Zhang Shaoxiong [First ed.]

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IN SEARCH OF A TIMELESS CROSS-CULTURAL DEFINITION OF POETRY Zhang Shaoxiong Department of Foreign Studies Central South University of Technology

A paper prepared for The Fourth Annual Conference of the Chinese Society of Comparative Literature and the 1993 International Forum on Comparative Literature Zhangjiajie, Hunan

Department of Foreign Studies Central South University of Technology 1993, Changsha, Hunan

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0. FOREWORD Scholars believe they know what poetry is as they indulge themselves in brilliant lectures or speeches about or on poetry; they go on to define what poetry is, and they are always successful in giving the definition, though not often so in defining it. Authorities on literature do the same thing, and their definitions, however non-defining, exert strong influences upon dictionaries, handbooks and textbooks, and even become beliefs of literature.

PART ONE THE ACCEPTED DEFINITIONS: A NON-DEFINING CYCLE I. The Definition of the Poem The definition of the poem varies with hereditary, environmental, and historical factors, that is, to quote from H. Taine, “la race, le milieu, le moment”. Read some of the definitions: 1.‘The work of a poet, a metrical composition’(Johnson); ‘a work in verse’ (Littre); a composition of words expressing facts, thoughts, or feelings in poetical form; a piece of poetry. -- OED, Vol. Xl, C.1989, P.1116. 2.... an arrangement of words in verse; especially, a 2

rhythmical composition, sometimes rhymed, expressing facts, ideas, or emotions, in a style more concentrated, imaginative. and powerful than that of ordinary speech: some poems are in meter, some in free verse. -- WDEL, P.1388. 3. (1) a composition in verse. (2) a piece of poetry designed as a unit and communicating to the reader the sense of a complete experience. -- WTNIDEL, P.1748. 4. A composition, a work of verse, which may be in rhyme or may be blank verse or a combination of the two. Or it may depend on having a fixed number of syllables, like the haiku. -- DLT, P.515. 5. Ouvrage en vers, de forme fixe (quatrain, sonnet, rondeau, ballade, etc.) ou libre. -- DHLF, P.1220.

The definitions might be summed up as: The poem is a composition, A. of a poet; B. of poetry; C. of verse, in meter, or in free verse; D. having the beauty of thought or language; E. as a unit and communicating the sense of a complete experience; F. expressing facts, ideas, or emotions; G. in a style more concentrated, imaginative and powerful than that of ordinary speech. This integrated definition doesn’t really define what the poem is, in other words, it doesn’t agree to the history and the making of the compositions which are universally considered as poems, even as great poems. G is quite inadequate in many cases, as of the Wordsworth poems. Wordsworth’s poems are composed in “the very language of men”, in “language really used by men”, in “the language” that “does not differ from that of prose”. In fact, in the Wordsworth poems, there is “little of 3

what is usually called poetic diction”, as the poet takes “as much pains to avoid it as others ordinarily take to produce it”. F goes for almost every genre of literature, even for journalism. It is not anything characteristic of the poem. E, much like F, is not typical of the poem. What is more, there are many exceptions. Very often a poem is not a unit, but a fragment; the greatest fragment, might be S. T. Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. And very often a poem does not communicate the sense of a complete experience, take for example the Japanese haiku, the most important thing about which is that it leaves the reader himself to complete the meaning of the poem, and that it is not self-contained, but suggestive and impressionistic, and transitory. The haiku, in fact, can do no more than suggest, with its perfection lying in its power to suggest as widely as possible; and it is often marked by a lack of a personal conclusion. Read: Furu-ike ya / kawazu tobi-komu / mizu-no-oto Old pond / a frog jump-in / water sound -- Matsuo Basho Asa-gari ya / e ni kaku yume-no / hito-doori Morning-haze / view in paint of a dream’s / men passing -- Taniguchi Buson Katatsuburi / soro soro nobore / Fuji-no-yama Snail / slowly slowly climb up / Fuji mountain 4

-- Kobayashi Issa

D might be a principle only for conventional and conservative poets, for giant modern poets such as C. Baudelaire, T. S. Eliot and A. Ginsberg, it makes no sense. Baudelaire makes himself the greatest singer of the flowers of evil, and his Les Fleurs du Mal is frequented by corpse, graveyard, abyss, beggar, old woman, snake, apparition, blood-eater, illness, death, sin, penalty, hatred, pain, sorrow, horror, void, self-torture, and other images of ugliness. Eliot presents a waste land to the reader. And Ginsberg produces the hell of an America, real or fictitious, and the miseries in the hell where, “everyone in this life is defeated”, according to W. C. Williams, who ends the introduction to Howl with a terrifying sentence: “Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell.” C, B, and A are meaningless unless the verse, the poet and poetry arc respectively defined. II. The Definition of the Verse C in the above integrated definition of the poem is as good as nothing unless the verse is defined. A list of authoritative definitions of the verse seems necessary: 1.(1) a line of metrical writing... (3) ... metrical writing that is distinguished from poetry esp. by its lower level of intensity and its lack of essential conviction and commitment. 5

-- WTNIDEL, P.2545. 2. A succession of words arranged according to natural or recognized rules of prosody and forming a complete metrical line; one of the lines of a poem or piece of versification. ... Metrical composition, form, or structure; language of literary work written or spoken in metre; poetry, esp. with reference to metrical form. .... The metrical or poetical compositions of a particular author, etc; a certain amount of metrical work or poetry considered as a whole. -- OED, Vol. XIX. P.556. 3. ... a line of poetry, consisting of a certain number of metrical feet, disposed according to some rule or design. … metrical writing or speaking: poetry in general, especially when light or trivial or merely metered and rhymed, but without much serious content or artistic merit. ... a particular form of metrical composition; as blank verse, trochaic verse.... a single metrical composition. -- WDEL, P.2031. 4; Suite de mots mesuree et cadencee salon certaines regles, et constituant une unite rythmique. -- DHLF, P.1677. 5. Three main meanings may be distinguished: (a) a line of metrical writing; (b) a stanza; (c) poetry in general. -- DLT, P.742.

The definitions presented above, and in other authoritative publications, might create a new dilemma: in general, the definition of the verse is incomplete and needs the help of the ones of the poem, and poetry, and the definitions of the latter two are dependent on that of the verse in return; and at a more serious level, the poem is not necessarily the verse, and the verse is not necessarily the poem. 6

Therefore, neither the verse nor the poem is well defined. III. The Definition of the Poet It seems that each authority has his own conception of the poet: 1. (1) one who writes poetry: a maker of verses (2) a writer having great imaginative and expressive gifts and possessing a special sensitivity to language. -- WTNDEL, pp.1748-1749. 2. One who composes poetry; a writer of poems; an author who writes in verse. … One who makes or composes works of literature; an author, writer. … A writer in verse (or sometimes, in extended use, in elevated prose) distinguished by special imaginative or creative power, insight, sensibility, and faculty of expression. -- OED, Vol. Xl. P. 1117. 3. ... a person who writes poems or versus. .... a person who writes or expresses himself with imaginative power and beauty of thought, language, etc. -- WDEL. P.1388. 4. ...Celui qui s'adonne a la poesie. ...Personne qui, meme si elle n'ecrit pas, a une vision peotique des choses. ... Personne qui manque de realisme. -- DHLF, P.1220.

