number of Chinese poems.
I shall first look at an early folksong of the Yueh
region (the modern Chechiang and Chiangsu provinces),
probably composed in the late Chou period:
What an evening is this,
That I've come to the islet midstream.'
What a day is today,
That I share the boat with you, my prince.'
Unworthy that I'd be so desired,
When have I ever felt such shame?
My heart is perplexed to no end,
That I've come to know you, my prince.
There are trees on the mountain and branches on the
The song progresses in a straightforward and
manner, expressing the joy and bashfulness of the boatswain
at meeting the prince of the Ch'u state.' The last two
lines are noteworthy since on the surface the images of
"trees on the mountain" and "branches on the trees" do not
quite follow the previous lines. We may say that they
trees ;
I yearn to please you, yet you do not know!
95
serve as a contrast to the present situation described in
the song. Namely, just as it is obvious and natural that
trees grow on the mountain and branches grow on trees , so
it is obvious and natural that the boatswain cares for the
handsome prince. Yet he is unaware of it! This analogical
contrast is enhanced by the rhyming of "chih" ("branch")
and its homonym "chih" ("to know"). Thus, the two lines
can be considered an example of irony based on a rela
tional metaphor.
or easily recognizable. ' For we may also say that the
images of the trees and mountains are juxtaposed to present
the human subject; as the boat crosses the stream, these
images come into view. There is no necessary metaphorical
significance attached to them. The rhyming of "chih" only
maintains the prosodic flow from the previous lines ,to the
end of the song. The metaphorical and metonymic rela
tionships do not contradict each other, and they tend to
co-exist with, rather than play off, each other.
B.C., the Han emperor under whose sagacious reign Chin
reached an unprecedented economic prosperity and military
s t reng th.
The rustling of the silk skirt is discontinued;
Dust drifts over the jade steps.
The empty room is cold and lonely;
This metaphoric dimension, however, is not explicit
The next poem takes us to the early Han period. In
fact, it is written by Liu Ch’e the first century
96
Fallen leaves cling to the heavy bolt.
I think of the beauty yonder--
How could she know the restlessness of my heart. 1
-3LA Jlr
?■£ rfn
^ i •'h' i .
The poem is a threnody in memory of the deceased royal con
sort Li, the favorite of the emperor. It was made well-
known to the English-speaking reader through Ezra Pound,
whose rendering is quite free yet preserves the essence of
the poem.^ The poem is characterized by negativity or
absence— no sound, no action (no one walking on the steps
so that dust has collected), and no sight of human presence
O
(the "empty room" and the locked door)'. All' of this con
jures up and culminates in the ultimate absence— death
("fallen leaves"). As to the way the images work, the silk
skirt evokes the presence of the lady that is no more; it
bespeaks her high status as well as her feminine graceful
ness. The jade steps not only shed light on the royal
milieu, but more importantly they call forth the feeling of
coldness, spelt out in the next line. Thus, the atmosphere
of abandon and sorrow is successfully set up through the
correlation of disparate, spot-light-like images. Instead
of the lady, we are only given the view of her silk skirt;
instead of the palace building, we are only given the view
of the jade steps; instead of the chamber, we are given the
heavy bolt on the door; instead of the abstract notion of
97
autumn, we are given the fallen leaves (suggesting wind
and autumn chill). None of the images is explicitly meta
phorical or symbolic, but a rich emotional tone is created.
It should be added that the remarkable unity of tone and
ambience achieved through metonymy in the poem is almost
ahead of the time of Liu Ch ' e . As we shall see, the eco
nomy of language, compression of imagery, and subtleness .
and suggestiveness in tone is more frequently found in
T'ang poetry nine hundred years later.
To return to the more simple form of hs ing in Han
poetry, let us look at the first long ballad ever produced
in China, "Southeast Fly the Peacocks," traditionally held
to be based on the story of Chao Chung-ch'ing of
the third century A.D. The poem of 1^,745 words begins with
these lines:
Southeast fly the peacocks;
They tarry every five miles.
At thirteen I could weave unbleached silk,
At fourteen I learned how to sew.
At fifteen I played k’ung and ho,
At sixteen I recited poetry- and classics.
At seventeen I became your wife,
Often my heart grieves and suffers....
The image of the peacocks has caused much discussion among
scholars. According to Ku Chieh-kang, for instance, the
image in the opening lines has nothing to do with the rest
of the poem.^ It is used only because it is too straight
forward and therefore monotonous to start the poem with
98
"At thirteen I could weave unbleached silk...." This alle
gation is not quite convincing since the image recurs in
other folk compositions of roughly the same time. In an >
earlier "Music Bureau" song , yueh-fu / , "Yen ko ho
ch ' ang hsing" / - for example, we find a similar
image at the opening:
East fly the peacocks,
Bitter cold, no clothes.
As your wife, I suffer pain in my heart.
Night after night I weave,
Never get to leave the loom.
In three days I finish a bolt,
But still she says I am too slow....
Besides the correspondence in imagery, both poems describe
the bitter tragedy in marriage caused by the oppression of
the wicked mother-in-law. The seemingly irrelevant image
of the peacock, therefore, is not totally unrelated to the
theme of the song. First of all, peacocks are domesticated
fowls, and it is not unusual in ancient Chin to keep them
in garden in one's residence. Furthermore, that the pea
cocks often appear in pairs serves as -a contrast to the
forced separation of husband and wife narrated in the
ballad. Lastly, it has been posited that the image does
not refer to live peacocks, but to the peacock design on
silk embroidery, an essential, almost prerequisite part of
the traditional Chinese woman's domestic life whether she
12
is married or not. Since the peacock motif is a common
design for silk embroidery, it is likely that the sight of
the embroidery in the bed chamber caused the narrator to
_____________- 99
think of the domestic tragedy and pour out the song.
When all the possible connotations and references
are taken into consideration, the image of the peacocks
indeed becomes relevant and significant. In this case, the
metaphoric and metonymic dimensions are combined. As the
former mode, it is symbolic of husband and wife. As the
latter, it evokes the domestic context--be it sewing and
stitchery, a woman’s chore, or marriage (man and wife)—
in which the story unfolds.
regarded an anonymous composition in the Later Han period.
The following poem is labeled Number 2:-
Green is the grass by the river,
Dense are the willows in the garden.
Delicate is the lady upstairs,
Bright she appears by the window sill.
Beautiful is the rouge she puts on,
Slender is her fair hand arising.
She used to be a girl in the pleasure house,
Now she's the wife of a philanderer.
He is away, never to return— ^
The empty bed is hard to bear.
The next poem is one of the earliest pentasyllable
which form a group
known as the "Nineteen Ancient Songs" , ku-shih
shih-chiu shou/. Neither the date nor the authorship of
the group of poems is known for sure. Generally, it is
On a first reading the poem exemplifies some universal
characteristics of folksongs, such as simplicity of
100
language and tone, repetition (each of the first six lines
begins with a duplicative compound word), and explicitness
of expression. A closer look reveals that the images are
juxtaposed in a unique manner. The perspective of the poet
seems to steadily draw closer and closer up to the lady as
the poem progresses from Line 1 to Line 6. It begins with
a long shot, a distant view of the river and the grass on
the shore. In Line 2, it pulls up to the garden, the imme
diate sight outside the lady's boudoir. Closer still, the
view is now focused on the lady in the boudoir, standing
in front of the window (lines 3-4). No clear picture of
the lady can be drawn, however. We are only given two
quite unconnected close-ups: one of the rouge on her cheeks
the other of the slender hand she raises (to do what we do
not know, maybe toopen the window, to brush aside the hair
from her forehead, even to catch a butterfly? Or, perhaps
it's a symbolic gesture of trying to break free from her
confinement?). Structurally, the poem proceeds from a
broader view of the distant landscape, to the garden of the
residence, to the narrow and limited view of the lady.
Like disparate shots of the film camera, the images pro
duce bits and pieces of visual impressions on the reader,
leading to the final revelation of the loneliness of the
ill-fated lady. The mode of perception employed in the
poem is definitely metonymic rather than metaphoric.
Another poem that also begins with the image of
101
grass in the first line gives us an example of a quite
different way images sometimes work in Chinese poetry. The
poem is attributed to Ts’ai Yi /^ % / of the second century
A.D., but it is probably an anonymous work produced in
roughly the same time as the "Ancient Songs."
Green is the grass by the river,
On and on I think of the one faraway.
Not only thinking of the one faraway,
I dream of him night after night.
In the dream he appears before me—
Suddenly he is in a strange land.
Through different towns in the strange land
He travels and cannot be seen....
The first two lines of the poem calls for special atten
tion. When compared with the previous poem, they do not
seem any different except that there the image of grass is
juxtaposed with an abstract idea— thoughts of love. The
juxtaposition, however, is both metaphoric and metonymic.
The two modes simultaneously present hinge on the one word,
"mien-mien" . "Mien-mien , " here translated as "on
and on," is a compound word that can be used as either
adjective or adverb. It is derived from the character
"mien" which originally means the continuation of silk
yarn. In the poem, It refers to both the grass and the
pining thoughts of love. In terms of grass, the word
describes its dense volume and spreading growth; in terms
of thought, it stands for its continuity and seeming end
lessness. We may say that thought are like grass, spread-
___________________________________________: ______________: ____ 1 ________ 2jCL2.
-£ng and seeming to have no end. Like the grass conti
nuously growing, the grief of being separated from one's
love is ever born anew. The two are therefore juxtaposed
through the simple reason that both can be described by
"mien-mien."
On the other hand, as in the case of "Song of the
Yueh Boatswain," the metaphorical correspondence need not
exclude and is co-present with the metonymic relation
between the two lines. The grass calls forth the thought
of the absent lover in a spatial, almost physical, sense:
the stretching of grass along the river into the distance
evokes the distance of the traveller from the wife waiting
at home. The continuous expansion of the grass into the
horizon is literally the "distant road" . yuan-1 ao /
in Line 2 (translated "the one faraway"). The image of
grass is therefore correlated with the traveller in a meto
nymic manner.
Several poems have been analysed so far to illus
trate the idea that the metaphoric mode sometimes loosens
and shades into the metonymic mode in Chinese poetry. The
above poem is especially interesting since the simulatneity
of the two dimensions in the poem is achieved by one word
alone. The same technique is used in later Chinese poetry.
The following poem provides a good example:
The moon is bright, flowers strewn all over the ground.
You alone think of the north of the mountain.
Who sends them up in the wind?
- t c
Disorderly, they disturb this heart.
___________________________________________ 103
£ aft jg U ffc
111-111 bIL>5M~ ^ ^ ' r > ^iLvtt^'c:
Tlxe title of the poem is "Snow at Midnight: To Ch1 in Hsi
Recently Divorced." The image of flowers in Line 1 can be
read literally, but judged from the title of the poem, they
probably refer to the snow flakes that fall in the middle
of the night. Against the dark earth, they look like pale,
fallen petals. Taken either way, the image does not change
the meaning or the internal structure of the poem. Like
the previous one we looked at, this poem contains both
metaphoric and metonymic modes, the simultaneity of which
also hinges on one word, "fen-f en" • "Fen-fen," here
translated "disorderly," describes a numerous, random,
variegated, and visually confusing state. Like "mien-mien,"
it is a compound used as an adjective or an adverb. In the
poem, it functions on two levels: it describes the snow
flakes (like fallen flowers) blown in the wind as well as
the state of mind of the poet. Like the disorderly way
snow flakes fly, the poet's heart is confused and disturbed
over the recent divorce of his friend. But the relation
between the image of flowers and the state of mind is not
strictly metaphorical. The snow drops do not stand for
or serve as a substitution for the heart of the poet. The
random way they are blown about in the wind evokes and
resonates with the restlessness of the poet's heart; they
do not replace but only call forth such emotion. Rather
__________________________________________________________________10 A
than : flying snow flakes = disturbed mind, the structure
of the poem is more appropriately: snow flakes -- disturbed
mind. The image leads and gives rise to the emotional ' ■
state.
Similar juxtaposition of imagery is found in
another poem by the same poet, entitled "Listening to Tu
Pien-chia Playing the Hu-Violin on an Islet at Eh":
Lady Wen left this tune;
In a thousand years comes the one who knows it.
Not understanding the tongue of the Hu people,
In vain I retain the heart of a guest at Ch’u.
The tune sways with the grass by the shore;
Its meaning enters the deep clouds over the mound.
Wherefore out on the River,
The tune of "Beyond the Frontier" lingers?
vtt,& yLUk- ' '
^ it i | ix %.
Tire poem depicts the tune heard by the poet on an islet in
the Yangtze River in the Eh region (the modern Hupei pro
vince). Lines 5-6 specifically deal with the effect of the
tune, where we find music juxtaposed with the image of
grass as well as that of clouds. A metaphorical relation
can be posited between them: the music is like the grass
swaying in the wind, and its meaning is deep like the
clouds above the mound. However, this metaphorical inter
pretation does not do full justice to the lines since it is
clear that neither the swaying of the grass nor the depth
of the clouds stands for the tune. Rather, the tune seems
to imbue everything between the earth and the sky: from the
grass below to the clouds above.. This is confirmed by Line
____________________________________105
7, which tells us that the tune lingers on the River as
well (probably after it ends). The lines therefore present
the impression of the tune on the poet who, as the rest of
the poem tells us, is a traveller in a foreign land. He
does not understand the dialect of the local people, and ;
the tune seems to be the only thing he can relate to emo
tionally. For the poet, the tune hence comes to take on
more significance than mere music; it is the sole solace
and only medium for relating to the longely and unfamiliar
environment. Resonating in the space constituted of grass,
clouds, river, wind, etc., the tune seems to create a
unified context in which meaning can be found and express
sion of the inner mind is made possible. The structure of
the lines is therefore metonymic in addition to the more
easily recognizable metaphoric dimension.
With the last two poems we have come to T'ang
poetry, which indisputably represents the highest accom- .
plishment in Chinese poetic art. As far as the poetic form
is concerned, with the maturity of the "recent style" or
"modern style" chin-1 1 i / poetry, including the
"regulated verse" lu-shih / , containing ei'ght lines
in a poem, and the "incised lines" , chueh-chu / or
quatrain, T’ang poetry achieves an economy of means and
subtlety of meaning unmatched by earlier and perhaps later
poetry. The discursive element, for instance, is greatly
reduced; a poem of four or eight lines hardly allows its
106
presence. And metonymy, because of its evocativeness
beyond the semantic surface, becomes an important mode of
poetic expression. By juxtaposing images, metonymy is
capable of calling forth more meaning than the double
entendre of a simple metaphor. In the following, we shall
look at a few T'ang poems where metonymy plays a significant
role.
We begin with a quatrain that could not be simpler,
Li Po's "Thoughts on a Quiet Night":
Bright moonlight in front of the bed,
Taken to be frost on the ground.
Raising my head to look at the bright moon,
Lowering it; I think of the hometown. ■ * ■ ^
The poem has been used to demonstrate the use of metaphor as
X 8
a means of producing meaning in Chinese poetry. Meta- ■
phorical relation is explicitly stated in the first couplet:
moonlight is compared to frost on the ground since both are
white and cold. The structure of this couplet neatly re
sides in the parallel between the two images, between the
sky above and the earth below, and between the upper and the
lower lines. The second couplet, however, endorses a some
what different mode of perception. Granted that both the
moon and the hometown are far away, as I shall argue, this
metaphorical implication is considerably downplayed by
metonymy..
The quatrain was written while Li Po was in exile
in the southern part of China. The region enjoys a sub-
107
tropical climate where frost is rarely seen even in
19
winter. Thus, the sight of frost (mistakenly identified)
on the ground suddenly reminds him of home in North China.
Frost (i.e., moonlight) is not compared to home; it only
evokes the thought of home. Unlike the first couplet
where we find simple equivalence between moonlight and
frost, this couplet is not based on substitution, equating
moonlight with home. It is a horizontal, thus metonymic,
movement: moonlight — home, rather than a vertical or
metaphoric movement: moonlight = home.
In the Book of Songs, the image of the moon already
appears in Song no. 143. Of the "Nineteen Ancient Songs,"
Song no. 7 and Song no. 19 also contain the moon image.
In these early works, the moon is always associated with
separation, of lovers or friends, or between the traveller
and his home, and it is often accompanied with a hope for
reunion. This traditional association persists in later
poetry, and it obviously applies to the Li Po quatrain undei
discussion. In another poem by Li Po, the way the image
works is more clearly shown:
Poplar filaments fall and are gone, cuckoos crying.
It is heard Lung-piao passes Five-Streams.
I send the grieved heart to the bright moon,
To go with the wind to the west of Yeh-lang.
^ ) 5 L - f a . m
The poem is composed on the poet's learning of the demotion
of Wang Ch'ang-ling to be a minor official at
108
Lung-piao in the west of Yehrlang (the modern Szechuan),
then an undeveloped area. In an effort to comfort the
friend who is also a poet, Li Po wishes that he could send
his concern and affection across the miles by way of the
moon. The movement of the last two lines can be expressed
this way: heart — moon — Lung-piao. The moon correlates
the poet and the friend metonymically or horizontally. It
is therefore understandable why the motif so frequently
occurs in poems dealing with separation and reunion. No
matter where it is seen, the moon is the same; thus it
transcends physical distance. Eternally revolving in its
natural course, it always returns; thus it transcends the
viccissitude of time and the unpredictability of human
situations. And, present to all those who want to see it,
it serves as a link between different people. In other
words, the moon comes to be the universal bond between
different people, places, and times, despite or exactly
because of the fact that it is above and beyond the human
realm. This is why the moon is always looked upon as a
reminder of the absent loved one or the home faraway, and
as bringing the hope of reunion to come. The former aspect
evokes in one loneliness and nostalgia, while the latter
cheers one up and makes one look forward. The idea is
again expressed in these lines by Li Po:
If the moon is seen above the Wu island,
Let us be glad /to know/ that we miss each other across
? 1"
a thousand miles.
109
The structure is the same as in the previous poems, which
can be expressed as: the friend the moon — the poet.
Though friends cannot be together in a physical sense, by
looking at the moon they seem to share the same experience
and the same feeling, and thus are much closer in spirit.
The metonymic import of the moon, so succinctly
expressed by Li Po, is frequently echoed in Chinese poetry.
The following lines, for instance, are from a poem Po Chu-i
addresses his brothers, all of whom are separated
from one another:
As we all look at the bright moon, tears should fall;
Thoughts of home on this night are the same in five
places.22
A M ^ ) s\
Here are two couplets by Tu Fu
»
A patch of cloud, the sky is equally far;
The long night, the moon is just as lonesome.
The pines and cassia trees at home are in full bloom;
Across ten thousand miles we share the pure radiance.^
The latter couplet in particular reminds us of the tz * u
poem by Su Shih , which ends with these celebrated
lines:
May that we live as long 25
Across a thousand miles to share the moon.
110
Examples like these can be multiplied indefinitely, but I
think the few we have seen are sufficient in making the
point that the moon motif often serves a metonymic function
in Chinese poetry.
What we have seen so far illustrates not only the
fusion of metaphor and metonymy but also metonymy as an
extremely important mode of perception and composition in
classical Chinese poetry. The latter observation will be
further supported by the next few poems of the T’ang period
The setting sun passes the western peak;
The ravines suddenly darken.
The moon in the pines bring chill to the night;
Springs fill the wind with pure sound.
Woddsmen have almost all gone;
In the haze, birds have just settled down in their
nes ts.
The expected gentleman has not come,
A lone zither awaiting on the ivy path.
^ M r
Tire title of the poem, "Waiting in Vain for Ting-ta While
Staying Overnight at a Buddhist Master's Mountain Resid
ence," and the poem itself make it clear that the poem is
written while the poet waits for a friend who is late for
their meeting. The acute sense of time passing by that
befits a person waiting is expressed in the images through
out the poem. It can be discussed in two ways. Firstly,
the poet is keenly aware of the transition of time from
day to night: the ravines seem to grow dark in a flash,
the moon has arisen, and it is getting cold now. The tran
111
sition thus conveyed in concrete images bespeaks the late
ness of the hour and the imaginably growing disappointment
of the poet. Amidst this disappointment, however, he has
a faint hope that the friend still might show up despite
the fact that it is late. This feeling is implied in the
used of the verbs and adverbs that suggest actions in
progression and incomplete. The sun is setting, but it is
not quite gone; it is still visible and on its way out.
The woodsmen have "almost" all gone, but, again, not quite.
A few are seen on their way home. The haze is falling; the
birds have all come home to their nests, but "just" indi
cates this is the very moment that they have done so. Each
of the actions described above is either on the verge of
completion or at the very moment of completion. It gives
a sense of uncertainty, and, by saying that everything is
not quite done yet, the poet expresses the hope that the
friend might come after all. Embedded in those images is
an attempt to stay the time, to prolong the moment of
transition so as to maintain the hope that does not seem
likely to be fulfilled.
The last line sums up such feeling. Instead of the
poet, we have the image of the zither _/.^>, ch 1 in/ on the
mountain path. To say that the zither is waiting is much
more forceful than saying "I am waiting," since the musical
instrument, which is meant to be played and to be appre
ciated by a friend, lies silent. (There is only the sound
112
of flowing springs.) We recall the ancient story about
Chung Tzu-ch'i and Po-ya . Chung was a
supreme musician who played the zither, yet no one was able
to appreciate and understand his music until one day he
met Po-ya. As he played with mountains in his mind, Po-ya
remarked that there were mountains in the tune; as he
played with rivers in his mind, Po-ya remarked that there
were rivers in the tune. After Po-ya died, Chung broke the
zither on his tomb and never played music again, for there
would be no one to understand it. The phrase "the one who
knows the tune" , chih-y in / is derived from this story
to refer to a friend with whom one has spiritual affinity
and genuine communication, a friend who understands and
appreciates one. Therefore, by using the image of the
zither to conclude the poem, the poet not only repeats
the expectation of the friend's arrival, but also spells
out his loneliness not in the sense of lack of company,
but in terms of reticence of the soul. The zither is
silent since there is no one to appreciate its tune.
As we have seen, the poem is composed of images
that are metonymically correlated. Together they form a
unified whole conveying a feeling in depth. We may call
the poem a "unity of feeling" or "morphology of feeling."
The latter term is borrowed from Susanne Langer who defines
it as a structure that contains "the essence of feeling,"
a structure of "formalized perceptual qualities devoid of
113
a context."27 It is particularly germane to
our discussion of Chinese poetry where concrete imagery is
for instance, the sense of time is concretized in the imag
images of the setting sun, the darkening ravines, the moon
in the pines, the returning woodsmen and birds, etc. Each
image is like an integral part of a mosaic, conveying a
dominant emotive impression on the reader. Metonymy,
therefore, can be seen as an essential way of achieving
such unity of feeling in Chinese poetry.
though equally profound way in the following poem by Tu Fu:
Staying overnight by the water, the setting sun yet
gleaming.
Smoke arising, this pavillion once again.
By the station the sand is white as before;
Beside the lake young grass is green.
Spring is everywhere in Everything;
A lone raft, the still travelling star.
Following the ripples and countless moons,
It slowly approaches the southern sea.
It has often been remarked that Tu Fu's poetry is charac-
of the highest order. The po.em under discussion here well
exemplifies his artistic achievement matched by few other
poets in Chinese history. Line 1 provides the simple
elements of time— late evening— and place— by the water
(we already know from the title of the poem the place is
the most prominent
The sense of time is expressed in a different
terized by compression of language and precision of imagery
114
called White-Sand Station). Both elements reappear in Line
2. We learn that the place is inhabited by .people as in
dicated by the smoke (probably from cooking). The smoke
also suggests it's around dinner time. The word "again"
tells us that this is not the first time the poet visits
the place. It creates a continuity between the present and
the past. The general outline composed of present time and
place in Line 1 is therefore given some depth in Line 2,
for continuity of time means history and memory. Thus,
memory is continued in Line 3: the sand is "still" white,
in contrast to the newly grown-grass on the bank, which
signifies the renewal of nature in spring. Even at this
point, we seem to sense a slight discrepancy between the
vigorous progression of time in the natural cycle and the
stagnancy and repetition in the mental cycle of the poet:
nature is presented as fresh and vivacious, while the poet
is locked within his memory, the "same-as-before" frame of
mind. This feeling is to be justified and explained by
the next couplet.
