Chapter 11 Forms of Variation: Complication
The laws of formal beauty include unity in diversity, orderliness, repetition, balance, contrast, symmetry, proportion, gradation, rhythm, primary and secondary emphasis, the interplay of the substantial and the insubstantial, variation (irregularity), harmony, and so forth.¹ Among these, “unity in diversity” is the highest-level concept, while “harmony” is the ultimate ideal goal. The focus of “variation” lies in breaking the regularized and orderly forms represented by “orderliness, repetition, balance, contrast, symmetry, proportion, gradation, and rhythm.” In essence, it possesses a character of “disruption.”
In the field of literature, “variation” includes variation in paragraph forms, sentence forms, and sentence patterns, with the purpose of making paragraphs and sentences more lively and diverse in form. “With regard solely to sentence-pattern modification, the methods for creating variation in sentences consist of six types: inversion, irregularity, transformation, complication, mutual-text construction, and omission.”² In this chapter, only “irregularity,” “transformation,” and “complication” will be discussed. “Inversion” and “omission” (ellipsis) are treated in separate chapters, while “mutual-text construction” is more concerned with adjustments in methods of expression and has already been discussed in the first volume, The Aesthetics of Expressive Techniques.
“Irregularity refers to differences in sentence length among sentences and is used to vary syllabic patterns. Transformation avoids the repetition of words or sentences by substituting expressions, thereby achieving the effect of gradually changing scenes. Complication refers to interweaving the wording within sentences so that parallelism loses its strict regularity, thereby expressing the technique of appearing clumsy while embodying great skill.”³ Since scholars of rhetoric generally discuss these three under the broader category of “Complication,” the present author follows this convention.
Section One: Complication
I. Definition and Function of Complication
Complication: Seeking Variation within Orderliness
“Whenever rhetorical devices with orderly forms, such as reduplication, parallelism, parallel construction, gradation, and the like, deliberately substitute vocabulary, interchange word order, expand or contract sentences, or alter sentence patterns so that their forms become irregular and their vocabulary becomes varied, the result is called Complication.”⁴
In writing, “in order to avoid monotony and flatness in sentence patterns, authors deliberately select different words or employ irregular and staggered arrangements so as to make language vivid, lively, colorful, and varied. This rhetorical technique runs counter to the approach of ‘parallelism’ and ‘paired expressions,’ which regard orderliness as beauty. It may also be said that ‘Complication’ is a rhetorical technique used to counterbalance the rigidity of uniformity and standardization.”⁵
In other words, during the process of selecting words and constructing sentences, Complication deliberately disrupts aesthetic requirements of formal beauty such as “orderliness, repetition, balance, contrast, symmetry, proportion, gradation, and rhythm” in order to achieve “variation” and produce effects of irregularity and staggered arrangement.
II. Historical Origins and Development of Complication
In the field of Chinese literature, the gradual maturation of rhetorical devices such as reduplication, gradation, and parallel construction in the earliest anthology of Chinese poetry, the Book of Songs, reveals that ancient people already possessed a considerable understanding of “formal beauty” in language.
For example, in “Mugua” from the “Wei Airs” section of the Book of Songs:
You throw me a quince,
I repay you with a fine jade pendant.
Not merely as repayment,
But to preserve our friendship forever!
You throw me a peach,
I repay you with a precious jade.
Not merely as repayment,
But to preserve our friendship forever!
You throw me a plum,
I repay you with a rare jade gem.
Not merely as repayment,
But to preserve our friendship forever!
This is a love poem depicting the mutual exchange of gifts between young men and women. Formally, it adopts parallel construction, creating a rhythm and cadence of repeated chanting and recurring song, expressing the beauty of free courtship, communal gatherings, and free love among young people in ancient times.
The young woman throws fragrant fruits to the man she admires at a gathering, while the young man removes the jade ornaments from his body and presents them as tokens of affection to the young woman in his heart.
In the poem, “quince,” “plum,” and “peach” are all fruits, while “jade pendant,” “precious jade,” and “jade gem” are all forms of beautiful jade. Throughout the repeated structure, only individual words are substituted. Yet these substitutions create variations in sound and visual form within the language, making repeated singing easier, enriching rhythmic and tonal beauty, and expressing deep affection more effectively.
