Sheng Tang Poetry

Author: Yu Wenyan / Jia Jinhua (USA)
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-12-01
Features: If we set aside the myth of the High Tang, we would find that Li Bai and Du Fu were not typical representatives of that era. Later readers often cling to the image of Li Bai and Du Fu: they are not only regarded as the pinnacle of poetry but also as two opposing archetypes of poetic personality. However, the background of contemporary poetry gives us a vastly different perspective on Li Bai and Du Fu, one that allows us to discern the essence and degree of their originality.
The prefaces to Early Tang Poetry and High Tang Poetry in English were published about a quarter of a century ago. At that time, the academic field of classical Chinese literature in China was very different from what it is today. We had the basic raw materials, although Wang Ji’s five-volume collection of poems was not published until 1987, a decade after Early Tang Poetry appeared. Many annotated collections of poetry were still unavailable, and we had not yet benefited from the significant research by scholars like Fu Xuancong on the lives of authors and the chronology of their poems. Today, electronic literature has made word searches incredibly easy, greatly facilitating research—a luxury that was unimaginable twenty-five years ago. Back then, we lacked the research tools we have now and had to rely on the academic achievements of the Qing and Republican periods. Most importantly, in the past twenty-five years, Chinese scholarship has made great strides, and the field of Tang studies has flourished, which is both gratifying and inspiring.
Early Tang Poetry and High Tang Poetry have their limitations, errors, and shortcomings. If they could be rewritten, they would undoubtedly be very different. Whether personally or in terms of the academic research I drew upon, much has changed. However, even after many years, I believe some of the fundamental arguments in the books and the perspective they take on literary history still hold some validity.
Literary history is not just the history of the famous. While literary history must include the famous, its most important role lies in understanding literary practices in flux, using contemporary literary practices as the context for understanding the famous. We should not make sweeping generalizations about a century-long period but instead examine shorter periods, groups of writers, and different regions. In this way, traditional academic research, such as studies of literary associations or chronologies, can be combined with literary history writing and theoretical research, giving it new meaning.
Literary history attempts to connect specific details with an understanding of the whole, yet the complexity of the whole often reveals the inadequacy of simple generalizations. In the study of poetry, the sole purpose of academic work is to help us better understand individual poems. A good literary history always returns to the poems themselves, allowing us to clearly see the astonishing, beautiful, and bold creations of the poets.
Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Professor Jia Jinhua, the translator of these two books: if Tsinghua University Press believes that these works are still worth republishing in China two and a half decades later, half of the credit goes to Professor Jia.
August 2004
If we set aside the myth of the High Tang, we would find that Li Bai and Du Fu were not typical representatives of that era. Later readers often cling to the image of Li Bai and Du Fu: they are not only regarded as the pinnacle of poetry but also as two opposing archetypes of poetic personality. However, the background of contemporary poetry gives us a vastly different perspective on Li Bai and Du Fu, one that allows us to discern the essence and degree of their originality.