ESSAY ON LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION

Medieval China had very dark ages. People struggled to search for light. The search took various forms in religion, in art, and in literature. Lu Chi's Essay on Literature (Wen Fu) is the consummate expression of one of the results of this search. I came to this belief in my study of the Essay and of Lu Chi's life, published, together with this translation, for the semicentennial anniversary of Peking University in 1948 under the title "Literature as Light against Darkness." Translations of the Essay exist in two other languages.[1] Mine, as far as I know, is the first rendition in English. It was aided by the music of the thought and the rhyme remembered of the Essay from early youth, as well as by adult study and experience of literature. After mine, two other English versions, in different manner and spirit, I might say, have successively appeared.[2] With the present reissue of my translation, making it available to a greater number of readers than was the limited, now hardly accessible, Peking edition, it is cheering to think that the years 1951 and 1952 have seen such a burst of interest in this medieval work of extraordinary beauty and wisdom.

I have translated the Essay into verse, for I believe that although in later history the Essay has been rightly acclaimed as having marked the beginning of Chinese literary criticism, Lu Chi in the year A.D. 300 wrote it as poetry. And only as such can its vision, language, and truth be fully grasped and appreciated.

It is not really so long ago that English poets wrote first-rate poetry later to be considered criticism. Shelley wrote:

     You will see Coleridge; he who sits obscure
     In the exceeding lustre and the pure
     Intense irradiation of a mind
     Which, with its own internal lightning blind,
     Flags wearily through darkness and despair—
     A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
     A hooded eagle among blinking owls.

[1 In French, by G. Margoulies, in Le Fou dans le Wen-siuan, Paris, 1926; also a second version, Paris, 1948. In Russian, by B. M. Alexeiev, in Bulletin de l'Academie des Sciences de PURSS, 1944.

[2 E. R. Hughes, The Art of Letters, Bollingen Series xxix; Pantheon Books, Inc., 1951; and Achilles Fang, in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. XIV, Nos. 3 and 4, December, 1951.

Of this passage Arthur Symons said, "Criticism, at such a height, is no longer mere reasoning; it has the absolute sanction of intuition." Here we gain an insight into the mind of a genius at work, toiling in sublime desolation, with the senses indrawn amidst the radiance of inner light. This is one poet's intimate experience, which it takes another poet's experience and his "intuition" and language to portray so well.

There are comparable passages in Lu Chi, telling also of this experience:

          In the beginning,
     All external vision and sound are suspended,
     Perpetual thought itself gropes in time and space;
     Then, the spirit at full gallop reaches the eight limits of the cosmos,
     And the mind, self-buoyant, will ever soar to new insurmountable heights.
          When the search succeeds,
     Feeling, at first but a glimmer, will gradually gather into full luminosity,
     Whence all objects thus lit up glow as if each the other's light reflects.

* * *

     Now one feels blithe as a swimmer calmly borne by celestial waters,
     And then, as a diver into a secret world, lost in subterranean currents.

The dominant imagery and general drift of thought are remarkably similar, though the points of view be differently addressed. There is in one case the romantic exaltation of the tragic height which became a predicament for too brilliant an individual genius, towering into the clouds; and in the other, the medieval Chinese teaching of meditation to set the mind free and suffuse it with light against the dark outside.

But what interests us here more is that both of these, Shelley's passage and Lu Chi's entire Essay, are poetry held in high esteem as criticism. That poets, if they choose, make the best and most proper critics has always remained true. Occasional disputes notwithstanding, we have enough living examples in our contemporary literature. True, our conception of criticism and what it connotes has changed, and our poet-critics today as a rule write their criticism in prose. But I think the latter fact is to be explained by the change also of our poetry, perhaps mainly of its sources of inspiration and how they are used. The moon, the sea, and love, for our poetry, are no longer what they used to be. Other erstwhile goodly subjects now cease to inspire at all.

But it is not quite one and a half centuries ago when the person of one poet caused in another the high excitement of "a cloud-encircled meteor," and an old translation of Homer conjured wonders of a "new planet," or of a new continent richer than the "realms of gold." Still further back, in one of the darkest ages in man's history, in third-century China, the whole meaning and function of creative literature, for the individual and for civilization, inspired the poetry of Lu Chi's Essay.

This poetry sprang from a critical period in Chinese history, and a fateful year of the poet's personal life. As criticism, from a historical point of view, its vital importance is to set up new standards of value for creative literature. Like a hymn, it chanted into the creative mind a new consciousness of itself and of its relation to man and the universe. To assess fully these two aspects of the Essay needs must take long expatiations on history and literature. But there are concise statements of general truth on poetry and on certain classes of criticism that we can apply here. "Poetry is the language of a state of crisis," said Stephane Mallarmé. And for the high regard the Essay received in Chinese tradition, as criticism, there are words we can borrow from Walt Whitman: "Criticism, carried to the height worthy of it, is a majestic office, perhaps an art, perhaps even a church."

