+ About the Speakers

RELATED TOPIC:
The Book of Songs and China's Literary Tradition

RELATED TOPIC:
Legends of the Zhou and the Nature of Chinese Society

RELATED TOPIC:
The Han Dynasty Codification

RELATED TOPIC:
Individual Voices in the Book of Songs

 
THE BOOK OF SONGS:
"THE GREAT PREFACE"
AND FIVE NOTIONS ABOUT POETRY

First Notion: Poetry and Emotions

Robert Oxnam :: The interpretations of the Book of Songs by Confucian scholars of the Han dynasty have been immensely important to the development of Chinese poetry. Five notions in particular have influenced Chinese poetry for centuries. First is the notion that a poem is a place where one's deepest emotions are expressed. One group of Han scholars put it this way:

From "The Great Preface" to the Book of Songs

The poem is the place to which one's preoccupations go.
Within the mind it is a preoccupation;
emerging in language it is a poem.
The emotions are stirred and take form in words.
If words are not enough, we speak them in sighs.
If sighs are not enough, we sing them.
If singing is not enough,
then unconsciously our hands dance them
and our feet tap them.

Paul Rouzer :: As soon as you read the poem, you feel what is in the poem. You feel what the author felt, and you, yourself, can react spontaneously to that.