Poetry Expresses the Mind and Discerns Its Differences

Author: Zhu Ziqing
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2004-12-01
Features: This book is a monograph on poetry theory by Zhu Ziqing. It traces the development of poetic theory from the "poetry expresses the mind" () concept in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods down to the "poetry education" () theory of the Han Dynasty, covering four historical threads of poetic theory development. It emphasizes the Chinese poetic tradition of "poetry expresses the mind" from the perspective of rationale. Zhu Ziqing cites a large number of poems and original poetic theories in the book, making it rich in content, well-documented, with elegant and precise language, and rigorous arguments. It is widely recognized as a classic work of modern Chinese scholarship. The four essays included in this small book are dedicated to researching the historical development of the four poetic theories. These four theories, four phrases, have many different usages in different eras. The book attempts to explain the original and variant meanings, origins, and schools of these four phrases based on their important usages. However, the essay on "Bi and Xing" can only start from the Mao Shi () and cannot trace back to the earliest sources. The explanation of the original meanings of "Fu" (), "Bi" (), and "Xing" () is primarily concerned with the Mao Shi. Originally, "Fu," "Bi," and "Xing" were likely names of musical songs, similar to "Feng" (), "Ya" (), and "Song" (). This aspect has already been studied by others, but it is unrelated to literary criticism, so we can set it aside. Whether the interpretation of the Mao Shi aligns with the poet's intent is also irrelevant. Because what we are explaining is "Bi and Xing," not poetry. The original title of this article was "Interpretation of Poetic Terms" (), with "" referring to phrases. Later, since the four essays in the book form a set centered around the concept of "poetry expresses the mind," the title was changed to its current form. The essays on "Poetry Expresses the Mind" and "Bi and Xing" were written before the war and were separately published in Language and Literature and Tsinghua Journal. The essays on "Poetry Education" and "Zheng and Bian" were written in the past two years. The former was published in Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, while the latter was submitted to Tsinghua Journal, but that issue of the journal has not yet been printed.