Lu Chi wrote the Essay three years before his death. History tells us of a somber day, with rising hurricanes followed by heavy snow, in the tenth month of the year 303, when he was executed. He ended his life as a mistrusted commanding general of two hundred thousand men in the field, an "outsider" of a conspiring clique, a tool of an internecine war among royal cousins. Little could anyone at the time have realized that three years before he had accomplished the task of a high priest in the domain of ideas on Chinese belles lettres.

Lu Chi had indeed played many roles. Each role in its brilliant, tormented way bore the incidences of an ominous age of gathering gloom. In the magnitude of those roles we see him as perhaps the most regular yet the oddest man of his time. He was closely identified with each important vicissitude, yet in the last analysis he did not quite belong with it. To his last day he was involved in the world as a hero with many tragic flaws, and yet detached as a poet to look away and beyond with sublime vision.

This seems to have been predestined since his birth. Lu Chi's forty-three years of life, in fact, about equally divided into two distinct periods, coincided with two opposite phases of medieval Chinese history in quick conflux and transition. He was in and out of two worlds. And both worlds were constantly slipping. He was a survival of his native Wu kingdom, which fell at his twentieth year of age. This downfall concluded an age of magnanimous spirit and the contest of heroic forces, and began the feeble, ephemeral unification of the Chin empire, sapped by the worst confusion of moral values as well as political misrule. Had Lu Chi lived fourteen years more, to the age of fifty-seven, he might have seen collapse again, this time of an empire overrun by barbarian invasion.

At the downfall of his native Wu, he was a young soldier, already with literary fame, and with his brothers, the brave but futile last defender of the southern kingdom. There followed ten years of study, writing, and contemplation in sequestered life at his country home. Then he arrived north in the capital of his conqueror, ruler of the Chin empire. An expatriate seeking to "belong" must needs make double effort to do his best. He was meticulous in his moral conduct, dutiful in government service, and industrious in his literary work.

But, although he tried so hard, we see him in his immediate milieu as nonetheless a "misfit." The whole moral cosmos was confounded, and his scruples were only backwash from a cursed night ship heading for doom. His sedulous public services amidst the dark labyrinth of court intrigues invited jealousy and rancour, or made him an unwitting partner in clandestine evil design. His sense of honor, inherited from the bygone glory of a great family, now dispossessed, made him look only presumptuous and vain. His literary fame was indeed skyrocketing. But many of his works had to cater to a taste for the florid and pompous, then in high vogue at the capital. How much better he knew is well revealed in the Essay.

There are indeed times in history when existence becomes utter absurdity and the mind seems at the end of its tether. Many of Lu Chi's contemporaries were driven to spiritual escapism or religious otherworldliness, with prevalent Taoism nourishing the former, and Buddhism encouraging the latter. Lu Chi stood out distinctly by contrast. It is no perfunctory labelling, as it might be in the cases of other great Chinese, that history sets him down as a conformed Confucianist. In a sense we may say that he is the last Confucianist of his age. We see in his unshakable Confucian "this-worldliness" his tragic flaw, but ultimately also that peculiar Confucian way of redemption. The redemption comes from an adamantine faith in the utmost of human possibilities. It is a faith which, if frustrated by immediate worldly affairs, will in its single-hearted dedication and pursuit be realized, and thus rewarded, by the inspired vision that effects an expansion and a sublimation of one's ego, or super ego, into all humanities of all time, into human history and the humanistic arts, which prove immortality as humanly possible. Knowing the circumstances under which it was produced, we shall see the Essay on Literature as a full expression of this spirit.

That "poetry is the language of a state of crisis," in the case of the Essay, may well be taken fully in a literal sense. There was a personal as well as a world crisis in the background of its creation. I have, by historical and biographical evidence, decided that the Essay was written in the year A.D. 300. The intricate problems of the dating and my determinant conclusion have been presented in full detail in my Peking publication. I am even more convinced of this date now.[3] In the year 300 disaster smote the Chin empire like a thunderbolt. There at the court, in the heart of trouble and fatally involved, Lu Chi snatched at an opportunity to write the Essay. On the third day of the Fourth Month the catastrophic blow had struck. A coup d'état at the court shook the empire to its foundation. It set forth chain reactions of raging civil wars, until the empire's downfall and its devastation by barbarian hordes on the north. One of its direct results was the battle among royal cousins in which Lu Chi was executed as a "foreign" commanding general.

The coup d'état of 300 led by Prince Lun of Chao was exceedingly bloody, and turned out to be an indiscriminate massacre overnight of both heroes and villains. This was typical of many like incidents at the Chin court, ending in confusion worse confounded. History records Lu Chi's part in it. He was rewarded with the title hou, "marquis," for helping effect the execution of a villainous leader, which the perpetrators of the coup d'état claimed was an act of loyal vengeance. But reckless murderous plots were also carried out. Among the best men killed were pillars of the empire, one of whom was Lu Chi's great friend. There was madness in the air. The empire was crumbling. Chaos and delirium reigned.