Line 6 in particular poses some problems since the
flexible syntax and referential generality characteristic
of the Chinese language make it difficult, if not impos
sible, to determine the meaning of the line. A literal
transcription of the line reads: "lone raft by-itself guest
star." One may, however, question the use of the word
"guest." "K'e" /]§7 can mean "guest" as opposed to "host"
115
or "master," but it can also mean "traveller" in the sense
of "man away from home" as opposed to "man at home." The
line therefore can be paraphrased in at least three ways.
First, we may take it to mean, the lone boat is 1ike a
travelling star. A star "travels" in the sense that it
revolves in the orbit through the year. So, like the star,
the raft travels on, seemingly to no end. The second way
of interpreting the line is: the lone raft is like a star,
which is a guest to the earth. Spring brings life to the
earth ("wan-hsi ang" here translated as "everywhere"
and "everything," literally means "ten thousand aspects or
images"), but the stars are not affected by it. They
always seem to be cold and "lifeless." Thus, the lonely
poet, like the stars, does not share the life and warmth
of spring. Lastly, we can say, the lone raft alone wel
comes the stars as guests, in which case the word "k'e"
is used as a verb. For they bring on the night, bringing
the day to a close. For the journey-weary poet, they must
be a welcome sign, meaning he is closer to the destination,
closer to the end of the voyage.
In the translation above, I choose to use the first
interpretation of Line 6. But all three versions, I feel,
make sense and can co-exist with one another. The impact
of the five-character verse lies in the fact that the boat
is and at the same time is not the star. The metaphorical
connotations of the star tend to break down so as to allow
116
the juxtaposition of the raft and the star to fit in. The
juxtaposition also serves the function of a smooth trans—
tion from the sunset in Line 1-2 to the night in Line 6.
The poem closes with a further indication of the
passage of time. The moon reflected in the rippling water
becomes many moons. "Wu-hs ien" here translated "countless"'
literally means "infinite" or "boundness." As ripples
rise after ripples, so one reflection, of the moon is seen
after another. The continuous displacing of the ripples
and the image of the moon suggests the continuing, forward
motion of the boat. This is backed up by the last line.
"Ti -1i" 9 an onomatopeia imitating the sound of the
boat moving along, describes a slow but steady movement.
We can actually picture the raft smoothly moving on, with
the reflection of the moon sparkling here and there in the
wavy water.
The poem thus beautifully presents the state of
mind of a traveller, who is painfully sensitive to the
passage of time and more susceptible to its effect than
most people. For the voyage-weary poet, time is not an
abstract concept, a conventional expediency. The concrete
ness of time is conveyed by spatializing time in the images
of sunset, smoke, pavillion, sand, grass, stars, water, and
moon. This is another supreme example where one image
leads to another to compose a "morphology of feeling."
What I have tried to demonstrate above is that the
____________________________________________________________ 117
subtlety and depth of Chinese poetry is partly the result
of its constitutive structure or mode of composition. This
poetic mode has been defined as the dissolution of the
reified differentiation between metaphor and metonymy. It
is true that I have selected poems in which metonymy plays
a dominant role, but it is not because of an intentional
neglect of metaphor but rather to make a point about meto
nymy. The emphasis on metonymy by no means suggests that
metaphor is of less importance in Chinese poetry. My con
tention is that metonymy as a poetic mode can be traced to
the notion of hs ing and has significant implications for
the way we approach Chinese poetry in general. As the
metaphoric/metonymic mode in the Book, of Songs , hs ing is
not an antiquated, pedantic term but a useful literary
concept to account for the blending of metaphor and meto
nymy, as well as the structural significance of metonymy,
often encountered but seldom examined in classical Chinese
poetry. Before we proceed to deal with the philosophical
and theoretical implications of such literary phenomenon,
I would like to look at two more poems. Whereas one shows
the sliding of metaphor into metonymy, the other presents
the sliding of metonymy into metaphor.
The former case appears in a group of three poems
under the same title of "Chfing-p 1 ing Tune" by Li Po;
Clouds /make me/ think of her blouse and skirt,
flowers her face.
Spring breeze brushes by the railing, blossoms iri
118
heavy dews.
If not on the top of the Ch'un-yu Mountain,
She might be seen on the Yao Terrace under the moon.
A single blossom of rosy loveliness and dewy fragrance,
Love on Mount Wu— the heart is broken in vain.
May I ask whom she resembles in the Han palace?
The lovely Fei-yen in her freshly applied make-up.
Celebrated flowers and ravishing beauties get along
f ine ;
They are both fondly looked on by the emperor.
Dissolving the endless resentment in the spring breeze,
She leans on the railing in the Enbalmed Pavillion.29
i ^ _i_s. -A* ~F
- 2^_ ^
/ < J k ?A ^ 3k "$6 A^f ^
j 5-
& , 5* J "T
The poems are inseparable from the historical context in
which they were written. One day, the exotic peonies in
the royal garden suddenly burst into bloom. Delighted at
the unexpected extraordinary sight, the emperor of T'ang,
accompanied by the royal consort Yang, summoned the poet to
the garden to compose poetry to celebrate the auspicious
occasion. It is obvious that in the first two poems, the
flowers are a metaphor of the beautiful lady. In Poem
no. 1, the floating clouds are compared to the undulations
of her flowing garments, and flowers to her face. Poem
no. 2 continues the metaphor of the flower, adding specific
attributes such as loveliness and fragrance. The various
allusions to the fairyland ("Ch'un-yu Mountain" and "Yao
119
consorts.) The feeling of isolation is enhanced by the
image of the "trace of the moon" that merely "brushes" the
tips of the trees of the court, implying that it is so well
protected that even the moonlight finds little access to it
Hence, the opening line sets the mood for the entire poem,
with the other lines now focusing on the court lady. The
overall mood of isolation sets off the utter loneliness of
the lady, a state perhaps undeserved for her beauty
("charming eyes"). Her loneliness is sharply contrasted to
the peacefulness and belonging called forth by the image of
the egrets asleep in their nest. The fowls enjoy harmony
and companionship of which the lady is deprived. The same
image also tells of the late hour. Staying up late, is
she waiting for the emperor who never comes, or is she
simply too lonely and grieved to go to sleep? The two
possible explanations are in fact correlated and both are
acceptable. The.refore, through the juxtaposition of de
scriptive, non-metaphorical images in the first couplet,
we already feel a deep sense of deprivation and sadness.
The climax of the poem is reached in the concluding
line: the lady, having nothing to do to pass the time,
saves a moth caught in the lamp. The act seems quite
trivial and innocent at first glance, and she probably does
it in total absent-mindedness. However, because of the
mood so successfully evoked in the previous lines, the
image of the moth takes on some deeper significance. We
12-0
Terrace" where female immortals live) and the legendary
romantic encounter between the prince of Ch’u and the fair
goddess of Mount Wu elevate the hackneyed metaphor to the
realm of the otherworldly and etherial. In Poem no. 3,
however, the metaphor is dissolved into a metonym. Instead
of equating the beauty with flowers, they are now cor
related non-metaphorically. Both are the object of royal
affection and the source of delight. Perceived visually
or cinematically, the superimposition of the image of
flowers upon that of the lady in the first two poems is re
placed, in the third poem, by the juxtaposition of the two.
Metaphor is relaxed and gives way to metonymy.
The opposite situation is exemplified by this poem
written by Chang Hu of the eighth century:
The trace of the moon brushes by the palace trees be
hind the "prohibited gate";
!The charming eyes only see the egrets asleep in the
nest.
Plucking aslant the jade hairpin by the shadow of the
iamp ,
She snaps out the red wick to save the flying moth.
The quatrain begins with a description of the general en
vironment, the royal palace. The word "prohibited"
chin/ is used specifically to refer to the court that is
isolated from, and unapproachable to, the other social
strata. (For example, "prohibited palace" , chin-
kung/ means the residence of the emperor and his wife and
121
may say that the metonymic arrangement of images throughout
the first three lines has been preparing for the metaphoric
transformation of the potent image. Just as the moth is
trapped in the lamp, weak and helpless, .so is the lady
trapped in the court, lonely and unable to do anything to
change it. The subtle identification of the lady with the
moth is underlined by the ironic fact that, weak as she is,
she can at least save the moth from the flame, but who is
to save her from her misery? To push the analogy a bit
further, we can even say that the moth, by nature attracted
to light, is ignorant of the imminent threat of death; by
the same token, the lady who aspired to the luxury and glorj
of court life ("jade hairpin") and royal affection was too
innocent to foresee the emptiness and loneliness in store
for her.
Unlike most of the poems studied in this chapter,
this poem illustrates the subtle transition from the meto
nymic to the metaphoric mode, without sacrificing the rich
emotional overtones achieved through concatenation of
imagery. Regardless of the direction as to which slides
into which, it has been shown that the distinction between
the two poetic modes is often blurred. In addition, the
importance of metonymy in Chinese poetry has also been
demons trated.
122
NOTES TO CHAPTER III
■*"See Mi Wen-k’ai and P'ei P 'u-hsien, vol. 1, p. 56.
2Ch ' en Hang, Commentaries on Pi-Hsing in. Poetry
(Taipei: Cheng-chung Bookstore, 1970).
o
lb id. , p. 1.
^lb id. , p. 19.
^"Song o_f the Yueh Boatswain^ 1 from the Origins of
Chinese Poetry Ku shih yuan/, ed. Shen Teh-ch'ien
(Taipei: Hsin-lu Bookstore, 1975), p. 19. All the
pre-T'ang poems cited below are from this anthology.
^Liu Ch 1 e , "Tune of the Sad Cicada," from Shen
Te-ch’ien, pp. 41-42.
^Compare Pound's translation (Cathay, 1915):
The rustling of the silk is discontinued,
Dust drifts over the courtyeard,
There is no .sound of footfall, and the leaves
Scurry into heaps and lie still,
And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them.
^This interpretation is suggested by Suzanne Juhasz
in her Metaphor and the Poetry of Williams, Pound, and
5 t evens (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1974), p.
26: "The first five lines of the poem offer a series of
careful, physical details, primarily noteworthy for their
negative element: there is no rustling of silk, no sound
of footfall."
^"Southeast Fly the Peacocks," from Shen Te-ch'ien,
p . 84 .
_ ^Ku Chieh-kang, "The Use of Hs ing" Ch ' i
hsing/, in the Essays on Ancient History, vol. 3, pp. 675-
6 .
^Cited by Hans H. Frankel , in "The Chinese Ballad
’Southeast Fly the Peacocks,'" Harvard Journal of Asiatic
Studies 34 (1974): 268.
12 Ibid. , p. 2 63 .
123
13 "Nine teen Ancient Songs," no. 2, from Shen ; ■
Te-ch'ien, p. 89.
l^Ts'ai Yi, "Horse Drinking by the Cave of the
Great Wall," from Shen Te-ch’ien, p. 58.
■ ' ■ ■ ’Liu Ch ’ ang-ch ' ing , "Snow at Midnight:
To Ch ' in Hsi Recently Divorced," from CTS, vol. 3, p. 1480.
T f i
Idem., "Listening to Tu Pien-chia Playing the
Hu-Violin on an Islet at Eh," from CTS, vol. 3, p. 1505.
^2Li Po, "Thoughts on a Quiet Night," CTS, vol. 3,
p. 1709.
18
See Yu-kung Kao and Tsu-lin Mei, p. 317.
19
This information is provided by John A. Turner,
S.J., trans., in A Golden Treasury of Chinese Poetry (Hong
Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1976), p. 322,
n. 38.
2 0
Li Po , "On Hearing Wang Ch’ang-ling Being Demoted
to Lung-piao: A Poem Sent from Afar," CTS, vol. 3, p. 1769.
21
Idem., "Seeing Secretary Chang off to the East of
the River," CTS, vol. 3, p. 1788.
22p0 Chu-i, "Thoughts on Seeing the Moon: To the
Eldest Brother at Fu-liang and to the Younger Brothers and
Sisters at Fu-li and Sha-kua Who Are Separated after the
Rebellion and Starvation in Kuan-nei," CTS, vol. 7, p. 4839.
2^Tu Fu, "The Yangtze and Han Rivers," CTS, vol. 4,
p. 2523.
24Ibid.
2 5
See Su Shih, "Water Tune and Beginning of Song,"
from the Anthology of Tz’u Poetry J _ , Tz ’ u hsuan / , ed.
Cheng Ch ' ien , 2nd ed. (Taipei: Hua-kang, 1972), p. 41.
2^Meng Hao-jan, "Waiting for Ting-ta While Staying
Overnight at a Buddhist Master's Residence," CTS, vol. 3,
p. 16 2 4.
^2The term "morphology of feeling" is coined by
Susanne K. Langer in Philosophy in a New Key (New York:
The New American Library, 1951), p. 202. It is first
applied to Chinese tz'u poetry by Shuen-fu Lin in The
Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition, Chiang
K’uei and Southern Sung Tz'u Poetry (Princeton: Princeton
124
University Press, 1978), pp. 81—2, 94, 142, 150, 152.
^Tu Fu , "Staying Overnight at White-Sand Station,"
CTS , vol. 4, p. 2567.
3^Li Po , " Ch ' ing-p 1 ing Tune," CTS , vol. 3, p. 1703 .
30Chang Hu, "To My Wife," CTS, vol. 8, p. 5840.
125
PART II. CULTURAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL
IMPLICATIONS: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
126
CHAPTER IV
THEORIES OF METAPHOR AND POETRY
Part I examines the concept of metaphor as con
ceived in the Chinese poetic tradition under the names of
p i•and h s ing. It constitutes a breach of Western, Struc
turalist in particular, differentiation between the meta
phoric and metonymic modes. The complexity of hs ing
reveals that there is no categorical difference between the
two; one tends to slide into the other and vice versa.
This of course does not suggest that metaphor per se does
not exist in Chinese poetry. In poetics, it has been noted
in Chapter 1 that, as early as the fourth century, Liu
Hsieh's definition and classification of pjL neatly cor
responds to the Western concept of metaphor. What I am
concerned with here is the undermining of the valorization
of metaphor and metonymy as two opposite modes implied in
hs ing. The concrete manifestations of hs ing in the Bo ok
of Songs actually lead from the metaphoric to the meto
nymic mode, which is prevalent in classical Chinese poetry.
Hs ing as the metonymic mode underlies the seeming simpli
city and directness of Chinese poetry where images, with
connotations other than metaphorical, are correlated to
create a rich affective mood or a "morphology of feeling."
________________________________________________ 12 7
Part II attempts to account for the fusion of metaphor and
metonymy in theory and practice, as well as the relative
lack of attention to metaphor per se in Chinese criticism.
To do so I shall place the issue in the context of theore
tical and philosophical concepts of the Chinese and the
West. In this chapter, I shall first deal with the nature
and function of metaphor as defined in the two literary
traditions.
Beginning with Aristotle through the Neo-Classical
period, metaphor was studied mainly as a rhetorical and
literary device. In Aristotle, a discussion of metaphor is
found in both the Rhetoric (Book III) and the Poetics
(Chapters 2-1-25). The former work is further divided into
three areas: argumentation, composition, and style; meta
phor belongs to the last. In the Poetics, metaphor is
subsumed under lexis which is one of the six elements of
tragedy. In both cases, metaphor is considered an import
ant technique which helps fulfill a certain function, be it
mimesis that is poetry, or persuasion, the goal of argumen
tation .
For Aristotle, rhetoric and poetic constitute two
of the three areas of the study of language, the other
being logic, of which the pronounced function is clarity of
thought, and, by extension, of expression. The implication
is that poetic and rhetorical'does not specifically con
tribute to the clarity of expression, and as such it is
128
clearly distinguished from "ordinary" or "standard" lang
uage. As a trope in its original meaning of "turning,"
metaphor is thus considered a verbal deviance from normal
usage, a detour in signification which nevertheless con
tributes to the extra effect of charm, wit, or pleasant
surprise. This view dominates discussions of metaphor in
the classical and medieval periods, among rhetoricians and
aestheticians such as Cicero, Horace, Longinus, and
Quintillian. The anonymous work produced around 86 B.C. ,
Rhetorica ad Herennium, best sums up the functions of meta
phor, which is used for "vividness," "brevity," to "avoid
obscenity," for "magnifying," "minifying," and "embellish
ment. All the six uses listed therein either achieve
stylistic distinctness or conform with the norm of decorum.
Metaphor is generally conceived as "the supreme ornament of
style," and it continues to be so defined in the Eliza
bethan and Neo-Classical times.
In Chinese culture, however, metaptior takes on a
rather different implication. Instead of a decorative
device or literary technique that can be consciously
applied for a calculated effect, it is felt that metaphor
is a natural way of poetic expression. Hu Ch'uan
of Southern Sung, for instance, associates the use of pi-
hs ing with literature as configurations of nature, such as
sun, moon, stars, mountains, rivers, etc.^ Just as heaven
and earth give birth to those natural configurations
129
without any conscious design, so does man create metaphors
spontaneously. The same notion is uttered by Li Yu <_/
of the Ch'ing dynasty when he compares various types of
literature to "flowers of the heart" ] _ ^ ^ The
organic images critics often employ connote that metaphor
is a spontaneous and natural creation of the heart or
feeling. This idea is directly related to that of poetry
as spontaneous expression of intent and feeling, which, as
mentioned before, is one of the oldest Chinese concepts of
literature. Though it is never really the basis for any
systematic theorizing, the expressive and emotive view of
poetry is variously found in ancient texts such as the
Historical Documents of Chou, the "Treatise on Literature"
]_ Wen fu / by Lu Chi , The Literary Mind and the
Carving of Dragons by Liu Hsieh, and many writings of the
Ming and Ch'ing periods. As K'ang Hai of Ming puts
i t:
...emotion commands thought, ^poetry born in
response to feeling; such is the essence of poetry.
To compare things and to present hs ing , to encounter
without anticipation; such is the way of poetry.^
i t ’ l f If i if
The first sentence reiterates the emotive view, the second
further relates the use of p i-hs ing , i.e., the metaphoric
mode, to it. The phrase "to encounter without anticipa
tion" suggest that to engage in metaphorization is a spon
taneous act, uncontrived and unpremeditated, just as poetry
______________________________________________ 130
is .
Of the two names of the; metaphoric mode, hsing is
more expressly associated with feeling, thus with the idea
of spontaneity. Cou Nan-shing of the Ming period
remarks that "hs ing is born in feeling" > an-d as
such it has nothing to do with learning.^ In fact, accord
ing to Li Meng-yang and Chiao Hun , learning
can sometimes even be an obstacle to poetic composition,
an idea that echoes Yen Yu's theory that the
quintessential flavor of poetry has nothing to do with
books or logical reason, but rather is dependent on the
6
poet's natural talent and temperament. In Chapter 18 of
the Book of Rite Li chi / , we find this statement:
Without learning extensive comparison, one cannot
excel in poetry.^
The claim is somewhat ambiguous, since "aji," here trans
lated as "to excel in," can also mean "to be comfortable
of’content with." It can apply to the poet creating as
well as to the reader comprehending poetry. Therefore,
the Chou view does not necessarily conflict with the notion
that metaphorization is largely independent of laborious
study. What they both agree on is that metaphor is an
essential ingredient of poetry and metaphorization a
defining quality of the poet. The latter idea is expli-: .
citly expressed by Chou Nan-shing who comments that "...
131
only the ignorant do not have hs ing; the mundane do not
have hsing" • 8
That the ability to create metaphor is basically
innate and distinguishes the poet from the rest of men
echoes Aristotle’s theory of metaphor, in particular the
passage found in both the Poet ics (1459a 3-8) and the
Rhetoric (1412a 10):
. . .the_greatest thing by far is to b_e a master of meta-
phor J_literally: to be metaphorical^/. It is one thing
that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a
sign of genius, s_ince a good metaphor /literally: to
metaphorize welJ^/ implies an intuitive perception of
the similarity in dissimilars.
The correspondence between Aristotle and the Chinese, how
ever, is quite superficial and stops here, for also im
plied in the above passage is the function of metaphor as
conceived by Aristotle and many later theorists which is
in direct contrast with that held by the Chinese.
Besides the idea that metaphorization is an innate
ability and a sign of poetic genius, the Aristotelian enun
ciation also points out the intrinsic nature and function
of metaphor as cognitive. To metaphorize means to be able
to discern likeness or resemblance between hitherto un
connected entities.or categories, thus imparting fresh
insight. In the Rhetoric, it is also stated that metaphor
enables one to "get hold of new ideas" (Book III, 1410b).
This epistemological approach to metaphor is taken
up by many a philosopher, linguist, as well as literary
critic of the modern era. To name but a few, Monroe C.
132
Beardsley says that, "the meaning of a metaphor does not
grow out of the literal meanings of its parts, but appears
as something extraneous to, and independent of, them. The
literal meanings are overridden and lost; the metaphorical
10
meaning is inexplicable in terms of them." The "inex
plicable" meaning of metaphor defies paraphrasing or
literal translation, and it asserts the unique value of
metaphor in its own right. Martin Foss defines this value
in cognitive terms as well. He holds that metaphor gives
"an entirely new knowledge beyond their /_the parts of a
metaphor/ fixed and addible multitude.In Max Black's
work, which, based on I. A. Richards' theory, has great
influence on later studies of metaphor, it is defined as a
"redescr-ption" of reality that has not only emotive
effect but also cognitive value. Metaphor contributes not
only to aesthetic pleasure but also to our understanding of
12
the world. In the same vein, Nelson Goodman talks of
metaphor as "a matter of teaching an old world new tricks"
and as having "truth value" just as literal statements . -
13
do. Finally, Paul Ricoeur asserts the "capacity of
metaphor to provide untranslatable information...to yield
some true insight about reality. While it is impossible
to deal with those theorists in any depth here, the above
survey is given to illustrate the prevalence of the cogni
tive view of metaphor.
This modern tendency to study metaphor as cogni-
____________________________ 13 3
tively valuable and effective is nothing new; it can be
traced back to Aristotle. As the "intuitive perception of
similarity in dissimilars ," metaphor is closely related to
poetry as mimesis. According to Aristotle, mimesis is a
universal human instinct that fulfills the deeper instinct
for learning, or rather the pleasure in learning. Only
after this aspect of mimesis is laid out does he state that
pleasure is also derived from harmony inherent in mimesis.
Thus, already in Aristotle, the epistemological import of
mimesis weighs more than its purely aesthetic attribute.
In addition, metaphor contributes specifically to tragedy,
the imitation of human action which better than the common
and ordinary is nevertheless based on the law of necessity
or probability. As Ricoeur aptly puts it, whereas the plot
or mythos achieves mimesis on the level of action, metaphor
does it on the level of lexis or the word.^
Because metaphor serves a cognitive function, the
ability to discern and comprehend a metaphor is conse
quently of importance as well. "How does a metaphor work?"
is a vital concern to many theorists of the West, and it
has been variously defined as a substitution and transpo
sition, an interaction and interillumination, a collision
and conflict, and so forth. No matter how it is defined,
the process of understanding or "decoding" a metaphor is
generally held to be intellectually stimulating and logi
cally penetrating. It is no wonder then that in analysing
134
metaphor the Western critic usually prefers the original,
complex, and most unlikely, to the hackneyed, simple, and
easily comprehensible. Metaphor has long been identified
with wit or ingegno , the human faculty that discerns and
discovers similarities and creates metaphor. From a
historical point of view, it is instructive to observe that
since medieval times,- interest in metaphor tends to coin
cide with that in metaphysical poetry studded with in
geniously conceived metaphors. With the birth of
metaphysical poetry in the seventeeth century, literary
critics and rhetoricians, such as Baltasar Gracian in
Spain, and Emmanuele Tesauro, Cardinal Sforza-Pallavicino,
Pierfraneesco Minozzi, Matteo Pelligrini in Italy, produce
a rich corpus of writings on the "conceit," synonymous with
metaphor.Although the creative aspect of metaphor
distinguishes itself from purely discursive reason, the
theorists always finish up "by finding a kind of intellec
tual truth in the conceit."^ in tune with the theologi- .
cal, scientific, and astronomical beliefs at the time, it
is commonly accepted that metaphor makes the world more
intelligible, revealing a world of consistency and coher
ence .
