Journal of the Peking Oriental Society (Volume 2) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1887. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... POETS OF CHINA DURING THE PERIOD OF THE CONTENDING STATES AND OF THE HAN DYNASTY BY J. EDKINS, D. D. The Confucian age produced no poetry brilliant enough to be preserved. The tone of thought was prosaic at that time. After the close of the Book of Odes, B. C. 585, to the year B. C. 312, the date of Chtt Yuen's being disgraced at the court of Ch'u, there elapsed 273 years during which there appeared no poetry of any importance. The literati did not encourage it and, if it was written, no students cared to preserve it. This is quite a large space of time to be filled up merely by prosaic literature. No doubt much was written and lost, but if so, no whisper of its existence has been preserved. From B. C. 312 onwards, much poetry was written and an almost unbroken succession of poets maintained a position of influence in the literary firmament. Of these literary stars the brightest was Chti Yuen. He took a position of great distinction as a man of genius and became founder of poetical style, as Tso Chieu-ming had become the founder of prose style. These two great literary artists, each creative and permanently influential, were separated by a little more than a century from each other. Tso belonged to the Lu kingdom, with Confucius and Mencius, and was of the school of the Confucianist literati. Chu Yuen knew little of the scholars of Lu. He lived on the Yang tsz river above Hankow, at King cheu, amid the plains of Hu pei. IBy temperament a poet, while he loved the midnight sky, he gazed with no less admiration on the solar orb. He collected and planted all sorts of flowers and trees in his own broad lands and studied them for poetic purposes. But he was not a landscape poet. His chosen sphere was that of human feelings and duties and speculations. He pored over an...