[3 See Supplementary Note.

After the tempestuous days, the rest of the year was a brief lull, as darker storms were gathering, before the oncoming usurpation and more bloodshed that was to drain the country. By midyear Lu Chi's brother, Lu Yun, suddenly received six manuscripts. Among them was the Essay on Literature. The time chosen for these to be written, the speed, and their extraordinary qualities all took Lu Yun by surprise. In his letter he expressed wonder and admiration, but somehow with a portentous undertone. Lu Yun wrote: "Brother, all of a sudden you have created so many pieces, and each one of them so new and extraordinary, that you make me really feel terrified. Perhaps I should not talk any more of writing." After these, Lu Chi probably wrote very little, however hard he might have tried. For in another letter, estimated to be of a later year, Lu Yun advised and consoled him: "Brother, your literary works of course have already been well known the world over. It matters not whether there be more or less. And it wears one out to task one's thought so. You may as well disengage yourself from this toil." In these six pieces it is as if his last important word had been said.

The pieces include, besides the Essay, two written in memoriam of people deceased shortly before, of which one was, history tells us, addressed to his friend sacrificed at the coup d'état. The other reads, in part:

     Alas, the quick of my heart is wounded again and again,
     I have no more strength to bear this immense sorrow.
     If the "road thither"[4] is perilous,
     Here my day is also near dusk.
     Truly, how long have we been together?
     Now we are two worlds apart.
     The light before me is but the length of a foot,
     I have only the pang in my inch-sized heart to hold.

There is The Fan, in a lighter mood. But the fan is a traditional Chinese symbol of the inconstancy of fate, being a mere tool that serves the purpose of a passing season. Another piece is The Water-Clock, in exuberant praise of the invention to control time. Both works extol the human creation of marvelous things out of the humble, slight, and crude, be it bird feather or bamboo stalk. In both there are several similar figures and phrases also employed in the Essay, where, it seems, at last he spoke out loud of creative literature:

[4 The "road thither," the road to the world of the dead.

     . . . it is Being, created by tasking the Great Void,
     And 'tis sound rung out of Profound Silence.
     In a sheet of paper is contained the Infinite,
     And, evolved from an inch-sized heart, an endless panorama.

But more revealing of the state of mind which produced the Essay, and which perhaps made his brother feel the works so "new," "extraordinary," and "terrifying," is the last accompanying piece, Lament for Fleeting Life. Let us see two passages from it:

     Alas, water runs for the river to last,
     But water itself wave after wave must away,
     Men live for the world to continue,
     But men themselves one by one must to the dusk.

And

     Let me halt my journey and lay my heart at peace,
     And contemplate only the subtle ways of Creation.
     My spirit will float above and my soul drift below,
     Suddenly I am beyond the phenomena of the world.

We have mentioned that Lu Chi is a true Confucianist. For him the human world is positive. Hence his grand vision of it after utter self-resignation, a high buoyancy sublimated from deep sorrow. There comes self-redemption, which is beyond the apparent temporal existence, yet is nevertheless in this world. This is to be seen as at least a part of the underlying spiritual attitude that furnishes the Essay on Literature the necessary detachment, yet, rejecting transcendence and strongly reaffirming human values, gives it such emotional depth and benignancy.

No more need be said here of the Essay, which will henceforth speak for itself.

It has been my hope to be able to present this work, first of all, as poetry, inspired as it was by the contemplation of creation at a sublime hour of detachment from the world's chaos and gloom. The subject of this poetry is literature as an ever-living thing, spoken of in concrete, sensuous imagery, and as passionately regarded as love. Thence is uttered the wisdom and acumen of criticism to perform a "majestic office." The wisdom is no doubt of the ancient kind. The work has become scriptural in Chinese tradition, its parts quoted out of context, and paraphrased in very different ways to satisfy individual needs.

But it nonetheless deals with both perennial and specific problems which are still being discussed with lively interest by critics today. Comparative studies of these points, together with some details on translation, have taken up one particular chapter in my Peking publication which cannot be entirely reproduced within the limited space of the present edition. But for those who may feel interested in further inquiry into these and other related matters, positive microfilms of the entire Peking edition will be easily available by applying at the library of the Boston Athenaeum, where, through the great kindness of Dr. Vernon D. Tate, Director of Libraries of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a microfilm negative has been deposited.

