No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Thetsyr are a comparatively late development in the history of Chinese poetry and less well known in the West than the shy
, of which many translations exist. It may be interesting to look at a few examples of tsyr and a few elementary rules of their composition so as to be able to distinguish them from shy and to appreciate their special qualities.
page 116 note 1 Foreword to The Herald Wind, by Candlin, Clara, London (1933), pp. 27–8Google Scholar (Wisdom of the East Series).
page 117 note 1 Loc. cit., pp. 28–9.
page 117 note 2 In his Tyan tsyr menjinq 
Shanghai, 1933, p. 1–2.Google Scholar
page 118 note 1 
page 118 note 2 See below, p. 127.
page 120 note 1 A Chinese writer on tsyr (1620–1688), see Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, ed. by Hummel, A. W., vol. i, Washington, 1943, p. 564.Google Scholar
page 120 note 2 Loc. cit., pp. 22–3.
page 121 note 1 
/ denotes pause of shortest duration.
// denotes a longer pause. This is not as long a pause as the period, but it allows the reader to dwell for a moment on the psychological subject or emphasis that went before.
* denotes a long pause, a break, a period.
page 121 note 2 Literally “a person fated to be one's enemy in this life owing to the retribution of a wrong committed in one's previous life against that person”—one's karma. It is often used as a term of endearment for the beloved, especially when he or she is exasperating.
page 122 note 1 Where a pyng tone is allowed even though this tsyr has a tzeh tone I indicate it thus: B
Where a tzeh tone is allowed even though this tsyr has a pyng I indicate it thus:
page 123 note 1 Literally: storeyed, or storey upon storey. One is in the right atmosphere for poetic inspiration up in a high tower.
page 124 note 1 Now Tay-Yuan 
in Shansi, famous then for bright sharp blades. The name indicates that the lady used a knife of the best quality for cutting the orange.
page 124 note 2 Corresponding roughly to the present Jiangsu Province, where salt came from in those days. Salt is still used in this way now by some people to flavour fresh fruit like melons and oranges in the belief that it combats the acidity of the fruit and makes it taste sweeter.
page 124 note 3 The incense burners of those days were often shaped in animal forms.
page 124 note 4 A musical instrument.
page 125 note 1 Walcy, A, 170 Chinese Poems, London, reprinted 1942. Introduction, p. 4.Google Scholar
page 126 note 1 Sorrow consists of numerous minute threads of sad thoughts and feelings intricately entwined.
page 126 note 2 The tsyr 
(anonymous) has the lines 
.
page 127 note 1 
translated as “crimson wall” by Teresa Li in “Fifty Poems from the Chinese”, (Tien Hsia Journal, Shanghai, 10, 1939, p. 304).Google Scholar
page 127 note 2 Lovers usually made an oath of faithfulness to each other saying that their love would be as constant and long-lasting as the mountain and the sea.
page 127 note 3 Letters were written on silk before paper was invented, and so the poetic names for a letter are still associated with silk or brocade.
page 127 note 4 See also here above, p. 115, n. 1.
page 128 note 1 Shih, Hu in his Selections of Chinese Lyric Poems, Shanghai, 1927, p. 44Google Scholar, quotes 
in 
, jiuann, 29, p. 2Google Scholar
to prove that it was the eighth day of the seventh month.
page 129 note 1 
Wutorng in Autumn symbolizes loneliness and sadness.
page 130 note 1 
translated as “You ask” by Teresa, Li, “Poems from the Chinese,” (loc. cit.), p. 239.Google Scholar
page 130 note 2 Levis, J. H., Chinese Musical Art, Henri Vetch, Peiping, 1936, p. 210, Appsndix II.Google Scholar
page 131 note 1 Dawn, 3 a.m.
page 131 note 2 In saying life is but a dream and we are only passing guests of this earth, he also referred to his captive state, in another's court.
page 131 note 3 
has two meanings: “don't” or “evening”. Shih, Hu in his Selections of Chinese Lyric Poems, p. 48Google Scholar, says that he prefers the meaning “evening”. I agree with him.
page 131 note 4 
“rivers and mountains” also implying the meaning of “kingdom”.
page 131 note 5 In the Herald Wind (see above, p. 116, n. 1), pp. 36–37Google Scholar, the last two lines were translated as:—
Flow on, deep streams.
Fade, flowers, and fall.
The Spring is past.
'Tis heaven when Spring is here,
But days are only common days
When Spring is gone.
Various interpretations were given by Chinese readers:
(a) 
is mere interjection.
(b) That the poet feels it is so easy to leave one's own land and so difficult to see it again, that it is like spring going away with the flowing water and fallen petals and once it is gone, it is as far from us as heaven is from earth.
(c) That spring is going away to heaven or remaining on earth?
I venture to interpret it as a dream of past glory and happiness and beautiful spring time which was like heaven on earth, because the poet keeps harking back to this theme as in another tsyr of his:
Dr. Hu Shih in his Selections of Chinese Lyric Poems, also puts an exclamation mark after the last line.
page 134 note 1 The Shieh family refers to that of 
of 
who had high rank and wealth and who kept a large house with gardens and ponds and pavilions, which were famed at the time for their splendour, hut these fell into decay afterwards and were lamented by a Tarng poet
:—
It is customary for one to think of the rise and fall of one's family fortune in connexion with such famous families.
page 135 note 1 A stringed musical instrument.
page 137 note 1 That is to say, the scenery of the falling leaves of the Wutorng in autumn makes me feel very sad and the fine rain on top of it makes it doubly so.
page 137 note 2 In The Herald Wind, by Candlin, Clara (see above, p. 116Google Scholar, n. 1), the last two lines are rendered differently (p. 69):—
And sorrow, sorrow, sorrowing;
Can such a word as this
Be ever ended?
page 138 note 1 Transactions of the Philological Society, 1948, p. 127.Google Scholar