Poems in Pictures: Iconic Poetry in the Chinese and English Traditions

Robert Neather

Leafing through mainstream anthologies of European literature, one might easily conclude that the “pattern poem” was one of those literary curiosities confined to one particular cultural tradition. Yet in Chinese literature too, a similar—and no less curious—poetic genre existed. As we shall examine below, both literary traditions, quite separately, developed forms of pattern poem which, though bearing the marks of their cultural specificity, reveal strikingly similar motives of composition and reasons for development that suggest more universal aesthetic preoccupations.

The term “pattern poem” is one of a range of similar terms from Western literature, including “figure poem”, “shape poem” and, in the twentieth-century French context, “calligramme”, all of which though carrying different nuances, suggest poetry that is in some sense explicitly iconic. The precise nature of this iconicity varies significantly. Sometimes, the lines of a poem may be arranged in an obviously pictorial shape that directly reflects the subject matter in a consciously “imagic” way; alternatively, more abstract formal patterning may be found, such as the use of geometric shapes or number symbolism as a means to organize the poem (see further below). In all cases, however, we have a situation in which poetic form is said to “mime” poetic meaning.1 In the European tradition, the use of iconic patterning as a determinant of poetic form has a considerable history. The earliest examples of explicitly “imagic” or pictorial usage are generally attributed to the Greek poet Simmias of Rhodes (fl. 300 BC), whose three pattern poems—in the shape of an egg, an axe, and a pair of wings—have been passed down to us through works such as The Greek Anthology, the hugely influential collection of Greek poems ranging from the seventh century BC to tenth century AD that has been described as “the greatest single repository of iconic poems in antiquity”.2 Shapes such as Simmias’s wings were to be used by later writers, including the sixteenth-century French court poet, Mellin de Saint-Gelais (1487-1558), and perhaps most famously, the metaphysical poet George Herbert (1593-1633), whose “Easter Wings” has long been a favourite in anthologies of English poetry and has even attracted the attention of Chinese translators.3 Another well-known example of explicit pictorial shape is Herbert’s “The Altar”, in which the text is arranged in the I-shaped form of a church altar.

An altar of I-shaped form in a painting

And besides such obviously pictorial forms of patterning, Herbert’s anthology, The Temple (in which the poems “The Altar” and “Easter Wings” are included), is also rich in varieties of iconic patterning that may be described as more “diagrammatic”,4 such as anagrams (e.g. the religious conceit of “MARY/ARMY” in a piece entitled “Anagram”), iconic rhyme-patterns (the echoed end-rhyme in “The Echo”), and the use of non-standard styles of reading such as those found in “Coloss. 3.3” (see further below).

Some thirty years after the posthumous publication in 1633 of Herbert’s The Temple, the early Qing dynasty writer, Wan Shu 萬樹(dates unknown), was completing his own collection of iconic poetry, the Xuan Ji Sui Jin 璇璣碎錦or Brocade Fragments in the “Armilliary Sphere” Form. A formidable collection of pattern poems exhibiting differing forms of iconicity, it originally contained one hundred pieces, of which some sixty remain.5 Like Herbert’s work, Wan Shu’s collection can perhaps be seen as the apotheosis of an equally long tradition, whose origins, as often with Chinese literary genres, are not easily traced.6

To understand just how pattern poems like Wan Shu’s Brocade Fragments work, we need to know something more about their generic categorisation. In China, such poems have generally been categorised as a subgenre of huiwen 回文, a designation normally translated as “palindromes”. The term palindrome generally refers to a phrase which may be read in two directions, both forwards and backwards (e.g. the well-known “Able was I ere I saw Elba”), though it is also sometimes used more loosely to include other styles of reading, such as “boustrophedon”, in which alternate lines in a text are read in alternate directions, as the Greek etymology of this word (the bull turning as it ploughs the field) suggests. In the Chinese tradition, palindromic poems or hui wen shi 回文詩have sometimes been seen as encompassing two main styles of reading. One is the straight “for-wards and back-wards” style that works in a similar way to an English palindrome: the poem may read in either direction, and rhymes in both cases. The other involves a more intricate, cyclical style of reading, in which the reader may start from any character in a given line, and keep reading until s/he arrives back at the beginning. In every case, the lines will rhyme, and again, the same style of reading will work in the opposite direction also. This means that a single poem of twenty characters in length will yield as many as forty other poems (twenty in a forwards direction, and twenty reading backwards).7

