CHINESE VERSE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 82, 5 April 1924, Page 17

CHINESE VERSE

•Mr. Arthur-Waley has done more than any other living writer to make Chine.se poetry known.to readers of English. "The ,'JCemple ' and other Voems" (his latest) continues the task of translation; This volume contains'a number of long poems called "fu," ■ several narrative ballads; and a passage from the Buddhist Scriptures. VFu," Mr. Waley tells us, was the name given to literary poetry as opposed to; song-words. ' Though it was used for almost''every kind of literary poetic purpose—-lyrical, narrative, reflective, satirical—it always tended.to show one characteristic intimately connected With its origins: the "fu" was originally a.spell. . In.its purely magical form it is derived from-the hymns by the recitation of which the priests of Ch'u compelled: the gods to descend from Heaven and manifest themselvesUo, their Worshippers... Of this • nature 'are the "Nine Hymns" of Ch'u Yuan, who lived in the fourth century B.C. One of the "fit's"- from/one of them, "To the God of the River" :—

"For our sakes that ride in boats of sandal wood, ' Oh make the' Yuan and Hsiang to have no wave. ' . » Oh' cause the waters of the river.to flow quietly. -..■■.' We look 'for you, 0 Lord, but'you do hot come. • . , . For whose sake, think you", but'yours ■are we blowing at ;our.flutes?"

The God of the River, like Baal, is either talking, or he is pursuing, or he is on » journey, or peradvenlure. W «locptb'»nd inugl bo awaked,. " .