{"id":123504,"date":"2018-03-28T11:00:48","date_gmt":"2018-03-28T15:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=123504"},"modified":"2018-03-28T08:28:08","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T12:28:08","slug":"chinese-rhymes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/28\/chinese-rhymes\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Rhymes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Everybody who cares anything for old poetry in English knows how it feels\u2014knows how awful<\/i> it feels\u2014when a poem is rhyming away and then suddenly the rhyme goes off the rails for a second because English pronunciation has changed since the time the poem was written. Take a look at this gallery of specimens.<\/p>\n

Exhibit A:<\/p>\n

Come live with me and be my love<\/b><\/span>,
\nAnd we will all the pleasures prove<\/b><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Millions of examples of that. Love<\/i> rhymed with prove<\/i> or move<\/i>. Elizabethan poetry is rife with this.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Exhibit B:<\/p>\n

A winning wave, deserving note
\nIn the tempestuous petticoat;
\nA careless shoestring in whose tie<\/b><\/span>
\nI see a wild civility<\/b><\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tie<\/i> used to be pronounced tee<\/em>. Read it again and say tee<\/em> where it says tie<\/i>. Aha.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Exhibit C:<\/p>\n

Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
\nWhat\u2019s roundly smooth or languishingly slow.
\nAnd praise the easy vigor of a line<\/b><\/span>
\nWhere Denham\u2019s strength and Waller\u2019s sweetness join<\/b><\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t know whether Pope pronounced line<\/i> \u201cloin,\u201d or join<\/i> \u201cjine.\u201d But it must have been one or the other.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Exhibit D:<\/p>\n

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
\nIn the forests of the night,
\nWhat immortal hand or eye<\/b><\/span>
\nDare frame thy fearful symmetry<\/b><\/span>?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eye<\/i> was pronounced ee<\/em>. Read it again.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Now, granted, it is possible<\/i> to find these sonic derailments attractive, especially if you\u2019re a modern undergraduate who is strongly prejudiced against rhyming poetry in the first place. In cases like that, the young, cutting-edge reader delights to find a surprising splash of \u201cfree verse\u201d amid the \u201cstupifying welter of couplets\u201d or whatever. About these students we need say no more. The rest of us, of course, regret the loss of the intended effect.<\/p>\n

What does all this have to do with Chinese? Well, if you don\u2019t already know, you could easily guess that the Chinese language\u2014with all its dialects, creoles, sister languages, and God knows what all\u2014has changed a great deal in the last, oh, three thousand years. We have quite a bit of Chinese poetry from way back in there, and if I understand things correctly, the Chinese still like it. A generalization, but I\u2019ll venture it. And indeed, there were centuries wherein one could not even pretend to be educated unless one could recognize at a glance any reference to any of the 305 poems in the oldest Chinese poetry anthology, the Shijing<\/i>. This, despite the fact that what came out of your mouth when you recited the poems was quite drastically different from what the stuff sounded like when it was composed, a thousand, two thousand years before you<\/i> got a hold of it. And here we come to the heart of the matter.<\/p>\n

You would think <\/i>that what I\u2019m going to call \u201crhyme spoilage\u201d would be a constant threat to classical Chinese poetry\u2014and you\u2019d be right. Those examples I gave of rhyme spoilage in English? The oldest specimen up there is about four hundred years old. What would happen if we looked at samples of English rhyming that were five times as old as that? (Which, of course, is impossible, since both the English language and rhyming poetry did not exist in Europe two thousand years ago.) You might think all<\/i> Zhou dynasty rhymes would have been obliterated by now. But you\u2019re in for a surprise. We\u2019ll just look at one example.<\/p>\n

Here is an English translation (by Burton Watson) of one of the most famous poems from the\u00a0Shijing<\/i>:<\/p>\n

