[ **up: [[Poetry]] | [[Chinese language]]** ] --- # Chinese poetry ## Form and symbolism [[2024-0416. 'Chinese people are more likely to express feelings of love in a more roundabout or symbolic way'.|'Chinese people are more likely to express feelings of love in a more roundabout or symbolic way...']][^1] [[2024-0725. 'In classical Chinese painting the white space defines what forms emerge, and in Buddhism emptiness is wholeness.'|'In classical Chinese painting the white space defines what forms emerge, and in Buddhism emptiness is wholeness.']][^2] --- ## Poets ### Wang Wei [[Wang Wei's poetry is spare and clean; 'each character resonates in emptiness like the brief birdcalls he records in one of his poems'.|Wang Wei's poetry is spare and clean; 'each character resonates in emptiness like the brief birdcalls he records in one of his poems'.]][^2] --- ### English translation [[2024-0725. 'The poem in translation must carry on conversation with other poems in order to discover itself.'|'The poem in translation must carry on conversation with other poems in order to discover itself.']][^2] [[2024-0725. 'While the elimination of rhyme and meter from translations of Chinese poetry has created a distinguished English-language tradition of 'Chinese' free verse ... it has also denied the poem its right to sing.'|While the elimination of rhyme and meter from translations of Chinese poetry has created a distinguished English-language tradition of 'Chinese' free verse ... it has also denied the poem its right to sing.']][^2] [[“And yet, it may even add to the charm of a love poem if we do not know whether a man is addressing a woman or another man.”|'And yet, it may even add to the charm of a love poem if we do not know whether a man is addressing a woman or another man.']][^3] [^1]: Zhang Shijie, ‘Mastering Chinese Poetry, Ep. 2: Love Seeds’, *Culture China*, 8 September 2019. https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-08-07/Mastering-Chinese-Poetry-Ep-2-Love-Seeds-IWHHpIE6iI/index.html. [^2]: Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping, eds. *[[Barnstone and Ping , eds. 'The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry', 2005.|The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry: From Ancient to Contemporary, The Full 3000-Year Tradition]]* (New York: Anchor Books, 2005), preface. [^3]: Wolfram Eberhard, “Introduction: The Symbolic Language of the Chinese”, in *[[Eberhard. 'A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols', 1986.|A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols: Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought]]*, London: Routledge, 1986, p. 7.