The quoted definitions of the poet are as un-self-contained as those of the verse. They are more behaviouristic and functional than literary and aesthetic. The poet might be more than a behaviouristic and functional being. And the thesis underlying these definitions is quite 7

misleading and confusing. The thesis is that poetry is verse, that poems are verses, and that the poem is poetry. Thus there is a great contradiction between the definitions of the verse, those of the poem, and those of the poet. IV. The Authoritative Definition of Poetry 1. (1) ... metrical writing: verse … the productions of poet: poems (2) writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through its meaning, sound and rhythm (3) ... a quality that stirs the imagination or gives a sense of heightened and more meaningful existence... -- WTNIDEL, P.1749 2. The art or work of the poet... With special reference to its form: Composition in verse or metrical language, or in some equivalent patterned arrangement of language; usually also with choice of elevated words and figurative uses, and options of syntactical order, differing more or less from those of ordinary speech or prose writing. ... The product of this art as a form of literature; the writings of a poet or poets; poems …; metrical work or composition; verse. ... With reference to its function: The expression or, embodiment of beautiful or elevated thought, imagination, or feeling, in language adapted to stir the imagination and emotions, both immediately and also through harmonic suggestions latent in or implied by the words and connexions of words actually used, such language containing a rhythmical element and having usually a metrical form; though the term is sometimes extended to include expression in nonmetrical language having similar harmonic and emotional qualities. -- OED, Vol. 8

XI.P.1120. 3. the writing of poems; the art of writing poems.... poems; poetical works. ... poetic quality or spirit. -- WDEL, P. 1388. 4. ... Forme d’expression litteraire caracterisee par une utilisation harmonieuse de sons et des rythmes du langage et par une grande richesse d’images. ....Maniere particuliere dont du un poete. ... Poeme. ... Caractere poetique. -- DHLF, P.1220. 5. It is a comprehensive term which can be taken to cover any kind of metrical composition. However, it is usually employed with reservations, and often in contra-distinction to verse. For example, we should describe Shakespeare’s sonnets as poetry, and the wittily ingenious creations of Ogden Nash as verse, though both are in verse. We speak of “light verse” rather than “light poetry”. The implications are that poetry is a superior form of creation; not necessarily, therefore, more serious. -- DLT, P.520.

None of these quotations is definition clear enough of poetry, though not as incomplete as the ones of the verse and of the poet cited above. They are not self-contained in at least three aspects. When poetry is defined as metrical writing or verse, the definition is partial, and to a certain extent self-contradictory. Much of poetry ever produced is, not metrical writing, or not in verse, while much of metrical composition is not poetry. The former includes Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Charles Baudelaire’s Le Spleen De Paris, Aloysius Bertrand’s Gaspard de la Nuit, and Lu 9

Xun’s Wild Grass; the latter includes many highly rhythmical compositions, such as: “Good, better, best, / Never let it rest. / Till good is better, / And better best.” The term “verse”, apart from its formalistic denotations, implies, according to most critics, that the verse is a form, of creation inferior to poetry. This again disagrees to the statement that poetry is verse or covers any kind of metrical composition, and verse is poetry. The definitions here are mobile, as quicksands. On the abstract level, poetry is simply defined as a “poetic quality”, but none of the definitions reaches the point where the essence of the quality is further defined. When poetry is defined as a “poetic quality”, the definition is again un-self-contained, depending upon the term “poetic”, which, in turn, depends on the term “poetry”. The definitions above do not define what poetry is! V. The Non-Defining Cycle of Definitions A conclusion may be reached that the present definitions of the poem, the verse, the poet and poetry form a cycle. Let 1 stand for the poem, 2 for poetry, 3 for the verse, 4 for the poet, and A for the author, W for the work, the cycle might be expressed in the following: 1 = 2 = 3 = W of 4; 2 = 1 = 3 = W of 4; 10

3 = 1 = 2 = W of 4; 4 =A of 1 = A of 2 = A of 3. … Or: 1 = 2…2 = 3...3 = W of 4... 4 = A of 3, 2, 1 … 1 = 3… 3 = 1 … 1 =W of 4 … 4 = A of 1 … 1 = …

The cycle of definitions has no sure beginning and no well-aimed ending, and is non-defining. The definitions are partial, un-self-contained, and ill-grounded; therefore, against the will of the definers, none of the poet, the poem, the verse, and poetry is really defined. A definition, if it is to be impartial, self-contained, well-grounded and really defining, should, not falling a part of cycle, start from a point steady and meaningful. If the poet, the poem, the verse, and poetry are to be effectively defined, a sure, steady and meaningful starting point should be located. The starting point lies somewhere in the term “poetry”, which should be redefined.

PART TWO IN

SEARCH

OF

A TIMELESS

CULTURAL DEFINITION OF POETRY

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VI. Redefining Poetry: Requirements to Fulfill A new definition seems necessary for poetry as a “poetic quality”. The new definition is to be 1. TIMELESS, including all real poetry, especially the good and high part of it, produced in all times, not only in the time of the definer; 2. CROSS-CULTURAL, taking into account poetry produced by, accepted to, and treasured as of value by all nations; 3. NOT IN ANY CYCLE AND SELF-CONTAINED, depending upon none of the poet, the poem, the verse, and relevant terms of poetics; 4. INITIAL OF ALL DEFINITIONS OF POETICS, serving as a starting point to define the poet, the poem, the verse and other terms of poetics; 5. QUALITATIVE, not stopping at the statement that poetry is a “poetic quality”, or at the point where only the function of poetry is defined as “stirring the imagination and the emotion…”, but continuing to state in exact and compact expressions what the quality is; 6. A CRITERION OF POETIC VALUATION, followed in the judgment of high poetry and low poetry, pure poetry and impure poetry, poetry and non-poetry, in the judgment of golden poems, silver poems, copper poems, and clay poems, and in the judgment of classes of poets; 7. STRATEGIC AND PRINCIPLING FOR ALL 12