Peach tree young and fresh,
\nbright bright its blossoms:
\nthis girl\u2019s getting married,
\nshe\u2019ll do well in her home.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Peach tree young and fresh,
\nplump are its fruits:
\nthis girl\u2019s getting married,
\nshe\u2019ll do well in her rooms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Peach tree young and fresh,
\nits leaves lush and full:
\nthis girl\u2019s getting married,
\nshe\u2019ll do right by her people<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here\u2019s the same thing, word for word, according to Michael Fuller:<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

peach…….\u2019s…….young and vigorous
\nbrilliant…….its…….flowers
\nthis…….child…….is on…….going to husband
\nproper…….her…….room…….house<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

peach…….\u2019s…….young and vigorous
\nthere is…….plentiful…….its..…..fruit
\nthis…….child…….is on…….going to husband
\nproper…….her…….house..…..room<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

peach…….\u2019s…….young and vigorous
\nits…….leaves…….luxuriant
\nthat…….child…….is on…….going to husband
\nproper…….her…….house..…..people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And here are the last words of each line, with the rhymes in blue bold (don\u2019t worry about the diacriticals; you don\u2019t need to understand those for our purposes here):<\/p>\n

y\u0101o
\nhu\u00e1<\/b><\/span>
\ngu\u012b
\nji\u0101<\/b><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

y\u0101o
\nsh\u00ed<\/b><\/span>
\ngu\u012b
\nsh\u00ec<\/b><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

y\u0101o
\nzh\u0113n<\/b><\/span>
\ngu\u012b<\/span>
\nr\u00e9n<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Want to hear somebody read the poem aloud in modern Chinese? Click here<\/a>. Wanna see it written out in Chinese? Click here<\/a>. And after you\u2019re done screwing around with that, note that the second and third stanzas certainly rhyme just like they\u2019re supposed to\u2014even though the words a modern Chinese person enunciates sound nothing like the original pronunciations of the words.<\/p>\n

I have right here in front of me an extraordinarily useful book that just came out from Harvard University Press called An Introduction to Chinese Poetry: From the Canon of Poetry<\/em> to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty<\/i>, by the abovementioned Michael Fuller. There are other books where you can get word-for-word renditions of the poems, but this book also gives you the linguistic reconstruction of the original<\/i> rhyme sounds, so you can see something about the poems that only a specialist would have been able to see, hitherto.<\/p>\n

I, personally, don\u2019t understand the linguistic hieroglyphics that are used here, but I can see what rhymed, and I can also see how different from modern Mandarin the various words were in 1000 B.C.E.<\/small> For example, second stanza: the modern Chinese rhyme is {sh\u00ed | sh\u00ec<\/i>}; the ancient Chinese rhyme was {*m\u0259.lit<\/i> | *s.tit<\/i>}. I don\u2019t know what \u201c*m\u0259.lit\u201d sounds like, but I can tell you one thing it doesn\u2019t<\/i> sound like: sh\u00ed<\/i>. That\u2019s<\/i> how much the words have changed in three thousand years<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>. Yet\u2014and this is the crazy part\u2014they still rhyme in their new forms. This can only be because all the vowels and the consonants shifted together and consistently, like with the Great Vowel Shift in the Indo-European languages. Or that other thing where all the p<\/em>\u2019s in Latin show up as f<\/em>\u2019s in English (pater<\/i>\/father<\/i>, et cetera).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in that first stanza, the rhyme looks dicey to me. The pair {hu\u00e1 | ji\u0101<\/i>}\u2014is that a legit rhyme in Chinese? I can\u2019t help but think it\u2019s not the poet\u2019s desired effect, but it\u2019s hard for me to be sure; I\u2019m out of my depth here. But look, if that particular example is not well chosen, trust me: I could pelt you with hundreds of cases about which there could be no doubt. Like, just opening the Shijing<\/i> at random, I\u2019m looking at a stanza where the end words are: \u0113<\/em>, y\u014du<\/em>, z\u01d0<\/em>, and ji\u0101o<\/em>. Surely none of those<\/i> rhyme with each other.<\/p>\n

And see, this is where you<\/i> come in. My questions are: Would it be right to say that a lot of old Chinese poetry has pretty much gone from being perfectly rhymed Robert Frost poems to being weirdly rhymed Emily Dickinson poems? As in:<\/p>\n

And now We roam in Sovreign Woods –
\nAnd now We hunt the Doe<\/strong><\/span> –
\nAnd every time I speak for Him
\nThe Mountains straight reply<\/strong><\/span> –<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And do I smile, such cordial light
\nOpon the Valley glow<\/span> <\/strong>–
\nIt is a Vesuvian face
\nHad let it\u2019s pleasure through<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And when at Night – Our good Day done –
\nI guard My Master\u2019s Head<\/b><\/span> –
\n\u2019Tis better than the Eider Duck’s
\nDeep Pillow – to have shared<\/strong><\/span> –<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