Many poems in the Book of Songs employ this pattern of parallel construction combined with “substitution of lexical forms” to create variation. Examples include “Jianjia” from the “Qin Airs” and “Taoyao” from the “Zhou and the South.” All possess the external form of folk songs and are well suited to repeated singing.
Another example is Emperor Wu of Han Liu Che’s “Song of the Autumn Wind”:
The autumn wind rises and white clouds fly;
Grass and trees turn yellow and geese return south.
The orchids display their beauty and chrysanthemums their fragrance;
I long for the fair one and cannot forget.
I launch the towered ship and cross the Fen River;
Across the river’s center I raise pure white waves.
Flutes and drums resound and rowing songs arise;
Joy reaches its peak, yet sorrow grows abundant.
How long does youth endure?
What can be done about old age?
The opening couplet,
“The autumn wind rises and white clouds fly;
Grass and trees turn yellow and geese return south,”
and the third couplet,
“I launch the towered ship and cross the Fen River;
Across the river’s center I raise pure white waves,”
form neatly balanced parallel structures and are examples of “line-to-line parallelism.”
In the lines,
“The orchids display their beauty and chrysanthemums their fragrance,”
“Across the river’s center I raise pure white waves,”
and
“Joy reaches its peak, yet sorrow grows abundant,”
the two phrases within each individual line form parallelism internally and are examples of “in-line parallelism.”
The line
“Flutes and drums resound and rowing songs arise”
would originally have been ordered as
“Flutes and drums resound and the rowing songs arise.”
Such an arrangement would have formed internal parallelism corresponding to the third, sixth, and eighth lines. Yet the author deliberately altered the word order, seeking variation within orderliness. This may truly be called ingenious.
From the Tang and Song dynasties onward, poets and lyricists appeared in great numbers. Regulated verse and lyric poetry reached full maturity, and requirements concerning poetic rules—parallelism, tonal patterns, and rhyme—became increasingly strict. Consider the following example:
Excerpt from Bai Juyi’s “Song of Everlasting Sorrow”
The waters of Shu are blue, the mountains of Shu are green;
The Sage Emperor thinks of her morning and night.
In the traveling palace, seeing the moon brings the color of heartbreak;
In the night rain, hearing the bells brings the sound of broken bowels.
Since the third line reads,
“In the traveling palace, seeing the moon brings the color of heartbreak,”
the fourth line should logically read,
“In the night rain, hearing the bells brings the sound of a broken heart.”
In that case, “the color of heartbreak” would correspond to “the sound of a broken heart,” the parts of speech would match, and the two lines would form a proper “line-to-line parallelism.”
However, the author instead uses “the sound of broken bowels,” clearly altering the word order. The intention is to seek difference within similarity and to create variation through Complication.
Section Two: The Formal Aesthetics of Complication
I. The Foundation of Formal Beauty
(I) Embodying Variation within Unity
In Western aesthetics, “unity in diversity” is also called “embodying variation within orderliness.” It is a fundamental law of formal beauty in Western aesthetics and “a comprehensive summary of such principles of formal beauty as symmetry, balance, orderliness, contrast, proportion, the interplay of the substantial and the insubstantial, primary and secondary emphasis, variation, irregularity, and rhythm.”⁶
Complication corresponds to the principle of “uniform orderliness” among these concepts. Its central concept and primary mode of expression is “irregularity.”
So-called irregularity generally refers to “a combinational relationship among the constituent parts of formal elements in which variation and order coexist. Its characteristic is the coexistence of order and disorder; order may be perceived within disorder, resulting in order within irregularity and structure within apparent lack of structure.”⁷
(II) The Foundation of Formal Beauty: Variation
“People often employ relatively orderly structural forms such as parallelism, parallel construction, and the repetition of the same words or passages. Although these can indeed produce good rhetorical effects, excessive use of a single linguistic form often appears rigid, monotonous, and dull. To avoid such phenomena, people frequently and deliberately replace words with synonyms or near-synonyms, or adjust sentence patterns, thereby enriching vocabulary and diversifying sentence and paragraph structures.”⁸
Complication is a rhetorical technique that deliberately disrupts the requirements of formal beauty, including “unity,” “orderliness,” “repetition,” “balance,” “symmetry,” “contrast,” and “proportion,” in order to achieve “variation” and create effects of irregularity and staggered arrangement.