LITERARY CRITICISM, opening a way to the possibility of the establishment of a common standard for all literary judgment; 8. OF PSYCHOLOGICAL VALUES, describing the psychological truth of poetry making and even poetry reception; 9. AESTHETIC, examining poetry from an aesthetical stance and establishing a basis on which a timeless, cross-cultural poetic aesthetics or literary aesthetics might be structured. VII. Poetry: A New Definition POETRY IS LIBERTY OR LIBERATION. It is the liberty or liberation of unusuality from usuality. 1. Liberty or Liberation: A General Analysis People of mental health and complete faculties see, hear, feel, remember, comprehend, judge, and reason in ways normal, usual, logical, reasonable, practical, and even scientific. Some people of different frames of mind and different faculties do not do such things in such ways. A pine, an eagle and a cicada might help analyze this. Before a great pine tree rooted in the rocky cliffs, people of mental health and complete faculties might have it in their mind that it is a great tree, it is high and big and it can be used in house making, or furniture making; it has taken roots in the cliffs; it has been brought up by the 13

fertile earth between rocks; … They are quite right: rational, logical, practical, and scientific. But there are a few people who do not at all follow and fall into such patterns. They do not regard the pine as a tree, but as a friend of theirs, or as a great hero against bad environments, or as a courage teacher of living struggle, or something of more importance to them; they may take from the tree comfort to hurt minds, encouragement to overcome defeats in life, and more. Poetry hence comes into being. The pine to people of mental health and complete faculties is a tree of natural making. And the other is no more a tree; it is already an image of poetical values, as the treeness of a pine is overthrown and the nontreeness is liberated, or at liberty. An eagle, too, might be different things to different people. Most people will agree that an eagle is any of various large diurnal birds of prey noted for their strength, size, graceful figure, keenness of vision, and powers of flight. -- WTNIDEL, P. 713.

But occasionally the eagle is seen as quite different a thing: The Eagle: A Fragment He clasps the crag with crooked hands, Close to the sun in lonely lands, 14

Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls: He washes from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. -- Alfred Tennyson

Much in the same way, a cicada might be of different significance to different eyes, ears and minds. Compare the following cicadas: any one of many species of insects, genus Cicada, living on trees, shrubs, etc. and having a characteristically sharp chirp produced by vibrating a tightly stretched membranes beneath the abdomen. -- DEL, P.324. Chui wei yin qing lu, liu xiang chu shu tong; Ju gao sheng zi yuan, fei shi jie qiu feng. Antennae hanging, he drinks the pure dew; His fluid singing penetrates the sparse tungs. Standing high, he sends his voice far, With no help of the wind of autumn. -- Yu Shinan, A Cicada Lu zhong fei nan jin, feng duo xiang yi chen; Wu ren xing gao jie, shei wei biao yu xin? The dew heavy on wings, his flight is hard, The winds drowning, his voice gets sunk; With none to believe in his noble purity, 15

Who could be there to express for him? -- Luo Binwang, On Hearing a Cicada in Prison Ben yi gao nan bao, tu lao hen fei sheng. Wu geng shu yu duan, yi shu bi wu qing. High there, he is ill-nurtured, With his voice spent in vain; Into the night thin calls sink, On a tree in heartless green. -- Li Shangyin, A Cicada.

The eagle to WNIDEL and the cicada to WDEL, are nothing but the very eagle, and the very cicada in their natural existence, of biological values. The eagle to Tennyson, the cicadas to Yu, Luo and Li, are no more the eagle, the cicadas in the biological sense, but rather human beings, of different personalities, and in different situations. The usuality of the biological eagle and cicadas is animality, that is, the quality of the animal, and that of the human being is humanity. The humanity of the eagle, and the cicadas, inborn or bestowed, is liberated from the long captivity by the animality, and hence poetry. 2. Unusuality from Usuality Usuality is being usual, normal, customary, and habitual, etc. It is that a thing occurs or is done, judged, etc. most often in a particular situation or in the way it 16

normally happens or is done, judged, etc., by a particular person or by the person of whom it is most typical. It is that a person sees, hears, feels, remembers, comprehends, judges, reasons, etc. in the way that is considered as usual, normal, customary, habitual, etc. and is accepted by people of mental health and complete faculties. Usuality is the thinking and behaviour following the standard established on the basis of the hereditary, the environmental, and the historical consciousness, that is, the total of the culture of “la race, le milieu, le moment.” Usuality includes normality, rationality, logicality, scientificality, mortality, confinement environmental and historical, etc. The concepts here overlap. The opposite to usuality is unusuality. It includes: abnormality, irrationality, illogicality, lunaticality, unscientificality, immortality, unconfinedness, etc. Again the concepts overlap. The liberation of unusuality from usuality is the liberation of abnormality from normality, of irrationality from rationality, of illogicality from logicality, of lunaticality from sanity, of immortality from mortality, of timelessness from timedness, of nonscience from science, of unconfinedness from confinement, etc. Treeness is the usuality of the pine, and animality that of the eagle and the cicadas. And the humanity of them is the unusuality at liberty. A beggar lives by asking for money or food, and he or she is always supposed to have no dignity. Beggarness 17

is the usuality of the beggar. But one beggar was different; on his dry corpse at the side of a road, people found a composition: Benxing shenglai ai ye you, Shou xie zhuzhang guo Tongzhou. Po lan xiang xiao ti canyue, Ge ban linfeng chang wanqiu. Shuangjiao taping tianya lu, Yi jian tiao jin gu jin chou. Erjin bu yong jie lai shi, Cun quan he lao fei bu xiu. -- Wumingshi, Guo Tongzhou Born a vagabond I love wanderings, A bamboo stick in hand, I crossed Tongzhou. A broken basket to the morn, I cradled the waning moon, Song-beat plates against the wind, I sang of late autumn. Feet going, I smoothed harsh roads under the sun, Shoulders strong, I carried all sorrows of the world. I do not take any leftovers thrown to me, Village dogs, why do you pour barks at me? -- Anonymous, Crossing Tongzhou

The beggar lost everything, including his life. But he didn’t lose the unbending dignity and the independent personality, which are not found even in many people of the higher classes of the society. Unusual qualities are again liberated from the usual beggarness; and poetry occurs. And the poem shines with sublimity of personality. Another case of unusuality freed from usuality is that 18

of a Buddhist monk. Anyone who decides to devote himself to a Buddhist life, according to the doctrines, is supposed to be without anything secular in his mind. He is not to be affected by secular emotions such as love, hatred, joy, etc. And to be such is the usuality of a monk. But there was a certain monk, who, while following strictly the Buddhist commandments, treasured unconsciously many secular things in his mind: Gu deng yin meng ji menglong. Feng yu lin an yeban zhong, Wo zai lai shi ren yi qu, She jiang wei shei cai furong. -- Su Mauhu: Gu Deng A lonely lamp dreamful, my memory fades, In storm and midnight bells from a near nunnery. I will go; when I am back, she will be gone, For whom shall I then bring a flower across the river. -- Su Manshu: A Lonely Lamp