But it is with the Romantics that metaphor first
takes on a profound epistemological and creative import.
Though the term is scarcely used by them, perhaps purposely
avoided for its negative association with rhetoric, the
.... 135_
idea of metaphor underlies and is inseparable from their
discussions of poetry and the imagination as the highest
poetic principle. Shelley, for instance, speaks of poetry
as the language that
...marks the before unapprehended relations of things
and perpetuates their apprehension unti1 the words
which represent them become, through time, signs for
portions or classes of thoughts instead of pictures
of integral thoughts .
The language of poetry is, as he terms it, "vitally meta
phorical." Likewise, when Wordsworth syas in The Prelude:
...The song would speak
Of that interminable building reared
By observation of affinities
In objects where' no brotherhood exists
IQ
To passive mind....
he is referring to the active, creative power of the poet
to make metaphors.
According to Coleridge, the ideal poet "diffuses a
tone and spirit of unity that blends, and...fuses, each
_/image, thought, or emotion/ to each, by the synthetic and
o n
magical power...of imagination." The unity revealed in
poetry is effected by metaphor which produces
a blance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant
qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general
with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the indi
visual, with the representative; the sense of novelty
and freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more
than usual state of emotion, with more than usual
order;...^
That metaphor fuses the idea with the image, or the uni
versal with the concrete, echoes the statement of J. G.
Herder, the eighteeth century German critic, that metaphor
136
serves as "the easiest transition to abstract thought.
It also pinpoints one way in which poetry is more concrete
than philosophy yet more philosophical than history, a no
tion that is voiced in Shelley’s A Defense of Poetry, Sir
Philip Sidney’s An Apology for Poetry, and, before them,
Ar istotle 1 s Poe tics. For Coleridge and other Romantics
influenced by the German transcendental idealism of Kant
and Schelling, metaphor provides a coalescence of the
abstract idea and the concrete experience, the noumenal
and the phenomenal.
The close association, if not identification, of
metaphor with imagination is clearly demonstrated by
Coleridge's examples in distinguishing poetry from non
poetry, or poetry informed by imagination from poetry that
is not. In Chapter XV of Biographia Literaria, he first
gives us the following two lines:
Behold yon row of pines, that shorn and bow'd
Bend from the sea-blast, seen at twilight eve.^3
According to Coleridge, the lines are "descriptive" but not
poetic. To transform them into a "semblance of poetry," he
rewrites the lines in this way:
Yon row of bleak and visionary pines,
By twilight glimpse discerned, mark.' how they flee
From the fierce sea-blast, all their tresses wild
Streaming before them.
The differences between the two versions are striking: the
revision is more vivid and descriptive ("bleak and vision
ary," "fierce," "wild," "streaming," etc.), more emphatic
137
in tone ("mark!"; "how they flee"), and more suggestive
("visionary," "glimpse," etc.)* But; the biggest difference
is that the straightforward description in the original
(with only a very slim suggestion of metaphor in "shorn and
bow'd") is turned into an explicit metaphor. The pines are
clearly personifications, though whom they stand for cannot
be readily identified. They are probably compared to
women ("tresses") who "flee" with "their tresses wild
streaming before them." They might remind one of Greek
myths which tell of frenzy nymphs being pursued by some
violent and lascivious God ("the fierce sea-blast"). The
ambiguity is not demaging to the effect of the lines, how
ever. What is achieved is that the metaphorical dimension
of the pines imparts the same sense of ominousness, to the
other images (such as the "twilight glimpse" and the
"fierce sea-blast") and creates tension in the lines.
Incomplete and improvised as they are, those lines
serve Coleridge's purpose of showing the imagination at
work. The kind of metaphor the Romantics praise and look
for is not based on mere association by way of similarity,
but it must induce a coalescence and interaction between
disparate elements. In the example.we have seen above, the
metaphor of the pines unifies the verse by creating subtle
relations between and among the images. This, for the
Romantics, dictates the essential difference between imagi
nation and fancy. Whereas imagination "shapes and
_________________________________________________________________138
creates," fancy only mixes and combines. To illustrate the
distinction, Coleridge refers to two metaphors or two groups
of metaphors from Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis:
(1) Full gently now she takes him by the hand,
A lily prisoned in a jail of snow,
Or ivory in an alabaster band:
So white a friend ingirts so white a foe.
(2) Look.' how a bright star shooteth from the sky,
So glides he in the night from Venus* eyes. 5
The first example contains metaphor that are mere "juxta
position and apparent reconciliation of widely different
9
or incompatible things." It compares the hand to a lily
and ivory, but fails to relate them to each other and to
the other images ("the jail of snow," "white friend," and
white "foe"). Namely, they remain "separate entities,
although yoked together by the lines .... There is no inter-
2 7
action, no blending of the elements here." Therefore,
(1) is the product of fancy. On the other hand, (2) is a
true creation of imagination,, as explained by Coleridge's
wonderful analysis:
How many images and feelings are here br.ought together
without effort and without discord— the beauty of
Adonis — the rapidity of his flight — the yearning yet
hopelessness of the enamoured gazer— and a shadowy
ideal character thrown over the whole.— Or it acts by
impressing the stamp of humanity, of human feeling,
over inanimate objects...^®
While fancy makes mechanical and arbitrary comparisons,
imagination gives us synthetic and "organic" metaphors.
The same idea is expressed by Wordsworth:
When the Imagination frames a comparison...a sense of
139
the truth of likeness, from the moment that is is
perceived, grows— and continues to grow— upon the mind;
the resemblance depending less upon outlines of form
and feature, than upon expression and effect; less
upon casual and outstanding, than upon inherent and
internal, properties; moreover, the images invariably
modify each other....29
The crucial distinction between mere assembly of simila
rities and mutual reinforcement and modification between
images, as well as the image of growth often used by the
Romantics, are later adopted by Allen Tate when he diffe
rentiates metaphors that are "imposed upon the material
3 0
from above" from those that "grow out of the material."
Such, then, is the "esemplastic" power of metaphor,
which is imagination in action. For the Romantics, meta
phor attains a status that is.almost comparable to that of
poetry itself. The use of subtle, complex metaphors is
nearly synonymous with poetic art, and it is certainly one
of the most essential elements of poetic achievement.
Monroe Beardsley's remark that metaphor is "a miniature
poem"^! aptiy applies to this Romantic attitude.
It is no wonder, then, that the New Criticism,
which inherits wholeheartedly and further refines the
Romantic idea of poetry as an organic unity, holds an
equally high opinion of metaphor. In the critical writings
of the most representative New Critics, such as T. S.
Eliot, Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, W. K. Wimsatt, and
Cleanth Brooks, we constantly find detailed and perceptive
analyses of metaphors in poetry. The presence of Coleridge
_______________ 140
in them is pervasive and preponderous, especially the
Coleridge on the imagination as the "balance or reconcili
ation of opposite or discordant qualities." In the words
of Wimsatt and Brooks:
...it is only in metaphor, and hence it is par excel
lence in poetry, that we encounter the most radically
and relevantly fused union of the detail and the uni
versal idea. ^
The fusion they talk about is practically a paraphrasing of
Coleridge's. And, again, in their view:
It can be read as metaphoric meaning here and there in
poems or as metaphoric character or dimension extending
all through poems and constituting this very "imita
tive" relation to the world of reality which with their
aid and in them we come to know.^3
Metaphor is important both as a way of generating meaning
in poetry and as a vital means of knowing and understanding
reality as well as conveying such knowledge and under
standing.- The epistemological and creative value of meta
phor remains essentially a Romantic view.
In light of the fervor over metaphor, it is only
natural for the New Critics to resuscitate the Metaphysical
Poets in whose work the use of metaphor is inextricably
related to the effects of drama, irony, and ambiguity.
Reversing Dr. Johnson's derogatory remark, the New Critics
praise the metaphysical conceit exactly because it "yoke(s)
O /
by violence" together the "most heterogeneous ideas."
The notion of "violence" not only refers to the tension
thus generated in the poem itself, but also describes the
impact on the reader from the audacity and originality of
_____________________________; ____________________________________141
the metaphysical conceit. Hence, Brooks talks about the
"boldness" and "vigor" of metaphor in Modern Poetry and Its
Tradition; Ransom on Wordsworth sees metaphor as intro
ducing "foreign objects" into the poem; and, Paul Henle,
in more general terms, says: "The outstanding characteris-
3 5
tic of metaphor is the sort of shock which it produces."
While the freshness, boldness, and shock attributed to the
metaphysical poetry may be a modern interpretation, some
what out of the historical context, it is sufficient in
showing the' tremendous emphasis placed on metaphor in
poetry, and it would not be an overstatement to say that
metaphor has been the most universally applied criterion
for poetry in the West.
The Western assumption about metaphor as capable of
providing fresh insight and creating a synthesis of emotion
and idea is quite foreign to the Chinese mind. As already
noted, for the Chinese, the origin of metaphorization can
not be separated from that of poetry, which is held to be
spontaneous expression of human emotion or intent. Born
in feeling and eliciting emotive response, metaphor tends
to defy rationality or logical comprehension. Cheng Ch’iao
thus speaks of hs ing:
That which is hsIng: what one sees is here, what one
gets is there; it cannot be inferred from categories of
things, it cannot be sought in reason and meaning.^
142
Though the statement refers to hs ing in particular, Cheng's
idea applies to the nature of metaphor in general as con
ceived by the Chinese. This view is elaborated on in this
passage by Shen Te-ch'ien, the famous scholar-critic of the
Ch'ing dynasty:
It is difficult tomake clear and present a thing; it is
djiffjicult to exhaust the inner principle with words.
/.One/ always relies on objects and connects categories
to describe it; deep emotion may then be^ released, and
the chance of Heaven is met with. J/One/ always borrows
objects to refer to what is on one's mind; p i and hs ing
are used alternately, repeatedly sung and chanted.
Thus, the joy and sorrow hidden within may be subtly
transmitted. The words are shallow, but the feeling is
profound.3®
% Jte 4k ^ ^ 4mr kA i_
W ^ M ^
f > k ° i , J s X . r ^ v 4 if
Ik % 4
Here Sh.en sees both pi and hs ing as originating in feeling
and expressing feeling which is beyond logical or rational
feeling, as indicated by the phrase "chance of Heaven"
/-Xk-3^’ t ' ien-chi / .
The divergence in the way metaphor is viewed in the
two traditions also leads to some broader questions regard
ing the nature of poetry in general. In many ways they are
already implied in the above discussion of metaphor and
metaphorization. We have remarked that mimesis designates
poetic function in Aristotle. It is only appropriate to
add that the notion of poiesis designates the nature of
poetry. Side by side with the idea of imitation is that of
_________________________________________________________________141.
making. The seeming contradiction between imitation and
creation is resolved in that the engage in artistic crea
tion is to produce an imitation of nature. "The creative
dimension is inseparable from this referential movement."
Therefore, "mimeiss is poiesis, and poiesis is mimesis.
Poetry as making or a craft (techne) entails the theoreti
cal concern with methodological and operative principles
persistent in the Western critical tradition. As observed
by Shih-Hsiang Chen, the Poetics "advances many analytical,
finely differentiated technical considerations concerning
the art of poetry which were to form the basis of Western
literary criticism.
In contrast to the Western concept of poetry as
poiesis and mimesis, the etymological significance of
poetry is quite different in the Chinese language. It has
been pointed out that the character•for poetry, "shih,"
originally meaning song-dance and expression of individual
emotion suggests a lyrical element in it.^ Shih for the
Chinese is intimately if not exclusively associated with
the lyric. The lyrical origin of Chinese poetry is there
fore distinguished from the origin of Western poetry.
Though the ancient Greeks give us the lyrics of Sappho and
Pindar, the term "poetry" as coined by Aristotle in the
Poetics and the earliest writings on poetry refer primarily
to the dramatic and the epic forms. In the Book of Songs,
the feng section designates the category of the lyric, and
144
it contains 160 songs in comparison with the ya section
containing 105 songs ("minor ya" 74 and "major ya 31 songs)
and the sung section of 40 songs. The idea that poetry
expresses what is on the mind is found in all the earliest
references to poetry, among them: the Historical Documents,
Tso's Commentaries on the Spring and Autumn Annals, the
"Major Preface" to the Songs, Discourse on Tao and Its
Power by Chia-tzu J_ > the Treatise on Heaven
imS./ by Hsun-tzu , etc.^ Given the prevalence of
the concept, there is really no need to repeat that poetry
is considered the spontaneous expression of the human mind
or human emotion.
At this point, it is perhaps helpful to clarify one
thing regarding the spontaneous and expressive theory of
poetry; namely, it does not necessarily imply that poetic
composition is spontaneous as well. That poetry originates
spontaneously in emotion should not be confused with the
notion that the poetic process itself is effortless or
even beyond conscious control, thus dispensing with culti
vation of craft. While there are poets and critics who
make a point about the ease and natural flow of poetic
genius, most poets in fact admit or are known for their
engagement in the strenuous, painstaking process of poetic
creation. The most famous example is probably Tu Fu, who
dedicates himself to the art of poetry and thus speaks of
himself in a poem:
145
As to personality, JjL am/ unsociable and addicted to
f ine lines;
Would not stop till death if words did not astonish
people 1^3
And his friend, Li Po, greatly admired for his almost
legendary genius for poetry, speaks of him half in jest and
half in humor:
May I ask why this scholar is so skinny?
''All because writing poetry has been such a painful
tionally characterized as pure, otherworldly, or enlight
ened, is known to step into a vinegar pot while cogitating
others well indicate the tremendous effort and concentra
tion usually required for poetic creation:
Two lines are comDleted in three vears:
So far, we have examined the various implications
of metaphor and poetry in the Chinese and Western tradi
tions. The study of the concept of metaphor has inevitably
task!"44
^ ^ I f
Another poet, Wang Wei /_ t . whose poetry is tradi
the lines, of a poem.^ The following verses among many
they bring tears down both eyes
The heart of a lifetime is broken.'4^
To compose a mere five-character line
One single word appropriately placed--
Several strands of beards are snapped.
146
led to that of poetry since the two share in common many
theoretical assumptions. In the West, corresponding to
poetry as both poiesis and mimesis, metaphor is given a
profound creative and cognitive significance. Especially
since the Romantic age, the poet as a maker, a craftsman.,,
cannot be understood apart from the poet as a creator of
metaphors. In China, by contrast, metaphor has a rela
tively simple and innocent implication. It is subsumed
under the idea of poetry as the spontaneous expression of
feelings or intents. While we detect in it an echoe of the
Wordsworthian definition of poetry as the "spontaneous
A 9
overflow of powerful feelings," the similarity is quite
superficial and deceiving. Though the Romantics elevate
feeling in revolt against the Empiricist, mechanical view
of emotion and sensory experience, poetry for them remains
one of epistemological import. This is clearly supported
by the discourse on metaphor in Coleridge and Wordsworth.
The Romantics seek a unification of emotion and intellect,
or rather an improvement upon intellect through deep and
intense feeling. The poetry of feeling cannot be sepa
rated from the poetry of "thoughts that do often lie too
deep for tears and Coleridge holds the highest regard
for Shakespeare who successfully combines "intellectual
C 1
energy" and "creative power." The cognitive function of
poetry is likewise envisaged by the modern heirs of
Romantics such as W. B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens. This,
_________________________________________________________________147
then, constitutes the major difference between the Chinese
and Western views on metaphor and poetry.
To account further for the marked discrepancies in
this respect, as well as between the lack of metaphor
theories in Chinese criticism and the tremendous enthusiasm
the subject has continued to spark among Western critics,
I shall place the issue in its proper cultural and philo
sophical contexts. To do so is to study the conditions of
possibility or the philosophical premises underlying the
literary concepts. In other words, I shall present my
speculations as to what makes possible a particular concept
of metaphor and is responsible for it.
148
NOTES TO CHAPTER IV
■'"Summarized by Terence Hawkes , Metaphor (London:
Methuen and Co., 1972), p. 13.
O
_ _ H_u Ch ' uan , the Collected Literary Works of Hu
/Ch * uan / J_ > Hu Tan-an Shen-sheng wen-chi / ,
excerpted in CWCLC, vol. 4, pp. 101-2.
_ ^Li Yu, "Preface" to the Selected Famous Tz'u Poems
Ming tz’u hsuan sheng/, excerpted in CWCLC, vol.
8, p. 10 3.
4
K'ang Hai, "Preface" to the Collected Poems of
Ch'ang Meng-tu of the T'ai-wei Mountain / -A- .3^ %
S% iL , T ' ai-wei shan-.jen Ch'ang Meng-tu shih-chi/, excerpted
in CWCLC, vol. 7, p. 310.
~*Cho;u Nan-shing', "Preface" to the Collected Poems
of San-hsi San-hsi shen-sheng shih-chi/,
excerpted in CWCL C, vol. 7, pp. 600-1.
6 y |
For LI Meng-yang s and Chiao Hung s statements,
see CWCLC, vol. 7, p. 289 and p. 473^. For Yen Yu's theory,
see his Ch*ang-lang's Poetry Talk J_ 3^ > &•£, Ch ' ang-lang
shih-hua / , annotated by Kuo Shao-yu, rpt. ed. (Taipei:
Cheng-sheng, 1973), pp. 23-4.
^The statement is compared to Aristotle's remark
that met_aphor is the sign of genius by_Ch'ien Chung-shu
in the Selected Sung Poetry vgj 53? , Sung shih
hsu an chu/, ed. and annotated by Ch'ien Chung-shu, 3rd ed.
(Peking: Jen-min, 1979), p. 74, n. 7.
®Chou Nan-shing, CWCLC, vol. 7, p. 601.
^Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Ingram Bywater, with
the Rhetoric, trans. W. Rhys Roberts (New York: The Modern
Library, 1954), p. 255.
^Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the
Philosophy of Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and
World, 1958), p. 136; also, "Metaphor" in The Encyclopedia
of Philosophy (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1967), p. 285.
■'••'"Martin Foss, Symbol and Metaphor in Human Expe-
___________________________________________ 149
rlence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), pp.
61-2 .
i o
Max Black, Models and Metaphor (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1962).
t
13
Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art ( I n d i a n a p o l i s ;
Hackett, 1968), p. 69.
^Paul Ricoeur, "The Metaphorical Process as Cog
nition, Imagination, and Feeling," Critical Inquiry 5
(Autumn 1978): 143.
15 '
Idem., The Rule of Metaphor, Multidisciplinary
Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language (Toronto:
University of Toronto Pr,ess, 1977), p. 41.
1 f i
For an account of these theorists on wit and the
conceit, see Joseph Anthony Mazzeo, Renaissance and Seven
teenth-Century Studies (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1964), pp. 30-50.
^ ^lb id. , p. 49.
18
Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defense of Poetry, rpt.
in Critical Theory Since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams- (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 500.
"^William Wordsworth., The Prelude, Book II, 11.
382-6, from the Selected Poems and Prefaces by William
Wo rdswo rth , p. 215.
2 0
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria,
Ch. XIV, from The Portable Coleridge, p. 524.
21Ib id.
22J. G. Herder, Werke V, 53, quoted in W. K.
Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, vol. 2, p. 374.
23coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Ch_. XV, p. 529.
24Ibid. , pp. 529-30 .
2 5
Coleridge, "Shakespeare's Poetry," from The
Portable Coleridge, p. 414.
9 f t
Idem., Biographia Literaria, Ch. xyill, pp. 576-
7 .
2 7
Terence Hawkes, p. 48.
150
A. Richards further explicates this passage:
"The separable meanings of each word, Look.' (our surprise
at the meteor, hers at his flight), s tar (a light-giver, an
influence, a remote and uncontrollable thing), shoo teth
(the sudden, irremediable, portentious fall or death of
what had been a guide, a destiny), the sky (the source of
light and now of ruin), glides (not rapidity only, but
fatal ease too), in the night (the darkness of the scene
and of Venus' world now)— all these separable meanings are
here brought into one" (Coleridge on Imagination /London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950^/, p. 83).
2 9
Quoted by W. K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, vol.
2, p. 405.
30
Allen Tate, On the Limits of Poetry, Selected
Essays: 1928-1948 (New York: Swallow Press, 1948), p. 92.
Q 1
Monroe C. Beardsley, Aes thetics , p. 144.
3 2
W. K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, vol. 2, p. 749.
See T. S. Eliot, "the Metaphysical Poets," in the
Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot, ed. with an intro, by Frank
Kermode (London: Faber and Faber, 1975), p. 60.
3 5
Cleanth Brooks, Modern Poetry and Its Tradition
(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1967); John Crowe Ransom, "William Wordsworth: Notes
Toward an Understanding of Poetry," The Kenyon Review 12
(Summer 1950): 505; Paul Henle, "Metaphor," in Language ,
Thought, and Culture, ed. Paul Henle (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1958), p. 182.
O f .
In Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery, Renais
sance Poetic and Twentieth-Century Critics (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1961), Rosemond Tuve rejects the
modern interpretation of the metaphysical conceit as bold,
shocking, or original. On Donne's metaphor of compasses,
she says: "This metaphor exhibits decorum: it is uniquely
suited to its subject, precisely apt for the purpose, and
in no way shocking. It isn't even original" (p. 21). The
metaphor draws upon the symbol of the perfect circle to
express the idea of "consistency and coherence" of a world
of which both the lovers and the compasses are a part.
o y
Quoted in Mi Wen-k'ai and P'ei P'u-hsien, vol. 1,
p . 6 .
151
^ Shen Te-chfien_j_ Collected Talks on. Poetry
, Shuo sh.lh tsuel yu/, excerpted in the Class if led
Compilation of One Hundred Poetry Talks J_ " j & i f , - | - Pai
chuna shih-hua lei-pien/, 3 vols., ed. T'ai Ching-nung
Z( T a ipe i: Yi-wen, 1974), vol. 3, p. 1422 .
~^Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, p. 39.
^Shih-Hsiang Chen, "The Shih-ching," p. 12.
^For a thorough study of the etymology and early
history of the word "shih , " see Chow Tse-tsung, "The Early
History of the Chinese Word Shih (Poetry)" in Wen-1in,
Studies in the Chinese Humanities, ed. Chow Tse-tsung
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), pp. 151-210.
/ o
For the earliest references to "shih , V see Ke
LjLen-hsiang » "The Origin and Function o^f Poetry"
, Shih te ch’i-yuan yu kung-yung/, in
Chinese Poetry Quarterly ]_ ^ , Chung-kuo shih chi-
k*an/ 12 (June 1981): 94-115.
^ 3
Tu Fu, "A Short Composition on the River Rising
like Sea," CT S, vol. 4, p. 2443.
^Li Po , "To Tu Fu in Playfulness," CTS , vol. 3,
p. 1892.
^Recorded in the "Appendix" to the Annotated
Complete Works of Wang /Wei/ j_ 1; , Wang Mo-chieh
ch'uan chi chu/, rpt. ed. (Taipei: Shih-chieh Bookstore,
1974), p. 387.
^Chia Tao , "Inscription on the Composition
of a Poem," CTS, vol. 9, p. 6692.
^^Li P'in , "Verse," CTS, vol. 9, p. 6845.