The possibilities for intricate, large-scale pattern-building afforded by this style were to be an important factor in the development of true pattern poems that were more than simply palindromic. The earliest known example of such a work (dating from the late fourth century AD), to which the title of Wan Shu’s collection alludes, is Su Hui’s 蘇蕙“Xuan Ji Tu Shi”璇璣圖詩, a poem so extraordinary and of such fame that it continues to find reference even today in the works of popular novelists.8Composed of 841 characters arranged in a perfect square and subdivided into smaller geometric units, its palindromic possibilities are such that it is said to yield a total of no less than 3752 possible poems.9 The histories tell us that Su Hui composed the piece—and then wove it into a five-coloured tapestry—to try to regain her wayward husband Dou Tao’s 竇滔 affections, a mission in which she appears to have been successful.1

Xuan Ji Tu Shi”璇璣圖詩

  In Wan Shu’s Xuan Ji Sui Jin, we can see the extent to which, by the mid-seventeeth century, the genre had been exploited and developed into a whole range of iconically distinctive forms. Some poems are arranged in a clear shape, though unlike the poems in the Western tradition touched on above, the shape in such examples is not simply formed by the script itself, but rather is sketched in outline, the characters then being placed within that outline: in “The Gourd” (Hulu 葫蘆),11(Figure 1)for instance, a single row of characters snakes its way around the inside edge of a gourd outline, the middle space being left blank. Other poems are arranged in more abstract geometric formations, such as “Five Varied Groups” (Wu Za Zu 五雜組),12(Figure 2) in which a complex pattern of five triangular portions of text is set within two superimposed squares, each triangle symbolizing one of the ancient five elements of fire, water, earth, metal and wood, and containing an entire column of eight repeated characters denoting the particular element in question. In still other poems, such as “Eight-Columned Document” (Ba Hang Jian 八行牋),13(Figure 3) interpretation is taken to yet further extremes. Here, the poem is arranged in the shape of an unfolded document, whilst the characters are printed back-to-front (they are more easily read when held in front of a mirror). The reader must also interpret the meanings of the characters in a “back-to-front” way, i.e. interpret each as its antonym. Hence the first two characters of the poem, chun qing 春晴(meaning “clear skies of Spring”), must be interpreted as qiu yu 春雨(“rains of Autumn”) in order to correctly decode the meaning.

In Wan Shu’s collection, then, we find a highly complex interplay of differing iconic usages, which perhaps reveals the inadequacy of the traditional categorisation of such poems as “hui wen”. More obviously “imagically” iconic use of pictures and geometric patterning combines with a variety of differing reading styles which themselves have iconic potential, though of a more “diagrammatic” variety. These styles include palindromic hui wen arrangements, boustrophedon and antonymic interpretation, as well as styles such as “li he” 離合, which might be translated as “split and match”, and which involves the separation and combination of component parts of the initial characters from two adjoining poetic lines. Again, one calls to mind George Herbert, in which as we noted earlier, iconicity involves a similar range of usage that encompasses pictorial shape, diagrammatic patterning, palindromic readings and word-play such as anagrams.

Why should writers in two so apparently diverse cultures, with two such different poetic traditions, both arrive at a similar use of shape and pattern? What is it about this particular combination of poetic text and image that transcends cultural divisions? A number of reasons suggest themselves.