I wish this were the occasion for me to elaborate more on some of my views formerly expressed, and to amend others. But in this small volume the translation, slightly revised, has to stand by itself. Even the footnotes have to be cut to the very minimum. As to such technicalities of the translation as what textual variants were favoured, what lexical meanings chosen, semantic associations noted, and contextual overtones observed, how the incompatibilities of medieval Chinese and modern English grammar were reconciled, and, above all, where expansions or contractions of sentences were made to recapture the effects of the imagery and burden of thought of the original, I beg my sinological friends' pardon for the lack of room here to discuss them. But I point out these briefly, and trust that those who understand and appreciate Lu Chi's Wen Fu as well as I do will quickly perceive the intricate processes, and, I hope, will read the result of the translation with sympathetic comprehension.

In preparing my Peking publication in 1948, I benefited greatly from the expert knowledge of my friends and colleagues in Peking and California. My indebtedness to them was acknowledged then, and I wish to renew it here now. I dedicate this re-issue to Walter Muir Whitehill of the Boston Athenaeum, custodian of many treasures of world letters, lover and connoisseur of all the best in world literature, who, never letting a single "phoenix feather" (to borrow a Chinese expression) drop unnoticed, made it possible to bring out this small volume. I wish to thank with profound sincerity and affection my dear friend Chang Ch'ung-ho, who undertook laboriously with her excellent calligraphic art to adorn the volume with the full Chinese text[5] of the Essay. She has imitated the medieval style with admirable likeness. I might say, as people of that period said of ancient poetry, "Each word a thousand gold." My deep gratitude also goes to several other esteemed friends. These are John and Phyllis Wheelock, in many ways my beloved mentors in life and work; and Allen Tate and Mark Schorer, whose own works I so greatly admire, and who have been so kind in advising the publication. My deep appreciation also of the generosity of The Anthoensen Press and the Meriden Gravure Company in giving both the English translation and the Chinese text of Lu Chi such appropriate dress.

[5 As edited by Ku Shih-cheng, in the Wen-hsuan lui-ch'en hui-chu shu-chieh, published in 1687, this, with other authoritative texts consulted, being the working text for my translation.
 

ESSAY ON LITERATURE

(*) prefatory remarks

I am therefore writing this essay on literature to tell of the glorious accomplishments of ancient men of letters, and to comment on the causes of failure and success in writing. Perhaps some other day the secret of this most intricate art may he entirely mastered. In making a handle of an axe by cutting wood with an axe, the model is indeed near at hand. But the adaptability of the hand to the ever-changing (circumstances and impulses in the process of creation) is such that words can hardly explain. Henceforth follows only what can be said in words.

* The Essay in this translation is divided into twelve sections, according to its original rhyming patterns and obvious paragraphings of thought. The small headings for each section are added by me. (S. H. C.)

(1) the motive

Erect in the Central Realm the poet views the expanse of the whole universe,
And in tomes of ancient wisdom his spirit rejoices and finds nurture.
His lament for fleeting life is in observance of the four seasons that ever revolve,
His regard for the myriad growing things inspires in him thoughts as profuse.
As with the fallen leaves in autumn's rigour his heart sinks in grief,
So is each tender twig in sweet spring a source of joy.
In frost he finds sympathy at moments when his heart is all frigid purity,
Or far, far, into the highest clouds he makes his mind's abode.
The shining, magnanimous deeds of the world's most virtuous are substance of his song,
As also the pure fragrance which the most accomplished goodness of the past yields.
The flowering forest of letters and treasuries of poetic gems are his spirit's favourite haunts,
Where he delights in nothing less than perfection of Beauty's form and matter.
Thus moved, he will spread his paper and poise his pen
To express what he can in writing.

(2) meditation before writing

          In the beginning,
All external vision and sound are suspended,
Perpetual thought itself gropes in time and space;
Then, the spirit at full gallop reaches the eight limits of the cosmos,
And the mind, self-buoyant, will ever soar to new insurmountable heights.
          When the search succeeds,
Feeling, at first but a glimmer, will gradually gather into full luminosity,
Whence all objects thus lit up glow as if each the other's light reflects.
Drip-drops are distilled afresh from a sea of words since time out of mind,
As quintessence that savours of all the aroma of the Six Arts.
Now one feels blithe as a swimmer calmly borne by celestial waters,
And then, as a diver into a secret world, lost in subterranean currents.

          Hence,
Arduously sought expressions, hitherto evasive, hidden,
Will be like stray fishes out of the ocean bottom to emerge on the angler's hook;
And quick-winged metaphors, fleeting, far-fetched
Feathered tribes, while sky-faring are brought down from the curl-clouds by the fowler's bow.

Thus the poet will have mustered what for a hundred generations awaited his pen,
To be uttered in rimes for a thousand ages unheard.
Let the full-blown garden flowers of the ancients in their own morning glory stand.
To breathe life into late blossoms that have yet to bud will be his sole endeavor.
Eternity he sees in a twinkling,
And the whole world he views in one glance.

