2. On the Language and Feeling of Poetry (Part I)

Today let's chat about how to grind corpses into soil and make them grow something with color. Even without the structuralists' troublemaking, the idea of structure is probably not difficult to understand. Grasping the so-called historical structure or paradigm of poetry is one entry point for dissecting the corpses of the ancients, but don't turn it into an anatomy class the way the structuralists do. Appropriate analysis is necessary, and materials on this subject are probably so abundant they'd be surplus even as toilet paper. If you don't have the conditions to research it yourself, just find one book and take a look. So-called paradigms are always a matter of endless academic debate — generally, knowing them is enough, unless you need to make a living flapping your lips about them. After gaining a general understanding of poetry as a whole, you should then read in a focused, structured manner according to specific paradigms, finding classics within each paradigm to read. The so-called classics are those that have been recited by mouth and hand the most times throughout history — different poetry anthologies record these. For poetry, oral recitation is absolutely crucial. Oral recitation produces language-feel (yugan), and the subtlety and sensitivity of this language-feel cannot be overstated for anyone who plays with poetry. Language-feel is the key that distinguishes so-called literati poetry from poet's poetry, and is also the key that, on a subconscious level, differentiates between paradigms and styles. Poetry increasingly becomes textual garbage precisely because of the lack, coarseness, and dullness of language-feel. Once one develops sensitivity to the language-feel of different types of poetry, everything has a foundation. Diction, vocabulary, arrangement, and so on can all accumulate and grow from this. Practice on the basis of language-feel, consolidate and continuously heighten its sensitivity through practice — this is a path worth exploring. Feelings are pent up inside, and what is released becomes voice, becomes poetry and song. Divorced from this, everything else is useless.

Yesterday I rambled a bit about language-feel. Today I'll continue to develop the topic. The application of language-feel in writing is somewhat analogous to orchestration in composition. Anyone with experience writing symphonies will understand this clearly. As I said yesterday, the starting point of all writing should be feelings pent up inside, and the bridge between the completion as text and this starting point is language-feel. Or we could say language-feel is the inner, non-speculative activity through which feelings acquire form. Relatively coarse language-feel comes from rational accumulation — most so-called literati poetry is of this type. But vital, living language-feel is connected to life itself.

Let us continue with the composition analogy. When life is enveloped at a certain moment by something — or when life breaks into an impulse of expression — this impulse may be a certain rhythm, a motif, or a harmonic color. It may even be something indescribable. This triggers expression, or rather, this is the very first expression. How to give it form is a crucial question, and language-feel is the catalyst between expression and form.

Language-feel is induced by felt-language. The transition from felt-language to formed-language contains all the secrets of creation. Everyone is born with language-feel, but subsequent learning often makes it rigid. The most dreaded thing when looking at someone's work is to look at the complete collected works — hardly anyone's complete works are worth reading all the way through. Most people probably use a habitual mode of language-feel to template all their felt-language, and this language-feel is often not even derived from their individual life — it comes from books, from corpses, from the antique mood. Eventually, even the individual's innate language-feel is ruined. What becomes over-familiar is often not the words themselves. Words are merely form. A living language-feel can strike dead words back to life.

Obviously, the forms through which felt-language becomes formed-language are many — eight-legged essays, reports, self-criticisms are all examples. But if a certain kind of expression is called poetry, and poetry is the direct expression of living life's existence, then the vitality of language-feel between felt-language and formed-language constitutes the essence of poetry. To dwell poetically — in a sense, that's a tautology. Being lies in not-being; the meaning of being is revealed in not-being, and this revelation is essentially poetry. Non-poetic revelation merely reveals, poetically, the absence of poetry. Here, poetry is used in the broad sense. All creation is essentially a kind of revelation, and all revelation is poetic. For poetry in the narrow sense, if one is bound by the rope of words and spins within, without gaining the release of language-feel from poetry in the broad sense, then poetry merely reveals the absence of poetry.

Yesterday I mentioned felt-language and formed-language, which can also be replaced by the simpler terms "feeling" (gan) and "language" (yu) — this is conceptually more concise and clear. The language-feel relationship between feeling and language was given a preliminary analysis yesterday. Since this issue is quite complex, let's set it aside for now and first clarify the surrounding concepts. Related to "language" is the question of form, which in the large sense includes all technique — rhetoric, composition, literary form, etc. — and constitutes the basis on which language is recorded. Form is, in essence, related to public language and originates from the individual's social existence. I must declare that I have never had much interest in concepts, but since I've adopted this rather tedious textual form, the necessary conceptual distinctions become part of the game.

The concepts here are all distinct from similar concepts in public language. For example, the concept of "form" is not the one paired with the category of "content" in public language. What public language calls "content" is also a kind of form in my framework. In public language, "content" has the most typical public-language orientation — just think carefully and this isn't hard to understand. For life's present moment, the public-language concepts of both "form" and "content" are superfluous. People are accustomed to this mode of thinking only because they are bewitched by public language, which is connected to laziness of language-feel.

Related to "feeling" is life's present moment. All problems of writing lie in how this present moment of life becomes language, acquires form, and obtains content and form in the public sense. Feeling, in essence, is always fresh. Freshness, that patch of vitality, is the distinctive quality of life's present moment (speaking in the public sense). Obviously, from the perspective of poetry in the broad sense, this point is the same.

Today I begin discussing a topic that may carry the smell of gunpowder — I'll try to write as mildly as possible. For poetry in the broad sense, life at every moment is in-feeling and in-language, and this is forever fresh. Feeling and language need no bridge — any division here is superfluous. For poetry in the narrow sense, the separation of feeling and language becomes unavoidable. As I said yesterday, this separation is, to some extent, a reflection of the individual's separation from social existence. This is said only in the sense of language. Separation exists for the purely individual as well, even though the concept of the purely individual has only theoretical significance. Here we must also touch on the debate about private language and public language, and the issue of individualized writing that extends from it. Both private and public language fall within the domain of language. Individualized writing may very well involve a separation of feeling and language. The starting point of all these issues remains within the domain of language. Furthermore, the entanglement of reading and writing also spins within the domain of language. Whether the author is alive or dead, and other disputes about the text, also spin here. Like a mountain that won't turn but the water does, Western philosophy, after its linguistic turn, has been spinning here ever since (and wasn't much better before), and it seems it still hasn't spun its way out. As for Chinese classical literary theory, whether starting from the Yijing, from Daoism, from Chan, or all at once — peering through the dazzling text, through the various brandished banners — unfortunately, it's still spinning within the domain of language. Though I know that having spoken the above I may again be inviting trouble, unfortunately, I've spoken. Since I've spoken, it stinks. Unrolling this foot-binding cloth will take a long time, but I've caught a cold recently, and neither this medicine nor that one has helped. I'll start slowly tomorrow and see if I can cure the stench. As for what domain I'm speaking from? One should abide nowhere and yet give rise to the mind — where is the mind? It's late. Let's sleep.