　
An emblem poem by George Wither
  In the first place, the notion that poetic word and visual image share a close relationship is found deeply embedded in a range of culturally diverse poetic traditions, and in various manifestations. At the more abstract level, for instance, one recalls Su Shi’s 蘇軾famous remarks on the Tang poet Wang Wei 王維(701-761), which suggest an almost total interchangeability of word and image: “When one savours Wang Wei’s poems, there are pictures in his poems (Wei Mojie zhi shi, shi zhong you hua 味摩詰之詩, 詩中有畫). When one contemplates his pictures, there are poems in his pictures (Guan Mojie zhi hua, hua zhong you shi觀摩詰之詩, 畫中有詩).”14In the Western classical tradition, similar notions are found in Horace’s famous dictum “ut picture poesis” and in the works of Simonides, ideas which were to become especially influential in 16thand 17thCentury Europe.15At a more material level, the combination of word and image is most obviously seen in the use of poems as accompanying texts in traditional Chinese painting, or in the genre of “emblem poems” in renaissance Europe, in which a poem and motto are combined with a symbolically significant illustration.16Whilst approaching the issue in different ways, all such examples are in some sense attempts to explore the interplay of text and image. The growth of pattern poems in both Chinese and European traditions perhaps represents a natural attempt to marry word and image still further, in a form which seeks to achieve a still more complete fusion of the textual and visual elements in question. In the Preface to the 1741 edition of Wan Shu’s anthology, Jiang Yu 江昱writes, with genuine admiration: “When these poems were conceived, I do not know whether the poem came first or the picture” (Wu bu zhi qi shusi shi, xian you shi yi xian you tu 吾不知其屬思時先有詩抑先有圖). Such a statement is perhaps testimony to the total fusion of text and icon that might be achieved.

Beyond this fundamental, more general desire to fuse word and image, there is also a shared sense in both traditions that iconicity, whether more “imagic” or more “diagrammatic”, can provide a further dimension to reveal profounder truths than words alone can express, that it can help to connect with universal patterns. Consider, for instance, a poem such as George Herbert ’s “Coloss. 3.3”. Here, “iconicity is ... driven to its limits”,17and the patterning of words and geometric shape finds its most intricate expression. This poem is written in the form of a perfect square which is divided into two triangular halves by a diagonal line of words discernible within the usual horizontal line structure, reading “My life is hid in Him, that is my treasure” (it has further been suggested that this line also reads in a semi-palindromic way: “My treasure is [,] that in Him is hid my life”).18This diagonal recalls the message of the poem’s subtitle: “Our life is hid with Christ in God”, setting up an extremely complex interplay of symbolic resonances that have profound religious significance, forming what one commentator styles a kind of “mystical geometry”.19The use of iconicity at this level reflects a world-view in which “the concept of similarity or likeness [in this case, between form and meaning] ... can be regarded as a common denominator of the pursuit of knowledge, artistic creation, and the search for religious truth.”20

Such a belief that iconic patterning can reveal more than words alone is clearly shared in the Chinese context, mirrored in remarks such as those of the Tang poet, Gao Shi 高適(716-765), who once commented on a poem of similar size to Su Hui’s original Xuan Ji Tu Shi, opining that: “Its cyclical turns have numerical [pattern], like the transitions between cold and hot seasons; in its accordance with transformations, it is never exhausted, and may be called the unfathomable of yin and yang” (Xunhuan you shu, ruo han shu zh diqian; yingbian wu qiong, wei yin yang zhi moce 循環有數, 若寒暑之遞遷; 應變無窮, 謂陰陽之莫測).21Despite the hyperbole, such a view recalls earlier associations of the tu as a “chart” or “diagram” (rather than a picture) that expressed some profound or mystical truth, revealing patterns in the universe that often involved number symbolism. The language of Gao Shi’s description is striking in this regard, recalling strongly the tone of passages in the Yi Jing 易經. This is particularly true of the phrase “the unfathomable of yin and yang”, which suggests an almost divine status, for in the Yi Jing, we learn that “What cannot be fathomed in terms of yin and yang is called ‘the divine’” (Yin yang bu ce zhi, wei zhi shen 陰陽不測之, 謂之神).22