The objects to which Complication is applied are primarily regularized formal rhetorical devices such as reduplication, parallelism, and parallel construction.
In free verse poetry, the use of Complication can appropriately counteract the shortcomings of “monotony,” “rigidity,” and “dullness” that may result from excessively regularized forms, making poetic form lively and rich in variation.
The functions of Complication are threefold:
(1) To make language lively, fresh, and rich in variation.
(2) To make imagery accurate and vivid, thereby enhancing expressive power.
(3) To create a rhythmic beauty of staggered arrangement and artistic balance within a passage.
II. The Psychological Dimension
“Variation” is the foundation of the formal beauty of Complication. From the psychological perspective, the theoretical basis of “variation” lies in the theory of “stimulus differentiation,” namely Weber’s Law. Its meaning is that “the intensity of a stimulus is directly proportional to the perception of difference.” It includes two aspects:⁹
(I) Absolute Threshold
Not all stimuli are capable of producing sensory experiences. The physical energy of an external stimulus must exceed a certain minimum value before it can be perceived by the sensory organs. This minimum value is called the absolute threshold.
(II) Difference Threshold
If the physical energies of two stimuli differ only slightly, people are unable to distinguish between them. The difference in physical energy between two stimuli must exceed a certain value before people can perceive them as different. This minimum difference in energy that enables the recipient of the stimuli to clearly distinguish between them is called the difference threshold or the just noticeable difference.
Because people develop individual “conditioned responses” to identical or similar stimuli, psychology refers to this phenomenon as “stimulus generalization.” This may explain why, when readers read regulated verse, repeated exposure to “metrical conditions” (tonal patterns, parallelism, and rhyme) causes stimulus generalization to occur. As a result, they form a preconceived notion that anything failing to conform to the “metrical conditions” cannot be regarded as regulated verse.
At such a point, if an author composes poetry that does not conform to the “metrical conditions,” it will fail to elicit the readers’ conditioned response and gain recognition as regulated verse. Instead, because the difference threshold has been activated, “stimulus discrimination”¹⁰ occurs, and readers may regard the work merely as a “word game” or doggerel verse.
Section Three: The Formal Structure of Complication
Complication is a rhetorical format designed to avoid monotony and rigidity in language. It transforms potentially repetitive vocabulary, orderly and symmetrical sentence structures, regular hierarchical patterns, and identical tones into different lexical forms, irregular sentence structures, and varied tones, thereby producing a lively, diverse, vivid, and attention-grabbing mode of expression.
I. Principal Rhetorical Techniques
The principal rhetorical techniques of Complication include:
- Structural adjustment of sentence patterns.
- Substitution of vocabulary during composition.
(I) Structural Adjustment of Sentence Patterns
Structural adjustment of sentence patterns includes altering both sentence structure and tone.
In terms of sentence structure, orderly patterns such as balanced sentences, repetition, parallelism, and parallel construction may be transformed into irregular yet artistically staggered sentence forms. Different tones may also be interwoven throughout the discourse.
Specific methods include:
“expanding and contracting sentence bodies,”
“interchanging word order,”
“mixing tones,”
and
“adjusting grammar.”
(II) Substitution of Vocabulary During Composition
The so-called “substitution of vocabulary during composition” is “essentially a matter of consecutive use of synonyms. Repeatedly employing two or more words that are identical in sound, meaning, and form may cause auditory and visual fatigue and dullness. At such times, provided the original meaning is not harmed, changing the sound or form of the words can refresh the reader, deepen impressions, and achieve a favorable expressive effect. At the same time, it can emphasize the central idea, strengthen meaning, and create a beauty of linguistic emphasis.”¹¹
Specific methods include:
“changing parts of speech,”
“substituting personal names,”
“substituting forms of address,”
“replacing expressions,”
and
“substituting lexical forms.”¹²
II. Principal Formal Structures
Complication primarily consists of four structural forms:
lexical complication,
structural complication,
tonal complication,
and grammatical complication.
Structural complication further includes two forms:
word-order complication
and sentence-pattern complication.¹³
(I) Lexical Complication
Also known as lexical substitution, synonymous repetition, or avoidance of repetition.
It refers to replacing repeated words in the context with synonymous or near-synonymous words that differ in sound and form, in order to avoid repetition.
Its aim is to achieve difference within similarity.