(3) the working process

          Henceforth,
To obtain choice ideas in close observation of things in categories,
And elect expressions that will fall in happy order,
All objects visible under the sun or moon will the poet in experiment strike aglow,
All that can give out a sound he will ring to test their resonance.
He makes barren twigs put forth luxuriant foliage as they sway,
Or by endless waves he traces to the remote fountainhead.
He may either work from the obscure to the obvious,
Or, following an easy course, find the hardly obtainable.
Shapes of tame animals by the sudden shining forth of a tiger are illuminated,
Or amid the surf-tossed gulls the vision of a dragon emerges.
Sometimes with sure touches and smooth rhythm his ideas in utmost ease flow on,
At other moments, as if beset by mountainous obstacles, he is in a fret.
But not until the heart attains calm transparency does thought crystallize
Into such words as no man before fancied or pronounced.
Then, both heaven and earth find new embodiment in the shape desired,
And all things become plastic under the tip of his pen,
Which after all parching anxiety and hesitations
Is saturated and sweeps forth in a wave.

When the substance of a composition, trunk of a tree, is by Truth sustained,
Style aids it to branch into leafy boughs and bear fruit.
Indeed, feeling and expression should never fail to correspond,
As each emotional change wears a new complexion on a sensitive face.
Thought that swells with joy bursts into laughter;
When grief is spoken, words reverberate with endless sighs;
No matter if the work be accomplished in one flash on the page,
Or is the result of the most deliberate pen.

(4) the joy of writing

Writing is in itself a joy,
Yet saints and sages have long since held it in awe.
For it is Being, created by tasking the Great Void.
And 'tis sound rung out of Profound Silence.
In a sheet of paper is contained the Infinite,
And, evolved from an inch-sized heart, an endless panorama.
The words, as they expand, become all-evocative,
The thought, still further pursued, will run the deeper,
Till flowers in full blossom exhale all-pervading fragrance,
And tender boughs, their saps running, grow to a whole jungle of splendor.
Bright winds spread luminous wings, quick breezes soar from the earth,
And, nimbus-like amidst all these, rises the glory of the literary world.

(5) on Form

The forms of things differ in a myriad ways,
For them there is no common measure.
Jumbled and jostled in a ceaseless flux.
Living shapes to all their imitations bid defiance.
Words, each with inherent limitations, do only partial service.
It is the all-harmonizing force of Meaning that integrates and bodies forth features supreme.
How the poet's mind toils between Substance and the Void,
And every detail in high and low relief he seeks to perfect,
That the form, although it may transcend the dictates of compasses and ruler,
Shall be the paragon of resemblance to all shapes and features imitated.
To ravish the eye, rich ornaments may be prized,
But such precision must be wrought that it appeals to the heart as true. Words may in time be exhausted, but not so that their sense is immured withal;
A far-reaching thought attains its object only in the realm of the infinite.

          (To be specific),
The Lyric (Shih), born of pure emotion, is gossamer fibre woven into the finest fabric;
The Exhibitory Essay (Fu), being true to the objects, is vividness incarnate;
In Monumental Inscriptions (Pei) rhetoric must be a foil to facts;
The Elegy (Lai) tenderly spins out ceaseless heartfelt grief.
The Mnemonic (Ming) is a smooth flow of genial phrases, succinct but pregnant;
The staccato cadences of the Epigram (Chen) are all transparent force.
While the Eulogy (Sung) enjoys the full abandon of grand style,
The Expository (Lun) must in exactitude and clarity excel.
The Memorial (Tsou), balanced and lucid, must be worthy of the dignity of its royal audience,
The Argument (Shuo) with glowing words and cunning parables persuades.
Meticulous as these classifications are,
Lest passion and thought, given free rein, may wantonly go astray,
The maxim holds: Let Truth in terms most felicitous be spoken,
While of verbiage beware.

(6) the making of a composition

A composition comes into being as the incarnation of many living gestures.
It is (like the act of Tao) the embodiment of endless change.
To attain Meaning, it depends on a grasp of the subtle,
While such words are employed as best serve beauty's sake.
The interactions of sounds and tones are like
The five colours that each the others enhances:
Although they dwell and vanish by no common rule,
And their tortuous, intricate ways permit no liberty,
Yet if a poet masters the secret of change and order,
He will channel them like directing streams to receive a fountain;
But once a false move leads to reckless floundering,
The end and the beginning are thrown into confusion,
Celestial blue and earthy yellow confounded,
Dull mud and dregs to chaos return, all light fails.

          (A composition is ruined)
When a later passage swells to engulf its forerunners,
Or a downright statement encroaches on all that follows.
Apposite truth in words too ill expressed,
And pleasing phrases which utter senseless cant,
To redeem virtues of both, must be set apart
From the harmful company they keep.
For literary merits high and low are by grains and scruples measured,
The elect and the forsaken are separated no wider than a hair's breadth.
After the choice is made on the most accurate balance,
The Master Carpenter's tape it must also fit.