　
      In reading iconicity in the Chinese and Western poetic traditions, there is a further element which suggests a shared perspective as regards the desire to compose such pieces. For if iconic poems fulfilled a desire to fuse image and text, or provided a means to reveal cosmic truths, they also developed for another reason: a sheer delight in the ingenious use of language. At one level, this might be used simply for clever or comic effect: shape can be exploited as a form of visual punning (as in Rabelais’ “La Dive Bouteille”,23where the shape of a bottle is used to frame a eulogy on wine), a fact which may explain its existence today largely in the realm of humorous or children’s verse, as well as in advertising, where iconic punning is common.24At a higher level, such delight in the linguistic possibilities of iconicity transcends mere ingenuity, adding a further dimension by which language can be pushed to the extreme, performing a kind of “word-magic” whose very complexity forges a poetic vision all its own. Here, one might draw an analogy from the traditional Chinese genre of fu 賦(“rhapsody” or “rhymeprose”). The Han fu poet, Sima Xiangru 司馬相如(179-117 BC), once famously described the mind of the fu writer as “encompassing the universe”, whilst Yang Xiong 揚雄(53 BC-18 AD) would characterize Sima Xiangru’s works as being “not of this world”, or more literally “made divine” (shen hua 神化). In a more recent age, Arthur Waley famously spoke of the fu as creating a “sensuous intoxication of rhythm and language”,25a state in which language itself, at its extreme, creates a different state of consciousness. In pattern poems of both Chinese and European traditions, it may be argued, iconicity may be used to create a similar sense of “intoxication”, so that, like Emperor Han Wu Di after reading a fu, we have the sensation of “floating on clouds”.26Certainly, for one reader of Wan Shu’s pattern poems, the experience seems to have been positively breathtaking.27

Pattern poems, we have attempted to show above, whilst each bearing the marks of their own particular poetic and cultural traditions (most obviously in the differing possibilities presented by differing scripts),28developed in each case out of more universally shared aesthetic preoccupations. Yet we should also, finally, take note that cross-cultural exchange too had its part to play. For whilst the two traditions developed independently, there is evidence to suggest that with the development of cross-cultural ties, they also influenced each other. In George Puttenham’s famous treatise, The Arte of English Poesie (published 1589), we find a substantial section on the use of geometrical shape in poetry, which suggests that the English iconic poetic tradition may have been enriched by borrowing from East Asia:

　But being in Italie conuersant with a certaine gentleman, who had long trauailed the Orientall parts of the world, and seene the Courts of the great Princes of China and Tartarie, I being very inquisitiue to know of the subtillities of those countreyes, and especially in matter of learning and of their vulgar Poesie, he told me that they are in all their inuentions most wittie, and haue the vse of Poesie or riming, but do not delight so much as we do in long tedious descriptions, and therefore when they will vtter any pretie conceit, they reduce it into metricall feet, and put it in forme of a Lozange or square, or such other figure, and so engrauen in gold, siluer or iuorie ...29

Many of Puttenham’s examples would appear to be of Middle Eastern or Central Asian origin, but he mentions China more specifically again when giving examples of emblematic devices of the kind used in renaissance “emblem poetry”, providing a lengthy description of the Imperial device of intertwined dragons as being without compare:

　... that of the king of China in the fardest part of the Orient, though it be not so terrible is no lesse admirable, |&| of much sharpnesse and good implication, worthy for the greatest king and conquerour... ...30

Such statements give us tantalising glimpses into cross-cultural influences in the later development of iconic literature. The scope of the influence, and the extent to which it was truly mutual, are issues which must await further research.

Notes

1.See Max N?nny and Olga Fischer, eds., Form Miming Meaning: Iconicity in Language and Literature, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1999. For the specific category of “imagic iconicity”, see pp. xxii ff.

