The Chinese word for poetry is shih (詩) and is composed of two parts. The part on the left (言) means "language," and the part on the right (寺) originally mean "administrative court" and later came to mean "Buddhist temple." But this was not the original form of the part on the right, and neither "court" nor "temple" has anything to do with the meaning of shih. This is because the second part was originally written chih (志), meaning "from the heart," and the later form was simply the result of calligraphic shorthand and subsequent invention. Hence, the word for poetry does not mean "the language of the court/ temple" but "the language of the heart." The Great Preface to the Book of Odes says, "When it's in the heart, it's chih. When it's expressed in language, it's shih."
--Translator's preface to Poems of the Masters: China's Classic Anthology of T'ang and Sung Dynasty Verse (2003), translated by Red Pine [pseudonym of Bill Porter] (1943- )
Comments