For example:
The southern mountain stands majestic,
The whirling wind blows fiercely,
All the people are fortunate,
Why alone am I harmed?
The southern mountain stands lofty,
The whirling wind blows strongly,
All the people are fortunate,
Why alone do I not survive?
(Book of Songs, “Liao E” from the Xiaoya)
“Majestic” and “lofty” are synonymous.
“Fiercely” and “strongly” are synonymous.
These substitutions are made precisely to avoid the repetition of words in the context, which might otherwise result in rigidity and monotony.
(II) Structural Complication
Structural complication refers to changing the sentence structures of the context in order to avoid identical structures.
It includes word-order complication and sentence-pattern complication.
- Word-Order Complication
Also known as “interchanging word order,” “complicating expression,” or “twisted phrasing.”
It involves changing the positions of words in corresponding phrases.
For example:
“Only the clear breeze above the river,
And the bright moon above the mountains;
The ear receives them and they become sound,
The eye encounters them and they become color.”
(Su Shi, “The Red Cliff Rhapsody”)
This belongs to a complicated sentence pattern in which the first and third segments are linked, while the second and fourth segments correspond.
The unaltered version would be:
“Only the clear breeze above the river,
The ear receives it and it becomes sound;
And the bright moon above the mountains,
The eye encounters it and it becomes color.”
- Sentence-Pattern Complication
Also known as “expanding and contracting sentence bodies.”
It refers to deliberately transforming orderly and symmetrical sentence patterns such as parallelism, parallel construction, repetition, and gradation into a linguistic form where long and short sentences intersect and interweave, making sentence structures irregular and varied.
(III) Tonal Complication
Tonal complication refers to avoiding uniform tone throughout a context by intermixing declarative, imperative, interrogative, and exclamatory sentences.
This creates complication, enriches the expression of thought and emotion, increases variety, and enhances the emotional appeal of language.
(IV) Grammatical Complication
“Grammatical complication” corresponds to what Huang Qingxuan termed “grammatical adjustment”:
“Deliberately altering the structural forms of originally similar sentences so that their grammatical structures become irregular and distinct.”¹⁴
The purpose of such adjustment is to avoid the rigidity of forms such as parallelism and parallel construction, while preserving variation beneath their outward appearance.
For example:
“A single falling flower diminishes the spring;
The wind scatters ten thousand blossoms and grieves the heart.”
(Tang Dynasty, Du Fu, “Qujiang”)
The original sentence ought to have been:
“A single flying flower diminishes the spring;
Ten thousand drifting winds grieve the heart.”
or
“Flowers fly one by one and diminish the spring;
The wind scatters ten thousand blossoms and grieves the heart.”
Such versions would form a parallel structure, grammatically neat but lacking variation.
After grammatical adjustment, however, “a single” is a quantitative modifier placed before the subject-predicate structure “flowers fall,” whereas the quantitative modifier “ten thousand” is placed after the subject-predicate structure “the wind scatters.”
The result appears parallel but not symmetrical, becoming a lively and varied example of Complication.
Another example is:
“Try to see how much idle sorrow there is:
A plain of misty grass,
A city full of drifting catkins,
Rain during the season when plums turn yellow.”
(Yuan Dynasty, He Zhu, “Qingyu An”)
Before the Song dynasty, poets and lyricists employed many ways of describing sorrow.
Some compared sorrow to mountains, such as Zhao Gu:
“Layer upon layer of mountains above the Sunset Tower,
Yet not equal to spring sorrow multiplied once more.”
Some compared sorrow to water, such as Li Qi:
“Please measure the waters of the Eastern Sea,
And see how deep my sorrow runs.”
Or Li Yu:
“How much sorrow can you possibly have?
It is just like a river of spring water flowing eastward.”
In all these cases, a single object is used to represent sorrow.
However, in He Zhu’s “Qingyu An,” three metaphors are employed consecutively:
“A plain of misty grass,”
“A city full of drifting catkins,”
and
“Rain during the season when plums turn yellow,”
to describe his innumerable sorrows.
Consequently, Luo Dajing remarked in Helin Yulu:
“He uses these three things to compare the abundance of sorrow. It is especially novel. Within the evocative imagery there is also metaphor, making the meaning even more enduring.”