2.J.H. Hagstrum, quoted in Michael Bath, Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture, London: Longman, 1994, p. 53.

3.On the translation of George Herbert’s “Easter Wings” and “The Altar” into Chinese (with examples), see Guo Jianmin 郭建民and Huang Ling 黃凌, “Cong Kua Wenhua Jiaodu Kan Yingyu Yixing Shi de Hanyi” 從跨文化角度看英語異形詩的漢譯, in Guo Jianzhong 郭建中ed., Wenhua yu Fanyi 文化與翻譯, Beijing: Zhongguo Duiwai Fanyi Chuban Gongsi, 1999, pp. 391ff.

4.The idea of “diagrammatic iconicity”, which pertains to structural and semantic iconic patterning, is developed at N?nny and Fischer, eds., Form Miming Meaning, op. cit., pp. xxiii ff.

5.On the dating and textual history of the Xuan Ji Sui Jin, see Murakami Tetsumi 村上哲見, “Bunjin no Sai: Ban Koyu Jiryaku” 文人之最:萬紅友事略, in Chugoku Bunjin no Shik? to Hy?gen 中國文人の思考と表現, Toky Kyuko Shoin, 2000, p. 21.

6.The origins and early development of the genre (which is treated as a subdivision of huiwen 回文) are subject to considerable debate which cannot be rehearsed here. For a summary of the main arguments, see Ho Wenhui 何文匯, Zati Shi Shili 雜體詩釋例, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1986, reprinted 1991, pp. 53ff, also p. 62. See also Fan Wenlan’s 范文瀾commentary at Wen Xin Diao Long Zhu 文心雕龍注, Beijing: Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, 1958, p. 68.

7.These methods of reading are discussed in Sang Shichang’s 桑世昌preface to the Song dynasty collection of palindromic poems, the Huiwen Leiju 回文類聚. They are also discussed in Ho Wenhui, Zati Shi Shili, op.cit., pp. 53-54.

8.See for instance Chang Show-foong’s 張曉風humorous anecdote entitled “Sige Shen Chu Hunyin Weiji de N?ren” 四個身處婚姻危機的女人, in her collection Nide Ceying Hao Mei 你的側影好美, p. 145.

9.This is the calculation of the Ming commentator, Kang Wanmin 康萬民, who devotes an entire work to the interpretation of the piece. See Xuan Ji Tu Shi Dufa 璇璣圖詩讀法, cited at Ho Wenhui, op. cit., p. 59.

10.For a brief account of Su Hui, see Jin Shu 晉書, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1974, 96/2523. For a lengthy elaboration of the Su Hui story and its treatment in subsequent literary works, see Li Wei 李蔚, Shiyuan Zhenpin: Xuan Ji Tu 詩苑珍品 : 璇璣圖, Beijing: Dongfang Chubanshe, 1996, pp. 1-25. According to Li, the work is datable to 381 AD.

11.Xuan Ji Sui Jin, Siku Quanshu Cunmu Congshu 四庫全書存目叢書edition (Ji bu 集部, 238 ce 冊), B/1b (modern pagination, p. 145).

12.Xuan Ji Sui Jin, B/14b (modern pagination, p. 155).

13.Xuan Ji Sui Jin, B/21b (modern pagination, p. 158).

14.See “Shu Mojie ‘Lan Guan Yan Yu Tu’’’ 書摩詰「藍天煙雨圖」, in Su Shi Wen Ji 蘇軾文集, Zhonghua Shuju 1986, 70/2209. For a discussion of the ideas embodied in this phrase, see Asami Yoji 淺見洋二, “ ‘Shi Zhong you Hua’ wo megutte: Chugoku ni okeru Shi to Kaiga” 「詩中有畫」をめぐって中國における詩と繪畫, Shukan Toyogaku, 78 (1997), pp. 58–80.

15.See e.g. Michael Bath, Speaking Pictures, op. cit, p. 53.

16.ibid., passim.