Lavish expressions may contain abundant truth,
But fail to direct and drive the Meaning home.
For the highest perfection to be attained will exclude duality,
And consummation admits of no surfeit.
A pithy saying at a crucial point,
May whip all parts into a whole.
Though all the words are in nice order arrayed,
Such a "rallying whip" is needed to make them serve.
The utmost is achieved at slightest cost,
When the kernel, unequivocal, suffices.

Sometimes inspired thoughts weave themselves into the finest fabrics,
And grow ever fresher and more comely as they expand,
Glistening with colours of the most exquisite embroidery,
And tuned to the poignant music of a thousand strings.
But the accomplished piece of imitation must be so perfected
That it is in the ancient tradition, yet remains a nonpareil.
Even though all the warp and woof are of my own heart's tissue,
In constant fear must I be lest others before me have spun the same.
When honor and integrity are menaced,
Even gems most cherished must I sacrifice.

&&20Or a thought may, like a lone plant, burst and burgeon with a life all its own,
So individual that on this earth it seems to have no species,
Until it becomes mirage-like, forever a fugitive from form,
Or a phantom voice that no sound audible can echo,
A being isolated from all contexts, a singular eminence,
That no common words or vocables can express.
The heart then feels like a forlorn lover, doomed to desolation,
Yet haunted by a Meaning evasive, intangible, but never to be shaken off.
Let it, then, be contained like jade in rocks, that a mountain loom in radiance,
Or cast it like a pearl in water that a whole river gleam with splendour.
For even shrubberies, when allowed to flourish,
Will by their opulent verdure claim a share of beauty.
In humble tunes that may mingle with the most exalted strains,
I find resources, too, for any grandeur they may augment.

(7) five shortcomings

A verse limps and falls short
When it is a single train of thought by too indigent vision hampered.
'Tis then like one in bereavement around whom the world is mute,
And heaven above, out of reach, empty and vast:
A weak string plucked alone,
Without resonance, its sound into thin air vanishes.
Or a composition is so marred by languid tones
That its words may flash but never rise to glory.
Fair is confounded with foul,
And qualities are drowned in blemishes:
'Tis as if pipers down the Hall pipe hurried notes at random,
Resonant but out of tune, that only throw the hymn into discord.
ESSAY ON LITERATURE
XXVI)
Or, to attain the unique at truth's expense,
The poet is so bent on a search for the illusory and the minuscular
That his words, lacking true emotion and void of love,
Will waft and drift, homeless, nowhere to return:
'Tis like a zither, too high-strung and hard pressed by rapid fingers;
Although the melody is played in tune, it fails to move with pathos.
Or, a work may swing itself into such a symphony
That it rings and clangs with many bewitching colours.
It may thus please the eye and win popular acclaim,
While its lowly tunes are exalted by loud performance.
Beware of resemblance to the "Dew Shelter" and "Mulberry Grove/'1
Which, though full of pathos, are an offense to grace.
Or, aerial purity and simple elegance are so cultivated
That the work is rid of all trimmings and ornaments,
A rarefied feast without relish of seasoned gravy.
A concert of wrought-silk strings that twang with too pure a tone,
Although it trills on with endless reverberations,
For all its grace, is innocent of glamour.

(8) the secret of artistry

Luxuriance and terseness of style,
And the different aspects of form,
Vary according to laws of propriety,
Whose intricacies hinge upon a feeling so subtle:
Once grasped, uncouth language may divulge clever parables,
A truism by light verbal touches is turned into epigram,
The older the model, the fresher the imitation,
1 Allusions to ancient folk tunes typified as very lowly.

The duller the beginning, the more brilliant the final illumination.
Whether this superb artistry becomes apparent at first sight
Or is comprehended only after arduous toils of wit,
It is like the dancer's, whose each whirl of the sleeve is borne by a rhythm,
Or the singer's, whose each note responds to the twang of the string,
Guided by a force which even the Master Wheelwright Pien2 could not express in words;
Therefore its secret lies beyond smoothest speech.

(9) the source of literature and discipline

To the all-pervasive law of word order and literary discipline
I have devoutly dedicated myself.
In its light I have seen much of the ills in vogue today
And perceived the merits of masters of the past,
Although an art truly wrought from the depths of a master mind
Is oft by untrained eyes with ridicule regarded.
Coral gems and jade filigrane, however, are in their origins none too rare,
But common as wild beans of the Central Plain that all can gather:
Thus the source of poetry is like the air from the
Bellows, the eternally generative Void,
And it will forever breed with Heaven and Earth.

But be it soever bounteous and ubiquitous in this world,
Alas, how much of it can my fingers mold?
Dismayed as the holder of a vessel that is too often empty,
I feel harassed by the thought that Great Eloquence is hard to achieve.
Hence limping verses, born dwarfed, are let live,

2 Who, in one of Chuang-tzu's fables, in T'ien-tao, chidedbook learning and prided himself on making the perfect wheel by complete union of heart and hand, which no words can express or teach.