^Lu Yen-jang /Hi j j L / , "Labor of Composition,"
CTS, vol. 11, p. 8212.
49
Wordsworth, "Preface to the Second Edition of
Lyrical Ballads," from Selected Poems and Prefaces of
William Wordsworth, p. 460.
^Idem., "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood," Selected Poems and Pre
faces , p. 191.
^Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Ch. XV, p. 53 2.
152
CHAPTER V
PHILOSOPHICAL EPISTEME OF
THE WEST AND THE CHINESE
In "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of
Philosophy" (1974), Jacques Derrida declares that: "In
every rhetorical definition of metaphor is implied not just
a philosophical position, but a conceptual network within
which philosophy as such is constituted.It is exactly
this "conceptual network" that will constitute the core of
the present discussion. Namely, we' shall pursue what gives
rise to the concept of metaphor in reference to the
Western and Chinese philosophical traditions. Why does
metaphor in the West assume a profound epistemological and
metaphysical implication? And, by contrast, how can we
account for the relative lack of interest in metaphor as
a rhetorical concept and consequently the marked absence of
elaborate theories of metaphor in China? Does the discre
pancy between the way metaphor is conceived in the West
and in China reflect a difference in philosophical outlook
and emphasis? Therefore, we are concerned, not with what
metaphor means, but with why metaphor means what it means
in an overall cultural context. It is to this problem of
metaphoricity that we now turn.
153
The common denominator of the Western philosophical
tradition can be defined as hierarchical dualism. It can
be traced back to Plato, where we find the dichotomy of the
realm of ideas or forms and that of senses or appearances.
Consequently, art, defined as an imitation of the pheno
menal eWorld which in turn imitates the realm of ideas, is
considered twice removed from the real and eternal. Art,
therefore, is to be condemned and reduced to the false and
immoral. In an attempt to resuscitate art by justifying
its raison d'etre, Aristotle redefines art, poetry in par
ticular, as imitation not of appearance but of essence or
substance inherent in the individual and particular, which
manifests the transcendental realm of ideas. Poetry then
both teaches and.pleases. Though the Platonic idealism is
modefied, the' fundamental duality of substance and attri
butes, essence and accident, form and matter, truth and
representation persists neverthless.
Derrida argues that this dualistic strain runs
through the entire Western philosophical tradition from
Plato to Descartes to Hegel. The basic hierarchical dicho
tomy of essence and appearance entails a complex configura
tion of concomitatnt dualities: subject/object , inside/
outside, substance/form, logos/mythos , origin/derivation ,
nature/culture, etc., with the former taken as the real,
the essential, the originary, the superior. Granted that
there have been thinkers whose orientations are non-
_______ 154
dualistic, such as the pre-Socratics and medieval mystics,
these remain isolated instances, an undercurrent of the
mainstream of Western philosophy. The long tradition con
stitutes a single system of thought that, according to
Derrida,
...is the determination of being as presence in all the
senses of the word. It would be possible to show that
all the terms related to fundamentals, to principles,
or to the center have always designated the constant
of a presence — eidos , archg, telos , energeia, ousia,
(essence, existence, substance, subject), aletheia ,
trans cendentality , consciousness o.r cons cien ce % God,
man, and so forth.^
All those terms designate the state of self-presence ,
plenitude of being, and inferiority, and they inevitably
generate their logical opposites as the marginal and in
substantial* This dualistic framework, which Derrida calls
the "metaphysics of presence," "logo centrist," or "phono-
logocentrism," dominates the regulates Western thinking
from Plato to Heidegger. Drawing upon the works of think
thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger, Derrida
seeks to overthrow the tyranny of such an episteme.
How does metaphor relate to Western metaphysics
then? Initially, we note that the term "metaphor" itself
("meta" meaning "over" and "phore" from "phero" "to carry"
or "to bear") is metaphorical, that is , pointing beyond
itself and referring to something other than itself. This
can be said of other terms denoting the same idea. For
instance, a "trope" indicates a turning away from itself
or its semantic surface; a "figure" of speech connotes a
_________________________________________________________________155
detour in expression, the "shape" of thought which is
intelligible by itself and seemingly transparent in voice
or speech. In dealing with language, Saussure refers to
linguistic "value" and semantic "exchange," both terms
borrowed from economics, while the reverse can be found in
Marx, who expresses economic concepts in terms of linguis
tic principles. In the same vein, abstract terms such as:
concept, fundamental, theory, substance, eidos , logos,
arche, etc. are all derived from a metaphorical process and
are a form of metaphorical "sedimentation." Like Nietzsche
before him, Derrida reverses the hierarchy of concept and
metaphor, idea and image. By using a dialectical process
(so well exemplified by his deconstruction of the hierarchy
of speech and writing), he argues that there is no concept
that is not always already a metaphor. There is no meta
metaphor, that is, a concept totally free of metaphorical
displacing or one that does not lend itself to indefinite
metaphoricai supplementation. Using the sun as a prime
example, he says,
It reminds us that an object which is the most natural,
the most universal, the most real, the most clear, a
referent which is apparently the most external, the
sun— that this object, as soon as it plays a role in
the process of axiological and semantic exchange (and
it always does), does not completely escape the
general law of metaphorical value: "The value of just
any term is accordingly determined by its environment;
it is impossible to fix even the value of the signifier
'sun’ without considering its surroundings: in some
languages it is not possible to say 'sit in the sun 1"
_/Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, p. Ilj6/.
156
However, the point here is not the simple fact that
a metaphor, through long usage, loses its metaphorical
impact, or that language by nature is metaphorical (i.e.,
self-transcending). What Derrida is concerned with is why
it is necessary for philosophers to disguise, to eradicate
the metaphorical origin of concepts. The answer that he
proposes is that the "effacing" of the "wear and tear" of
metaphoricity in concepts assures the security of being as
self-presence , the metaphysical concept par excellence.
This argument can be clarified from at least three per-
spe c tives.
First of all, metaphor as a transference of name is
always seen as a vehicle between two distinct and disparate
realms or categories: the sensible and the intelligible,
the figurative and the literal or proper sense, the con-
crete and the abstract, etc. It is the same referential,
process that defines language use, moving from image to
idea, from representation to content or truth, from the
signifier to the signified. As argued by Derrida in 0f
Grammato logy, in Western metaphysics, the former is always
held as the primary, originary, and present-to-itself,
while the latter is the derivative, accessory, and absence
(of meaning or truth). Metaphor in itself is incomplete
and unstable; its importance lies only in being a me'ans of
transporting to the realm of abstract ideas.
Secondly, metaphor defined as an awareness of
________ 157
resemblance or likeness is closely related to the concept
of mimesis. We remember that metaphor has its place in the
Poetics , a work which starts off as a study of mimesis, a
"natural," ie.e. , innate, property of man. Therefore, as
a characteristic distinguishing man from other animals,
mimesis reveals truth in nature or physis. From this
notion it is but one step further to say that "mimes is ... is
connected with the possibility of meaning and truth in
discourse.From Aristotle to Fontanier, metaphor, "an
effect of mimesis and homoiosis," "a manifestation of
analogy," is a means of knowledge.
The third implication drawn from the history of
"metaphorics" is based on the concept of name or onoma.
Metaphor, as has been noted, is a transfer of name. The
term "name" does not simply refer to the noun, but it also
includes the verb and the adjective. What the three cate
gories have in common is that "they carry an immediate
reference to an object or rather to a unity of sense."
Namely, whereas nouns, verbs, and adjectives refer to a
self-contained, self-sufficient meaning, other categories
such as prepositions, conjunctives, etc. serve only as
syntactical links that rely on the noun, verb, etc. to
express meaning. The former categories are called "cate-
gorematic," while the latter are "syncategorematic." In
Aristotle, Fontanier, Husserl, etc., metaphor is defined as
a transfer of the "nominalizable"— "a complete and inde-
158
pendent signification, what is intelligible by itself."
To put it in a different way, it is a transfer of "cate-
g
gorematic words, not of syncategorematic words as such."
This definition of metaphor reveals the effort of the
philosopher to preserve sense as something present-to-
itself, outside the field of supplementation, the "syncate
gorematic" play.
By examining the history of "metaphorology,"
Derrida maintains that it shares the very same presupposi
tions that make possible Western metaphysics. The movement
of connecting two disparate orders of reality is far from
innocent of metaphysical implications. Quite the contrary,
the concept of metaphor is inevitably inscribed in the
dualistic-phonologocentric frame of reference of Western
thinking, and it epitomizes the effort to escape from the
realm of appearances by transcending the concrete and
particular, the sensible, and the figurative, into the
abstract and universal, the intelligible, and the literal
or proper. The former is but a vehicle that carries one
over into the latter as self-presence or plenitude of being.
In the final analysis, the ascending movement that is
metaphorization is the same movement of idealization and
interiorization that we find in Plato, Aristotle, and many
others. It is, in Derrida’s term, "white mythology" since
metaphor never does "eventually" lead to the "proper" name
or presence (of meaning) as such; it only leads to more
159
metaphors. Again, in his words:
There being no longer any properly named reference in
such a metaphor, the figure of speech sets out on a
voyage into a long and hidden senten—e, a secret reci
tative, with no assurance that we shall be led back
to the proper name. The metaphorization of metaphor,
its bottomless overdeterminabi1ity, seems to be written
into the structure of metaphor, though as its negative
s ide.^
In her recent study of metaphor in Chinese poetry,
Pauline Yu notes that in the Chinese metaphor, "the
referents are not fundamentally 'other'; the images are
parts of cultural conventions or of the object being
described. Things and beings are depicted in familiar
terms drawn from this world, and. . .assumed to be a part of
it, if distantly. She seems to suggest that Chinese
metaphors,are different from Western metaphors in the* -
nature of their referents; Statements like this can be
misleading and are quite beside the point, since the
difference in reference to metaphor does not lie in the way
metaphor appears or is used in poetry. (Chinese metaphors,
for instance, do refer to mythical or supernatural things
or beings that are not so "familiar" to "this world.") I
think the essential difference pertains to the underlying
concept of metaphor evolved in the Western and Chinese
traditions. As we have seen in Chapter 4, the West
emphasizes the cognitive and creative import of metaphor;
metaphor is treated as a tool for assimilating experience,
bringing new insight, and producing knowledge. Such a view>
160
in light of Derrida’s interpretation of Western metaphysics ,
is deeply embedded in conceptual dualism, which reifies the
abstract and the concrete, concept and image, truth and
representation, presence and absence, being and nonbeing,
etc. Metaphorization represents yet another attempt at
idealizing or interiorizing what is apparent and outside.
The difference in literary theory is therefore inseparable
from the difference in ontological thinking. As distinct
from the metaphysical tradition of the West, the Chinese
have produced a decidedly non-dualistic view of reality.
The beginning of Chinese philosophy or even Chinese
culture as a whole can be traced to the Book of Changes or
I ching. . The authorship of the work in its original form
is attributed to Fu Hsi, the legendary culture hero of the
third millenium B.C., but the text as it has been studied
for over two thousand years is the accumulated result of
the efforts of King Wen of the Chou dynasty, the Duke of
Chou, and Confucius, who expanded, elaborated on, and
annotated the original text. Central .to the I ching is the
notion of Tao /.3§_/. Tao , often rendered "Way" in its
literal sense, is the originating principle of the universe
or all that is. In the Confucian commentaries on the
I ching , we find this statement: "one yin and one yang are
_ _ 11
called the Tao" J_— - p-% When at work, Tao
takes the form of yin and yang , the operative principles
manifesting Tao. While yin, literally referring to the
161
northern, shady side of the mountain, designates the recep-\
tive, in the numerous forms of the dark, the female, the
earth, etc. , yang , literally the southern, sunny side of
the mountain, is the creative, in the forms of light, the
male, the heaven, etc. The two opposite states, however,
are not in conflict with one another, and one is not
superior to the other. One gives rise to and in turn re
places the other. It is through this interaction and
interpenetration of yin and yang that Tao comes to be known.
The I ching can be regarded the backbone of Chinese
culture since it provides the framework for various disci
plines in ancient China, such as philosophy, religion,
astrology, geomancy , medical science, etc. As far as
philosophical thinking is concerned, both Confucianism and
Taoism, the two ideological mainstreams of Chinese culture,
contain elements from the work and show its influence.
Confucius, for instance, is recorded as saying:
Had I been given a few more years so that I started
studying the I ching at fifty, then I would have done
no great wrongs.
tio 3E. + ^ ka ^
It refers to another passage where he expresses the idea
that to know the I ching is to know "the mandate of Heaven"
— 1 3
-L^.^ > T ' ien-ming / . In the Taoist writings of Lao-tzu
and Chuang-tzu, extensive discussions of the interaction of
yin and yang, or being j _^ , %u_/ and nonbeing J_ , vru/, can
be found. This does not suggest that Confucianism and
162
and Taoism are identical in their philosophical thinking.
The two, as we shall see, are very different in their
emphasis and tone; whereas Confucianism advocates human
strivance and human cultivation as essential to fulfilling
Tao, Taoism deems all human intervention and invention
detrimental and destructive. Whereas Confucianism empha
sizes ethical conduct and moral responsibility in line with
social harmony and common welfare, Taoism stresses total
liberation from moral precepts and being in tune with one’s
pristine nature. Whereas Confucianism is more humanisti
cally oriented, Taoism is more naturalistically inclined.
Despite their differences, however, Confucianism and
Taoism bear the imprint of the I ching in the sense that
they draw upon different aspects of the text. Confucianism
is closer to the spirit of yang, the principle of creati-
vity, of going forward, while Taoism is closer to that of
yin , the principle of quietude, of keeping still. Also in
Taoism we find a profound ontology centered on Tao, which
has a tremendous influence on Chinese culture, particularly
Chinese aesthetics and poetics. This ontology of Tao ,
then, shall provide a clear picture of the Chinese episteme,
In the Classic of Tao and Its Power ]_ f t j g . ? Tao
te ching/, attributed to Lao-tzu (6th century B.C.?), Tao
is first of all defined as the origin of all beings. In
Chapter 42, for example, Lao-tzu says: "Tao gives birth to
one, one to two, two to three, three to the ten thousand
__________' 163
things" ^ and Tao the unnameable
is "the origin of heaven and earth" J_ However,
Tao as origin must not be understood in an onto-.theological
sense, for Tao "gives birth yet does not own; it accom
plishes yet does not vaunt; it nourishes yet does not
dominate" J_ ^ f f h -jk^n ^ %_l • 16 In other words, it
makes possible beings, yet does not control or govern them
in the sense that God or the Logos does in the Western
tradition. The nature of Tao can be best understood in
terms of the relation of Tao to being and nonbeing.
In both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, Tao is identified
with the conventionally negative or inferior term such as:
the weak, the low, the ignorant, the lack, etc. Central to
Taoist philosophy is the idea of Tao as .wu or nonbeing —
no-name wu-ming / , no-form /_.$£,» wu-hs ing / , not-
having , wu-yu / , non-striving wu-wei / , not-
knowing > wu-chih/ , etc. j^But the nonbeing that Tao is
should not be seen as opposed to being, because it as ori
gin is the nonbeing by which being comes to The follow
ing analogies clearly illustrate the nature of Tao as
creative, dynamic nonbeing:
Thirty spokes share one hub; as there is nonbeing,
there comes to be the function of a cart. Clay is
molded into a vessel; as there is nonbeing, there
comes to be the function of a vessel. Windows and
doors are excavated in rooms; as there is nonbeing,
there comes to be the function of a room.^
164
Th_e idea that Tao is the nonbeing by which being is made
possible is more forcefully expressed in the original
which can also read: "as there is nonbeing being /serves/
the function of a cart, etc." Also in Lao-tzu, Tao is
compared to the holes of a flute without which the flute
cannot function. This metaphor recurs in an expanded form
in Chuang-tzu in reference to the "piping of Heaven" _/ ,
t'ien-lai/ which we shall quote at length:
Tzu-ch'i said, "The Great Clod belches out breath and
its name is wind. So long as it doesn't come
forth, nothing happens. But when it does, then ten
thousand hollows begin crying wildly. Can't you
hear them, long drawn out? In the mountain forests
that lash and sway, there are huge trees a hundred
spans around with hollows and openings like noses,
like mouths, like ears, like jugs, like cups, like
mortars, like rifts, like ruts. They roar like
waves, whistle like arrows, screech, gasp, cry,
wail, moan, and howl; those in the lead calling out
yeee J those behind calling out yuuu. ' In a gentle
breeze they answer faintly, but in a full gale the
chorus is gigantic. And when the fierce wind has
passed on, then all the hollows are empty again.
Have you never seen the tossing and trembling that
goes on?"
Tzu-yu said ,_"By the piping of earth, then, you mean
simply /_the sound of_/ these_ho 1 lows , and by the
piping of man ]_the sound of_/ flutes and whistles.
But may I ask about the piping of Heaven?"
Tzu-ch'i said, "Blowing on the ten thousand things in a
different way, so that each can be itself— all
take what they want for themselves, but who does
the sounding?"^
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The question with which the passage ends is of course a
rhetorical one: no one does the sounding, yet sounds are
or are disseminated through the movement of Tao, the non-
being without which being cannot be. Since Tao always
already inhabits being, it is not in opposition to being.
Giving rise to being and negating itself, it is not non-
being either. Chuang-tzu also uses the image of the hinge
in reference to Tao; the hinge which performing a spatial
(i.e., the opening and closing of the door) itself seems
to be invisible, occupying little space.
Such then is the paradoxicality intrinsic to Tao.
Neither being nor faonbeing , neither presence nor absence,
neither self-sameness nor difference, Tao is the originat
ing nonbeing always already preceding and underlying the
bifurcation of being and nonbeing, presence and absence,
self-sameness and difference. As such Tao cannot be
called a concept, but rather a nonconcept that only func
tions as one. ~j
Thus, the Taoist interpretation of Tao develops the
ancient idea, as it appears in the I ching . "I/' is to be
understood as the ultimate understanding of Tao , and it
embraces four levels of meaning.First of all, "i_"
literally means "change" , P ien-i / . It refers to the
166
movement of Tao, from which yin and yang, the so-called
"two nodes" liang-y i / , "four images" ]_ ssa^L, ssu-
hsiang_/, "eight trigrams" J_ /v£|- , pa-kua / , and sixty-four
hexagrams are derived. It can therefore be called the
"law of evolution."
On the second level, "1." means "simplicity" >
chien-i/, which describes the principle underlying the
movement of change stated above. Namely, the process of
change, observed in nature and the world of man, is simple
and clear. There are three explanations of the etymology *
of the word "i_. " One states that.it is composed of the
characters for "sun" and "moon," hence designating the
constant rotation of night and day. Another hypothesis
holds that the pictogram presents the sun over water, thus
the idea of the sun rising above the horizon. It therefore
suggests the beginning of the process of change. Still
another theory posits that "i_" originally means "lizard,"
a homonym composed of "iV' and the radical element of
"insect." The lizard changes its color from red in the
daytime to white at night, thus expressing the notion of
mutation. Of the three views, the first one is probably
the most popular and widely accepted, but, philosophically,
all are valid and convey pretty much the same idea of
change as readily observable and easy to understand.
The third meaning of "i_" is "trade" or "exchange"
J- » chiao-i/ . It refers to the continuous interplay and
______________________________ 16 7
intepenetrat ion of yin and yang, or nonbeing and being,
which can be termed the "law of enantiodromia" or "Reversal
2 0
in extremis." Namely, "whatever goes to its ultimate
O 1
extremity will revert to its opposite," and opposite
states are mutually implicated and interdependent. There
fore, it can also be called the "law of mutual transforma
tion . "
Finally, "jl" also means "changelessness" > pu~
1./, which defines the nature or essence of Tao . The work
ings of Tao are incessant and constant; underlying all and
* ■
making all possible, it is the oneness or unity shared by
all. Hence, change is also changeless; the permanent is
also the simple; what is different is also the same. This
can be named the "law of constancy."
The above outlinesof the roots of Chinese philo
sophical thinking reveals the fundamental difference be
tween the Western and Chinese traditions, which has to do
with the way duality is perceived and conceived. Whereas
the West tends to reify and r^igidify binary oppositions,
developing a hierarchical, dualistic framework that cate
gorizes reality, the Chinese regard them as mutually
generative and interpenetrative. j^The particular and the
universal, the concrete and the abstract, the individual
and the whole are understood as interdependent and comple
mentary phases of one creative process under the name of
Tao. Such a way of holistic thinking, born in the symbol-
168
ism of the I ching and further developed and fully em
bodied in Confucianism and Taoism, is continued in later
philosophical thought such as Chinese Buddhism (including
the Ch'an or Zen sect) and Neo-Confucianism of the Sung and
Ming periods. ^Dualism may be the most basic and universal
form of human perception and conception; for one thing ,
without the ability to differentiate the subject from the
object, knowledge or cognition would virtually be impos
sible. However, to take conceptual opposites as perma
nently vali-d and ultimately antithetical is to see reality
in a limited and partial way from the Chinese point of
view.^j Especially beginning with the late nineteen century,
the linguistic-conceptual dualism of Western metaphysics
has been seriously challenged by thinkers such as Nietzsche
Husserl, Heidegger, Whitehead, Bergson, and Derrida.
Granted that there are profound if not irreconciliable
differences between these thinkers, they all share the same
thrust in their attempt at a radical revaluation and in
sightful critique of metaphysical conceptualization. It is
interesting to note that as some of the thinkers turn away
from the orthodox tradition of Western philosophy in search
of a new perspective, a new ideological platform, there is
often some similarity to the Chinese episteme, particularly
2 2
the Taoist or Ch * an way of thinking.
169
NOTES TO CHAPTER V
■'■Jacques Derrida, "White Mythology: Metaphor in the
Text of Philosophy," New Literary History 6 (1974): 30.
2
Idem., Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
3
For Nietasche on metaphor, see: J. P. Stern,
"Nietzsche and the Idea of Metaphor," in Nietzsche: Imagery
and Thought, A Collection of Essays, ed. Malcolm Pasley
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 64-
82; Sarah Kofman, "Metaphor, Symbol, Metamorphosis," in
The New Nietzsche, Contemporary Styles, of Interpretation,
ed. and intro. David B. Allison (New York: Dell, 1977),
pp. 201-14.
^Derrida, "White Mythology," p. 37.
' ’This is found not only in traditional theories,
but also in modern studies of metaphor. Pauline Yu cites
these examples: "...W. M. Urban, in Language and Reality
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1939), defines metaphor as
'a word transference from one universe of discourse to
another' (p. 433)...Other critics stress the 'disparity'
between the 'different spheres of thought' linked by meta
phor (David Lodge, The Modes of Modern Writing...p. 75) or
distinguish metaphor, which joins a 'plurality of worlds,'
from metonymy, which involves 'movement within a single
world of discourse ' (Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theo ry
of Literature _/New York: Harcourt , Brace and World, 1956^/',
p. 195)" (p. 211 , n. 21) .
£
See Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1976), pp. 1-93.
^Idem., "White Mythology,", p. 33.
8Ibid .
^Ibid. , p. 44.
■*"^See Pauline Yu, p. 206.
■'■■'"See the Appended Commentaries in the I ching of
170
Chou J_fS\ ^ , Chou i / , rpt. ed. (Taipei: Hsin-hsing Bookstore
1979), p. 47.
1 ?
Analects , Ch. 7, rpt. ed. (Taipei: Ho-lo Press,
1978), p. 76.
13 Ibid. , Ch. 2 , p. 13..
^^Lao-tzu, Ch. 42, rpt. ed. (Taipei: Taiwan Chung-
hua Bookstore, 1973), Part II, p. 5.
15 Ibid. , Ch . 1 , Part I , p . 1 .
16 lb id. , Ch . 10 , Part I, p . 6 .
17
lb id. , Ch . 11, Part I, p . 6 .
Chuang-1 zu , Ch. 2. See Burton Watson's trans
lation, pp. 36-7.
