The “harmony but difference” of the theory of sexual spirit in poetry of both sexes

The theory of sexual spirit in poetry is one of the four major theories of poetry in the Qing Dynasty. Now most scholars understand the connotation, value and significance of the theory of sexual spirit from Yuan Mei’s poetic view. In fact, women in the Qing Dynasty also made certain contributions to the theory of sexual spirit. There are similarities and gender differences, which should be part of the theory of sexual spirit. Therefore, to objectively and comprehensively evaluate the theory of sexual spirit, we should start from the perspective of both sexes.

The resonance of the theory of sexual spirit in poetry of both sexes. As soon as Yuan Mei’s theory of “sexual spirit” came out, “followers flocked like ducks and ants”①, forming the “Yuan Mei phenomenon”②, and he led the literary world after Wang Shizhen. Among the large number of followers, the most eye-catching are the figures of about 60 female disciples of Suiyuan, followed by the Bicheng ladies’ poetry group of similar size, forming a network of sexual poetry that prospers in harmony and singing and competing, and female poets are also worthy of being the new force of sexual spirit.
Modern scholars have different interpretations of Yuan Mei’s “spirituality”. Restoring the context of the time to understand it should be a shortcut. He said: “Poetry is the temperament of people.” It is determined that temperament is the origin and soul of poetry. Second, advocate originality, such as “Answering Lan’s Discussion on Poetry and Books” says: “Poetry is the temperament of each person, and it has nothing to do with the Tang and Song dynasties.” Poetry must reflect the unique “this one”, and there is no need to stick to the Tang and Song dynasties. Third, emphasize “talent” and “inspiration” when creating. For example, “Jiang Xinyu’s Preface to Jiyuan Poems” says: “Writing poetry is like writing history. Talent, learning, and knowledge should be combined, and talent is the first.” Fourth, the language is natural and concise. “Poetry should be simple rather than clever, but it must be simple with great cleverness; poetry should be light rather than heavy, but it must be light after being heavy.” In summary, the theory of spiritual poetry should include straightforward temperament, distinct personality, wonderful inspiration and natural language. Most female poets take spirituality as a guide and echo this in their creation. For example, the dozens of poems in Xi Peilan’s Changzhen Pavilion Collection, which was praised by Yuan Mei as “the best poet of this dynasty”, reveal the theory of poetry of nature and spirit: “I just know that the wonderful and vivid sentences are not about words but about nature and spirit”③; Jin Yi’s “How to focus on nature and spirit” also takes nature and spirit as the purpose. Wang Duan, Shen Shanbao, Gui Maoyi, Zong Can, Wu Jing, Liu Wanhuai and others all agree that the content of poetry should be true: “Poetry is the sound of nature, and true feelings and true scenes are all good works.”④ Wu Jing said in “After the Self-titled Collection”: “What can I get from a petal of fragrance? I dare to boast of being honest and straightforward instead of strange.” In terms of creative personality, female poets in Shen Shanbao’s “Famous Ladies’ Poetry Talk” repeatedly agree that the novel and natural works that are “unspoken” are good poems, such as “(Guo) Shengyu’s poems are all written by nature and spirit, without any traces of piling up or chiseling, which is precious.” Even works that do not conform to the rules but are naturally beautiful and graceful are fully affirmed: “Li Wanyu of Anqiu was smart and intelligent since childhood, and she was fond of chanting. Although she did not pay much attention to the rules, she often spoke verses and was naturally beautiful.”

The alienation of the poetic theory of sex and spirit between the two sexes. Female poets in the Qing Dynasty approached the text from a gender perspective and paid attention to the gender differences in poetics, showing a different characteristic from men’s attention to female literature. Therefore, while the poetics of the two sexes are interdependent, they also appear to be alienated from each other. It is mainly reflected in:

1. Different reasons for identification. Yuan Mei’s theory of sex and spirit originated from the fact that “charm”, “style”, “texture” and various poetic concepts, poetry criticism, and poetry creation phenomena that bound talents and suffocated temperament have been binding poetry culture for nearly a hundred years, and it is getting tighter and tighter. Yuan Mei inherited the essence of poetry theory of previous generations, especially the Gong’an Poetry in the middle of the Ming Dynasty and Zhao Zhixin, broke the boundaries and school numbers of the Tang and Song dynasties, tried to save the life of poetry, and became a destroyer of feudal orthodoxy. The reason why most women identify with the theory of sex and spirit is the status of “second sex”. Because no matter what class they are in, women as a whole belong to the disadvantaged group, and their creative psychology and creative conditions are very different from those of men. As for the former, the super-utilitarian purpose of creation is an important reason why women are mainly spiritual. People of different genders have different understandings of the social significance and life significance of poetry creation. Men use poetry as a tool to enter the official career, and the diverse life between success and failure affects the diversified development of their poetry creation and poetics, which has been demonstrated by many. Female poets are different. The living conditions on the margins of society, the mental repression of depression and helplessness, and the weakness and tolerance of their nature make them unable to get rid of the mark of “weakness”, which also determines that the dominant mentality of their creation is the mentality of the weak. In their eyes, literature is no longer a great cause of governing the country and an immortal event, but may just be a beautiful decoration in life. Relying on it to establish some meaning in the illusory world, life will not appear too pale and empty. Without the heavy political burden in the traditional literary view, the value of poetry is also restored to life itself, which should be an important reason why women choose spiritual poetry. Many of the “Ten Sons of Wuzhong” turned to Yuan Mei after learning from Ren Zhaolin. Although there was a factor of fame, it cannot be ruled out that the theory of spiritual nature is particularly attractive to women. At the same time, Taoist thought and Taoism also have a certain impact on women’s pursuit of truth. Taoism advocates “truth”. There are 66 “truth” characters in the book “Zhuangzi”. There were many female poets who believed in Taoism in the Qing Dynasty, and “truth” naturally became an aesthetic requirement for enlightenment and life.
2. There are differences in specific connotations. First, the scale of showing truth is different. Both male and female spiritual poets advocate straightforward temperament. However, the true temperament expressed by male poets is mainly aimed at feudal orthodoxy, with rebellious characteristics, and they often speak the truth boldly. However, there is little such heresy in female poems. Even if they write about the love between men and women, they are basically in line with Confucian ethics. Surrounding their own spring and autumn sorrows, separation sorrows and parting hatreds. For example, the preface to “Poems of Famous Ladies” says: “Therefore, the poems of modern people and scholars first have Cao, Liu, Wen and Li in their minds, and then imitate them. As for the famous ladies of ancient and modern times, they are inspired by emotions and rooted in nature. They have never imitated, nor do they know schools. They are not Nan Pi and Xi Kun, but they are naturally sad and elegant.” Women lack strict training in reciting poems and writing essays, but they have maintained the sensual characteristics of poetry; the isolated situation also makes them simple and pure in spirit and emotion, and they can get closer to the realm of “true nature”. As Wang Guowei said in “Human Ci Talks”: “Subjective poets do not need to have much worldly experience. The less worldly experience, the more true their temperament.” Yan Dichang also said: “When they tell their emotional life and life experiences, the true elements are much more than those of male literati who can write at will. Delicacy and delicacy are often only a piece of paper away, and the key to this gap lies in whether it is “true” or not.”? Reputation? Second, there is a difference between the delicacy and elegance of poetry. When a certain theory or creative practice is followed, when the positive factors are brought to the fullest, the negative factors are also pushed to the extreme. The theory of poetry of nature and spirit proposed by Yuan Mei did inject a shot of adrenaline into the poetry world of Qing Dynasty, but the problems of the theory of nature and spirit itself and the incompetence of the late generation of nature and spirit gradually brought negative influence to the poetry world, which is also an important reason why Yuan Mei was criticized during his lifetime and after his death. The changes in current affairs and the laws of poetry development have prompted poets to criticize and reflect on the poetry theory and creative atmosphere of the prosperous Qianlong period. As the constructors, practitioners and disseminators of the theory of poetry of nature and spirit, female poets also actively participated in the enrichment and revision of the theory of poetry of nature and spirit, and made certain contributions to the transformation of the poetry style of the Qing Dynasty. Wang Duan