The commandments absolutely forbid a monk to be so sentimental at the rings of the bells coming from a neighbouring nunnery at midnight during a storm. He followed the commandments willingly and strictly, quite unlike those Tartuffs. The touch of sentimental love is the overflow of his subconsciousness, pure, though not very religious as it is supposed to be. Su composed many sentimental poems, and he 19

translated Byron, Shelley, Burns, W. Howitt, Goethe, Toru Dutt, well reproducing the passionate cadences of these poets. It is the unusuality at liberty that makes Su a poet, and a poet-translator. 3. Non-science From Science Scientificality, or to be more exact, science consciousness, in all times, is one of the greatest enemies of poetry. Poetry, according to Sir Isaac Newton is “a kind of ingenious nonsense.” And T. B. Macauley, in his essay On Milton, declares: “We think that, as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. ... we fervently admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages.” Newton views poetry from a scientific stance. And Macauley’s civilization, refers mainly to the industrial civilization, the very production of science. A mind of scientific awareness is bound to have no poetic awareness. Many beautiful compositions of poetry, from a scientific stance, are nothing but nonsense talks; therefore, readers of scientific consciousness often charge poets with making mistakes: Bai fa san qian zhang White hair, thirty thousand feet long. -- Li Bai, Songs Composed in Qiupu Town 20

Fei liu zhi xia san qian chi, Yi shi yinhe luo jiutian. Flying torrents roll down from three thousand feet high, Like the Silvery River falling from the sky; -- Li Bai, The Lushan Waterfall Chun can dao si si fang jin, Ju zhu cheng hui lei shi gan. Silkworms cease to silk when dying, Candles dry out of tears when in ashes. -- Li Shangyin, Hard to Meet For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar. -- Alfred Tennyson, Crossing the Bar

Scientifically, none of observations is truth. There is only ignorance of science. The hair, of a human being or of an animal, biologically, can never be kept that long; the Silvery River (the Milky Way in English) falling from the sky is nonsense, from the point of astronomy; the dying of the silkworm is a fatal error of biology; and man’s soul crossing the bar and seeing the pilot of the other world is what is often labeled as superstition. But side by side with the ignorance of elementary science, there is poetry shining, shining with a glory that is thirty thousand times more powerful than the errors are harmful. 21

Scientificality doesn’t make poetry at all. Some people speak of' “scientific poetry”, which, quite out of their expectation, is only a dilemma. A composition, in verse or not, can be either science or poetry, but not both. Wherever there is science, there is no poetry; and as science advances, poetry necessarily declines; or in Macauley’s words, “...science gains and poetry loses.” When scientificality is betrayed, poetry occurs. 4. Irrationality from Rationality Rationality is a major type of usuality, especially in modern times. It is the quality or condition of being able to reason, the power of faculty of reasoning, and the possession of reason, and reasonableness. People rational, or of rationality, follow the principle or practice of accepting reason as the only authority in determining their opinions and their course of action, often with the awareness that the reason or intellect, is the true source of knowledge rather than other senses. Rationality falls into many forms: logicality, abstraction, conceptuality, generalization, reasonableness, reasoning, hypothesis, theoretical operation, etc. Rationality destroys poetry. Macauley’s observations are quite brilliant: “Nations, like individuals, first, perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is 22

poetical. ... Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination, ...as men know more and think more, ... they therefore make better theories and worse poems.” There are many types of irrationality: illogicality, particularity, synaesthesia, pathetic fallacy, passion, etc. A brief study will be made of the major forms of irrationality; not all. Synaesthesia, the mixing of sensations, such as seeing or hearing a smell, hearing or touching a colour, touching or tasting a sound, is frequent in the compositions of poets and treasured by critics and scholars of aesthetics. It is actually a type of irrationality; and to logicians, Chinese logicians in particular, it is mere fallacy. The Jian-bai School of China, early before 250 B.C., began to propose “li jian bai”, because they decided that “mu buneng jian. shou buneng bai”. The phrase “li jian bai”, in English translation, is “the separation of hardness and whiteness”, or “separating hardness and whiteness”. “Mu buneng jian, shou buneng bai”, in literal translation, is “the eye cannot see hardness, the hand cannot touch whiteness” and the English paraphrase would be “hardness as a tactile quality doesn’t pertain to the eye, and whiteness as a visual one doesn’t pertain to the hand.” The idea of “li jian bai” is still treasured by and influential upon the rational and logical minds of today. 23

Rational and logical minds might be very abusive about the following: O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth. Tasting of Flora and the country green. Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! -- J. Keats, Ode to a Nightingale Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants, Doux comrae les hautbois, verts comme les prairies. -- C. Baudelaire, Correspondences Shan lu yuan wa yu, Kong cui shi ren yi. Mountain path in no rain, Airy green wets dress of man. -- Wang Wei, In the Mountains

In the observations of Keats, Baudelaire, and Wang, absence of ration and logic results in presence of poetry. Pathetic fallacy, a term coined by John Ruskin (in Modern Painters, Vol. III, Pt IV) as something derogatory, refers to the ascription of the emotions and characters of human beings to inanimate objects. It applies, as he says, not to the “true appearances of things” to man, but to the “extraordinary, or false appearances” to one “under the influence of emotion or contemplative fancy.” To illustrate his point Ruskin quotes from Kingsley and Coleridge: 24

They rowed her in across the rolling foam— The cruel, crawling foam. -- Kingsley, The Sands of Dee The one red leaf, the last of it’s clan That dances as often as dance it can. -- Coleridge, Christabel

According to Ruskin, such passages, however beautiful, are “morbid” and false; and such writers as write these lines are pathetically fallacious. But ascription of human feelings and qualities to inanimate objects is a phenomenon common to the compositions of the poets of all nations and of all times. Readers might, countless times, read passages marked by fallacious logic and technique like the following: Yan yan wu xin, Taihu xi pan sui yun qu. Shu feng qingku, Shang lue huanghun yu. North swans, heartless, Fly, west of Taihu Lake, away with clouds. And peaks, sad and lorn Taste dusk rainfalls. -- Jiang Kui, North Swans Heartless

Pathetic fallacy occurs, according to Ruskin, when “the reason is unhinged”, that is, when rationality is 25

brought down by irrationality, or when irrationality is liberated from rationality. Whenever and wherever such fallacy occurs, poetry rises. Another major type of irrationality is passion. Passion is strong feeling or enthusiasm, especially of love, hatred, anger, fear, grief, sorrow, joy, etc. Olivia falls in love with Viola (Cesario) and the love soon turns into passion, and the passion further drives her to the point of no return, that she declares: By maidhood, honour, truth and everything, I love thee so, that mauger all the pride, Not wit nor reason can my passion hide. Do not extort thy reasons from this clause, For... But rather reason thus with reason fetter, ... -- Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. III, i.

In the same way as Olivia is, the poet is often governed by passion rather than by reason. And many of the compositions of poetry are saturated with passion, of one form or another, so many that examples become quite unnecessary. In conclusion, rationality fetters poetry, and irrationality makes poetry. Better reason makes better theories and worse poems, and worse reason makes worse theories and better poems. 26

5. Lunaticality from Sanity Lunaticality is, in all times, a striking form of unusuality, so striking that it is regarded as a mental illness, judged from stances of usual minds. And lunaticality and irrationality might be overlapping; if latter is outside of ration, the former is far away from ration. It is necessary to quote from Shakespeare: ...and madmen have such seething brains. Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold. That is, the madman: ... The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. -- Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V, i.