■^That i_" ; emb races three levels of meaning is an
ancient idea. According to Ch'ien Chung-shu, it is first
articulated by Chenj* Hsuan in the Commentaries on the I
cihing / , I tzan/ and the Discourse on the I ching
/ > I lun / , see the Chapters of the Tube and the Awl
Z l m ^ , Kuan chuei p 'ien/, 4 vols. (Peking: Chung-hua,
1979), vol. 1, p. 1. The three meanings are here presented
as the first, second, and fourth. The third interpretation
of "_i" as "trade" or "exchange" is suggested by Chung-ying
Cheng in an unpublished manuscript.
20
The term is taken from W. A. Sherrill and W. K.
Chu, An Anthology of I Ching (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1977), p. 9.
21lb id. , p . 13.
2 2
For similarities between Chinese thinking and
some of these thinkers, see, for example, Charles Wei-hsun
Fu, "The Trans—Onto-Theo-Logical Foundations of Language
in Heidegger and Taoism," Journal of Chinese Philosophy 5
(1978): 301-33; Steven L. Bindeman, "Silence and Eastern
Wisdom" in his Heidegger and Wittgenstein: the Poetics of
Silence (Washington, D. C.: University Press of America,
1981), pp. 12-15; and my "The Deconstructive Way: A Com
parative Study of Jacques Derrida and Chuang-tzu" to be
published in Journal of Chinese Philosophy (1983).
171
CHAPTER VI
CHINESE VIEWS OF LANGUAGE AND MEANING
How, then, does the general philosophical outlook
of the Chinese affect or relate to the issue of metaphori-
city? If» as has been argued in the preceding chapter,
the Chinese entertain an interpenetrative, mutually genera
tive view of binary oppositions, how is that reflected in
the notion of metaphor, or pi-hsing of our present concern?
To explore this implication, I shall in this chapter deal
with the issue of metapho in terms of the nature of lang
uage and the relationship between language and meaning con
ceived by the Chinese.
As pointed out earlier, based on Derrida’s inter
pretation, the Western concept of metaphor is seen as
inscribed in the dual istic-metaphysical episteme that
characterizes the Western philosophical tradition. The
cognitive function of metaphor to lead from the concrete
image to the abstract idea, or from the figurative expres
sion to the literal or proper sense, can also be described
as an ascending movement from representation to truth, from
the accidental to the essential, from appearance to sub
stance, etc. The same modality is discerned in the dis
cussion of language built upon the dichotomy of the
______________________ 17 2
reference and the referent, or the signifier and the signi
fied. The problem of metaphoricity, therefore, should be
considered as belonging to the larger issue of language
and signification.
While semantics is a modern Western science which
finds not counterpart in the Chinese tradition, semantic
concepts and discussions did exist in classical Chinese
philosophies of all the major schools: Confucianism, Moism,
Taoism, and the "School of Names" Ming chia/ some
times translated as "Dialecticians. In those writings,
the concept of reference is designated by "name" j_ ,
ming / , and that of the referent designated by " ch ih" _/4fr/,
which literally means "finger" as a noun or "to point" as
a verb. In the commentaries on the I ching, the statement,
"tz'u, point to that which they mean respectively" JJ%
is found. "Tz’u," here referring to the anno
tations and interpretations of the hexagrammic symbols of
the text, can be used to mean "words" or "discourse" in
general. The notion of language as an act of pointing and
names as pointers is established and held by almost all
early philosophers. The question that immediately follows
is naturally: what do names point to? And the answer is,
reality Jj^^y shih /. As Mo-tzu puts it, "That which is used
to speak, name; that which is spoken about, reality."
The correspondence between names and things becomes the
predominant concern for most ancient Chinese thinkers.
_____________________ 173
For Confucius, language as names is essentially a
social and moral instrument, and the central theme of Con
fucianism can be summed up by the name of " j en" — the
human-heartedness or benevolence inherent in human nature,
but also corresponding to the ever-creative ] _ , sheng-
sheng/ , life-giving principle of the universe of Heaven.
The name of j en is further explicated and ramified by those
of "yi" (righteousness), "li_" (propriety of
conduct), and "chih" f^_/ (wisdom), designating respec
tively: moral duty, code of conduct, and the ability to
discriminate that allows one to act in accordance with the
above principles. These four names for virtue are of
cardinal importance in Confucianism, from which are derived
more names, e.g., "sincerity;1 ch' eng /, "faithfulness"
!/>%, hs in / , "loyalty" j _ chung / , "filial piety"
hsiao/, etc. The entire system of Confucian thought can be
regarded as a taxonomy of true and correct names, and Con
fucianism, the school of the "proper" name.
Witnessing the social-political division and dis
order in his time, Confucius sighs over the fact that "the
king is not king-like; the subject are not subject-like;
the father is not father-like; the son is not son-like"
J_ M gL 5C— -5-_/ • ^ The reality to which these
names (i.e., "king" "subject," "father," and "son") are
meant to refer is in actuality breached. As Confucius
sees it, once the names are clearly defined and promul-
174
gated, the wrongs can be corrected. Thus, the Confucian
effort of "rectification of names" J_ , cheng-ming / .
In the chapter on "Rectification of Names,"
Hsun-tzu of the third century B.C., usually considered the
third great Confucian thinker after Confucius and Mencius,
elaborates on the problem of language and reality. He not
only classifies names but also divides the confusion caused
by names into three types, the "three delusions" s an
f i i
huo /. They are: 1., delusion of names by names; 2. delu
sion of names by reality; and 3. delusion of reality by
names. The first is illustrated by the Moist statement:
"to kill bandits is not to kill men." It is fallacious
since the name "bandit" presupposes that a bandit is a
man; to treat them as two separate, unrelated categories is
to be misled by names. The second type of semantic confu
sion is illustrated by the statement: "the mountain and
the swamp are on the same level," which is fallacious
since, by definition, "mountain" is elevated earth while
"swamp" is low and damp. To say they are the same fails
to conform to reality. . The last type of confusion is given
the example of "a white horse is not a horse," the famous
statement of Kung-sun Lung, representative of the School
of Names. According to Hsun-tzu, the category of "white
horse" should be subsumed under that of "horse"; the two
are not mutually exclusive as Kung-sun Lung argues. There
fore, the statement is contradictory.
175
The theme of "rectification of names" is not only
advocated by the Confucianist but is also found in the
writings of Mo-tzu and Neo-Moists, as well as the School of
Names represented by Kung-sun Lung and Yin-sen-tzu. These
thinkers provide a variety of approaches to the issue,
basing their arguments on different assumptions and em
phases. According to Chung-ying Cheng, their philosophical
orientations can be classified as nominalist, Platonist,
logical and objective, respectively.^ As a whole, the
solution the various schools and thinkers offer can be
defined as one of the two: either to correct names in
correspondence to reality, or, to change reality in order
to fit names. While they may show an awareness of both,
the Moist places emphasis on the first approach while the
Confucianist and the School of Names are more concerned
with the second.
Of all the major schools of classical Chinese
philosophy, Taoism alone deals with the issue of language
from a totally different point of view. Instead of finding
a solution to the problem of names corresonding to reality,
the Taoist denies the validity of such correspondence in
the first place. In Chuang-tzu, for instance, the word
"pien" ]p%7 is frequently used in connection with dis
cussions of language. "Pien" with a character element of
"yen" or "speech" means "to argue or debate." Ety-
mologically, it is related to "p ien" (with a character
176
element of "j en" _/ 3]_/ or "blade") meaning "to differentiate
or discriminate" as well as to "p 1 an" /#!]_/, the ideogram of
a knife severing a thing in half, meaning "to distinguish,
discriminate, or judge." Thus, the word "pien" as used in
Chuang-1 zu takes on the connotation of discrimination by
means of language. Like most early Chinese philosophers,
the Taoist regards language as a conventional way of divid
ing up or categorizing reality; the nominalistic aspect of
language and its emotive effect on man is the central con-
8
cern. As Chuang-tzu sees it, the most problematic area in
this connection is the binary oppositions pervasively em
bedded in language: right/wrong, good/bad, life/death,
gain/loss, beauty/ugliness , success/failure, big/small,
long/short, more/less, etc. Once the world is categorized
and differentiated' this way, man cannot use those terms
without unconsciously passing an immediate value judgment
on experience and acting accordingly. Therefore, language
with its priori concepts sets up a referential-concep
tual grid that organizes and determines to a great extent
man's attitude and inclination to act. It is against
this fundamental linguistic-conceptual conditioning that
the Taoist directs his discourse.
The immediate consequence of dualistic naming is
the creation of preference and desire. Man seeks the so-
called "good" and shuns the "bad." When he obtains the
object of desire, he is pleased and exalted. When he
________________________________________________________________177
fails, he is angry and sad. The vicious cycle of desiring
and striving is, in Chuang-tzu's view, a trap of conflic-
tual emotions and moods: "joy, anger, grief, delight, worry
regret, fickleness, inflexibility, modesty, willfulness,
9
candor, insolence." Like a pendulum man swings between
the polar opposites of value artificially created and con
ceptually impenetrable. Of all the desires, the most
harmful are those of moral nature. From the Taoist point
of view, if the distinction between right and wrong is
rightly and self-evidently so, there is really no need to
make a point out of it.^^ The same principle of desire is
at work here; desire arises only when that which is desired
for is absent. The very presence of desire indicates a
lack or absence that is. always already there. If to love
one's fellow men and to treat them with integrity is in
deed part of human nature, as some Confucianists say it is,
then there is really no need to advocate the names of j en
and yi. To do so merely exposes an always-already-existing
deviation. As Lao-tzu says:
When the great Tao is abolished, there comes to be
j en and vi. When wisdom arises, there is great pre-
tens ion.
"Rectification of names" is the sigh of the problem, not
the solution; it is the symptom, not the cure.
Therefore, for the Taoist, names cannot be the
appropriate means of expressing or revealing the ultimate
178
reality that is Tao. While other schools are busy cor
recting names to conform with reality, Taoism simply re
jects the kind of reality thus named, The true and
ultimate reality is beyond naming, since it is beyond the
question of "what is?" though at the same time making it
possible. Hence, instead of rectifying names, the Taoist
advocates "namelessness" J_ , wu-ming / and "forgetting
words" _ / _ ll , wang yen/.
The Taoist view of language as names also serves as
a useful point of departure for our discussion of the re
lationship between language and meaning as conceived by the
Chinese. Meaning , yi/ is to be understood in terms of,
not names, bu words or speech /_~% , y en /. Unlike that
between names and reality, the relationship between yen and
yi is not referential, as it is generally regarded so in
the West. Before we can deal with this, however, we must
first look at the way meaning is defined by the Chinese.
In other words, before we can talk about how meaning is
generated, we must first know what meaning is.
This can be discussed in two respects: 1. meaning
is indeterminate and indeterminable; 2. meaning is not
something abstract that exists above, and in independent
of, the concrete and particular. Based on these two ob
servations we may arrive at the position that meaning is
not self-presence or the plenitude of being as opposed to
absence or nonbeing. To illustrate this notion, I shall
______________________________ 179
refer to the major philosophical strands in the Chinese
tradition.
T^e I ching, composed of hexagramic symbols, can be
regarded as the first hermeneutic effort of the Chinese.
In the Great Treatise , Ta chuan/ or known as the
Commentary on the Appended Judgments Hsi tz 1 u
chuan/, the origin of the work is thus conceived:
The sage institute the hexgrams, so that phenomena
might be perceived therein. They appended the judg
ments, in order to indicate good fortune and mis-
19
fortune. A
JUL-fy- - f j k ii nu
The trigrams and hexagrams represent man's understanding of
cosmic phenomena and their underlying principles, sometimes
known as the "mandate of Heaven." The judgment attached to
each hexagram is man's interpretation of the symbol and its
application to human affairs. The interpretation of the
meaning of the symbols, however, has no limit. "I_ is vast
and great. To speak of the remote, it has no bounds; to
speak of the near, it is quiet and appropriate; to speak
of what is between heaven and earth, it contains all" j _
% K A t £ ’ ] •*%_ hKt-f^L 5'] Irf fln i t , K A f f-X±*L*.?S\Z')
can therefore also be taken to mean "meaning,"
a homonym of "i/' as change. As the process of change is
perpetual and constant, the meaning man comprehends in it
is likewise far-reaching and uncircumscribed. It can be
as general and universal as the course of nature or as
specific and private as the outcome of an individual enter-
180
prise. Meaning in this case is not determinate or deter
minable, for it is manifested in an infinite number of
dimensions and in an infinite number of contexts. There
fore, the Comment ary records Confucius as saying: "writing
do not exhaust words; words do not exhaust meaning" ] _
4 fe_/. ^ Meaning, in essence, is inexhaustible, lend
lending itself to unlimited expansion and extension. With
regard to the I ching , this is borne out by the fact that
numerous commentaries and interpretations have been written
in the past and numerous more will be written.
Also implied in the exegetic tradition of the I_
ching is the idea that meaning cannot be known apart from
the particular manifestations in the world. The dichotomy
between meaning as something abstract and transcendental
and phenomenal reality as the realm of the concrete and
individual is non-existent. In Chapter 9 of the Commen
tary, we find this passage:
Looking upward, we contemplate with its help the signs
of heaven; looking downward, we examine the lines of
the earth. Thus we come to know the circumstances of
the dark and the light. Going back to the beginnings
of things and pursuing them to the end, we come to
know the lessons of birth and death. The union of
seed and power produces all things; the escape of the
soul brings about change. Through this we come to
know the conditions of outgoing and returning spi
rit s .
4*7 A SL M a*, if. 6ki i-SX JEM'S JsUfc^
zX.%* %%. i2i_^ ' * j c .
Meaning is believed to be embodied in "the signs of heaven"
and "the lines of the earth," from which it has no separate
181
existence. In the Analects, Confucius says in reply to the
disciples' inquiry as to why'-he seldom speaks of Tao:
"Does Heaven ever speak? The four seasons rotate; the
hundred things grow. Does Heaven ever,;; speak?"
I§o_ is self-explanatory and
self-evident, since everything in the universe bespeaks it.
Meaning, instead of something hidden behind concrete
reality, is in reality. Also in the Analects, one episode
of Confucius states:
The Master stood on the bank of the river and sighed:
"Passing like this, it does not cease day or'night."^
) > ) M. Q
The river is not a "symbol" of Tao in the sense that as the
sensory, external image it takes on some deeper, hidden
meaning; it in itself is Tao.
The same rejection of the conceptualization of the
absolute existence of the abstract as opposed to the con
crete, the universal as opposed to the particular, the
inside to the outside, is invariably found in Taoism. As
discussed earlier, Tao , as developed in Taoist philosophy,
functions as that which makes possible the interplay and
interpenetration of binary oppositions of any kind. Not
to be taken as a supraessential being of any theological-
metaphysical implications, Tao is omnipresnt and immanent.
In Chuang-1zu, for instance, we find this conversation
that conceivably baffles the questioner who tends to de
tach Tao from reality:
182
Master Tung-kuo asked Chuang-tzu, "This thing called
the Tao— where does it exist?"
Chuang-tzu said, "There's no place it doesn't exist."
"Come," said Master Tung-kuo, "you must be more
specific.' "
"It is in the ant."
"As low a thing as that?"
"It is in the panic grass."
"But that's lower still.'"
"It is in the tiles and shards."
"How can it be so low?"
"It is in the piss and dung."
Despite the seemingly negative and passive approach of whic
which it is often, unjustly I think, accused, Taoism is
actually an extremely positive and constructive way of
thinking.. Once the distortion and limitation of conceptua
lization is clearly recognized and rejected, one becomes
in tune with Tao or true reality and is perfectly free.
We may say that the I ching, Confucianism, and Tao
ism, the pillars of Chinese culture, are all sympathetic
to the interpretation of ultimate reality, whether it is
called Tao or Heaven, as Meaning. Just as there is no such
bifurcation of Tao and phenomenal reality, so Meaning
transcends the bifurcation of abstraction and concrete
ness, concept and image. Tao exists everywhere; in the
same vein, Meaning is unlimited and inexhaustible.
This notion is perhaps most starkly and ingeniously
expressed in the Ch'an sect of Chinese Buddhism. As a
183
convergence of Indian Mahayana Buddhism and Chinese Taoist
philosophy that burgeoned in the fifth and sixth centuries,
Ch’an inherits the Taoist view of language in relation to
Tao as the ultimate reality. "Kung-an" ("koan" in
Japanese) meaning "public-cases" or "public-precedents , "
often in the form of paradox, is frequently employed to
confront logic, exposing its intrinsic limitations and in
adequacy. Let us look at a group of "kung-an" collected
in the Gateless Barrier Wu-men kuan / , compiled by
the Ch ' an monk Wu-men in A.D. 1228.
(1) The Mas ter - Shou-san held up a staff and said to
the monks^: "If you c_all this a staff, you are
caught /by its name/. If you /o not call this a
staff, you contradict /reality/. Tell me,
brethren, what do you call it?"
(2) The Master Pa-chiao said to the monks, "If you
have a stick, I will give you another. If you
have no stick, I will take it away."
C3) The Master Wei-san started as monastery cook under
Pai-chiang. Now Pai-chiang had to select a master
for the great monastery at Yi-san. He summoned
everyone, including the head monk, and told them
that whoever answered the question most ably would
be sent.
Taking up a pitcher he placed it on the floor
saying, "If you cannot call this a pitcher, what
would you call it?" The head monk: "One cannot
call it a stump." Pai-chiang, "What would you call
it, Wei-san?" Wei-san kicked the pitcher over and
went out.
Pai-chiang, laughting: "The head monk was out
witted by brother Wei-san." And so Wei-san was
made the f_irst master /of the newly established
monas tery/.
All three kung-an address the issue of language as names
very much in the spirit of the Taoist. Unlike the Con-
184
fucianist or Moist, the Ch'an master is not concerned with
the correspondence between a name and its referent, but
rather he sees into the true reality, reality as it is
that goes beyond the naming and categorizing of language.
In each of the three kung-an cited above, a trap is set up
deliberately that is the trap of dualistic conceptualiza
tion. Once one is concerned with whether or not to call a
pitcher "pitcher," or a staff "staff," one is removed from
reality and trapped by the name. The kicking over of
the pitcher by Wei-san exactly bypasses such a trap and at
the same time asserts the meaning of the pitcher as in the
direct, unlabeled, unnameable experience itself. By the
same token, the meaning of a staff is in the experience of
a staff itself, as revealed by Wu-men's comment on the
second kung-an:
With its aid I cross the broken bridge over a stream;
with it I return to my village on a moonless night .
If you call it a stick,, you will be shot into hell as
quickly as an arrow.^0
The meaning of the staff is not separable from one's ex
perience of it, the experience eventually inseparable from
one’s life experience as a whole. In the comment, the
meaning of the staff is not understood in terms of its
practical and utilitarian function alone, but it is fully
assimilated into the life-world of the person using the
staff and becomes part of it. Instead of stepping outside
the ever-flowing flux of experience, trying to analyse and
185
interpret it and imposing maning on it, as if meaning could
be detached from experience, the Ch'an master advocates
that meaning is experience, and vice versa.
That experience is meaning and meaning is expe
rience is but another way of saying that Tao is meaning and
meaning is Tao, for Tao cannot be known except in experi
ential reality. Unpon the disciple's complaint of not re
ceiving any lessons on the Tao of the Buddha, the Ch ' an
master thus replies:
What do you mean, my son? When you salute me every
morning, do I not return it? When you bring me a cup
of tea, do I not accept it and enjoy drinking it?
What more instructions do you desire from me?^
The kung-an illustrates the theme of Ch'an thinking which
can be expressed in the words of Nan-ch'uan : "The
everyday (or, ordinary) mind is Tao ' ■ ]_ 3 ^ . / •' Only
when we understand that Tao is not to be abstracted from
direct, palpable experience and living reality can we
comprehend typical kung-an-like these:
Chao-chou was once asked by a monk: "What is the
meaning of the Patriarch's coming from the West?"
Chao-chou, "The cypress tree in the garden."
The Master, Feng-hsueh, was once asked by a monk,
"Since both speech and silence are concerned either
with affirmation or negation, how can we avoid _
violating J _the way in which Tao manifests as such/?'
Feng-hsueh: "I always think of the view of Chiang-nan
J_the south of the Yangtze River/ in March, when
birds are singing and flowers are at their best."
In each kung-an , the answer that sounds irrelevant to the
question and thus incoherent and odd is purported to block
the (questioner's) mind from falling into empty abstrac
186
tion and conceptualization, and to bring (or shock) it back
face-to-face with the vivid, living reality, which in both
cases happens to be nature.
Having seen the way meaning is defined by the
Chinese, we now turn to the issue regarding the generation
of meaning in relation to language use. If, as established
above, meaning is not a self-presence removed from pheno
menal reality and thus is capable of and relies on being
mediated by it, what role then does language,play other
than that of the signifier, the linguistic sign pointing
to reality? We have noted that the referential function of
language as names is well recognized by early Chinese
philosophers, mainly for pragmatic purposes. Taoism alone
rejects the validity of language as names on the ground
that it institutes false categories and entails false
conceptions. There is therefore some apparent discrepancy
between meaning which is indeterminate and expansive and
language as names or distinction-markers. To resolve this
contradiction and to better study the relationship between
meaning and language use, we should focus on another
aspect of language, language not as names (ming) but as
saying J _ ^ , yen / .
Yen , saying or statements as a result of saying, is
the natural way of expressing one's intent. Whereas names
are related to reality or actuality, yen is associated with
the intent of the speaker. This does not mean that to
18 7
name and to say are two totally unrelated acts, but in fact
"naming and names depend on the context of saying for their
introduction, whereas saying depends on our actual and
possible ability to name (to identify or to characterize
by using labels) for the purpose of explaining our intent
or meaning. In the Rites of the Great Tai / , Ta-
Tai li/, it is said that "to express one's intent leads to
saying; to speak language ]_i.e. , to make statements/ leads
r \ t
to names." Saying, not necessarily referring to some
distinctive object or state of affairs, is the primeval
semantic context from which naming emerges. Yen as an
intentional-performative act includes naming the referen-
tia1-propositional act, not the other way around. There
fore, in order to discuss how meaning is produced through
the use of language, we shall place it in the context of
yen as saying.
In this connection, two instances in the Analects
are illuminating:
The Master said, "I do not open up truth to one who is
not eager to learn; I do not help out anyone who is
not anxious to explain himself. When I have presented
one corner to one, yet he cannot learn the other three
from it, then I will not repeat my lesson."5
* JSL ^ ^ PA, A'] *
The Master said to Tzu-kung: "Which do you consider su
perior, yourself or Huei?"
Tzu-kung replied, "Row dare I compare myself with
Huei? Huei hears one point and knows ten; I hear
one point and know two."
The Master said: "You are not equal to him. Both you
and I are not equal to him."^
188
3- ® -^T^- tsq ^ a -4PJ ® Vff]-&_
ftf\-X» -f fiL ?-f\- j s ° ~ -^-E) Jt -i±2_
In the first passage, Confucius expresses his pedagogical
principle and method. In the second, Yen Huei is commended
for his extraordinary ability of comprehension. However,
both can also be taken as suggesting the way meaning is
generated and conveyed. Namely, meaning is evoked, sug
gested, or intimated by words. It is not so much in what
is said as in what is not said. In the second episode,
the word "ten" should not be taken literally to mean the
number of things learned from one, but it connotes "per
fection" or "completion," By knowing one point, Yen Huei
is able to know the entire subject. Thus, the limited
context of words or yen gives rise to the dynamic meaning
that goes far beyond it.