once pointed out the negative influence of Yuan Mei bluntly: “The literary style of my hometown was ruined by Suiyuan.” She also traced the source and criticized the pioneers of Xingling, Gong’an and Jingling: In the “Selected Poems of Thirty Ming Poets”, no poem of the Gong’an and Jingling poets was selected, and the evaluation was very low: “The frivolous and obscure of the three Yuans and the mysterious and strange of Zhong Tan are well known to everyone, so there is no need to discuss it in depth.” The reason is that the superficiality of the Gong’an late school and the profound and strange artistic realm of the Jingling school are incompatible with the elegant and correct aesthetic ideal advocated by Wang Duan. How to improve the Xingling Poetry Theory to save the life of poetry? Female poets believe that while pursuing elegance, sincerity, and leisure, they should abandon the wildness of the male Xingling school and express the “elegant and correct” sound, that is, in line with “loyalty, filial piety, righteousness, and bravery, and gentleness and honesty”. For example, Zhang Yin asked himself in “Learning Poetry” to “not be lewd and not hurt the purpose, and silently meet “Guanju””. Cao Xishu’s “Teaching My Old Son Xixiong an Ancient Poem Under the Lamp” says: “The legacy of the Han and Wei dynasties is close to the ancient times, so don’t let him fall into the wild fox Zen.” He taught his son to avoid slipping into the vulgarity of the soul. The requirement for clean language is in line with Li Qingzhao’s opposition to “the dust of words”. It is a correction method proposed by women when facing the shortcomings of male soul poets. This has continued the life of ancient poetry to a certain extent. At the same time, taking the ethics and poetry education that do not violate Confucianism as their refuge also reveals their relatively conservative side of ideology, which is a certain distance from the radicalism of Yuan and Zhao. From Zhongzheng, we can see the different social pressures of men and women. Third, the multi-directionality and singularity of aesthetic emotions are different. The aesthetic emotions of poetry written by men are rich and changeable. There are lofty ambitions to benefit the world, generous and tragic songs of worrying about the country and the people, the feelings of escaping from the world and spending the rest of their lives in the forest, the gentle and tender feelings of clouds rolling and spreading, and even the wild and vulgar feelings of the world. Most women lead a life of sorrow, illness, depression and depression, so the ink marks are often mixed with blood and tears. “Sorrow” has become the emotional core of female poetry, and expressing the sorrow of life has become a collective characteristic of women. For example, Jiang Zhu’s “Reading Zhou Yanyun’s Draft of the Epic of Women and Writing This to Comfort” says “A volume of ice and snow, words and blood and tears”, and Li Mu’s “Inscription on Liangxi Sun Xuying’s “Collection of Gorge Ape””: “Flowers fall in the river city and the water flows turbulently, and the remaining volume of embroidery is sad for autumn alone.”
In short, the theory of female spirituality is closely related to “truth”, “sorrow”, “purity” and “elegance”. “Truth” is the most basic requirement for the content of poetry, requiring the expression of true feelings; “sorrow” is the embodiment of “truth”, which is related to women’s aesthetic emotional orientation; “purity” is the aesthetic taste of poetry formed on the basis of “truth” and “sorrow”; “elegance” is a deepening of “purity”, pointing to the righteousness of temperament, which is opposite to vulgarity and is related to the writer’s subjective personality spirit. Among the four, “truth” is the bone of poetry, “purity” is the spirit of poetry, “sorrow” is the soul of poetry, and “elegance” is the style of poetry. The female spiritual poetry theory characterized by these four features has a significant gender factor, which is a supplement and correction to the male spiritual theory. The two are harmonious but different.
Female poetics is limited by the times and gender limitations and cannot be completely independent. It can only establish a special space of poetics with the unique experience of women through either approval, questioning, subversion, or balance of male poetics. Perhaps this is the unique contribution of a generation of women to the poetics of the Qing Dynasty. Moreover, the “gender poetics” of mutual recognition and mutual benefit is an interesting and important dimension in literary observation. The opening of this space by female poets will have eternal reference and enlightenment significance. [This article is a phased result of the Hunan Provincial Higher Education Scientific Research Funding Project (09C608)]

Notes:
① Jiang Fan: “Records of the Inheritance of Chinese Studies in the Qing Dynasty (Volume 4)”, Zhonghua Book Company, 1983 edition.
②Liu Shinan: History of Qing Poetry Schools, People’s Literature Publishing House, 2005 edition.
③Xi Peilan, “Mrs. Hu Zhizhu’s inscription on Xiangduan’s Baoyuelou Manuscript”, Changzhen Pavilion Collection (Volume 7), Saoye Shanfang, stone print in the ninth year of the Republic of China.
④Shen Shanbao: Talks on Poetry of Famous Ladies (Volume 7), Hongxuelou engraved edition in Guangxu period of Qing Dynasty.
⑤Yan Dichang: History of Qing Ci, Jiangsu Ancient Books Publishing House, 2001 edition, page 593.
⑥Wang Duan: On Poetry to Su Sun’s Nephew, Ziran Haoxue Zhai Poetry Collection (Volume 10), engraved edition in Tongzhi period of Qing Dynasty (1874).