Shakespeare, in very concrete expressions, states that lunaticality is a power of imagination and creation. And early in ancient Greece Plato studied mania as a mental disease. He discusses, in his Phaedrus, three types of mania: the mania of manike, the mania of religion, and 27

the mania of poetry. And about the last, the mania of poetry, he says that: mania is inspiration and permeates all kinds of poetry; whoever without it knocks at the gate of poetry will be forever outside of it; the art and technique of poetry alone doesn’t make poems; the composition of cool reason is dull and dim beside the shining composition of mania. In fact, it is a well acknowledged truth that creative writing is often tied up with lunaticality of one type or another, in other words, creative writing often results from and in lunaticality of some sort. And about eighty percent of creative men, according to pathographical investigations by modern scholars, were and are of mental illness. The composition of poetry is the creative writing of creative writing, and the poet is the creative man of creative men. There are more lunatics among the poets, and there is more lunaticality revealed in poems. A few cases, taken from histories of literature and from biographies, will suffice. S. T. Coleridge is often criticized as a lunatic and a drug addict, wrecked in career, leaving nothing but a handful of magical poems which are now generally accepted as great compositions of poetry. W. Cowper. sensitive and hypochondriac by nature, began to suffer severe depression when young, and soon broke down completely. His poems deal with man’s isolation and helplessness, and storms and shipwrecks recur in his work as images of mysterious forces. And his 28

poems are now highly valued. Shelley is, in some biographical writings, described as a man of nudism, or to put it more mildly, of exhibitionism. No critic, perhaps, can ignore this when he or she comes to Shelley’s rebellion against social and literary conventions. W. Blake, a subject to hallucinations, insane before death, created, in a diseased and wild manner, not only highly mystic visions, but also a cosmology that has taken generations of critics and scholars to explain. Wordsworth, according to C. Robinson, said the following of Blake: “There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.” E. A. Poe struggled with alcohol addiction and nervous instability, dying five days after having been found semi-conscious and delirious. He produced diseased poems and poetics. His Philosophy of Composition includes a striking statement: “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” And his compositions are filled with macabre and pathological elements, ranging from the hints of necrophilia to the indulgent sadism, which intrigued Freudian critics and even Freud himself! Yet Poe's posthumous reputation and influence have been great. Sylvia Plath was a woman of great hidden turmoil, self-sadism and suicide complex, and her short life of 29

thirty years were marked by frequent suicides and nervous breakdowns. She writes about private and taboo subjects, such as her experiences of the breakdown and the mental hospital. And her compositions are often mad and shocking. In Lady Lazarus, she declares: Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.

The insanity of Anne Sexton is worthy of note. She believes that poetry “should be a shock to the senses. It should also hurt.” She writes about sex, guilt, suicide, and madness, and portrays her own mental breakdown, and her time in a mental hospital where she sees herself as “the laughing bee on a stalk / of death. (You, Doctor Martin)”. In Sexton’s poetics, images are “the heart of poetry. Images come from the unconscious. Imagination and the unconscious are one and the same.” Her work is a justification and a verification of productive insanity! It seems that Chinese critics, in their studies of Chinese poets and poetry, have quite ignored lunaticality as a pathological phenomenon. Therefore, few cases are recorded, in histories of literature and biographies. But they do mythologize drunkenness, another type of insanity. Many great poets are described as great drinkers (alcohol addicts, in fact) who, in drunkenness, composed great poems. Li Bai, for instance, is remembered as a drinking 30

god, and many of his great compositions are connected with drinking and drunkenness. In the Chinese mind, drinking and poetry are inseparable. A cask of brew produces a hundred poems. Lunaticality is a great creative power, so great that Macauley believes that: no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness.

Unsoundness of mind is what is defined as lunaticality here. Lunaticality, however productive, is unacceptable to the rational society. More and more institutions, such as mental hospitals, psychiatric clinics, and mental crisis study centers, are established by the rational community, to cure people of lunaticality of different forms. To cure lunaticality is to bind it, and to suppress it. When it is in confinement, poetry is bound and suppressed, “As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.” To suppress, or to liberate lunaticality, that is the question confronting the modern man. 6. Other Types of Unusuality and Usuality There are many types of unusuality and usuality. And as clearcut classiftcation is difficult, one falls readily into 31

another of the categories, or in other words, the categories sometimes overlap, lunaticality and irrationality, for instance. Detailed discussion has been made of some major categories above, and of other types, a brief mentioning seems enough. Unusuality and usuality are determined by, again, hereditary, environmental and historical factors. In a society that treasures private life, maintenance of and respect for privacy would be usuality, and frank confession would be unusuality. While most of people learn and preach to maintain and respect their privacy, a few go self-revelatory and open in analytical exposure of their pain, grief, tension, fear hatred, joy, and love, as John Clare, G. M. Hopkins and W. Wordsworth do; and even reveal the innermost dark and hidden aspects of their life, including sex, guilt, suicide complex, and mental breakdowns, as the R. Lowell, S. Plath, and A. Sexton do. When such confessions occur, unusuality is liberated from usuality, and poetry is produced. The usuality of an animate or inanimate being could be defined as materiality, and that of a human being as humanity. The animate or inanimate might be at liberty from its usual materiality and possessed of humanity, and therefore obtain a type of unusuality. In the same way, the human might be emancipated from his habitual, common-place and formularised humanity, especially the personality formed in an industrialized society, and be 32

soaked in beautiful materiality, and therefore acquire a form of unusuality. There are times when a man and an animate or inanimate object are brought together. If the man is governed by mere human usuality, he will see the object as nothing but an animate or an inanimate thing, and himself as himself and as a human being. If the man sees the object as a human being or as himself, and sees himself as the animate or the inanimate object, or forgets whether he is the object, whether the object is he, whether he is he, and whether the object is the object, the unusuality rises in him, or come to him. This is what aesthetics defines as einfuhlung or empathy, which falls into two types: an involuntary projection of the self into an object; or an involuntary inward imitation of an object, or an involuntary spiritual participation in a natural or outward event. When empathy, a form of unusuality occurs, poetry occurs. And there has been much poetry composed as the production of the poet’s empathic experience. The Windhover by G. M. Hopkins and Du Zuo Jing Ting Shan (Sitting Alone at Jing Ting Mountain) by Li Bai, for instance. To conclude, where there is usuality at work, there is no poetry; where unusuality is at liberty, there is poetry produced.

