Rhymeprose on Literature - Lu Ki

Lu Ki was born in the late 3rd century and lived in a time of political upheaval and strife. When enemy forces overtook the Wu dynasty, the elder members of his noble family were killed. Lu Ki and his younger brother survived and fled to the north where they joined a flourishing court as literary scholars. In two years of peace, Lu Ki wrote his Rhymeprose. He rejoined the military when the court was attacked by warring factions, and was put to death after his troops were defeated.

One of the earliest pieces of Chinese literary criticism and instruction, Lu Ki's Rhymeprose on Literature (also referred to as Wen fu) is written in rhymed free verse, imitating the subject matter as Lu Ki writes of process, form, and content. As in the Western tradition, he writes that art's purpose is to instruct in the ways of virtue and to discourage vice. The following is an excerpt from "Process":

"Thereupon, submerged words squirm up, as when a flashing fish,
hook in its gills, leaps from the water's depth;
hovering beauties flutter down, as when a soaring bird,
harpoon-string about its wings, falls from a crest of cloud.
He gathers words untouched by a hundred generations;
he plucks rhythms unsung for a thousand years."

This short section exemplifies the creative process, beginning with the quiet reflection and search for inspiration, climaxing in the action of capturing the beautiful fish or bird, and ending with a quiet reaching to a timeless art.

Lu lists the five criteria for literature; music, harmony, sadness, decorum, and richness. Sadness, in traditional Chinese poetry (and, in many ways, society) seems to imply an honesty that gaiety cannot hope to achieve. In the Western culture, as well, tragedy is prized for the richness of emotion it evokes, and for its ability to sober an audience.

"Perhaps you forsake reason to strive for novelty;
you go after the inane and pursue the trivial.
Your language wants sincerity and is deficient in love;
your words wash back and forth, and never come to the point.
They are like thin chords reverberating--
there is harmony, but they are not sad."

From "The Use of Poetry," Lu writes: "[Literature] inscribes bronze and marble, to make virtue known; it breathes through flutes and strings, and is new always." The virtue of literature is that it is able to renovate man, to make him new and more pure over time. It is through the arts that man can refine himself, for they make him malleable to change.