THE ELEMENTS OF CHINESE ‘REGULATED VERSE’
Lüshi or Jintishi
• The strictures represented by these rules are not entirely rigid.
• Each character represents a complete element of sense, usually a free
monosyllabic word. No character should be repeated in a poem.
• Each syllable is counted in a more or less evenly stressed metrical pattern.
• Lines are of regular length, either either five or seven (rarely six) syllables. The
lines are nearly always end-stopped.
• There is a pause after the second syllable of the five character line which
should correspond to a semantic and syntactic division. There is a similar ‘major’
pause after the fourth syllable of the seven (or six) character line, as well as an
additional ‘minor’ pause after the second syllable.
• This metrical regularity, which might seem in danger of verging on the
monotonous, is modulated by a cadence of tones along each line of verse. The
tones describe variations of pitch intrinsic to each monosyllable. Only certain
arrangements of tones along the line are permissible, giving a basic repertoire of
tonal profiles to the line. This detailed tonal regulation (too complex to outline
here) gives its name to the major form of classical Chinese verse: lüshi (literally,
‘regulated poem’).
• Lines are strictly associated in couplets. The standard regulated form consists
of four couplets. A two couplet form is also common, usually considered to be
extracted from a notional eight-line poem, or the result of such a longer work
being ‘cut off’. Hence the Chinese name for such quatrains, jueju or ‘cut-off
lines’. Poems with a larger number of couplets may be tonally regulated.
• Contrasts of tonal pattern serve to keep the members of a couplet in tense
opposition. Partial similarity in the tonal patterns of the juxtaposed members of
adjacent couples serve to link the couplets together. More precisely than in the
case of other poetries, the effect is like a tapestry woven in the elements of
linguistic structure.
• The last words of each couplet rhyme and the same rhyme is preserved
throughout the poem.
• The lines of many couplets (always the second, and nearly always the third, in
the four couplet form) must display a more or less exact and subtle ‘parallelism’
of both structure and sense, involving matching correspondences of particular
words and classes of words. The associations and subsequent enrichment of
meaning implied by these correspondences may be as important to a poem as its
narrative, syntactical or logical development. Thus, the regularity produced by
end-stopped lines of equal length is further modulated by a form of language
capable of greatly enriching the poem’s meanings in directions which may not
follow the usual ‘line of the sentence’.
John Cayley, last revised 19/3/08