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PART THREE POETRY AND POETICAL VALUATION

VIII. Poetical Value: Quantitative Valuation

Poetry is already defined as liberty or liberation. And the definition is given to satisfy the nine requirements cited in section VI above. And liberty or liberation, that is, poetry, is necessary to, and existent in, almost all genres of literature, but to different consistencies. The poem contains poetry, and the story, the novel, the essay (the type Montaigne established), and the play may all contain poetry, to various consistencies. The consistency decides the poetical value of the composition, regardless of the genre; and the poetical value decides the class of the composition: the first-class, the second-class, ...and the n-th-class. Therefore, the judgment of the class depends much upon the estimation of the poetical value; and the estimation depends upon the test of the poetry consistency. And the test, the estimation and the judgment form the program of poetical valuation. Quantitative analysis can be used in poetical valuation, and a quantitative criterion for all literary criticism can further be established. The operation, of 34

course, is not, and should not be, as numerable and numerical as mathematical calculations. Roughly, the valuation can be operated by using the following equations: (1) PV = PC (2) PC = LD / NW (3) LD = UU / UU + US (4) NW = Total number of words / number of word units

PV stands for the poetical value of the composition, PC the poetry consistency, LD the degree of liberation, NW the number of the words used in the composition, UU unusuality, and US usuality. NW is measured in different units for different texts, line units (LL) for the poem, page units (PP) for the novel, the play, or the longer poem in prose, and word units (WW) for the short poem, the story and the essay. UU and US makes a hundred. And as for PV, PC, and LD all, one percent makes one degree, ten percent ten degrees. Actual operations seem necessary, by now, in illustration of quantitative poetical valuation. Ginsberg’s poem in prose Kaddish might be taken for the first operation. Kaddish is a mad, surrealistic reproduction of the sufferings, the miserable life, and the hopeless struggles of his family trodden under the iron-heels of the evil part of the society, and an overall representation of a Buddhist psychic progress of the poet 35

who, by means of imagination and illusion, spiritually transcends the sea of miseries from which physical freedom is not possible. The poem, in over twenty pages, presents in a glimpsing manner a variety of outer and inner events, which, according to Daniel Hoffman, will cost a naturalistic writer or a journalist thousands of pages to deal with. The valuation can be made of the real Kaddish, and a fictitious naturalistic Kaddish. There is in the reproduction and representation great liberty. Let LD = 85 degrees 1 NW = 1 PP = 25 pages

In the case of the real Kaddish, PP = 25 / 25 = 1; PC = LD / PP = 85 / 1-85; PV = PC = 85 degrees.

In that of the fictitious one, of 1000 pages, PP = 1000 / 25 = 40; PC = LD / PP = 85 / 40 = 2.125; PV = PC = 2.125 degrees.

A second operation is to be made of E. Pound’s In a Station of the Metro. In the poem, human faces are unusualized from usual forms and contents, and 36

transformed; therefore usuality is overthrown by striking unusuality. The LD is at least 90 degrees. The first version is in thirty lines according to the poet’s account of the genesis and development of the poem: “... I wrote a thirty-line poem, and destroyed it because it was what we call work ‘of second intensity.’ ... a year later I made the ... haiku-like sentence.” And the final version is in two lines. Let LD = 90 degrees; I NW = 1 LL = 21ines

In the case of the final version: LL = 2 / 2 = 1; PC = LD / LL = 90 / 1 = 90; PV = PC = 90 degrees;

In that of the first version: LL = 30 / 2 = 15; PC = LD / LL = 90 / 15 = 6; PV = PC = 6 degrees.

The results clearly show that the final version is a strong poem, and the first a very weak one. Pound was right in destroying the first version, but wrong in taking it as work “of second intensity”; it might be called work of no intensity. 37

A third operation is to be done of two Chinese poems. Tu Fu’s Huangli（Orioles）and Li Bai's Ku Xuancheng Shan Niang Ji Sou (An Elegy on the Death of Ji Sou of Xuancheng). Liang ge huangli ming cui liu, Yi hang bailu shang qing tian. Chuang han Xiling qianqiu xue, Men po Dongwu wan 1i chuan. Two orioles sing among green willows, A flight of egrets fly into the sky. The window frames snows of years on West Hills, The door fronts boats from Dongwu miles afar. -- Tu Fu Ji Sou Huangquan li, Hai ying niang laochun, Ye tai wu Li Pai, Gu jiu yu he ren? Ji Sou, down there in the Nether World, Would be still brewing Spring-Strong spirits, Without Li Bai there in the realm of night, For whom do you prepare such drinks? -- Li Bai

Tu’s composition is a cool arid rational description of door and window views, in a group of literal images, usual though well-depicted; there is technical perfection but no unusual content, with an LD of 50 at most. While Li’s contains striking irrationality, insanity from drunkenness, non-scientificality, and freedom from the life-and-death 38

confinements; the LD is at least 90. Let 1 NW = 1 WW = 20 Chinese syllables.

In the case of Tu’s work: WW = 28 / 20 = 1.4; PC = LD / WW = 50 / 1.4 =35.7; PV = PC = 35.7 degrees.

In that of Li’s poem: WW = 20 / 20 = 1; PC = LD / WW = 90 / 1 = 90; PV = PC = 90 degrees.

The results show that Li’s poem has so high a PC or a PV that makes it as strong as the spring-strong spirits brewed by Ji Sou, and Tu’s work so low a PC or a PV that makes as dull and tasteless as the water under the boats from Dongwu. The poetical valuation of the novel might be operated in the same way. IX. On the Poem: High, Low, Etc. 1. A Definition of the Poem 39

Initial of all definitions of poetics, poetry is already defined, and to define the poem, then, is not a difficult task. The poem is the composition which contains poetry to a high consistency. It is a container and conveyor of poetry, a major container and conveyor, and poetry is the contained and the conveyed. The poem can be in any form. In older times, many metrical forms were used in the making of the poem, such as couplet, triplet, quatrain, rhyme royal, ottava rima, sonnet, blank verse, jueju, lushi, ci, etc. Free verse seems to be the major form of the poem in modern times, from Whitman’s age to today. Under the influences of a group of modern masterpieces written in prose, such as those written by Turgnev, Tagore, Gibran, Baudelaire, Bertrand, Mallarme, Rimbaud, Lu Xun, Italo Calvino, and Allen Ginsberg, the prose is rising as a form of the poem. The form, therefore, is of no decisive importance to the poem. What makes a composition a poem is not the form, but the content, the contained and the conveyed, that is, poetry consistency. And, as the poem is a major container and conveyer of poetry, and poetry is always contained in and conveyed by the poem, the reader and the critic, for the sake of convenience, using a synecdoche, often call the poem poetry, much the same way as they call a wood table wood, 40

a fur coat fur. In the end, people, even the dictionary makers forget that they are two different things. 2. On the Verse The definitions of the verse, as those cited above in part one, are confusing and misleading, apart from the faults analyzed in that part. And the term has often been misused, not only outside, but also inside of the world of literary scholars. The phenomena result from the lack of a definite orientation of the defining. Take for example the definition given in DLT, as has been quoted above. DLT’s defining starts from the quicksands of stances, and goes for floating targets, with (a) and (b) focused on the form, not the content of the writing, and (c) on neither the form or the content. And (c) is apparently arbitrary and not accurate. If a housewife uses the word verse to refer to all poetry or to poetry in general, she is not blameworthy. When a critic includes all poetry under the category verse, he has obviously ignored the fact that much of the verse ever produced is no poetry, and much of the poetry ever produced is not in verse. The defining of the verse should be, quite unlike the definitions of it cited above in part one, directed to the formal features, not to the content, of the writing, to avoid confusion and misuse. The verse is therefore defined as follows: 41

The verse is the writing arranged in lines which, have one or more metrical patterns, often rhyme at the end and form certain stanza forms.