Even the great poet Huang Tingjian could not resist praising He Zhu, saying:
“Of those who can express the heart-rending lines of Jiangnan,
Today only He Fanghui remains!”
Grammatically, “a plain of misty grass” and “a city full of drifting catkins” are both noun-modifier structures consisting of two plus two syllables.
However, “rain during the season when plums turn yellow” is, in syllabic structure, a “four-plus-one” double-layer subject-predicate construction.
“The plums turn yellow” constitutes a subject-predicate structure functioning as the modifier of the noun “season.”
“The season when plums turn yellow” then functions as the modifier of the noun “rain.”
The first two phrases share identical grammar and syllabic structure, yet the third introduces a deliberate variation, avoiding the fixed form of parallel construction and thereby creating Complication.¹⁵
Section Four: Forms of Expression of Complication
By synthesizing the views of various scholars, “Complication,” according to differences in its structural forms, is divided into four major categories and four representative patterns. The former has already been introduced in the section on “formal structure,” and here we will examine the four representative patterns—“lexical substitution,” “interchange of word order,” “expanding–contracting sentence structure,” and “variation of sentence patterns”¹⁶—through illustrative examples and analysis.
I. Lexical Substitution
Also called “lexical complication,” this refers to replacing certain words in formally symmetrical sentences with synonymous expressions. It is defined as “slightly shifting the lexical surface so that the wording before and after is different (i.e., extracting repeated words and replacing them with different synonymous or near-synonymous words).”¹⁷
It is “the replacement of repeated lexical items in order to avoid repetition across sentences; in essence, it is the substitution of synonyms that differ in sound and form. Some scholars also call it ‘synonymous repetition avoidance’ or ‘avoidance of repetition.’ Lexical substitution seeks the expressive effect of ‘similarity within difference.’”¹⁸
Yu Guangzhong, “Water Town So Real”¹⁹
Once, there was a small canal called Qingchang
Boats came and went, flowing past the courtyard’s whitewashed walls
Pushing open the wooden door with a creak
And there it is—the rippling water town of Jiangnan
“Jiangnan” and “water town” are semantically equivalent. “Jiangnan” is a geographically specific designation, while “water town” is a general reference to Jiangnan. In rhetorical terms of metonymy, this is a relation between a specific term and a general term, where either may replace the other. It is a “binary alternative” relationship.
In this poem, however, “Jiangnan” and “water town” are used successively within the same sentence. In order to avoid lexical repetition and resulting monotony, the poet employs lexical substitution so that both expressions jointly convey a single meaning.
Cai Yu, “Autumn Ashes”²⁰
A desolate sky
The sky of jewel merchants
The sky bound tightly upon the edges of sword blades and knife edges
In this modern poetry example, we observe another form of lexical substitution. Sword edges and knife edges both refer to the sharp parts of weapons; when used together, they express essentially the same meaning. The poet, in order to avoid repetition, deliberately employs two sets of nearly identical lexical expressions, placed sequentially, to emphasize that the sky is confronted with extreme danger.
II. Interchange of Word Order
The deliberate disordering of word order between upper and lower clauses is called “interchange of word order.” It refers to “changing the sequence of words within a sentence.”²¹
In order to avoid identical syntactic structures across lines, writers intentionally alter word order. This belongs to the category of “synonymous repetition,” but the function of inversion differs from simple syntactic rearrangement: its purpose is not stylistic novelty for its own sake, but to emphasize meaning and enhance vividness of expression.²²
Luo Men, “Shoes”²³
The pair of shoes at the stairway entrance
Turn out to be a cloud hidden in the skylight
Distant mountains and far waters—the cloud is not tree
Far waters and distant mountains—the cloud is not cloud
The poet deliberately avoids repeating “distant mountains and far waters” in an identical form, and instead rearranges the word order into “distant mountains and far waters” and “far waters and distant mountains.” Semantically, these two phrases exhibit an intertextual relationship, where meaning is completed through mutual reference (“mutual implication forming meaning together”), while formally they constitute interchange of word order.
Chen Yizhi, “High Cold—Watching the Sunrise at Zhushan”²⁴
A carving knife strikes down fiercely
The sky startles the Han boundary, stone shatters into Chu River
The sun is about to rise but has not yet risen
Here, “stone shattering and sky startling” and “Chu River and Han boundary” are recombined in reversed order, producing the line “the sky startles the Han boundary, stone shatters into Chu River,” creating a forceful, explosive expression full of dramatic energy.