The relationship between words and meaning is more
profoundly revealed in Taoist writings, especially in
Chuang-tzu. In the Historical Records J_ Shih chih/,
Ssu-ma Ch’ien / / describes Chuang-tzu's style as "an
overwhelming flood which spreads at its own sweet will"
_/ 4^1 !i?§: bA^L-^=r/ • 2 ^ And Liu Hsieh thus comments on it:
When I read closely Chu an g_/_-1 zia/ and Han_/-f ei-1zxi / , I
see their florid language as overly excessive and ex
treme . 27
The use of the apparently insufficient superlatives ("ex
cessive" and "extreme") requires yet another ("overly"),
_____________________________________________________ 189
thus indicating the exasperation Liu must feel vis-a-vis
Chuang-tzu. This exasperation, shared by many critics, can
be discussed in two ways: the extensive use of metaphor, a
"literary" or "poetic" device, and the frequent employment
of paradox and play-on-words.
The first observation calls for little illustration
as anyone who merely browses through a Chuang-tzu text can
see. Metaphor, in its broadest sense of analogy to include
simile, allegory, fable, etc., is used in a way that has
come to be called the "tactics of cartwheel" J _
— O O
ch'e-lun chen-fa/. That is, metaphors come in a string,
one immediately displacing another. For instance, in the
passage quoted earlier on the "piping of the earth," the
hollows and’openings of huge trees are "like noses, like
mouths, like ears, like jugs, like cups, like mortars, like
rifts, like ruts." Elsewhere, in a more elaborate manner,
five metaphors are used to describe the limitation of "small
understanding" as distinguished from true or "great under
standing"; six are used to illustrate the usefulness of
uselessness. Not only do metaphors come in a sequence,
sometimes one metaphor is enclosed in another, like a play
within a play.
The second feature we note is the frequent use of
paradox and hyperbolic play-on-words. In Chuang-1zu, we
encounter statements such as: "There is nothing in the
world bigger than the tip of an autumn hair /supposedly to
190
be the finest/, and Mount T'ai is small. No one has lived
longer than a dead child, and P'eng-tzu /who, according to
Chinese legends, lived eight hudnred years/ died young"
"the highest happiness has no happiness; the highest praise
has no praise" ]_ jt ^ ^ ® ; "heaven and earth are
tiny grains and the tip of a hair is a range of mountains"
"pour into it /Reservoir
of Heaven/ and it is never full; dip from it and it never
runs dry" J _ 2 ; etc. In the first
chapter of the work, Chuang-tzu tells us the story of K'un:
In the northern darkness there is a fish and its name
is K'un. K'un is so huge I don't know how many thour . . . f
sand miles he measures.
n M.i£-
The word "k'un" here referring to a gigantic fish literally
means "fish roe"; thus, the biggest is also the smallest.
Statements like these, strewn all over the text, are meant
to reveal the limitations of logical, dualistic thinking,
which is to be dissolved and resolved in the understanding
o f Tao.
It is no wonder that the use of paradox, more than
the "extravagance" of metaphor, causes much dismay in the
critic, since it broaches the common notion of serious
discourse and signification. Chuang-tzu specifically
speaks of three types of language use -in his writings.
They are: "yu-yen" /~^i %—/ » "chung-yen" and "chih-
191
yen" » respectively. "Yu-yen ," meaning "imputed
words," refer to words put in the mouth of someone (a fic
tional or historical character) other than the writer
himself. "Chung-yen," meaning "weighty words," refer to
words put in the mouth of a revered person (thus carrying
"weight"). The two uses are practically the same with the
latter a more specific and limited type of the former. The
third type of language use, "chih-yen ," is the most in
teresting for our discussion. Literally, it ;means "goblet
words." A "chih" is a wine vessel which "tips over when
3 4
filled and falls down when empty." It is therefore a
utensil that is extremely unstable and, from the practical
point of view, unusable and useless, something whose nature
(of instability) contradicts its reputed function (as a
wine vessel). "Chih-yen" then seems to be the perfect name
for the paradoxes and play-on-words in Chuang-tzu that in
trigue and at the same time baffle the reader.
Of the three uses of language, "yu-yen" and "chung-
yen" represent an attempt to detach oneself, the writer or
speaker, from one’s intended meaning; the use of "chih-y en , '
on the other hand, purposely detaches language from in
tended meaning by suspending the one-to-one correspondence
between words and their meaning, between the signifier and
the signified. This is not to say that language does not
serve the function of referentiality any more, bu the
nature of referentiality is drastically changed. Meaning
t
192
is now open, no longer in words, but beyond them. Language
does not designate meaning, but only points at a general
field of meaning, a certain direction in which to compre
hend meaning. Meaning is projected rather than specified,
intimated rather than asserted. By maintaining the maximum
openness between words and meaning, the Taoist imbues the
limited context of words with theutmost semantic signifi
cance and reveals the dynamic relationship between words
and meaning, what is said and what is not said, sound and
silence. Silence is not mere negation of speech or absence
of language but the highest affirmation of immanent mean
ingfulness that is Tao. Coming out of and always returning
to the silence of meaningfulness, language is not incompa
tible with silence but is always already an integral and
active part of it. The two are interdependent and inter
penetrative. Therefore, like all other dichotomies, the
dichotomy between saying and silence, between words and
meaning, is in the final analysis resolved. To speak and
not to speak form a continuum; silence speaks and language
unspeaks. The Taoist who forgets language is also the one
who uses language most freely and creatively, such as we
have seen in Chuan g-t z u.
That meaning is basically the interplay of what is
said and what is not said, found in both Confucianism and
Taoism, has great impact on literary criticism in that
many critics throughout history have emphasized the idea of
19 3
"meaning beyond words" _/ > yen wai chih yi/.^^
Critics who first discovered the issue, Liu Hsieh and Chung
Hung, and those who first advocated the idea, such as
Chiao-jan, Ssu-k'ung T’u / / . and Yen Yu, are all h
heavily influenced by the thinking of Taoism and Ch'an
Buddhism, from which later critics such as Mei Yao-ch'en
> Su Shih, He Shang , Ch ' en T'ing-sho J_
, Wang Shih-chen ]_ , etc. , draw inspiration for
their poetic theories and criticism. The interpretation of
meaning is inseparable from the notions of "taste"
ch * u / , "flair" ch 1 u-we i / , "marvellous" , miao / ,
etc., all of which describes poetry as a rich field of mean
meaning created by a limited context of words. As such it
serves as a watershed between genuine poetry and stiff
verse.
The same critical concept and criterion is also
found in Chinese art criticism which holds that the blank
space on canvas is impregnated with as much meaning as
shapes and colors, if not more. This is most often applied
to landscape painting, though certainly not limited to it.
In the Discourse on Painting /*% ^ , Hua ch'uan/, Ta
Ch ' ung-kuan g , , a landscape painter of the Ch'ing
period, says:
Emptiness by nature is hard to picture. When the realm
of the tangible is pure, the realm of the empty emerges
There is no way to paint the spirit. When the realm of
the real is subtle, the realm of the spirit is born.
Positions clash with one another; what is painted is
_______________________________________________________________________ .19.4
n
mostly redundant. The empty and the tangible give
rise to each other. Where there is nothing painted
becomes the realm of the marvellous.^
^ t®.® “I ^
/iiLA« ^ JLibw 4 .
Meaning emerges as the tangible and the intangible interact
with each other in the same way that Tao manifests as the
dynamic interplay of yin and yang. What is painted— forms
and colors, structure and texture— evokes what is not,
which in turn reinforces and completes the meaning of the
painting as a whole. This idea is illustrated by Hsueh
Sheng-pai with a concrete example:
Do not talk about difficulty and ease in books on
painting. ' - ' ■ • ■ • - . ’ . i ' ■
To say multiplicity is hard, then simplicity is harder.
Look at the few leaves falling—
The entire space is filled with wind and rain beyond
endur an ce.^
XiftjLSL «#> m~ ^ XHL
Jn. M T^i ^ ^ ^ Jls-
The chill and desolation of autumn called forth in the
painting does not reside in the simple strokes delineating
the falling leaves per se but in the interaction between
the few leaves and the vast empty space against which they
are seen. What is present and what is absent form a con
tinuum. The empty space of the painting should not be
taken as either the absence or the negation of meaning;
meaning is conjured up through the interpenetration of the
tangible and the intangible.
When placed in the larger context of language and
195
meaning as conceived by the Chinese, the issue of metaphori-
city takes on deeper significance. This can be summed up in
two ways. First, meaning needs not be understood in terms
of the duality of abstract meaning and concrete represen
tation. Like Tao, it dissolves any bifurcation of this
sort. The characteristic transcendental movement of meta
phor from the realm of appearances to the other, higher
realm of ideas, conceived in Western metaphysics, cannot
hold in the Chinese .tradition. And by the same token,
meaning is not to be abstracted from and thus transcends
phenomenal reality; it is immanent in and inseparable from
reality. Second, the referential movement of language
gives way to a dynamic, interactive relation between
abstract meaning and concrete signification, the signified
and the signifier, presence and absence. Instead of taking
the former category as separate from and superior to the
latter, the above discussion shows that one cannot function
independently of the other. Meaning, rather than an
abstract entity that is self-contained and self-present ,
is the interplay of what is said and what is unsaid, what
is expressed and what is not expressed. Therefore, it can
not be pointed to or represented by language as the "other.'
Saying is always already a part of silence, and vice versa.
196
NOTES TO CHAPTER VI
For a study of semantic concepts and theories in
classical Chinese philosophy, jsee Tai Hua-shan >
Semantics Yu yi hsueh/ (Taipei: Hua-hsin wen-hua
shih-yeh, 1974),' pp. 20-60.
2
The Great Treatise, in the I ching of Chou, p. 46.
3
Mo-1 zu, rpt. ed. , 2 vols. (Taipei: Commerce Press,
1966), vol. 2, p. 113.
^Analects, Ch. 12, p. 135.
- ’ibid., Ch. 13, p. 140.
%sun-tzu, rpt. ed. (Taipei: Commerce Press, 1968),
pp . 317-8.
^Discussed by Chung-ying Cheng in "Language and
Ontology in Chinese Philosophy," an unpublished manuscript.
8
Chad D. Hansen lists four premises about language
shared by early Chinese philosophers: nominalism, conven
tionalism, emotivism, and distinction-marking. See his
"Ancient Chinese Theories of Language," Journal of Chinese
Philosophy 2 (June 1975): 245-83.
Q
Chuang-t zu , Ch. 2, p. 37.
10Chuang-tzu says: "If right were really right, it
would differ so clearly from not right that there would be
no need for argument. If so were really so, it would
differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need
for argument" (Ch. 2, pp. 48-9).
^ Lao-tzu, Ch. 18, Part I, p. 10.
-*-2The Great Treatise, p. 46. The English transla
tion is based on Richard Wilhelm, The I Ching, rendered
into English by Cary F. Baynes, Bollingen Series XIX, 2nd ed
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 287.
■^Ibid. t p. 47; Richard Wilhelm, p. 301.
•^Ibid. , p. 50; Richard Wilhelm, p. 322.
197
l^xbid., p. 47; Richard Wilhelm, p. 294.
^ Analects , Ch. 17, p. 19 5.
17 lb id. , Ch. 9, p. 99.
^ 3 Chu ang-tzu, Ch. 22, pp. 240-1.
^ Hu-men kuan , no. 43 , 44 , and 40, from Sohaku
Ogata, Zen for the West (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1959),
pp. 12 7 and 12 4.
Ibid. , p. 128.
7 1
Cited in D. T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen
Buddhism (New York: Grove Press, 1964), p. 83.
2 2
Wu-men kuan, no. 37 and 24; see Ogata, pp. 122
and 112.
2 3
Cited by Chung-ying Cheng in "Language and Onto
logy , " p . 6 .
24t, . ,
ib id .
33See the Analects, Ch. 7, p. 73, and Ch. 5, p. 48.
^Ssu-ma Ch'ien, Historical Records, rpt. ed., 10
vols. (Peking: Chung-hua Bookstore, 1959), vol. 7, p. 2144.
3^Liu Hsieh, vol. 2, Ch. 31.
2 R
Referred to by Ch'ien Chung-shu, in the Selected
Sung Poet ry , p. 72.
7 9
Chuang-tzu, Ch. 2, p. 43.
30Ib id. , Ch. 18, p. 191.
31Ibid. , Ch. 17, p. 179.
33Ibid., Ch. 2, p. 45.
33 Ibid. , Ch. 1, p. 29.
3^See the annotation by Kuo Hsiang ln the
Collected Annotations of Chuang-tzu Chuang-1 zu
chih shih/ , rpt. ed, 7 th ed. (Taipei: Shih-chieh Bookstore,
1978) , p. 407 .
33Cited in Lin Yu-hsiang , A Study of the
198
Tao in Lao-tzu ^ jg- , Lao-tzu tao chih yen-chiu/
(Taipei: Chia-hsin, 1976), p. 142 .
^^Ib id. , p. 142.
19 9
CHAPTER VII
THE POETIC "I" AND NATURE:
CHINESE POETRY AND SOME
WESTERN ANALOGUES
In his study of Chinese poetics, Huang Wei-liang
asserts that there are two ways of achieving "meaning be
yond words" in poetry: 1. through combination of imagery,
and, 2. through plurisignation or ambiguity in the sense as
used by William Empson.^ The first is further identified
with T. S. Eliot's "objective correlative." To illustrate
the point that classical Chinese poetry shares its use of
imagery with modern English-American poetry, Huang cites
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "A Game of Chess".1
from The Waste Land, and "Preludes." The idea of "objec
tive correlative," already articulated by Washington
Allston before Eliot, is thus defined in the essay, "The
Problem of Hamlet":
The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art
is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other
words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events
which shall be the formula of that particular emotion
2 K-----------
• • • •
Whereas it is true that the correlation of imagery
is a common feature in both Chinese poetry and twentieth-
century English poetry, it is important to determine how
and why images are correlated. For after all imagery is -
200
one of the most essential elements of poetry, and there is
always some linear sequence or syntactic linking (however
minimal it sometimes may be) in order to create a poem.
In "A Game of Chess,” for instance, it is clear that while
the images in the opening lines describe the milieu and set
the scene for the following conversation, they are also
symbolically significant. The images of the "throne-like
jeweled chair," the "flames of seven branched candelabra,"
and the "'jug jug' to dirty ears" all implicitly or ex
plicitly allude to the stories of Anthony and Cleopatra,
Aeneas and Dido, and Philomel. They are paradigmatically
related to one another in the sense that they all evoke
and reiterate the theme of "A Game of Chess," which is the
game of love and seduction. Furthermore, the color that
dominates these lines is gold: "burnished throne," "golden
Cupidon," "pro-longed candle-flames," "glitter of her
jewels," "copper," "burned green and orange," "glow,” etc.
On the one hand, it symbolizes the fire of lust that leads
to death and destruction; on the other, it suggests the
fire of purgation in "The Fire Sermon," the Dharma (law or
teaching) of the Buddha. In addition, the presence of gold
and white ("marble," "ivory") is contrasted to the "Ionian
white and gold" in "The Fire Sermon" in that one stands for
the Church, which promises salvation and resurrection
through Jesus/the Fisher King, while the other is associ
ated with sin and death.
_______________________________________________________________________________2or
it is beyond question that these images evoke a
mood or create an ambience in the poem, but, more signifi
cantly, they also form a complex symbolic network, rein
forcing and interacting with each other. This plurality
of semantic strcture is also found in "The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock," where the images of food represent a
symbolic food ritual, a debasement of the Eucharist. The
long wavy hair of the imaginary mermaids is contrasted with
the "bald spot" in the middle of the head, of which Prufrock
is extremely conscious and ashamed. It is the contrast
between the beauty and love he yearns for, and the empti
ness and impotency that induce a life-in-death for him.
By the same token, the images of cigarette butts,
"stale smell of beer," and the "ancient woman / Gathering
fuel in vacant lots" in "Preludes" signify the decay and
imminent death of modern civilization. The "you"— who
...dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
and "clasped the yellow soles of feet / In the palms of
both soiled hands"r-probably re-appears as the typist who
engages in mechanical lovemaking in The Waste Land. The
poem as a whole is rightly a "prelude" to the longer work.
In the above poems, the juxtaposition of physical
imagery may appear metonymic in providing views of the
overall context, but underlying their descriptiveness,
those images are really repetitions of a common motif. The
2 G 2
apparent metonymic arrangement of images is subordinated to
the logic of paradigmatic substitution and symbolic
reference. The poetic structure is therefore metaphoric
rather than metonymic such as we have seen in Chinese
poetry. The difference between Symbolist poetry and
Chinese poetrylies in the way images are related to one * • ,
another as much as in the underlying assumptions about the
relationship between the poetic mind and the external
world, or imagination and reality. The concept of "objec
tive correlative" as a "formula" for expressing a "parti
cular" emotion and the. dictative tone detected in the
definition ("shall be") suggest that images are used to
stand for or point to the inner states of man, which are
expressible only through their externalization in "objec
tive" images. Therefore, the theory of the objective
correlative presupposes the bifurcation of the inside and
the outside, subject and object, and proposes a resolution
in the incorporation of the latter into the former. As
such, it is inseparable from the Symbolist poetic which
upholds the imagination as the sole locus of meaning or
truth and reduces nature to "a forest of symbols." The
external world is significant only insofar as it provides a
rich repertoir of imagery for the creative mind to inter
pret and utilize.
The Symbolist mode-'of perception is the heritage of
Romanticism, in which the nature of the imagination is a
203
major concern for poets and critics. The creative power of
the imagination is deemed equivalent ot , and exemplary of,
the creative power of God. As the transcendental, divine
creativity, it stands above the physical and the natural.
Thus, in Romantic poets we often see the constant attempt
to resolve the dilemma between the supremacy of the imagi
nation and the glorification of nature, a byproduct of the
Romantic fascination with the primitive and the mystical.
In Coleridge, for example, it is the Primary Imagination
which through its "esemplas tic power" effects a coalescence
of "I" and "other." For Wordsworth and Shelley, nature is
the mother that nourishes and inspires poetic sensibility.
However, the Romantic effort to reconcile man with nature,
imagination and external reality often ends in the subjuga
tion of the latter to the former. As illuminated by many
critics, notably Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, and
Northrop Frye, landscape in Romantic poetry is the "paysage
intSrieurs." Structurally, whereas earlier poetry exhibits
an "outward and upward" movement, the Romantic lyric delves
"inward and downward." The nature poetry thus produced is,
A
in truth, an "anti-nature poetry."
In an insightful study of this Romantic dilemma,
Lawrence Kramer examines the image of the ocean in Words
worth, Whitman, and Stevens. He argues that in their works
the ocean represents nature, powerful and intractable, and
the ambivalent attitudes of these poets toward the ocean
__________________________________ ; __________________________204
indicate the conflict between imagination and nature. This
tension is frequently expressed in the idea of the "sub
lime," which "most often begins in the power of an object
over the mind, and ends in the power of the mind over the
object." The confrontation can be divided into three
phases. The first is "the moment of recognition," when
"the ocean’s sublimity makes its demand on consciousness."
The second phase is characterized by "anxiety and self
questioning," when the self is "reduced from an independent
subjective presence to a vehicle for disclosing the subli
mity' of the world." In the last phase, "the mind exerts
its imaginative power over the seascape by signifying the
ocean in a reductive or limitative way, thereby stripping
the ocean of sublimity and restoring its own autonomous
presence.
Kramer holds that the Romantic structure of mind
thus defined is found in such poets as Shelley, Byron,
Mathew Arnold, MallarmS, Valery, Yeats, and D. H. Lawrence
in addition to the three poets under study. It is onto-
logically significant, and inevitably it is manifested in
the structure of the poem. The transition from the initial
recognition of the power of nature and the temporary sub
mission of the self to it, to the exertion and final
triumph of the imagination, is reflected in the structural
transition from the metonymic to the metaphoric mode, from
the non-figurative to the figurative. As the author main-
205
tains, "the significance of this pattern seems to lie in
its coalescence of two processes: the discovery of a trope
which invests the self with meaning and power, and the de
tachment of consciousness from dependence on external
reality." While metonymy tends to objectify consciousness
by signifying the "vanishing of the self into the world,"
metaphor indicates "a liberation of the mind from the imme
diacy of its surroundings." Metonymy and metaphor hence
embody two opposite relations of the self to the world;
whereas the former "binds the self to the seascape," the
latter "alter s the seascape by importing images into
it."^ In short, metonymy connects the self to the world
in a horizontal, syntagmatic way; metaphor, a vertical or
paradigmatic movement of super-imposition or substitution,
humanizes and transforms the world.
Within the limited scope of the essay, , Kramer's
argument is perhaps too grand a postulation and it calls
for more illustration. However, I think the thesis in
principle holds, and it finds support in the foregoing
studies of the philosophical context from which the concept
of metaphor arises. The predominance of metaphor over
metonymy in Romantic and Symbolist poetry can be attributed
to the bifurcation of man and nature, subject and object,
inscribed in the Western metaphysical tradition. The
poetic structure but reveals the larger ontological struc
ture. This profound implication bears out as we turn to
206
Chinese nature poetry which evolves from a different frame
of ref erenc e.
Instead of metaphor, it is metonymy that charac
terizes Chinese poetry dealing with nature. It corresponds
to the absence or resolution of the dichotomy between man
and nature, the poetic "I" and external reality. In
Chinese literary criticism, two frequently recurring terms
designating the binary concepts are: " ch * ing" £$&_/ > feeling
or internal experience, and 1 1 ching" , (natural) scenery
or sensory experience. The use of the terms could be as
early as the T'ang period, but it was not until the Sung
times that they received abundant discussion, and they
haVe continued to be an important topic in later criticism.
The pair of terms is sometimes used in a rather technical
way; in analysing a poem, the critic would identify certain
lines as "feeling" lines, and others as "scenery" lines.
This approach, I feel, is too formulaic and superficial to
warrant our attention here. What concerns us is the nature
of the relation between the two terms. Almost all critics
agree that "feeling" and "scenery" designate the two sides
o_f__orie expe r i en c e . inseparable and undifferentiated. Wang
Fu-chih > a seventeeth-century critic who deals
extensively with this topic, says:
Ching is assembled by the agency of ch1ing , and ch' ing
is given life by ching; basically the two are not
separate, as they simply follow the direction the
J_poet’s_/ state of mind tends. If you sever ch' ing and
ching into two halves, the ch * ing will no longer be
______20 7
good enough for arousing the _/reader's_/ feeling, and
ching won't even be what one means by ching any
moreT®
^ ^ ^ 4%.
A) 4-% ~ 7 r f?n -Jl 4^. ~fr__
That the two are distinct yet not separate facets, neces
sary but not permanent names of one unified experience is
deeply rooted in the Chinese philosophical tradition,
which, as has been maintained, embraces a dynamic, inter
penetrative view of unitary opposites and is fundamentally
non-dualistic. The ultimate unity underlying man and
nature is similarly expressed in the interplay of yin and
yang in the I ching, or of being and nonbeing in Lao-tzu.
But it receives the most foreceful articulation in Chuang-
t z u.
In my earlier exposition of the Taoist philosophy
of language and meaning, I emphasized the Taoist rejection
of the conditioning of dualism through language as a
9
referential-conceptual framework. This can be discussed
from anoter perspective, in terms of the self and the world.
Namely, no matter whether it pertains to the material,
emotional, intellectual, or moral aspect, dualistic think
ing all boils down to the differentiation of self and non
self or wu JJ¥jn/, literally meaning "thing." As Chuang-tzu
sees it,
From the standpoint of Tao, things have no nobility or
meanness. From the standpoint of things themselves,
each regards itself as noble and others as mean.
VvilL %-X ^ Hln ^>i 1 , i b
208
Everything calls itself "this" and opposes "this" to
"that"; everyone sees oneself as "I" and opposes "I" to
"others." A self-positing, self-contained, and self-
conscious subject is therefore born, on the basis of which
decisions are made and values are determined. In Chaung-
tzu1s words:
From the point of view of "I," the rules of benevolence
and righteousness , the paths of right and wrong /_come
abou_t/. They are all hopelessly snarled and jumbled.
