Poems of solitude

Jerome Ch'en

The six Chinese poets who are represented in this anthology are all medieval and date from the seven hundred years following the beginning of the Three Kingdoms in 220 A.D. They are not therefore contemporaries, nor do they form a school. They share a mood, subtle and infinitely variable, that gives them each a place in this collection. We are inclined to forget that the Chinese poet is always a civil servant, a diplomat, or a public figure. With the frequent political changes that have been China's birthright, many of her finest artists found themselves exiles and rebels. Juan Chi, the third-century poet, preserved his life with a studied eccentricity and almost continual drunkenness. Li Yü, a monarch-poet of the tenth century, had two separate political careers, the second ending in his being ordered to take poison. Pao Chao was killed in a rebellion, while Wang Wei and P'e Ti, the...