A Comparative Study Of Poetics Of Yuan Mei And Zhang Wentao

This article intends to make a comparative study of poetics of Yuan Mei,who epitomizes the spirituality school in the Qing dynasty,and Zhang Wentao,a later representative poet of the school.Rather than exhaustively list their point of views or put excessive focus on some certain definitions and terms as traditional research does,this article takes the view of poetics comparison to compare Yuan and Zhang on the poetics differences and similarities as well as their performances.Epitomizing the spirituality school poetics,Yuan Mei broke the boundaries in the poetic circles during the periods of Emperor Qianlong and Jiaqing and made further progress in poetic composition,the words and phrases used and the poetic style.As a later representative of spirituality school,Zhang Wentao read widely and selected concisely so that he absorbed the essence from Yuan Mei’s poetics while developing a manner of his own.This article is composed of five parts which respectively are ‘comparison of the essence of poetry’,‘comparison of poetry composition’,‘comparison of the poetic style’,‘comparison of poetry criticism and appreciation’ and ‘the reason of differences and similarities of Yuan and Zhang’s poetics’.The first chapter compares the differences and similarities between the opinions of Yuan and Zhang on the topic of poetry essence.As a representative of spirituality school,the pursuit of life rhythm of poetry takes priority over everything else as the first standard to be a poet.Thus both Yuan and Zhang regard the touch of life,namely the ‘the true sentiment’ as the essence of poetry.Having experienced ups and downs in his official career life period,and after roaming around the kaleidoscopic world,Zhang Wentao composes poem from his life experience and values the sincerity,the virtue and the beauty of sentiment.The second chapter is a comparison of Yuan and Zhang’s opinions in terms of poetry composition.Their main consensus lies in the dialectical opinion of the relation between natural talent and acquired learning,between emulating the ancient rules and initiating new one.Both of them pay attention not only to the sensitivity and mastery of the poetry,but also the continuous accumulation with time.In regard to the relation of the ‘ancient’ and ‘self’,they all emphasize that one should absorb and benefit from the wisdom of the ancients and also lay stress on individual creation in poetry.In addition,they highlight the inspiration during poetry composition.As for the words and phrases in poetry,they prefer to use those are plain but concise and refined in order to ‘enrich the spirit’ of poetry.The emotion expression in poetry should be strong and has a power to move and inspire people,thus it should have a certain kind of substance existing in it.This substance,as Yuan Mei thinks,should be the ‘talent’,while Zhang Wentao reckons it as the ‘spirit’ that could light up the whole poem,and this is where the differences of their opinions lie on poetry composition.The third chapter makes a comparison of the two from the aspect of poetry language,namely the style of words and phrases.Both of them insisted on advocating the resistance of using one single type words and phrases.Except for this however,their main styles are very different from each other.Yuan Mei’s poetic language is more lively and various while Zhang Wentao’s is more of the style of deep melancholy and ethereal.The fourth chapter states the differences and similarities between Yuan and Zhang on the point of poetry criticism and appreciation.Both Yuan and Zhang hold the same opinion to make comment from the view of ‘taste’.However as it goes to the relation between poetic taste and personality traits,Yuan Mei thinks that ‘the fact that Guo Feng is good has nothing to do with personality traits’,whereas Zhang Wentao puts more attention on the relation between poetic taste and personality traits in his Shi Cao where there are large amounts of comments on poets and their poetry.When making comment on Du Fu’s poetry,Yuan Mei has a clear attitude of either praising or criticizing.He advocates to learn from Du Fu’s composing attitude ‘My poetry derives from the learning of others’,and criticizes that Du Fu’s poems ‘have too much habitual practices’,as he points out that Du Fu’s poems are too much restricted by rhyme and rhythm thus appear to be ‘hidebound’.On the contrary with Yuan Mei,and according to the general observation of Shi Cao,some verses are directly converted from Du Fu’s poems and there are even more than 20 poems whose content is all about comments either on Du Fu or on his poetry.Zhang Wentao identifies with Du Fu’s poetry in terms of artistic technique,content and theme of poetry and composition attitude,this is also one reason that his poetry is of a deep melancholy and ethereal style.Chapter five mainly illustrates the differences and similarities of Yuan and Zhang’s poetics from three aspects which are respectively the situation of poetic circle of that time,their life experience and geographical environment.