ESSAY ON LITERATURE

And perfunctory notes are fiddled to round out a vapid tune.
Often have I finished my work with pangs of remorse;
When has my heart rejoiced with self-content?
Always fearful am I lest mine were the earthenware, dust-muffled and jarring,
A coarse mockery of tinkling jade.

(10) of inspiration

Such moments when Mind and Matter hold perfect communion,
And wide vistas open to regions hitherto entirely barred,
Will come with irresistible force,
And go, their departure none can hinder.
Hiding, they vanish like a flash of light;
Manifest, they are like sounds arising in mid-air.
So acute is the mind in such instants of divine comprehension,
What chaos is there that it cannot marshal in miraculous order?
While winged thoughts, like quick breezes, soar from depths of the heart,
Eloquent words, like a gushing spring, flow between lips and teeth.
No flower, or plant, or animal is too prodigal of splendour,
To be recreated under the writer's pen,
Hence the most wondrous spectacle that ever whelmed the eye,
And notes of the loftiest music that rejoiced the ear.
But there are other moments as though the Six Senses were stranded,
When the heart seems lost, and the spirit stagnant.
One stays motionless like a petrified log,
Dried up like an exhausted river bed.
The Soul is indrawn to search the hidden labyrinth;
Within oneself is sought where inner light may be stored.
XXX
Behind a trembling veil Truth seems to shimmer, yet ever more evasive,
And thought twists and twirls like silk spun on a clogged wheel.
Therefore, all one's vital force may be dispersed in rueful failure;
Yet again, a free play of impulses may achieve a feat without pitfall.
While the Secret may be held within oneself,
It is none the less beyond one's power to sway.
Oft I lay my hand on my empty chest,
Despairing to know how the barrier could be removed.

(11) the use of literature

The use of literature
Lies in its conveyance of every truth.
It expands the horizon to make space infinite,
And serves as a bridge that spans a myriad years.
It maps all roads and paths for posterity,
And mirrors the images of worthy ancients,
That the tottering Edifices of the sage kings of antiquity may be reared again,
And their admonishing voices, wind-borne since of yore, may resume full expression.
No regions are too remote but it pervades,
No truth too subtle to be woven into its vast web.
Like mist and rain, it permeates and nourishes,
And manifests all the powers of transformation in which gods and spirits share.
Virtue it makes endure and radiate on brass and stone,
And resound in an eternal stream of melodies ever renewed on pipes and strings.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE

The date of the Essay on Literature has become duly recognized as an important issue only in very recent years. In fact one of the two earliest publications to go into great detail on this matter, as far as I know, is my own. The other is that of Professor Lu Ch'in-li of Kwangsi University, formerly Assistant Research Member of the Academia Sinica. In two different countries, without consulting each other, we have independently and with different methods arrived at nearly the same conclusion in refutation of a claim, transmitted from the eighth century, that the Essay was written some twenty years earlier. The truth had thence somehow for over a millennium remained on a literary-historical blind spot. Both Professor Lu's work and mine were published in the year 1948. I am more convinced that the correct date is a.d. 300 after a correspondence with Professor Lu, who kindly sent me his reprint from Hsueh Yuan, Vol. II, No. 1,1948, which I had not seen when my Peking publication came off the press. While Professor Lu's learned article pointed to a year very close to 300, he wrote me of what he considered a difficulty in deciding that it was precisely 300. The letter of Lu Chi's brother, Lu Yun, commenting on the Essay probably soon after its receipt, is one of the most important bases from which to ascertain the date of the Essay. That the two brothers in the year 300 both held official titles in the Chin capital seemed to be Professor Lu's sole difficulty in deciding that the letter could have been written in that year, because, he supposed, they must be all the time in the same city and would not have to write each other; though Professor Lu, in his thorough-going manner, kindly said in his letter of February, 1949, that my proofs (all detailed in my Peking publication) which placed the Essay in 300 rather than in any other year were "superior" to his if only this difficulty could be solved. I must say here that Professor Lu's method and mine in proving the date are basically different in that while his concern was to decide the date of the Essay mainly on the circumstantial, and of course important, evidence of the possible date of the letter, mine was to judge from what was being said in the letter, together with other historical and biographical material, however intricate. Of course it is agreed that the letter could not be very much later than the Essay, allowing for a necessary interval between the completion of the Essay and Lu Yun's receipt of it for comment. I placed the writing of the Essay about midsummer of 300. As to whether the letter could have been written later that year when the Lu brothers were both supposedly officials in the capital city (provided historical records are complete in this regard), I say yes, and the explanation of that answer may be of some interest. Official titles in the same capital do not always require a person to live in the capital all the time, either now or in the past. For instance, Lu Yun's Sheng-te sung, "A Eulogy," tells explicitly that while holding the title T ai-tzii she-jen, "Steward to the Heir-Apparent," he was travelling far from the capital, in the region of the Ssu River. And even when people stayed in the same city, in the middle