How could I know anything about such discriminations?^
The self, ecclosed in its petty differentiations and judg
ments, sees the world as the external, something to strive
for, struggle with, or change. The main thrust of Chuang-
tzu's discourse, then, lies in the way he undermines this
fundamental dichotomy by showing that one cannot exist
without the other; the concept of "self"-and that of
"others" or "world" are mutually implicated.
To undermine conceptual dualism, Chaung-tzu first
argues that the hierarchy of binary oppositions can easily
be reversed. The tre„e that is useful for carpentry is
useless for preserving its own life, whereas the tree that
is unfit for woodwork proves useful in living out its
natural life-span. Lady Li, who say life as miserable, now
calls the same set of living conditions happiness. What is
unnatural and out of the world for the quail and the dove
is natural and simple for the great bird, P 'eng ./flftlj/• By
giving such examples, Chuang-tzu is not merely saying that
209
values are relative and perspective—bound, but that all
values are relative and arbitrary because they are external
to the intrinsic nature of the things under consideration.
The reification of a concept in dualism prevents one from
seeing the internal structure of a thing, which can only
be understood in terms of differences:
From the point of view of differences, if we regard a
thing as big because there is a certain bigness to it,
then among all the ten thousand things there are none
that are not big. If we regard a thing as small be
cause there is a certain smallness to it, then among
the ten thousand things there are none that are not
small. If we know that heaven and earth are tiny
grains and the tip of a hair is a range of mountains,
then we have perceived the law of differences.^
I s ' ) rn
'h ^ ^ 1 $ r 1-^1 ^ i±L. A .
If dualistic terms are reversible and interchangeable when
seen from the internal point of view, i.e,, in terms of
"the law of differences," then there is no more opposition
between them. Instead of irreconcilable and mutually
exclusive, opposite terms are interdependent and comple
mentary on a deeper level: "without .'that' there is no
'this'; without 'this' 'that' has nothing to hold onto"
_ o
] _ & • One cannot exist without the
other, and they multiply each other indefinitely. Again,
according to Chuang-tzu:
There is a beginning. There is a not-yet-beginning to
be a beginning. There is a not-yet-beginning-to-be-a-
not-yet-beginning to be a beginning. There is being.
There is nonbeing. There is a not-yet-beginning to be
nonbeing. There is a not-yet-beginning-to-be-a-not-
yet-beginning to be nonbeing. Suddenly there is being
210
and nonbeing. But between this being and nonbeing, I
don't really know which is being and what is nonbeing.
i k . rfnJ^-^a y z L,
One term does not have any value separate from and inde
pendent of its opposite; they are mutually defined. There
fore, instead of perceiving them dualistically, Chuang-tzu
comprehends unitary oppositions in terms of complicity and
con t inuum.
Thus, Chuang-tzu talks about "sitting in forget
fulness" , tzo wang / . What is to be forgotten is the
reification of the self as opposed to the world. At the
beginning of Chapter 2 of Chuang-1zu, Tzu-ch'i of the
Southern Gate, a fictional character, says to his disciple:
"Now I have forgotten 1 I ' " j_ — the "I" that
has been forgotten is the self or the ego separated from
the world, and the "I" that is doing the talking is the
self that has regained unity with the world. This, then,
is the meaning of Tao; it is that through which "man and
1 f \
the universe interfuse as one."
The dissolution of the hierarchical duality of self
and world does not imply a denial of individuality or
individual existence. On the contrary, it is only when this
duality is renounced that each one or each thing can be
recognized as such. In this connection, Kuo Hsiang's
211
commentary is pertinent:
Everyone regards oneself as right; therefore, there is
no one that is no right. Things call each other
"that"; hence there is nothing that is not a "that."
When there is nothing that is not a "that," there is
no "yes." When there is nothing that is not a "yes,"
there is no "that." When there are no "that's" and
• 1 -7
"yes's," all are one. '
A.T ^ &.% '] - A . h 3 $ . t
To the extent that opposite terms are intersubstitutable ,
they are one. Or, to put it in another way, differences
are one insofar as they have the same internal structure of
reversibility. This is what Chuang-tzu means by "making
things equal" ch * i wu / , and Tao is also called
"heavenly equality" t ' ien chun / . The idea of
"equality" is further applied to things of the world in the
discussion of "hsing" or nature. For instance, the
capacity to fly three feet high of the quail is different
from and inferior to the capacity to fly nine thousand
miles of the P'eng. However, to the extent that the quail
and the P'eng each carry out their differences, that is,
their "nature," they are equal. The unity between them
resides in the fulfillment of their intrinsic nature or,
as sometimes translated, their "suchness" or "is-ness."
With this Taoist background in mind, we can better
understand the well-known, sometimes controversial story
of Chuang-tzu, which states as follows:
Chuang-tzu and Huei-tzu were strolling along the dam of
the Hao River when Chuang-tzu said,
212
"See how the minnows come out and dart around where
they please.' That's what fish really enjoy.'"
Huei-tzu said, "You're not a fish— how do you know what
fish en joy?"
Chuang-tzu said, "You're not I, so how do you know I
don't know what fish enjoy?"
Huei-tzu said, "ijm not you, so I certainly don't know
what you know. On the other hand, you're certainly
not a fish— so that still proves you don't know
what fish enjoy!"
Chuang-tzu said, "Let's go back to your original ques
tion, please. You asked me how I know what fish
enjoy— so you already know I knew it when you asked
the question. I know it by standing here beside
the Hao."18
it 3- ^ X - U - Q
-3~ 3 B I -3k ^ -b- 'b ££.Xa
^ 5 ^. -k. i i z _
Huei-tzu represents the so-called "objective" or dualistic
way of thinking, separating the self, the perceiver and
observer, from the other, the perceived or that which is
to be observed and subject to analytical understanding.
His questions clearly indicate the firm differentiation of
the knower from the known. Therefore, he rejects the no
tion that a person can claim to understand the joy of a
fish, much less to share it. Chuang-tzu, however, is not
speaking from the viewpoint of an observer, but he is in
tuitively participating in the experience of the swimming
of the fish. The swimming of the minnows is his joy. It
is as natural as it is for Huei-tzu to distinguish himself
from a fish or from Chuang-tzu. To ask "How do you know?"
213
already presupposes this separation, a presupposition
unacceptable and meaningless to the Taoist.
This presupposition is likewise denounced in the
story from Lieh-tzu, a work attributed to the philosopher
Lieh Yu-k'o t' ie fifth and fourth centuries -B.C.
but actually a Neo-Taoist work of the third century A.D.
The story tells of a young boy who went to the sea shore
every morning, where the seagulls would fly down, playing
around him as if he was not there. Seeing that his son
had easy access to the birds, the father told him to catch
a few the next time he went-there. The next morning when
the boy went to the beach as usual, however, the seagulls
would not even fly near him. In the story- the different
reactions of the seagulls were caused by the different
states of mind of the boy. As Chuang-tzu says, "He who
does not harm things will not be harmed by things as well.
Only he who does not harm can harmonize with men"
Before, there
was no hierarchical differentiation between the boy and
the birds, between "I" and "things." But once he intendded
to capture them, the dichotomy was created: he now became
the hunter after the game, the predator after the prey.
The original harmony was destroyed and opposition set in
ins tead.
The Taoist view of non-differentiation and primeval
unity between man and nature has a tremendous impact on
__________________________________________________________________________ 214
Chinese artistic, sensibility, and it is directly respon
sible for the rise of nature poetry, an important presence
in Chinese literature. In Chuang-tzu, we find this follow
ing passage which can be seen as the earliest expression
of nature poetry:
Therefore, in a time of Perfect Virtue, the gait of
men is slow and ambling; their gaze is steady and mild.
In such an age, mountains have no paths or trails,
lakes no boats or bridges. The ten thousand things
live species by species, one group settled close 'to
another. Birds and beasts form their flocks and herds,
grass and trees grow to fullest height. So it happens
that you can tie a cord to the birds and beasts and
lead them about, or bend down the limb and peer into
the nests of the crow and the magpie. In this age of
Perfect Virtue, men live the same as birds and beasts,
group themselves side by side with the ten thousand
things. Who then knows anything about "gentleman" or
"petty man"? Dull and unwitting, men have no wisdom;
thus their Virtue does not depart from them. Dull and
unwitting, they have no desire; this is called uncarved
simplicity. In uncarved simplicity, the people attain
their true nature.^
^ ^ ^
Zh ,$> i r . l ? ^ rJ ^ P*g\
The harmonious relationship between man and his environment
herein described is to inform the best of Chinese nature
poetry throughout history.
With the decline of the Han Empire during the reign
of which Confucianism was the state religion and the back
bone of social order, Taoism was revived and rediscovered
215
by scholars who were disillusioned by the bureaucracy and
hypocrisy of the ever-institutionalized doctrine. Among
those scholars were: Wang Pi / > Ho Yen , Yuan Chi
Chi K’ang j^x.%^/ , Hsiang Shu jj*\^_/, Kuo Hsiang,
and many others, who devoted themselves to interpreting and
expounding the I ching, Lao-tzu, and Chuang-tzu , the so-
called "Three Mysterious Books" , s an hsuan shu / of
Neo-Taoism. Of those Neo-Taoist thinkers, Hsiang Shu and
Kuo Hsiang were of particular importance since their inter
pretations laid the very foundation for later exegeses of
Chuang-t zu. This change in the ideological and philoso
phical scene during the Wei and Chin periods undoubtedly
contributed to the rise of nature poetry in the fourth
21
century A.D. Many of the poets were devout Taoists or
Buddhists (the latter, incidentally, were not clearly
distinguishable from the former at the time anyway). What
is characteristic of the new poetry is a sharp decrease in
allegorizing nature, the tendency to treat nature as it is,
and the expression of intuitive interaction between man
and nature as captured in a poetic moment. As far as the
poetic mode is concerned, the metaphorical and allegorical
element of pi-hs ing tends to recede into the background,
while the metonymic structure gains more and more impor
tance that culminates in the evocatively imagistic poem
that, as has been discussed in Chapter 3, is frequently
found in T'ang poetry.
216
The name "nature poetry" is here used in a very
loose way, under which may be subsumed the "poetry of field
and garden" t'ien-yuan shih/ represented by T 1 ao
Ch'ien , Fan Ch'eng-ta » etc.; "poetry of
mountains and rivers" san-shui shih/ by Hsieh
Lin-yun 'il -^IL/ . Pao Chiao » etc.; "nature poetry"
J_ tzu-jan shih/ by Wang Wei, Meng Hao-jan, etc.; and
many other poems which, dubbed by no particular brand,
draw upon nature for poetic inspiration and artistic ex
pression. It would not be an overstatement to say that
nature provides the single richest source of experience and
imagery for classical Chinese poetry, and it is less ade
quate to use "nature poetry" as the designation of a
distinct genre or subgenre than to view it as a represen
tative mode of sensibility or way of perception in relation
to man and nature. To illustrate this point we shall turn
to a few poems by representative poets.
I built a hut in the realm of men,
Yet there is no.noise of horse and carriage.
"How could it be?" may I ask,
"When the mind is remote, the place is naturally quiet.'
As I gather chrysanthemums by the eastern hedge,
The South Mountain, as such, comes into view.
The mountain air is fine in the sunset;
Flocks of birds return home wing to wing.
There is true meaning in this,
Yet when I try to say it— words are forgotten.
217
Without exaggeration, it can be said that this poem has
been analysed literally hundreds and hundreds of times by
critics throughout Chinese history. However, there is
something about the poem that warrants yet another reading.
The poem begins with a paradox of which the next two lines
provide an explicit resolution. Moreover, the rest of the
poem can be taken as an implicit expression of such resolu
tion: the poet maintains tranquility of the mind despite
the hustle and bustle of the human world, since he achieves
the primordial harmony with things of nature, as indicated
by Lines 5-8. Line 6, which literally leads: "In quietude
y °- j an / I see the South Mountain," almost defies
trasnlation, since the phrase "yu-jan" connotes a state of
mind that is tranquil yet not withdrawn, mystical yet not
remote, vacant yet profound. Thus, it suggests a sponta
neous and non-volitional state in which the poet encounters
the mountain. The word "chien" ("to see") also poses a
similar problem. It is sometimes translated "gaze at"
which, I feel, entirely misses the rich implication in the
original and somewhat distorts the meaning of the poem.
This has already been noted by Wei Ch'in— chih of
the Southern Sung period, who said:
...the ignorant take "to_see" to mean "to gaze at"; it
is not unlike J_comparinj*/ scraps of rocks with precious
j ade . 23
I ^ -X ^
One such example is the imitation written by Po Chu-i:
218
To pour now and then a goblet of wine,
And sit and gaze at the southeastern mountain.
The verb "to gaze" underlies the conscious imitation of the
act by the poet, which is totally absent in "to see."
The spontaneity and intuitive harmony between the
poet and nature reaches completion in the last couplet. It
echoes Chuang-tzu's idea of "forgetting words": when
experience itself suffices, words are quite redundant and
unnecessary. The word "pien" (here translated as "say")
in the last line should be understood in the Taoist sense
to mean "differentiate or discriminate by means of lang-
2 5
uage." The poet, already mutually implicated with nature
in the moment of unity, does not and cannot anymore make
the differentiation of himself from nature, of subject from
object. Therefore, the last line can mean both that the
poet forgets words with which to explain the experience
(embodied in the previous lines), and that he forgets the
words that are the poem itself. Language emerges from and
recedes into the experience which is the silence of mean
ingfulness. The poet uses language and at the same time
is not attached to it.
The primordial harmony that binds individual
existences of things (including man) also finds articula
tion in these lines by Li Po:
Flocks of birds fly out of sight;
Lone clouds drift leisurely on.
219
Never tired of looking at each other—
The Ching-t1ing Mountain and 1.26
In those lines are heard the echoes of the story of
Chuang-tzu and the fish. Man and nature form a continuity
and unity, apart from which they have no meaning. In
discussions of poetry, this state is often referred to as
the "ching-chieh" • The word (in Japanese, "kyogai"
or "kyokai") comes from the Sanskrit "go cara," "vish aya,"
or "gati . " meaning the "pasture" on which cows graze and
9 7
grow. Originally, it was. used in Ch'an discourse to
indicate the level of enlightenment of the ' disciple. But
as literary critics were heavily influenced by Ch1 an
Buddhist thinking, the term was adopted to describe and
judge poetry, especially poetry dealing with nature. It
is sometimes translated as "realm," "world," or "environ
ment," designating the field of interplay and interpene
tration between man and nature, or, rather, the ambience
or feeling evoked through such intuitive, universal iden
tification .
this quatrain by Meng Hao-jan:
The monk robe is hung in the Ch ' an hall on the moun
tain ;
No one outside the window, water birds fly by.
At dusk, half way down the mountain,
I stop to listen to the springs, in love with the
The emergence of the "ching-chieh" is presented in
blue mist.^
220
It is clear that the poem is written on a specific occa
sion, when the poet goes visiting a Buddhist master yet
finds him not home. Instead of feeling disappointed at
missing the friend, however, he is gradually absorbed by
the beauty of nature surrounding him. We may say that in
the poem two different states of mind are presented. The
first couplet addresses the purpose of the trip: the friend
cannot be found either in the house or outside of it. It
suggests searching and motivation. The second couplet, on
the other hand, is uttered by one who has been merged into
nature; at thss point, the goal of the trip is totally out
of mind.
The two states of mind can be defined in this way.
The initial one is goal-oriented; the poet seeks and fails
to find. The later transformation is specifically non
goal-oriented; now the poet ceases to seek and responds to
nature wherein he finds joy and peacefulness. The diffe
rence between seeking and finding is an important motif in
Ch1 an thinking, which, to the contrary of the Christian
motto: "seek and thou shalt find," advises "stop seeking
and thou shalt find." It is the difference between the
fragmented and self-conscious ego and the self that is
perfectly receptive and responsive to living experience.
The unity between man and nature can only be achieved in
the latter frame of mind.
While the previous poem illustrates the transition
221
from the dualistic self to the unified self, there are
many poems that present the latter without showing the
other, and, as such, the poem is often like a vignett of
imagery. For instance,
Deep blue the temple in the bamboo grove,
Resounding the bell in the evening.
Lotus-leafed cap carrying the setting sun,
Returning alone, the blue mountain remote.
The poem by Liu Ch'ang-ch'ing beautifully visualizes the
process of the self being drawn to and identified with the
friend, a Buddhist monk, disappearing into the blue moun
tain at the end of the vista. The last two lines are
especially powerful in that, the eye, following the friend
walking farther and farther away, actually projects the
self (the poet) into him. In the distance, the cap he is
wearing look as if the sun was being shouldered along by it,
and the mountain seems to gradually recede as the man
disappears into the mist of dusk. What is being experienced
here is the total identification of the self (of the poet)
with the departing friend and the surrounding landscape.
Against the setting of the temple in the bamboo
grove and the reverberations of the deep tone of the temple
bell, these lines give a sense of both movement and still
ness: the receding movement of the monk, the sun, and the
mountain, and the stillness due to the concentration of the
focus and the absorption of the perceiving mind. We may
say the poem presents a crystallized movement, a moment of
222
progressive stillness. The poetic ”1" is fully integrated
into the landscape in the "ching-chieh" or realm of unity
and identification.
Another poem will show a different kind of ex
perience of nature. It is "Magnolia Grove" by Wang Wei:
Magnolias at the top of the trees
Put forth red calyxes in the mountain.
The home by the river, lone and unoccupied—
One by one they bloom and then fall.^®
The poem describes a simple event or phenomenon in nature,
which is the eternal cycle of life and death, of growth
and decay. The blooming and falling of the magnolias
continues even though there is no one to witness it; nature
quietly moves on in.its natural way. But man is certainly
not excluded from this cycle, as suggested by Line 3: the
home is now unoccupied, but a woodsman or hunter might have
lived in it, who is now no more. Like the flowers, he too
belongs to nature, the ever-creative, ever-transforming
universe. The eventuality of such cyclical revolution is
accentuated by the rhythm of the last line. In the ori-
ginal, it reads: "fen-fen k1ai ch'ieh lo"--creating an
iambic-like rhythm with a long, heavy stress on the last
word "lo," and effect that I try to capture in my transla
tion with the word "fall."
It is also interesting to note the time elements in
this poem. Line 2 gives us the moment. of' blossoming; the
223
bright color image, "red," seems to enhance this moment of
maximum liveliness and energy. Line 4, in contrast, covers
the length of time from the blooming to the falling of the
magnolias. The progression of time thus indicated is juxta
posed with the brief' moment of blossoming. Unlike numerous
poems that sigh over the transience and elusiveness of
life, the poem is not sad. The compression of time dura
tion in the last line neatly balances off the focusing on
the momentary in Line 2. Similarly, the co orfulness of
life is balanced off with the quiet of death, the activity
of existence with the stillness of non-existence. The two
phases complement each other and replace each other in
cessantly. And man is part of this movement of eternal
return.
In poems like these, there is hardly any subjective
manipulation in the sense that nature is neither turned
into a figurative representation or sign of higher reality,
r
nor used as a backdrop for human imagination. Some critics
use the term "selflessness" or "absence of self" to de
scribe this characteristic of Chinese poetry in its treat
ment of nature. The term is misleading since the idea of
having no self in the poem does not mean the absence of
the first-person pronoun "I," nor does it mean that reality
is presented as impersonal and objective.' To say the poem
is objective is just as irrelevant as to say it is sub
jective, since the terms "objective" and "subjective" are
224
rather meaningless in light of the unity of man and nature,
or feeling and scenery. They presuppose each other and do
not exist apart from each other. Feeling and scenery form
a fusion, a fusion of external environment and internal
experience. The feeling of "absence of self" by no means
comes from the negation or loss of the self; it is the
result of the self fully assimilated into nature though at
the same time maintaining its individuality and distinct
presence. Thus, it can be called the mind of "no mind,"
the self of no self, j
The term "no mind" wu-hs in / ("mushin" in
Japanese) is borrowed from Ch.’an Buddhism, and, in a nut
shell, the following kung-an sums up the relationship
between man and world, imagination and reality, discussed
in Chinese poetry:
A monk asked Wei-kuan, "Where is Tao ?"
Wei-kuan: "Right before us."
Monk: "Why don't I see it?"
Wei-kuan: "Because of your ego you cannot see it."
Monk: "if I cannot see it because of my ego, does
your Reverence see it?"
Wei-kuan: "As long as there is fI and thou,' this com
plicates the situation and there is no seeing Tao."
Monk: "When there is neither 'I' nor 'thou,' is it
seen ? "
Wei-kuan: "Where there is neither 'I' nor 'thou,' who
is there to see it?"^!
The kung-an addresses the duality of self and non-self, or
subject and object, by raising a series of questions: what
does it mean that Tao is before us, why can't the young
monk see it, and what is the answer to the last question
posed by Wei-kuan: "Where there is neither 'I' nor 'thou,'
225
who is there to see it"? Answers to these questions will
then shed light on the issue.
is reality and the direct, intuitive experience of such;
it is not behind or above reality and experience, which,
Ch1 an poem says:
Looking for spring all day, I could not find it.
Straw sandals tred all over the mountains steeped in
clouds.
On the way back, I passed under the plum tree.
Spring all here— a plum blossom on the twig. 3
It is futile to try to match the abstract concept of
"spring" with concrete reality. Spring is not in anything,
it is the thing, which, in this case, happens to be a plum
blossom. The moment of sudden realization recorded in the
last line enables the poet to break loose from the bifur
cation of concept and reality, the abstract and the con
crete. In the kung-an, the monk fails to see Tao because of
his a_ priori separation of the self from the world, the
seeker from that which to be sought. It prevents him from
seeing reality as it is without the imposition of human
conceptualization. This is explicitly stated by Wei-kuan
in his reply. However, the dualistic frame of mind is deep-
rooted in the monk, as revealed by his next question, "Can
your Reverence see it?" Here, he is separating Wei-kuan
Regarding the first question, we may say that Tao
o o
as discussed in Chapter 6, are one. As an anonymous
22 6
from reality as well as from himself, the questioner. The
last question raised by Wei-kuan is the most ambiguous in
that it embraces a number of meanings.
First of all, when the differentiation between
subject and object is resolved, to ask "is it seen?" is
again to fall into the trap of dualism, separating the
knower from the known. Therefore, the monk's question
itself becomes irrelevant and redundant, and it is countered
with a question. Secondly, when "I" and "thou" (and "it")
have become one, neither "who" nor "it" can be understood
apart from the unity that is Tao. There is really no one
to see it in the sense that everything and everyone parti
cipates in reality; to detach oneself in order to "see" is
missing the point. Finally, it can be said in reply to
the question "who is there to see it?" that "everyone sees
it," everyone that realizes his "self-nature" or the "ori
ginal face" / -jp ^ f f r j i=] , pen-lai mien-mu/ as Ch ’ an masters
call it. This assertion of the original and primeval unity
of man with nature can also be seen as a rejection of the
nihilistic or sceptic tone implied in the monk's question.
To say there is no differentiation between "I" and "thou"
does not mean the denial of individual existence of the
self and things in general. The undoing of categorical
delimitations reaffirms their "suchness."
In light of the ontological structure of man and
nature inherent in Chinese culture, the metonymic mode pre-
227
valent in Chinese poetry takes on deeper significance.