As far as the metrical form is concerned, a line might be monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, nonameter, etc. And the meter might be iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl, etc. The stanza forms include couplet (close couplet, heroic couplet), triplet (triplet, tezza rima), quatrain (ballad meter and others), sonnet (Petrachan Spenserian, and Shakespearian), Ottava rima, jueju (wujue, liujue, qijue), lushi (wulu; qilu), ci (including about 2000 tune forms), etc. Compositions in verse can be poems, even great poems, like the sonnets of Shakespeare, but not necessarily. Many compositions in verse are not poems, and some do not even belong in literature. Some compositions in verse are merely practical writings to teach or give facts, rules, methods, etc., such as the following ones: How many seconds in a minute? Sixty and no more in it. How many minutes in an hour? Sixty for sun and flower. … How many months in a year? Twelve the calendar makes clear. -- Anon., How Many

42

Thirty days have September, April, June and November, All the rest have thirty-one, Excepting February alone, Which has twenty-eight days clear, And twenty-nine in each leap-year. -- Anon., The Months Three little words you often see Are ARTICLES, a, an, and the. A NOUN’ s the name of anything, As school or garden, hoop or swing. ADJECTIVES tell the kind of noun, As great, small, pretty, white or brown. … VERBS tell of something being done, To read, count, sing, laugh, jump or run. … -- Anon., The Parts of Speech Jia na gai mei lu meng xin, Tong gong yin bo jin. … K Na Ca Mg Al Mn Zn. Cu Hg Ag Pt Au ... -- Anon., Chemical Elements

There are educational treatises and materials arranged in verse. The Russian Makarenko is remembered for his educational verses. And most of the texts in the primer series published in ancient China are in verse, as those in San Zi Jing (Three-Character Classic, A Character Primer), Long Wen Bian Ying (The Steed and the Whip, A 43

Morality Primer), and Shiqi Shi Mengqiu (Anecdotes from the Seventeen Histories). As a matter of fact, these texts are very rhythmic and melodious, pleasant to the ear and fluent to the tongue, that they can always come natural to the reader. And there are also treatises on philosophical, scientific and literary subjects, written in verse. Lucretius Cams, the Roman philosopher, wrote De Natura Rerum in verse. And when Alexander Pope set out to write his Essay on Criticism, Essay on Man, and Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, he intended his compositions as essays, and epistles, not as poems. And it seems that the reader and the critic don’t take them as poems either; William J. Long says the following of his writing: ...the work of Pope, is polished and witty enough, but artificial; it lacks fire, fine feeling, enthusiasm, ... In a word, it interests us as a study of life, rather than delights or inspires us by its appeal to the imagination. ... Pope, who brought the couplet to perfection.

Long is right: Pope’s verse is perfect, but it doesn’t contain or convey much poetry; his compositions in such perfect verse are no poems though some people refer to them as poems (a misuse of the term or a misjudgment). Dr. Johnson, in Life of Cowley, comments on the metaphysical poets, in such words: The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to 44

show their learning was their whole endeavour; but unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; ... they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables. ... Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit, but maintains that they surpass him in poetry.

Dr. Johnson is right. The verse, if not containing and conveying enough poetry, is no poem, and nothing but the composition of given number of syllables. The verse might be the form of every genre of writing. And by the way, the term “verse”, when translated into Chinese, should be “yunwen”, not “shi”; and a composition in verse should be described as in “yunwen”, not in “shiti.” 3. The Prose and the Verse All writing, as far as the form is concerned, falls into two, and only two parallel categories: the prose and the verse. The verse is often misdefined by handbooks and dictionaries, and even by critics in their books. It has been redefined above. The prose, much the same way as the verse is, is often misdefined. It is mistaken for the opposite to poetry. As a matter of fact, the prose, as a formal category of writing, is parallel and opposite to, and only to the verse. 45

The paralleling of poetry and prose as two categories or two genres is a misconception, common in scholars and critics of all nations. (And it is difficult to decide whether the misdefinition has resulted in the misconception, or the misconception has brought about the misdefinition.) Poetry, as defined above, is neither a category, nor a genre of literature. It is the superlative literary quality, existent in all genres of literature, and necessary to one genre, the poem. Wuthering Heights, the novel by E. Bronte, for instance, contains much poetry, so much that it is often described as a very poetical novel. Every genre of writing might be in prose, much the same way as it can be in verse. The poem, of course, might be in prose. And there are many great poems or books of poems in prose, such as those composed by Baudelaire and other modern masters cited above in section one of this chapter. Obviously, it has risen not only as a form but as a major form of the poem. Thus, the paralleling of the poem and the prose is also a misconception. 4. On the Class of the Poem The poem is often classed, and labeled at the first-class, the second-class, or the n-th-class, by the critic and even by the reader. And as a matter of fact, a poem naturally belongs in a certain class. The class into which the poem is placed is often not the class in which it naturally belongs, due to the variance 46

of the standards of criticism and the stances of critics, and due to many other factors, such as historical backgrounds and cultural conceptions. There are many cases of such disagreement. The work of Tao Yuanming is placed into the middle class, and that of Cao Cao into the low, in the famous three-book criticism The Class of the Poem by Zhong Rong of the Nan Dynasty, who classed the poems composed by the poets from the Han to the Liang Dynasties into three classes: the high, the middle, and the low. His judgment, as on Tao and Cao, is often criticized by later critics and scholars as prejudice and partiality. The work of John Milton, much in the same way, has given rise to much controversy: Dryden described Paradise Lost as “one of the greatest, most noble and sublime poems which this age or nation has produced”; Dr. Johnson and Addison complained his foreign idioms; T. S. Eliot, mounted a violent attack in which he described Millon as one whose sensuousness had been “withered by book-learning”, and who wrote English “like a dead language”; ... V. Hugo is remembered in France often as a poet; in England first as a poet, and then as a novelist, and last as a dramatist; and in Japan and China more as a novelist, especially as the author of Notre Dame de Paris, and Les Miserables. This might suggest that Hugo’s poems will be placed into different classes according to different standards of poetical valuation. And the work of Stephane Mallarme is not admired 47

in France, but much treasured by North-European and Russian poets. Into which class does his work naturally go? Into which class will his work be put by French critics? And by Russian critics? The difference is often great between the class the poem naturally goes in and the class or classes into which it is placed, so great that some of the poets suffer what shouldn’t become of them, and some of the poets score points they don’t deserve. It seems that quantitative poetical valuation will result in less difference or disagreement of this kind. And quantitative valuation is free from limitations of the history, the culture, the time and the environment, and can better approximate to the truth. Any composition can be a high poem, a middle poem, a low poem, a pure poem, an impure poem, or a non-poem. The factors in the making of the class, viewed from a quantitative stance, are the LD, the PC, and most important of all. the PV, as were explained above. The poem is the necessary container of poetry. If a composition is to be a poem, it should contain poetry to the consistency that can make it a poem. The PV of a poem should be above 50 degrees; if the PV of a composition is below 50 degrees, it can be taken as a non-poem. The relation between the PV and the class might be expressed in the following chart:

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PV

Class

Class in Class

90 85

high high

middle

80

low

75

high

70

middle

middle

65

low

60

high

55

low

middle

50 50 below

low Non-

Thus, Pound’s In a Station of the Metro and Li’s Elegy on the Death of Ji Sou, both with a PV of 90 degrees, are high class poems of the high class poems; Ginsberg’s Kaddish, with a PV of 85 degrees, is of the middle class of the high class; and the three poems belong in the high class in general. Tu’s work, with a PV of 35.7 degrees, is a perfect verse, but a non-poem; and Pound’s first version of 49

In a Station of the Metro, with a PV of 6 degrees, is just a verse. The fictitious Kaddish of 5000 pages, with a PV of 2.125 degrees, is just a naturalistic and journalistic narration, not a poem. The pure poem is the poem with a PV of 100 degrees. Any poem might be a pure one, but the poem of that purity does not really exist. X. On the Poet: The Category and the Class The poet is, in general, the man of poetry, of unusuality liberated or at liberty from possible usuality. There are categories and classes of poets. 1. The Category of the Poet There are unconscious poets, conscious poets, temporary poets, eternal poets, etc. The unconscious poet is the mind of poetry, of unusuality of various types such as those analyzed in Part Two. He himself is unaware of the existence and the liberty of the unusuality in his mind, and therefore never demonstrates it by speech or writing. He betrays it in being awkward in the world of usuality, and in being slow to follow usual principles of various types in thinking and behaviour. But he is quick to respond to the demonstration or expression of poetry whenever he encounters it. He might often find the conscious poet speaking for him. He 50

is the poet of the inner self. He is the best reader of the poem, Alongside the unconscious poet is the conscious poet. He is conscious of the existence and the liberation of unusuality, and is quick to seize it, and to demonstrate it. And he finds it a mission to convey it to other members of his race, and searches for ways to best communicate it. He is the poet who writes poems for the reader. The conscious poet is the maker of the history of poetry. And very often the conscious poet is the rebel, and the hero as a poet. Unusuality, however, does not exist alone; it exists side to side with usuality in every mind. Unusuality and usuality are like aggressor nations in the world, always at work to conquer each other, and struggling to dominate the mind. Thus, some minds are dominated by unusuality, some by usuality, and some alternately by the two. The one whose mind is domineered over by usuality might prove to be a scientist, philosopher, or a something of important achievement, but never a poet. Even if he tries to be a poet, he will turn out to be a pseudo-poet. The “metaphysical poets” are something of pseudo-poets. According to Dr. Johnson, people “deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits.” The one, with his mind reigned alternately by the two, is the temporary poet. He might be a great poet, but he is no more a poet when usuality rises as the power to control his mind. Wordsworth, however great, is a temporary poet: so many critics agree that as a poet, Wordsworth died 51

about 1820, thirty years before he died as a man. Ai Qing, Zhang Kejia, and many other contemporary Chinese poets are temporary poets, and as poets they died a long time ago. The eternal poet is governed by the soul of unusuality of various types all his life. When one type of unusuality is liberated and rises as a power to rule the soul, poetry occurs in him. The liberated type of unusuality, if accepted and justified by the common minds, might soon become a type of usuality itself, to control the mind and confine other types of unusuality. A second liberation might in time occur. And after the second liberation, the new type of unusually in power might, like the overthrown one, soon be usualized. A third liberation occurs, then a fourth liberation, …. and then an n-th liberation. The eternal poet’s spiritual progress is, unlike that of the temporary, poet, a series of liberation movements, or a series of liberations, of various types of unusuality from various types, of usuality. This is why the poet is not allowed to repeat himself. There is the temporary unconscious poet, the temporary conscious poet, the eternal unconscious poet and the eternal conscious poet. There are other categories of poets. And the categories might overlap. 2. The Class of the Poet There are high class poets, middle class poets, and 52

low class poets. The class of the poet is determined by the class of the bulk of the poems the poet has written. If the bulk of the poems of a poet belong to the high class, he is a high class poet. Middle class poems might make middle class poets, and low class poem low class poets. 00. AFTERWORD The observations demonstrated above are the meditations of Zhang Shaoxiong, who, as a teacher of literature, is often confronted with the students questioning about poetry but puzzled by authorities. The quoted Chinese and Japanese poems in English are the translations of Zhang, if poetry in them is reduced, the blame is entirely upon him. Therefore, he does not forget to place the original versions before the translations. The meditations are presented not as conclusions, but as stimuli to further exertions of exploring. Bibliography The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Second Edition (In 20 Volumes), Oxford, C.1989. Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language (WDEL), Encyclopedic Edition, Publishers International Press, C.1977. 53

Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (WTNIDEL), G. C. Merriam Company, C.1976. J. A. Cudden, A Dictionary of Literary Terms (DLT), Andre Deutsch, C.1977. Diclionnaire Hachette de la Langue Francais (DHLF), Hachette, C.1980. William J. Long, English Literature, The Athenaeum Press, Ginn and Company, C.1909. Margret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford University Press, C.1985. James D. Hart, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Literature, Oxford University Press, C.1941. Martin Seymour-Smith, Macmillan Guide to Modern World Literature, Macmillan Reference Books, C.1985. Daniel Hoffman, et al., ed., Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing. Maynard Mack, et al., ed., The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, Fifth Continental Edition, W. W. Norton Company, C.1987. M. H. Abrams, ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, W. W. Norton Company, C.1986. Nina Baym, et al., ed., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Second Edition, W. W. Norton Company, C.1985. 54

Cleanth Brooks, et al., ed., American Literature: The Makers and the Making, St. Martin’s Press, New York, C. 1973. W. Wordsworth, Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. by Philip Hobsbaum, Routledge, C.1989. Allen Ginsberg, Collected Poems 1947—1980, Viking Penguin, C.I985. T. B. Macauley, Selections From the Prose of Macauley, ed., by L. H. H. Samuel Johnson, Lives of The English Poets, Oxford University Press, London, C. 1906. G. Blackmore Evans, et al. ed., The Riverside Shakespeare, Houghton Mifflin Company, C.1974.

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Zhang Shaoxiong Associate Professor of English Studies Department of Foreign Studies Central South University of Technology Changsha, Hunan Province, 410083, China

A paper prepared for The Fourth Annual Conference of the Chinese Society of Comparative Literature and the 1993 International Forum on Comparative Literature Zhangjiajie, Hunan

Department of Foreign Studies Central South University of Technology 1993, Changsha, Hunan

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