III. Expanding–Contracting Sentence Structure
This refers to deliberately arranging sentences of equal length into unequal lengths, allowing long and short sentences to alternate irregularly. It is “the intentional expansion or contraction of originally uniform sentences with equal syllable counts, producing variation in length.”²⁵
It is also defined as “a rhetorical technique that deliberately breaks the uniformity of repetition, parallelism, antithesis, and cyclic structures, combining long and short sentences in an interwoven manner.”²⁶
Luo Men, “Rising River—Elegy for the Poet Qu Yuan”²⁷
Face confronting cliff walls, a curved sword returning inward
Forcing your heart to surrender that river
That river which forever tells stories
The river rising within myth
To avoid excessive formal regularity, the final line deliberately omits the phrase “that river,” thereby forming an instance of expanding–contracting structure. This is a case of “seeking variation within order.”
Omission or extension are the two most common methods used by poets to achieve expanding–contracting structure.
Zheng Chouyu, “Paramecium”²⁸
In idle moments, I count those pale cilia
Trying to pick one up, letting it drift
Drifting into your Album
This is a red leaf, a small boat carrying sunset clouds
It is my crossing, the oars of the paramecium
It is my beginning
In this example, the latter three lines become progressively shorter, a common manifestation of expanding–contracting structure. Here, however, the shortening arises naturally from the use of brief phrases rather than explicit omission. Such complication is subtle and natural in effect, producing a better sense of rhythm.
Zhang Cuo, “Mother and Son”²⁹
With me by your side,
Everything will naturally improve,
You need not worry,
My son, mother will take care of everything,
When you are hungry, I feed you milk,
When you are in pain, I soothe you with tenderness,
When you cry, I gently wipe your tears away,
But you must open your once-stubborn eyes,
And see how happy your mother is holding you,
How joyful it is to reunite in a foreign land,
In this passage, the lines “When you are hungry, I feed you milk; / when you are in pain, I soothe you with tenderness; / when you cry, I gently wipe your tears away” employ a method of progressive extension, forming expanding–contracting structure.
Such lengthening gradually stretches rhythm and softens emotional intensity. The mother’s speech to the child naturally reveals maternal love, and when the child suffers setbacks, the mother responds with gentle consolation.
Xiao Xiao, “Red Dust Wilderness”³⁰
All footprints follow the wind
All wind follows memory
All memory is like passing footprints rushing toward a gust of wind
Passing in a violent surge…
The first three lines exhibit the rhetorical pattern of “anadiplosis” and the structural appearance of “gradation.” They share a visible common linguistic form.
In particular, the third line is deliberately lengthened, producing irregularity and avoiding excessive formal symmetry and rigidity. This is another instance of “seeking variation within order.”
IV. Variation of Sentence Patterns
“Variation of sentence patterns” refers to the interweaving use of affirmative and negative sentences, declarative and interrogative sentences, and parallel and free sentence forms.³¹
It is “the mixing of various sentence types—such as affirmative and negative sentences, declarative and interrogative sentences, and exclamatory sentences—to produce a form of complication.”³²
It is “the deliberate variation of tone in order to avoid uniformity across sentences. Irregularity allows for rich, diverse, complex, and nuanced expression of thought and emotion, thereby enhancing the expressive force of language.”³³
Yu Guangzhong, “Death, You Are Not Everything”³⁴
Death, you are not everything, you are not
Because what matters most is not
What is given to the grave, but
What is given to history
In this passage, affirmative and negative sentences are used in repeated dialectical opposition. Such a “positive/negative” structure is well suited for analytical reasoning and has strong persuasive force.
The poem expresses the idea that “human reputation survives death”: it first negates the idea that death controls everything, and then affirms the responsibility toward history.
Zhang Cuo, “Fossil Fish”³⁵
Once there was an endless ocean,
Now it may still be fertile fields stretching for miles,
But without eyes,
How can there be sorrowful tears?
Without skin,
How can there be painful bite marks?
Thus, we can only, in countless cold midnights,
Remain silent toward each other, weeping inwardly
And speechless.
As if everything spoken is in vain,
And everything unspoken is also in vain,
As if there is never a complete story—
In a lifetime,
From mutual sympathy and affection,
To love and separation.
