The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry (8 page)

After the Han dynasty many poets contributed to the popularity of the five-character form, among them Cao Zhi, Ruan Ji, and Tao Qian. It became the dominant form among literati writers. The seven-character form was a latecomer; literati poets did not accept it as a standard form until after the fifth-century poet Bao Zhao. There are many theories about its evolution, but the Chinese love of yin-yang symmetry helps to explain it. For quite a long time the seven-character form rhymed on every line, and the lines were not always in a paired relationship.
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Starting with Bao Zhao, paired lines were used conspicuously in the seven-character form. This form soon became very popular because it provided more space for expression in each line as well as satisfaction of the symmetry gestalt.

Under Sanskrit influence during the Yong Ming reign (483–493), when the Buddhist canons were translated into Chinese, the four tones of classical Chinese were established. Two critics, Zhou Yong and Shen Yue, wrote to promote regulated usage of the four tones in poetry, introducing yet another aspect of elegant symmetry into the construction of the Chinese poem. The old style verse, which did not follow a regulated use of tones, came to be called Ancient Style poetry (
gushi
), while regulated verse came to be called Modern Style poetry.

During the Tang dynasty (618–907), the golden age of Chinese poetry, a diversity of poetic forms helped poets find their own
highly individualized voices. Authentic folk poetry continued to exist in its natural, anonymous state and continued to be used by literati poets such as Li Bai, who found it a source of inspiration and a handy form for experiments in writing distinctive poems in the Ancient Style. Also during the Tang, after many years of experiments in earlier dynasties, regulated verse, containing the most exquisite symmetries in poetry, reached its apex. Other important forms flourished as well, such as the quatrain (
jueju
), a truncated regulated verse poem. The diversity of forms certainly contributed to the glory and the variety of achievement in Tang poetry, but there were other factors as well. The sociopolitical climate attracted talented people to poetry, since excellence in writing poetry had become a necessity for those who wished to achieve high official positions. Poetry brought rewards in terms of social mobility as well as celebrity status, so good poetry was written during the Tang by people from all walks of life, including nuns and monks. The diverse backgrounds of the Tang poets and the sense of writing as a form of competition for fame and power made Tang poetry more vital and powerful than in any preceding or subsequent period. Much of the best poetry from the period was written in the very difficult regulated verse form. Du Fu's poem “Gazing in Springtime” is a good example of the sort of multidimensional architectural balance that regulated verse poems achieved:

This five-character verse consists of four paired lines. Their symmetries can be analyzed on three levels: (1) rhythmic pattern, (2) lexical parallelism, (3) tonal pattern. Rhythmically, this verse employs the standard pattern of five syllables (two syllables, pause, three syllables). With the same rhyme on even lines, the first two characters
form one beat while the following three can either be taken as a single beat, or split into two sub-beats if one wants to read the poem slowly. If we transcribe the poem phonetically, its rhythmic symmetry in paired lines is easier to perceive:

As required by the form, the two middle pairs have to be parallel couplets. In other words, symmetry also exists on the conceptual level. Therefore, there must be a one-to-one parallelism between characters at the same positions: (i) parts of speech should match; (2) conceptually, the corresponding words should be chosen from the same category as prescribed by tradition. We can use the second pair of lines as an example:

In comparison with the rhythmic balance and the conceptual parallelism demonstrated above, the tonal symmetry is very difficult to perceive, even for Chinese readers. The tonal qualities of
Chinese characters have undergone a dramatic change since Mandarin was made the standard speech. One of the traditional tones, namely the fifth or the
ru
tone
, is absent in Mandarin and was redistributed into other tones. However, in many dialects the fifth tone still exists. For example, in Changsha
dialect, there are still five tones:
ma (1),
ma (2),
ma (3),
ma (4),
ma (5), while in Mandarin the fifth tone
ma (5) does not exist and can be pronounced only as a first tone—e.g.,
ma (1) bu (4). According to traditional prosody, the first two tones belong to the category of smooth tones
, while the other three are classified as sharp tones
.