No More Learning

"Poetry," says a critic, "should draw its materials from the Han and Wei
dynasties. " With the exception of a few reformers, writers contented
themselves with clothing old themes in new forms. The extent to which
this is true can of course only be realized by one thoroughly familiar
with the earlier poetry.

In the main, T'ang confines itself to a narrow range of stock subjects.
The _mise-en-scene_ is borrowed from earlier times. If a battle-poem be
written, it deals with the campaigns of the Han dynasty, not with
contemporary events. The "deserted concubines" of conventional
love-poetry are those of the Han Court. Innumerable poems record
"Reflections on Visiting a Ruin," or on "The Site of an Old City," etc.
The details are ingeniously varied, but the sentiments are in each case
identical. Another feature is the excessive use of historical allusions.
This is usually not apparent in rhymed translations, which evade such
references by the substitution of generalities. Poetry became the medium
not for the expression of a poet's emotions, but for the display of his
classical attainments. The great Li Po is no exception to this rule.
Often where his translators would make us suppose he is expressing a
fancy of his own, he is in reality skilfully utilizing some poem by T'ao
Ch'ien or Hsieh Ti'ao. It is for his versification that he is admired,
and with justice.
He represents a reaction against the formal prosody of
his immediate predecessors. It was in the irregular song-metres of his
_ku-shih_ that he excelled. In such poems as the "Ssech'uan Road," with
its wild profusion of long and short lines, its cataract of exotic
verbiage, he aimed at something nearer akin to music than to poetry. Tu
Fu, his contemporary, occasionally abandoned the cult of "abstract
form. " Both poets lived through the most tragic period of Chinese
history. In 755 the Emperor's Turkic favourite, An Lu-shan, revolted
against his master. A civil war followed, in which China lost thirty
million men. The dynasty was permanently enfeebled and the Empire
greatly curtailed by foreign incursions. So ended the "Golden Age" of
Ming Huang. Tu Fu, stirred by the horror of massacres and conscriptions,
wrote a series of poems in the old style, which Po Chu-i singles out for
praise. One of them, "The Press-gang," is familiar in Giles's
translation. Li Po, meanwhile, was writing complimentary poems on the
Emperor's "Tour in the West"--a journey which was in reality a
precipitate flight from his enemies.

_Sung. _--In regard to content the Sung poets show even less originality
than their predecessors. Their whole energy was devoted towards
inventing formal restrictions. The "tz'?