No More Learning

To most Europeans the momentary flash of Athenian
questioning will seem worth more than all the centuries of Chinese
assent.

Yet we must recognize that for thousands of years the Chinese maintained
a level of rationality and tolerance that the West might well envy. They
had no Index, no Inquisition, no Holy Wars. Superstition has indeed
played its part among them; but it has never, as in Europe, been
perpetually dominant. It follows from the limitations of Chinese thought
that the literature of the country should excel in reflection rather
than in speculation. That this is particularly true of its poetry will
be gauged from the present volume. In the poems of Po Chu-i no close
reasoning or philosophic subtlety will be discovered; but a power of
candid reflection and self-analysis which has not been rivalled in the
West.

Turning from thought to emotion, the most conspicuous feature of
European poetry is its pre-occupation with love. This is apparent not
only in actual "love-poems," but in all poetry where the personality of
the writer is in any way obtruded. The poet tends to exhibit himself in
a _romantic_ light; in fact, to recommend himself as a lover.

The Chinese poet has a tendency different but analogous. He recommends
himself not as a lover, but as a friend. He poses as a person of
infinite leisure (which is what we should most like our friends to
possess) and free from worldly ambitions (which constitute the greatest
bars to friendship). He would have us think of him as a boon companion,
a great drinker of wine, who will not disgrace a social gathering by
quitting it sober.

To the European poet the relation between man and woman is a thing of
supreme importance and mystery.
To the Chinese, it is something
commonplace, obvious--a need of the body, not a satisfaction of the
_emotions_. These he reserves entirely for friendship.

Accordingly we find that while our poets tend to lay stress on
physical courage and other qualities which normal women admire,
Po Chu-i is not ashamed to write such a poem as "Alarm at entering
the Gorges. " Our poets imagine themselves very much as Art has portrayed
them--bare-headed and wild-eyed, with shirts unbuttoned at the neck as
though they feared that a seizure of emotion might at any minute
suffocate them. The Chinese poet introduces himself as a timid recluse,
"Reading the Book of Changes at the Northern Window," playing chess with
a Taoist priest, or practising caligraphy with an occasional visitor.
If "With a Portrait of the Author" had been the rule in the Chinese
book-market, it is in such occupations as these that he would be shown;
a neat and tranquil figure compared with our lurid frontispieces.

It has been the habit of Europe to idealize love at the expense of
friendship and so to place too heavy a burden on the relation of man and
woman. The Chinese erred in the opposite direction, regarding their
wives and concubines simply as instruments of procreation. For sympathy
and intellectual companionship they looked only to their friends. But
these friends were bound by no such tie as held women to their masters;
sooner or later they drifted away to frontier campaigns, remote
governorships, or country retirement. It would not be an exaggeration to
say that half the poems in the Chinese language are poems of parting or
separation.

Readers of these translations may imagine that the culture represented
by Po Chu-i extended over the whole vast confines of China. This would,
I think, be an error. Culture is essentially a metropolitan product.
Chu-i was as much _depayse_ at a provincial town as Charles Lamb would
have been at Botany Bay. But the system of Chinese bureaucracy tended
constantly to break up the literary coteries which formed at the
capitals, and to drive the members out of the little corner of Shensi
and Honan which to them was "home.