Zhang Cuo’s lyric poetry is intensely emotional, yet does not become overly sentimental, precisely because of his skillful alternation of sentence patterns and grammatical structures.
In this passage, there is dialectical interplay between affirmative and negative sentences, as well as tension between interrogative and declarative sentences. The richness of variation in sentence patterns, combined with the alternation of full sentences (“from mutual sympathy and affection to love and separation”), loose sentences, long sentences, and short sentences, produces a rhythm that is at times slow, at times brisk, at times passionate, and at times subdued.
Zhang Cuo’s poetic language is predominantly lyrical rather than descriptive, and it is therefore reasonable to regard him as a lyric poet.
Notes
- Edited by Wang Shide, Dictionary of Aesthetics, Taipei: Muduo Publishing, 1987, p. 41. This has been reorganized by the author.
- Huang Yongwu, Methods of Refining Words and Sentences (Revised Third Edition), Taipei: Hongfan, 1986, p. 150.
- Same as Note 2, p. 150.
- Huang Qingxuan, Rhetoric, Taipei: Sanmin, 2002, p. 753.
- Huang Lizhen, Practical Rhetoric (Revised Edition), Taipei: Guojia Publishing, 2004, p. 540.
- Same as Note 1, p. 43.
- Same as Note 1, p. 45.
- Edited by Cheng Weijun and two others, Comprehensive Mirror of Rhetoric, Beijing: China Youth Publishing, 1991, p. 856.
- Wang Zhenwu et al. (five authors), Psychology, Taipei: Xuefu Culture, 2001, p. 111.
- Zhang Chunxing and Yang Guoshu (co-authors), Psychology, Taipei: Donghua Publishing, 2000, pp. 130–131.
- Edited by Yang Chunlin and Liu Fan, Great Dictionary of Chinese Rhetorical Arts, Xi’an: Shaanxi People’s Publishing House, 1991, p. 718.
- Edited by Cheng Weijun and two others, Comprehensive Mirror of Rhetoric, Beijing: China Youth Publishing, 1991, pp. 858–861.
- Same as Note 11, pp. 718–719.
- Same as Note 4, p. 761.
- Same as Note 4, p. 762.
- Chen Wangdao, An Introduction to Rhetoric, Hong Kong: Daguan, 1964, p. 208.
- Huang Lizhen, Practical Rhetoric (Revised Edition), Taipei: Guojia Publishing, 2004, p. 541.
- Edited by Yang Chunlin et al., Great Dictionary of Chinese Rhetorical Arts, Xi’an: Shaanxi People’s Publishing House, 1996, p. 719.
- Reprinted from Yu Guangzhong, Selected Poems of Yu Guangzhong II, Taipei: Hongfan, 1981, pp. 278–280.
- Reprinted from Ya Xian et al. (eds.), Anthology of Genesis Poetry, Taipei: Erya, 1984, p. 254.
- Same as Note 5, p. 541.
- Same as Note 18, p. 725.
- Reprinted from Luo Men, Selected Poems of Luo Men, Taipei: Hongfan, 1984, pp. 136–137.
- Reprinted from Chen Yizhi, Qingshan, Taipei: Erya, 1985, p. 81.
- Same as Note 4, p. 763.
- Same as Note 18, p. 727.
- Reprinted from Luo Men, Sketches and Lyric Poems, Taipei: Wenshizhe Publishing, 1995, pp. 92–94.
- Reprinted from Zheng Chouyu, Poetry Collection of Zheng Chouyu I: 1951–1968, Taipei: Hongfan, 1979, p. 137.
- Reprinted from Zhang Cuo, The Grievance of the Double Jade Bracelets, Taipei: Shibao, 1984, pp. 130–133.
- Reprinted from Xiao Xiao, No Fate of Affinity, Taipei: Erya, 1966, pp. 25–27.
- Same as Note 4, p. 770.
- Chen Wangdao, An Introduction to Rhetoric, Hong Kong: Daguan, 1964, p. 203.
- Same as Note 18, p. 731.
- Reprinted from Yu Guangzhong, In the Era of the Cold War, Taipei: Chunwenxue, 1984, p. 62.
- Reprinted from Zhang Cuo, The Wanderer, Taipei: Erya, 1986, pp. 179–185.
