Must good poetry be emotionally urgent?
I think in the Tang, the answer was no, but then yes
Brooks Lampe sent me this great post:
In which he enjoys this great contemporary Greek poet (in translation), compares him to Li Bai, and addresses a definition of poetry offered by a writer and critic:
“I think a good poem needs two things: (1) emotional urgency, and (2) doing something interesting with language.”
I’ve been thinking about it for a few days, and realised that I could perhaps comment on this definition.
The first thing to say is that the most mainstream Chinese tradition would have an oblique relationship with this kind of definition. The source book for all Chinese poetry is the Book of Poetry, supposed to have been collected by Confucius himself. The introduction to the book of songs was not attributed to Confucius, but was often assumed to reflect his thought. That introduction says:
情動於中而形於言。言之不足，故峰歎之。睦歎之不足，故永歌之。永歌之不足，不知手之舞之，足之踏之也。 The affections are stirred within and take on form in words. If words alone are inadequate, we speak them out in sighs. If sighing is inadequate, we sing them. If singing them is inadequate, unconsciously our hands dance them and our feet tap them. (Translation by Stephen Owen)
So there was certainly a relationship between emotion and poetry. But poetry also had a social/political function from the very beginning:
上以風化下。下以風刺上。 By airs those above transform those below; also by airs those below criticize those above.
Come the Tang Dynasty, it seems like the social function dominated at the start of the dynasty, and a harsh class system meant that the supposed two-way musical traffic between ruler and ruled was actually more of a one-way street. Song Zhiwen, an early Tang poet, ended one poem with the lines:
今朝天子贵，不假叔孙通。
This morning the glory of our emperor
Has no need of a Shusun Tong. {A Han official]Praise of the emperor is always a correct social function! I don’t think anyone really believed that phrases like these represented affections too strong even for sighs. Instead, they are an example of poetry upholding the correct Confucian social order.
Similarly, the poems I’ve been posting the last few days don’t have any great emotional content. They occasionally suggest that the poets are shocked (shocked, I tell you) by how realistic the emperor’s imitation flowers are, but again, we’re not fooling anyone. They are polite, social constructions, designed to amuse fellow guests at the banquet. They do some (very mildly) interesting things with language, but there is little urgency. Instead, there is good manners.
But, but, but… this is what the poets of the High Tang reacted against. I’ve run out of time, now, so I’ll have to finish this later. But the broad stroke I want to paint is a move from well-mannered social poetry to ill-mannered, emotionally urgent poetry.