Lushi

by S. L. P. Van der Veer

Winter 2007

Lüshi (luh’-shrrr; “code verse”) is a Chinese form from the Tang Dynasty (618-907 ce). In China, poetry is particularly important as a means of expression, and the Tang Dynasty is considered the “Golden Age” of Chinese poetry. Lüshi may also be spelled lu-shih under the Wade-Giles system (see “Romanization” sidebar); Chinese words and names in this article will be given in the pinyin spelling.

Historical Setting for the

Development of the Form

The Tang Dynasty followed the Sui Dynasty (589-618 ce), which reunited the country after nearly four centuries of political fragmentation and did not centralize its power. Instead, the Sui Dynasty developed civil service exams to fill official positions based on skill and talent rather than wealth and recommendation from existing officials. The Imperial Examination System tested candidates for bureaucratic positions using what is viewed as the first standardized tests based on merit. Exams during the Sui Dynasty tested candidates’ proficiency in the “Six Arts” and the “Five Studies.”

The Six Arts consisted of four scholarly arts that included music, arithmetic, writing, and the knowledge of public and private rituals and ceremonies, and two militaristic arts—archery and horsemanship. The “Five Studies” include military strategy, revenue and taxation, civil law, agriculture and geography, and the Confucian classics.

The Tang emperors continued the practice, and refined the exams. The exams remained in use for the next 1300 years, finally being abolished near the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911, the last dynasty of Imperial China).

Of the twenty Tang Dynasty emperors, almost every one was a great patron of poetry, and most were themselves poets. Early in the dynasty, poetry was added as a requisite for exams for degrees and critical to promotions for officials. This resulted in every scholar and official being a poet. The Complete Anthology of Tang Poetry, edited during the Qing Dynasty, contained nearly 50,000 poems by 2,200 poets.

Of the thousands of poets in the “Golden Age” of the Tang Dynasty, there are a few of particular renown. Wang Wei (699-761) was a hermit poet noted for his landscape quatrains (poetry on scenes of water and mist with little human presence). Li Bo (or Li Bai, 701-762) was known as “the Immortal,” and a master of yuefu (Ancient Style) poetry. Approximately 1,100 of Li Bo’s poems survive. Li Bo is the most-imitated Chinese poet in English. Du Fu (712-770) was known as “the Sage,” and though he wrote in all poetic forms, was master of the 7-character lüshi. Of his 1,500 extant works, about two-thirds are in this form. Du Fu is generally considered China’s greatest poet.

Form Specifics

Also see the sidebar: The Chinese Language and Romanization

There was gradual codification of the lüshi form due to its inclusion in the civil service exams. Its earlier open-ended format became a prescribed 8-line structure. In each 4-couplet verse, the 2 nd and 3 rd couplets are made of “parallel lines,” where each component of the first line is matched by a grammatically similar, semantically related, tonally antithetical component in the second line. The last couplet is not bound by this rule, and the first couplet is usually not. Each line contains 5 or 7 characters, and the number of characters per line is uniform throughout. The rhyme falls at the end of the second line in each couplet.

Chinese poetry is often on the subjects of natural conditions, geographical aspects of land, rain, the moon, and contemplation. The poems are frequently on the human aspect of things – the inevitable in life, pangs of parting and separation, human affection and the wisdom of living in the moment.

Shi , Chinese poetry, is divided into gushi (“old poems”) and jintishi (“regulated verse”). Lüshi is the basic form of jintishi. There are two other forms of jintishi: jueju and pailü. Jueju (‘truncated verse’) is a quatrain that follows the first half of the lüshi form; no parallelism is required. Jueju is comparable to the Japanese tanka (Bardic Circle, Jan. 2001). Pailü is the extended form of lüshi, observing the tonal pattern but having no prescribed length and allowing the rhyme to change several times throughout the poem.

  Falana Reflects

 

Full moon, and I think of home;

    familiar things bring comfort:

 

rainbow spray where sea meets shore,

    thread-thin trails where elves made sport,

 

tales the Singers sang in stars,

    tales, spoke soft, of solemn sort.

 

Time has passed, tales come to ends.

    Mem’ry is long, the night short.

 

 

 

  Reiksciel’s Reply

 

Moon fades. She’s not here.

    I’m waiting, alone.

 

Time slows, night deepens.

    Fearful, I am stone.

 

Wind blows. Earth slumbers.

    Bereft, a soul moans.

 

Dawn comes. She does not.

    I wait through time unknown.

References

“On a Moonlight Night” (5-character lüshi) by Du Fu, translated by Witter Bynner. http://afpc.asso.fr/wengu/wg/wengu.php?l=Tanghis&no=105

“A View of the Wilderness” (7-character lüshi) by Du Fu, translated by Witter Bynner, http://afpc.asso.fr/wengu/wg/wengu.php?l-Tangshi&no=184

“In my lodge at Wangchuan after a long rain” (7-character lüshi) by Wang Wei, translator unknown, www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Poetry/tangshi.html

“In the quiet night” (5-character jueju) by Li Bo, translator unknown, www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Poetry/tangshi.html

Examples

http://etext.virginia.edu/chinese/frame.htm

300 Tang Poems

www.hornbill.cdc.net.my/e-class/oldchina/qt_inte.htm

The Poems of the T’ang Dynasty

www.chinapage.com/poem/300poem/introduction.html

Introduction to 300 T’ang Poems

http://poetry-chinese.com/jintishimenu.htm

Tonal patterns of regulated verse

www.olimu.com/Notes/ChinesePronunciation.htm

Chinese Pronunciation

weber.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/pinyin2.html#

Mandarin Pronunciation

Barnstone, Tony, and Chou Ping, ed. The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry: From Ancient to Contemporary, the Full 3000-year Tradition

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