ages, they still often wrote each other. It is curious how we sometimes pride ourselves on certain conveniences and comforts as if they were exclusively modern, while they were enjoyed millenniums ago. There are numerous examples of frequent exchange of letters by people living in the same city in China during the third century, or even earlier. Witness the famous letters, discussing literature and daily trifles too, by people of a generation before Lu Chi's time. Among these are the ones, for instance, between Ts'ao Chih and his friends Yang Hsiu and Ch'en Lin, preserved in these authors' collected works, and even the familiar Wen-hsuan, where the Essay on Literature is also found. These letters show that the correspondents might be seeing each other almost every day. Another presumption might be that the Lu brothers, holding official titles in the same capital, must stay in the same house. I felt, on the contrary, that their official positions, quite high and in different departments in the year 300, were, if anything, more likely to separate their domiciles than as if they were private citizens. All these might be sufficient reasons for convincing my friend Professor Lu. But there is a document which may serve as material evidence that the Lu brothers in the year 300 were in fact separated. This is a fragment quoted in the Ch'u-hsueh chi, an early eighth-century encyclopedia. The fragment is a part of Lu Chi's Chien-yuan-hou hsieh-piao, "An Official Letter in Gratitude after Being Pardoned." I would rate this document even more highly had I not the suspicion after scrutinizing four editions that the text might be slightly corrupted. But the recension in Chang-P'u's Pai-san ming-chia-chi, edited by P'eng Mao-ch'ien in 1879, helps make the following sense unmistakable. Referring to the plotting of usurpation by Prince Lun in the year 300, Lu Chi wrote, "I was afraid that there might be pressure upon me [to draft the decree of the emperor's forced abdication], so, pretending to attend my wife's sister's funeral, I went out to join my brother Yun." We can be sure that this event occurred in 300. For the usurpation materialized in the very beginning of 301. And, accordingly, Lu Yun in 300 must have maintained a separate household sufficiently distant for his brother to hide in.

I am grateful to Professor Lu's cautious query, whereby an elaborate point in this problem can be aired. From the profitable discussions with him it also dawned upon me why, as the study of Lu Chi has recently become somewhat popular, there has been the claim that the date of this important Essay is 302. The misapprehension that Lu Yun's letter must have been written only when the brothers were in different cities can easily lead to this conclusion, by a narrow way of reasoning, based on slippery grounds indeed. For then all one would have to do would be just to look for the year of the brothers' separation, settle on that year for Lu Yun to write the letter, and Lu Chi, the Essay. Conveniently, there happens to be only one such year which can be selected easily, from the autumn of 301 to the autumn of 303: 301 is too short, and 303 is the year of Lu Chi's death, so—302, here we have it, open sesame! And with this facile conclusion all other important details of evidence are disregarded.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE

But I must say, however, that I am not referring here to Professor E. R. Hughes's Bollingen publication, The Art of Letters, where he marks down the date as 302. With due respect, I make no conjectures as to his reasoning and proof, which are not given in his over two hundred and sixty pages of interesting expatiation on this work of Lu Chi. Only one single sentence, on page 54, refers to Lu Yun's letter as "dated 302." Dated by whom or how, he does not mention. But I am sure, though that sentence inadvertently might do so, Professor Hughes does not want to give the impression that the letter was dated by the correspondent himself. In this connection I might add that Professor Lu Ch'in-li in his article in Hsueh Yuan has succeeded in dating sixteen (in his letter to me a year later he added two more) of Lu Yun's thirty-five extant letters. But the important one in question, which Professor Hughes has referred to, was to Professor Lu among those that were undatable as to the exact year. The eighteen letters dated, on generally sound bases, are of 302. But no sufficient reason can convince me that the other seventeen undatable ones therefore must be also of the same year. Professor Lu, in fact, in his conclusion has tried to place the Essay close to 300. He supposed 301, barring the possibility that the letter could have been written in 300. For he at the time of writing that article was still held by the scruple of believing that the brothers were all the time in the same city that year, and would not write each other.

This translation of Lu Chi's Essay on Literature by Shih-hsiang Chen, originally published for the semicentennial anniversary of Peking University in 1948, is now reprinted in revised form in an edition of four hundred copies as a Keepsake for the friends of The Anthoensen Press and The Meriden Gravure Company. The Chinese text, specially written for this edition by the skilful calligrapher, Chang Ch'ung-ho, has been reproduced in offset by The Meriden Gravure Company. The book has been designed by Fred Anthoensen, whose imprint in the Chinese transliterations above also signifies "Gentleman of the Peaceful Apple Orchard," and has been printed in the spring of 1953 at The Anthoensen Press, Portland, Maine.