… and so on. Is that what we\u2019re looking at? What I really mean is: Do modern Chinese-poetry enthusiasts have to develop a taste for Dickinson-style rhyming? And if so, is that fun for them? Or what.<\/p>\n

Or put it this way: Does rhyme spoilage\u2014spoil anything for them?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my other question. If I understand the thing, medieval (not ancient) Chinese poets intentionally used superannuated rhymes all the time in their stuff, based simply on the authority of the ancient classics. In other words, there were pairs of words that they considered good rhymes, despite the fact that the words did not rhyme to them, and indeed had not rhymed to anybody in a thousand years or whatever. It\u2019s sorta like W. H. Auden doing this in 1939:<\/p>\n

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
\nWilliam Yeats is laid to rest.
\nLet the Irish vessel lie<\/strong><\/span>
\nEmpties of its poetry<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But that was a stunt. Yeats was emptied of his poetry \u2019cuz he was dead, and that rhyme {lie | poetry<\/i>} is \u201cdead,\u201d too, get it? But who in the world would deliberately use dead rhymes not to make a point but simply based on the reasoning, Well it was good enough for the ancients, so it\u2019s good enough for me\u2014? The answer to that<\/i> question is apparently zillions of Tang- and Song-dynasty poets. So my question #2 is: What\u2019s up<\/i> with that? How can they possibly have done this? It just seems so, so counterintuitive …<\/p>\n

Right now there are people reading these very words who know\u2014who truly know\u2014the answers to these questions. So I\u2019m going to go ahead and announce a very exciting conference that is to be held in my gmail inbox. We are looking for papers that would speak to the two questions, above. As with all conferences, cranks and mental defectives are welcome. Here is my\u00a0email<\/a>. Now, I want to emphasize: I don\u2019t know Chinese, I don\u2019t wanna hear a lot of personal narrative, I don\u2019t have all day. The conference is beginning\u00a0right now<\/i>. Here is your lanyard. Start talking, expert.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Anthony Madrid lives in Victoria, Texas. His second book is <\/em>Try Never<\/a>. He is a correspondent for the <\/em>Daily.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Everybody who cares anything for old poetry in English knows how it feels\u2014knows how awful it feels\u2014when a poem is rhyming away and then suddenly the rhyme goes off the rails for a second because English pronunciation has changed since the time the poem was written. Take a look at this gallery of specimens. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[33512,33510,33509,33507,2056,33511,20883,3110,33508,2160],"class_list":["post-123504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-an-introduction-to-chinese-poetry-from-the-canon-of-poetry-to-the-lyrics-of-the-song-dynasty","tag-burton-waston","tag-classical-chinese-poetry","tag-elizabethan-poetry","tag-emily-dickinson","tag-michael-fuller","tag-rhyming","tag-robert-frost","tag-shijin","tag-w-h-auden"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nChinese Rhymes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Would it be right to say that a lot of old Chinese poetry has pretty much gone from being perfectly rhymed Robert Frost poems to being weirdly rhymed Emily Dickinson poems?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/28\/chinese-rhymes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chinese Rhymes by Anthony Madrid\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"March 28, 2018 \u2013   Everybody who cares anything for old poetry in English knows how it feels\u2014knows how awful it feels\u2014when a poem is rhyming away and then suddenly\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/28\/chinese-rhymes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-03-28T15:00:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/noble-ladies-in-tang-dynasty-1024x300.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Anthony Madrid\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Anthony Madrid\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/28\/chinese-rhymes\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/28\/chinese-rhymes\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Anthony Madrid\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ff28732ebcbdac8b865bc16ad5887c2e\"},\"headline\":\"Chinese Rhymes\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-03-28T15:00:48+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/28\/chinese-rhymes\/\"},\"wordCount\":1688,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/28\/chinese-rhymes\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/noble-ladies-in-tang-dynasty-1024x300-1024x300.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"An Introduction to Chinese Poetry: From the\u00a0Canon of Poetry\u00a0to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty\",\"Burton Waston\",\"Classical Chinese poetry\",\"Elizabethan poetry\",\"Emily Dickinson\",\"Michael Fuller\",\"rhyming\",\"Robert Frost\",\"Shijin\",\"W. 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