The Kingdom of Chinese Poetry

This book provides an overview of the development of classical Chinese poetry through four millennia of history, in which poetry has always been regarded as the highest form of literary and artistic expression. From ancient ballads to the poetic sprouts of the Book of Changes, from shamanic chants to the poems of the Classical Age, from the Golden Age of the Tang Dynasty to the poets of the nineteenth century, the reader may find a kindred spirit among these poems that have enchanted for thousands of years: the romantic poet Qu Yuan, or the "Father of Pastoral Poetry" Tao Yuanming, the "Immortal Poet" Li Bai, the "Buddha of Poetry" Wang Wei, the "Sage of Poetry" Du Fu, the "Universal Genius" Su Shi, the famous poetess Li Qingzhao, the great Qing Dynasty scholar Cao Xueqin, and many others less well known in the West but just as amazing, totaling more than a hundred poets and hundreds of poems.

Heaven and earth, mountains and rivers, flowers and birds, the world of nature is the protagonist of these poems, skillfully used to evoke subtle moods in the reader: love and nostalgia, solitude and the transience of things, friendship and nobility of character, vicissitudes and philosophical reflections, the search for serenity in a simple life and in the contemplation of nature. The deep human-nature connection also emerges in texts that can be traced back to the Taoist and Buddhist spiritual traditions, with reflections on reality and illusion. There is no shortage of dream visions and descriptions of mythical, legendary worlds. All these elements complement each other, making these classic poems especially rich in lyricism, with multiple implied meanings that inspire wisdom. Chinese characters are the root of traditional culture, containing the wisdom of the ancients. As a medium of poetry, ideograms carry with them the unique way of thinking and the spiritual world of the Chinese people. Therefore, this book offers a brief introduction to the origin of Chinese characters, whose figurative nature is evocative and symbolic. This publication is characterized by a "poet-to-poet" hermeneutic: in fact, the poems collected in these pages have been selected and commented on by a contemporary poetess. The reader will find in the annotations the cultural, mythical, and legendary references that allow for the correct interpretation of the translated texts.