We have seen that the ontological and poetic models are
mutually definable. The contiguous correlation of non-
metaphoric images reflects the connecting of the self to
the world on a homogeneous, non-hierarchical basis. Man
is metonymically related to the world; they constitute a
single, unified plane of meaning. When compared with the
Symbolist poetic tradition of the West, the close affinity
between ontology and poetic becomes even more instructive.
r
The metaphoric structure that defines most Romantic-
Symbolist poetry cannot be separated from the Western con
cept of metaphor as a tool of insight or a means of vision,
a concept that is ultimately embedded in the metaphysical
duality of subjebt and object, the abstract and the con
crete, truth and representation. The emphasis on metaphor
as creative in nature and cognitive in function/is clearly
behind the "poetic of correspondence" which was revived,
through Swedenborg, by Symbolist poets, in particular,
Baudelaire and Yeats. Poetry is to explore the deep re
cesses of the human psyche. The introvertive mode began
with Romantic poetry where we constantly find the motif
of the inward journey, and it culminated in Symbolist
poetry with its imagery of the dream, the abyss, the cave,
etc. Hence, poetry is essentially an internalizing pro
cess, transforming the external world into humanly intelli
gible terms and creating meaning in the world from which
228
man is otherwise totally alienated. Metaphorization in
sures such an ontological leap by creating a plurality of
semantic planes. As Joseph Riddell keenly observes,
Symbolist poetry is a "vertical project." j
This "vertical project," which represents the
poet's attempt to transform and dominate, to transcend and
be liberated from the world of appearances, has been
seriously modified and even categorically denounced by many
twentieth-century poets of the West, poets who, for want of
a better term, can be called "postmodern." The term, "post
modernism," is yet to be fully defined, but it serves as a
valid designation of an identifiable departure from the
Symbolist tradition far as poetic sensibility and percep
tual qualities are concerned. This departure can be partly
attributed to the import of Chinese poetry to the West in
the early twentieth-century, mainly through the works of
the Imagists. In view of the difference between Chinese
poetry and Romantic-Symbolist poetry discussed above, it
is not difficult to see why, when it first came out,
Imagist poetry had trouble being understood or even
accepted by the critic. The impressions of Chinese poetry
as rhetorically and thematically simplistic and straight
forward, stated by many early translators, were shared by
the reader of Imagist poetry. Paradoxically, this simpli
city seemed quite inexplicable to the Western reader who
was entrenched in Symbolist poetry. I would suggest in the
_________________________________________________________________229.
«
following that one way to define the transformation', of
poetic sensibility in modern English-American poetry is by
analysing the relationship between the poetic "I" and the
world, or subject and object, in the pioneers of postmodern
poetry, such as Pound and Williams.
In an-' illuminating reading of the Pisan Cantos ,
Donald Davie maintains that with regard to the "attitude of
mind," Pound is quite contrary to Eliot and Yeats but is
more in tune with Keats, Hopkins, and D. H. Lawrence.
Using Canto 83 as an example:
and Brother Wasp is building a very neat house
of four rooms, one shaped like a squat indian
bottle
La vespa, la vespa, mud, swallow sys,tem
So that dreaming of Bracelonde and of Perugia
and the great fountain in the Piazza
or of old Bulagaio's cat that with a well timed leap
could .turn the lever-shaped door handle
It comes over me that Mr. Walls must be a ten-strike
with the signorinas
and in the warmth after chill sunrise
an infant, green as new grass,
has stuck its head or tip
out of Madame La Vespa's bottle
mint springs up again
in spite of JOnes' rodents
as had the clover by the gorilla cage
with a four-leaf
When the mind swings by a grass-blade
an ant's forefoot shall save you
the clover leaf smells and tastes as its flower...
he says that "at no point does the wasp become a symbol for
something in Pound's predicament, or for his ethical or
other programs, or for his personality. The wasp retains
its otherness as an independent form of life; it is only by
2 30
doing so that it can be source of comfort to the human
observer..." And herein lies the main difference between
Symbolist poetry and postmodern poetry. Whereas in the
former the world is identified with the self, in the latter
the self is identified with the world. As Davie pointedly
remarks, "there is all the difference in the world between
identifying a swan with one’s self, and identifying one’s
O * 7
self with a swan." Whereas High Modernist poetry tames
and reduces the phenomenal world to a conglomeration of
signs and symbols, postmodern poetry celebrates the irre
ducible multiplicity and palpable concreteness of things.
Whereas plurisignation and textual depth score high with
the Symbolist poet, poastmodern poetry is often characr ,>•
terized by simplicity and transparency that may appear
superficial (its depth being of a different kind). If
Eliot with his "objective correlative" and Yeats with his
"poetic of correspondence" represent the epitome of Sym
bolist poetic, then Pound with his insistence on that "a
natural symbol is an adequate symbol" appropriately ini
tiates the postmodern era.
Pound’s objection to the use of a symbol "with an
ascribed or intended meaning," his dissociation of Imagism
from Symbolism, and his advocation of "objective," "direct"
treatment of things have been well documented to call for
any further explication here. I would only like to call
attention to an early piece of Pound which has not been
231
discussed in detail by any critic so far. The poem is
"An Object" which first appeared in The Ripostes of Ezra
Pound (1912):
This thing, that hath a code and not a core,
Hath set acquaintance where might be affections,
And nothing now
Disturbeth his reflections.
The poem, a,s I read it, presents two contrastive modes of
perception. One is the Symbolist, which turns an object
into a multi-layered referential construct, a "code" to
be deciphered. The other mode is Poundian or postmodernist
which grasps the essence, the "core" of a thing. The
perceptual pattern determines the relationship between the
perceiver and the thing perceived. The Symbolist mode
results in one that is somewhat impersonal and remote, as
implied by the word "acquaintance." To read an object as
a "code" is to internalize it through imagination and to
deprive it of its "otherness" or "thingness." In contrast,
the postmodernist mode achieves an intimate, authentic
bond between the perceiver and the perceived, as suggested
by "affections." However, as the poet laments, it is the
Symbolist mode that triumphs over the other. The archaic
spellings of "hath" and "disturbeth" seem to underline the
idea of Symbolism as antiquated and inappropriate, as ,
opposed to its more viable alternative ("might be"). It is
antiquated and inappropriate since it produces a fragmented
and self-confining consciousness, indicated by the notions
232
of "disturbeth" and "reflections." "Disturbeth" implies
the distinction between the inside ("his reflections") and
the outside, of objects or things. And, coming after
"disturbeth," the word "reflections" is poignantly signi
ficant; it evokes the visualization of the mind echoing
itself in the corridor of an enclosed chamber.
What postmodern poetry want to bring back, then,
is the "otherness" or "thingness" of "this thing," which
has disappeared into the labyrinth of the mind through sym
bolization and internalization. The "core" of the thing-
Pound talks about in the poem reminds of these words of
Wil1iams:
The only human value of anything, writing included, is
intense vision of the facts,...— clear into the machine
IQ
of absurdity to a core that is covered.
In the works of Pound and Williams, as well as their fol
lowers, we often find this "intensity of perception," of
an attentiveness to the very presence of things. Identifi
cation might not be a good word for it, since, in going out
of himself, the poet never loses or erases his own identity.
When Williams puts a wheelbarrow in the poem:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chicken s
2,33
we know there is a perceiver there; the wheelbarrow and the
other things are perceived from "his" perspective. But he
is not there to read meaning into the wheelbarrow, only to
receive, to respond to, to be overwhelmed by whatever
meaning there is in its being present with the rain and the
chickens. Whereas the meaning of an image in Symbolist
poetry can usually be paraphrased in a discursive manner,
the meaning of the wheelbarrow defies such verbalization.
It makes the poet exclaim "so much"! Yet, neither con
templative elaboration nor humanistic interpretation
follows. The wheelbarrow elicits and issues the poem,
and it leads only to itself.
Such, then, is the meaning or, rather, meaningful
ness, of "this thing," be it a wasp, a wheelbarrow, an ant,
a cityscape, a mare, or what-have-you. To be able to
appreciate it is to place oneself in the aura of its pre
sence as the "other." Paradoxically, resonance and harmony
is possible only when the otherness of the thing is main
tained and respected. As Williams terms it in "The Poem,"
a thing is both "centrifugal" and "centripetal." It draws
one near by being the "other."
The reaction against the treatment of the pheno
menal world as symbols is persistent among postmodern
poets. Besides Pound and Williams, T. E. Hulme is one of
the first critics to articulate the anti-Symbolist stand.
In "Humanism and the Religious Attitude," he advocates the
234
"objective perception" and "seeing things as they really
are." To name a few others, Charles Olson, in "Projective
Verse," proposes "objectism" in contrast to Symbolism. The
term designates "the getting rid of the lyrical inter
ference of the individual as ego...for man is himself an
object." Frank O’Hara remarks approvingly on Jasper Johns’
work, saying that the "meticulously and sensually painted
rituals of imagery ... express a profound boredom with the
symbols of an oversymbolic society." Jerome Rothenberg
opposes "presentation" in postmodern poetry to "interpre
tation" that is Symbolist poetry. Davin Antin holds that
"phenomenological reality is itself 'discovered' and
'constructed' by poets." Finally, John Cage states, "I'd
never been interested in symbolism...I preferred just
things in themselves, not as standing for other things."
And, "I don't like it when...a particular thing is a symbol
of a particular other thing...But if each thing in the
world can be seen as a symbol of every other thing in the
ii 41
world, then I do like it. The last enunciation by Cage
is especially noteworthy since it purposely undermines the
conceptual duality of the symbol and the symbolized, hence
opening up the closed field of symbolic reference. When
"each thing in the world can be seen as a symbol of every
other thing in the world," what we have is not symbolism,
but an open-ended, margin-less field of things.
If, as maintained earlier, ontological structure is
________________________________________________________________ 235
always manifested in poetic structure, then the anti-
Symbolist strain in postmodern poetry can likewise be re
lated to its poetic structure in some way. While Symbolist
poetry endorses an essentially "vertical" structure, in
postmodern poetry images are more often horizontally or
contiguously related. "The Nightingales," another poem by
Williams, furnishes a good example,:
My shoes as I lean
unlacing them
stand out upon
flat worsted flowers
Nimbly the shadows
of my fingers play
unlacing
over shoes and flowers
Like many postmodern poems, this short piece is not para-
phraseable. In fact, the "information" contained in the
two stanzas is almost identical, making the poem sound
repetitive. However, the way the few images are put toge
ther is different in each stanza, and herein lies the im
pact of the poem. In the first stanza, the shoes are
juxtaposed with the flowers. Both physically and typo
graphically, they "stand out." There is also a play on
the word "worsted." As a verb (an archaic one), it means
"defeated"; that is, the flowers are "flattened" by the
shoes. But it also functions as an adjective, as it usually
does, describing the soft, velevety texture of the petals
and the leaves. Thus, the stanza presents a simple picture
of the shoes over the flowers.
_________________________________________________________________2 36;
Stanza 2 introduces the "shadows of my fingers'"
But it is not really a new image since it is already im
plied in "unlacing" in the previous stanza. What is new
here is the correlation and combination of the images.
Whereas the first stanza gives us three disparate images
arranged in a strictly linear manner: fingers (over) shoes
(over) flowers, their structure in Stanza 2 is more like:
fingers — shoes/flowers. Shoes and flowers are taken as
one unit rather than two. Furthermore, the shadows cannot
be of the fingers alone; they are also of the shoes and the
flowers. Therefore, the silouette we visualize is of the
three images, distinguishable individually yet perceived as
a whole. Through the magic of the shadow, which is the
play of light, the three things seem to become one and is
mobile and alive (the "nimble" unlacing movement of the
fingers). Intensely perceived, the fingers, the shoes, and
the flowers are given a life, a dynamism, a meaning seldom
attributed to or associated with such prosaic things. The
overall effect of the poem is almost musical, evoked by the
title of the poem, "The Nightingales."
Puzzled and somewhat disconcerted by Williams'
poetry, Wallace Stevens once commented that Williams was
/ ^
more interested in how to say things than what to say.
The remark certainly applies to "The Nightingales," a poem
which thematically says very little, yet is arresting in
how it says it. It creates a play on spatial and percep-
2 3 7 '
tual relations: moving from three separate units (fingers--
shoes— flowers) to two (fingers— shoes/f1owers) to one
(fingers/shoes/flowers), from a fragmented, static view to
one that is holistic and dynamic. The images are juxta
posed in such a way that they do not point to a deeper
level of symb o 1 ic-: ;mean ing, but meaning emerges from the
juxtaposition alone. In the original, Williams put "under
my feet" under "flat worsted flowers" in the first stanza.
The line was crossed out probably to discourage a possible
symbolic reading (e.g., nature victimized by man). Rather
than a substitution, the poem is a mosaic of images meto-
nymically related.
As Marjorie Perloff remarks, the metonymic mode in
postmodern poetry produces "not meaning below the surface
but the play of the surface.And she shows that it is
not only found in Pound and Williams, but also in Gertrude
Stein, John Ashbery, and David Antin, where images like
pointers interact but do not always have definable re
ferents. In the words of Karl Malkoff, "in the place of
sequence and analysis is instantaneity and simultaneity.
The sense of transparency and immediacy thus created is
absent in Symbolist poetry and is diametrically opposed to
its density and complexity. For the postmodern poet,
"surface is preferred to 'depth,' process to structure."^
The poem is variously considered a "field," a "place," or
an "energy construct" which engages the perceiver and the
2 38
perceived to a degree that such distinction becomes vir
tually meaningless. In his study of postmodern poetics,
Charles Altieri says, "sight for postmodernism is usually
more than a way of perceiving objects; it becomes a way of
entering the duration of objects beyond the self and thus
a way of participating in their becoming.Postmodern
poetry is a poetry of process, of participation, of imma
nence .
The characterization of postmodern poetry as a
poetry of immanence in which meaning emerges from "the ways
man participates in the world beyond himself, harks
back to Chinese nature poetry dealt with earlier this
chapter. The idea of immanence or participation rings a
note of unmistakable familiarity to the "ching-chieh"--
the realm of mutual identification and interpenetration of
man and nature, or feeling and scenergy, embodied in
Chinese poetry. Implicitly or explicitly, both reject a
metaphorical or symbolic rendering of phenomenal reality,
and nature is perceived in a direct, unmediated way. Na
ture cannot be seen as an extension of man, nor is man an
extension of nature. They form a continuum which makes
possible a continuing interaction between them. In this
sense, the poem is a semantic as well as perceptual field
where the union of inner and outer states is achieved.
These words of Williams are an apt description of both
Chinese poetry and postmodern English-American poetry:
2-3 9
Nature is the hint to composition not because it is
familiar to us and therefore terms we apply to it have
a least common denominator quality which gives them
currency— but because it possesses the quality of in
dependent existence, of reality which we fill in our
selves. It is not opposed to art but apposed to it.
If, as I suggested earlier, there is such a phenomenon of
postmodern poetry as departing from the Romantic-Symbolist
tradition and tending toward the Chinese, it may be worth
while to speculate why it has occurred in our particular
historical context. As already mentioned, it can be partly
attributed to the import of the Chinese poetic model into
the West. But, more significantly, the fact that poets
look to Chinese poetry for new models and new concepts is
itself indicative of their dissatisfaction with the Sym
bolist nor.m grown out of the Western cultural and philo
sophical context. I would suggest that the transformation
and re-orientation in artistic sensibility is not an iso
lated, abrupt event, but it is inextricably related to the
transformation and re-orientation in ideology and philoso-
phy that goes on concurrently. Derrida's interpretation and
critique of Western metaphysics, on which my studies in
Chapters 5 and 6 are based, is the continuation and natural
result of the rigorous questioning of the fundations of
Western thinking since the late nineteenth century. It
epitomizes the ideological climate in which postmodern
poetry evolves and develops. In both cases, the Chinese
model, whether literary or philosophical, provides a useful
context for understanding and illuminating such phenomena.
2 40
NOTES TO CHAPTER VII
^Huang Wei-liang, "Theories of ' Meaning Beyond •
Words’ in the History of Chinese Poetics" J_ 41 ^
% , Chung-kuo shih-hsueh shih shang te yen-wai-chih-
vi shuo /. in his Studies of Chinese Poetics j _ 4* \WS !■§■ »
Chung-kuo shih-hsueh tsung-hung lun/ (Taipei: Hung-fan
Bookstore, 1977), pp. 119-85.
^T. S. Eliot, "The Problem of Hamlet," in the
Selected Essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1953), p. 145.
^From T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays
1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1971),
pp. 12-13.
^See, for example, Harold Bloom, "The Internaliza
tion of Quest-Romance," in Romanticism and Consciousness,
ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Norton, 1970), pp. 3-23;
Geoffrey Hartman,k"The Via Naturalister Negativa," in his
Wordsworth’s Poetry 1787-1814 (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1964), pp. 31-69; and Northrop Frye,
"The Romantic Myth," in his A Study of English Romanticism
(New York: Random House, 1968), pp. 3-49.
■^Lawrence Kramer, "Ocean and Vision: Imaginative
Dilemma in Wordsworth, Whitman, and Stevens," Journal of
English and Germanic Philology LXXIX (April 1980): 211.
6Ibid., p. 212.
Ibid., pp. 227-8.
^Wang Fu-chili, Poetry Talk of Chiang-chai fa ,
Chiang-chai shih-hua/, quoted in Siu-kit Wong, "Ch ’ ing and
Ching in the Critical Writings of Wang Fu-chih," in Chines e
Approaches to Literature, ed. Adele A. Rickett (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1978), pZ 125.
^See Ch. 6, pp. 176-9.
'"chuang-tzu, Ch. 17, p. 179.
■'"■'"Ibid., Ch. 2, p. 46. Watson translates the first
line as "The way I see it," which I change to "From the
point of view of ’I. ’"
241
l2Ibid., Ch. 17, p. 179.
13 lb id . , Ch. 2, p. 36 .
14Ibid. , p . 43 .
lb id. , p. 36.
^■^Chaxig Chung-yuan, Creativity and Taoism: A Study
of Chinese Philosophy, Art, and Philosophy (New York:
Harper and Row, 1963), p. 169.
^For Kuo Hsiang's commentary, see the Collected
Annotations of Chuang-tzu, p. 31.
^ Chuang-tzu, Ch. 17, pp. 188-9.
"*"^Ibid., Ch. 22, p. 246.
2 0lb id. , Ch. 9, p. 105.
2 1
For discussions of the origin of Chinese nature
poetry, see, for example: Wang Yao , "The Poetry of
Mysterious Words, Mountains and Rivers, and Field and_
Garden" /_ rs , Hsuan-yen san-shui, t 'ien-yuan/, in
his Studies of Medieval Literature / » Chung-ku
wen-hsueh feng—mao/ (Hong Kong: Chung-liu Press, 1973),
pp. 47-83; J. D. Frodsham, "The Origin of Chinese Nature _
Poetry," Asia Major 7 (.1960): 68-97 ; Lin Wen-yueh _ / 3 ,
"From the Poetry of Wandering Immortals to the Poetry of
Mountains and Rivers" 1-^- . Ts'ung yu-hsien
shih tao san-shui shih/, in her Mountains-and-Rivers and
Clas s i cism J _ , San-shui yu ku-tien/ (Taipei:
Gh'un wen-hsueh Press, 1976), pp. 1-22
22T'ao Ch'ien, "Drinking Wine," no. 5,_from the
Commentary on the Poetry of T' ao Ching-chieh
T'ao Ching-chieh shih chien/, ed. and annotated by Ku Chih
(Taipei: Kuang-wen Bookstore, 1969), p. 91.
23Wei Ch'in,— chih, Jade Scraps of Poets J_ A ,
Shih-.jen yu-hsueh/, rpt. ed. (Taipei: Commerce Press, 1974),
229
1858
24Ibid. , p. 230 .
25See Ch. 6, p. 177 .
2^Li Po, "Ching-t'ing Mountain," CTS, vol. 3, p.
o 7
See D. T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism, Selected Writings,
242
ed. William Barrett (Garden City: Doubleday, 1956), p. 249.
^^Meng Hao-jan, "Passing by the Residence of Master
Yung," CTS, vol. 3, p. 1669:
O Q
Liu Ch’ang-ch ' ing, "Seeing Master Lin-ch e off,"
CTS , vol. 3, p. 1482.
^Wang Wei, "Magnolia Grove," CTS, vol. 2, p. 1302.
■^Cited in D. T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism, p. 209.
^See Ch. 6, pp. 185-7.
3 3
Collected in The Ambrosia of the Crane Grove
]_ , He-lin yu-lu/, quoted b;y Wu Yi his
Ch * an and Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu £> Ch 1 an y u lao
chuang/, 4th ed. (Taipei: San-min Bookstore, 1976), p. 25.
q /
Joseph Riddell, The Inverted Bell, Modernism and
the Counterpoetics of William Carolos Williams (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1974), p. 256.
^Among the many studies of postmodern poetry and
poetics, those that have been especially helpful to me are
listed below in chronological order:
Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1971);
Charles Altieri, "From Symbolist Thought to Immanence:
The Ground of Postmodern American Poetics," Boundary
2 1 (Spring 1973): 605-41;
Hugh Kenner, A Homemade World, The American Modernist
Writers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975);
Karl Malkoff, Escape from the Self, A Study in Contem
porary American Poetry and Poetics (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1977);
Marjorie Perloff, The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud
to Cage (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1981).
^Donald Davie, Ezra Pound: Poet as Sculptor (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 176.
3 8
Ezra Pound, "An Object," from the Selected Poems
(New York: New Directions, 1962), p. 18.
3 9
William Carlos Williams, Imaginations (New York:
New Directions, 1970), p. 259.
243
40 lb id. , p. 138 .
4^-See: T. E. Hulme, Speculations (New York: Har-
court Brace, 1936), pp. 3-4; Charles Olson, "Projective
Verse," in Poetics of the New American Poetry, ed. Donald
Allen and Warren Tallman (New York: Grove Press, 1973), p.
156; Frank O'Hara, Art Chronicles 1954-1966 (New York:
George Braziller, 1975), p. 11; Jerome Rothenberg, "A
Dialogue with William Spanos," Boundary 2 3 (Spring 1975):
539; Davin Antin, "Some Questions about Modernism," Occi-
dent 8 (Spring 1974): 27; John Cage, Silence (Middletown:
Wesleyan University Press, 1961), p. 58; and, John Cage,
quoted by Michael Nyman, in Experimental Music: Cage and
Beyond (New York: Macmillan, 1974), p. 31.
4^W. C. Williams, "The Nightingales," from The
Collected Earlier Poems of William Carlos Williams (New
York: New Direction, 1951), p. 224.
4 3
Quoted in Hugh Kenner s A Homemade World, p. 55.
44Marjorie Perloff, p. 29.
^Karl Malkoff, p. 70.
^Marjorie Perloff, p. 33.
^Charles Altieri, p. 618.
48Ibid. , p. 612 .
h 9
W. C. Williams, Imaginations, p. 121.
24 4
APPENDIX
245 !
TABLE OF CHINESE DYNASTIES
Hsia .................... 2033 (?)-1562 (?) B.C.
Shang 1562(?)-1066(?) B.C.
C h o u 1066(?)-221 B.C.
Western Chou............................... 1066(?)-722 B.C
Eastern Chou.................................. 722-221 B.C.
Ch'ln............................................. 221-207 B.C.
H a n ..............
Former (Western)
Later (Eastern)
Han .
Han
.-A.D. 200
C.-A.D. 25
Chin .... . .
Western Chin.
Eas tern Chin . . 316-420
Six Dynasties .
S u i ..............
T'ang
Five Dynasties
Sung.............
Northern Sung
Southern Sung
. - 960-12 79
960-1127
1127-1270
Yuan.............. 1260-1368
Ming.............. 1368-1644
Ch'ing ... 1644-1912
246
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
2 4 7
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. English Sources
Adams, Hazard, ed. Critical Theory Since Plato. New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971.
Allan, Mowbray. T. S. Eliot's Impersonal Theory of Poetry.
Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1974.
Allen, Donald, and Tallman, Warren, eds. Poetics of the
New American Poetry. New York: Grove Press, 1973.
Altieri, Charles. Enlarging the Temple, New Directions in
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Creator Yeh, Michelle Mi-Hsi (author)

Core Title Metaphor and metonymy: A comparative study of Chinese and Western poetics

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