Shi
The shi is China's classic lyric form. The early poetry anthology and Confucian classic Shijing (Classic of Poetry), compiled during the Zhou dynasty (1045–256 BCE), contained poems with four-character rhymed lines, the earliest sort of shi. Although composed on nonpolitical topics, the poems of the Shijing were believed to contain messages on good governance and the well-run state, and poetry from the Zhou dynasty forward was seen as, among other things, a vehicle for criticizing and reforming the state. Because a main characteristic of shi is indirection and allusion, meanings other than the readily apparent surface meaning were sought for and identified.
During the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) shi with either five- or seven-character lines developed. This style of shi, like the shi of the Shijing, featured grammatical parallelism and rhymed lines. Melancholy themes were popular; this tendency carried over into the Six Dynasties period (c. 222–589), when it became a conventionalized stance. The poetry of Tao Qian (365–427) stands out during this period; his poems on turning away from officialdom and embracing the joys of drink and the life of the gentleman farmer were models for later disaffected bureaucrats.
The shi form developed further in the Tang dynasty, with lushi ("regulated verse"—shi whose tonal pattern and rhyme scheme were closely dictated) and jueju ("broken-off lines"), an exceptionally short form of just four lines. In contradistinction, the older styles of shi came to be called gushi ("old-style verse"). The great poets of the Tang include Li Bo (701–772), who preferred gushi, and Du Fu (712–770), who wrote lushi and was admired by later generations for his realism and his choice of mundane subjects, which had earlier been thought inappropriate for poetry. The shi of Wang Wei (699–759), another great poet of the Tang, are informed by Buddhist sensibilities and a deep appreciation for landscape (Wang Wei was also a celebrated painter).
Shi continued as a major poetic form in subsequent eras and even into modern times, but with the compositions of the Tang, the form is considered to have reached its high point.
Further Reading
Ayling, Alan and Donald Mackintosh. (1965) A Collection of Chinese Lyrics. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
Yoshikawa, Kojiro. (1989) Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 1150–1650. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Owen, Stephen. (1981) The Great Age of Chinese Poetry, The High T'ang. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Watson, Burton. (1971) Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century. New York: Columbia University Press.
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