17.See Matthias Bauer, “Iconicity and Divine Likeness: George Herbert’s ‘Coloss. 3.3’”, in N?nny and Fischer, eds., Form Miming Meaning, op. cit., p. 226.

18.ibid., p. 225.

19.ibid., p. 220.

20.ibid., p. 215.

21.Gao Shi, “Wei Dongping Xue Taishou Jin Wangshi Rui Shi Biao” 為東平薛太守進王氏瑞詩表(my translation), cited at Ho Wenhui, op. cit., p. 69.

22.Zhou Yi Zhushu 周易注疏(SBBY ed.), “Xi Ci Zhuan” 繫辭傳, 7/8b.

23.Contained in Chapter 44 of Le Cinqui?me Livre, the last work in the Gargantua and Pantagruel series.

24.One of the most obvious examples of humorous usage is Lewis Carroll’s “The Mouse’s Tail” in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. For further examples of modern humorous pattern poems, see e.g. Paul Cookson, ed., The Works: Every Kind of Poem You Will Ever Need for the Literacy Hour, London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2000. On the use of imagic iconicity in advertising, see Guy Cook, The Discourse of Advertising, London: Routledge, 1992, pp. 78ff.

25.Waley, quoted at Knechtges, The Han Rhapsody: A Study of the ‘Fu’ of Yang Hsiung (53BC-AD18), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, p. 111.

26.Again, the remark is Yang Xiong’s; see Knechtges, The Han Rhapsody, op. cit., p. 40. By way of further analogy with the fu genre, one could cite more specific instances of “intoxicating” features common to both: for instance, the foregrounding of particular radicals for iconic effect is also seen in Han fu. Another feature sometimes seen is the building of complex lists—such as the list of 100 flower names in the pattern poem “Bai Hua Ping” (“100 Flower Screen”)—again found in many Han da fu works.

27.See again Jiang Yu’s 江昱remarks in his Preface to Xuan Ji Sui Jin, Siku Quanshu Cunmu Congshu 四庫全書存目叢書edition (Ji bu 集部, 238 ce冊), p. 127.

28.One instance of iconic usage that can perhaps only be achieved in Chinese is the foregrounding of particular radicals within each Chinese character. For example, in one of Wan Shu’s poems, entitled “The Moon’s Shadow Strikes the Gnomon”, which depicts a sudden flash of moonlight on a hazy night, characters which contain within them the radi cal for “moon” are used in profusion.

29.George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, Book II, Chapter XII, “Of Proportion in Figure”, first published 1589, reprinted in C. Gregory Smith, ed., Elizabethan Critical Essays (Volume II), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1904, pp. 95-6. According to Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書, Puttenham’s reference is “positively the earliest mention of Chinese literature in an English book, or perhaps in any European book.” See Qian Zhongshu, “China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth Century”, first published 1940, reprinted in Adrian Hsia, ed., The Vision of China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1998, p.34. See also Qian’s essay of similar period, entitled “Tan Zhonguo Shi” 談中國詩, collected in “Xie Zai Rensheng Bianshang de Bianshang” 寫在人生邊上的邊上, p.54, Qian Zhongshu Ji 錢鍾書集vol. 12, Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 2001. In both essays, Qian further states that two of Puttenham’s examples are translations from the Chinese, though this is perhaps not fully certain, Puttenham’s text referring to their author only as “a great Emperor of Tartary whom they call Can ... surnamed Temir Cutzclewe”.

30.Puttenham, op. cit, p.110.

　Robert Neather gained his PhD in Chinese literature from the University of Cambridge, with a thesis specialising in the development of the fu genre during the Mid Tang period. He is currently Assistant Professor of translation in the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at City University of Hong Kong. He was previously employed as a Research Fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and as a lecturer in Chinese translation and interpreting at the University of Bath, UK. His research interests include translation and cross-cultural studies, and he is currently involved in a joint research project with colleague Wang Xiaolin, examining traditions of Japanese sinology.