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Hidden Grace and the Visible Flower As there is width to thinking in general, so there is depth to the literary imagination. What comes out from the deep sources develops into tributaries and strong roots produce the ripeness of the grain. The flowering of poesy includes the hidden (yin) growth (or life, or grace, or even beauty) as well as the beautiful budding (xiu). The pregnancy ofpoetry, its hidden growth, is in the fullness of thought that lies outside poetry; its beauty is in the flower that blows alone in the finished work. The pregnancy is best when the meaning is multiple, the beauty should ideally be rare and beyond compare. These are the virtues we see in the writings ofthe past, a conjunction ofthe potentials of feeling and thought. It is in the nature of the pregnancy of poetry to derive its significance from beyond poetry, like mysterious melodies reaching us from nowhere, like light first hiding then making itselfvisible, like the phenomena ofthe Hexagrammatic lines merging in alternative forms, like streams brightened by the presence of pearls: the alternative forms transmute the Hexagrammatic lines and yield the four phenomena, the pearl and jade lie low in the water and determine its contour. The pregnancy - the hidden life - of poetry begins as something natural and grows into something admirable, it is bright inside and lustrous outside, so that whoever contemplates it has no end of fascination, and whoever partakes of it will not surfeit. As for the beauty, it rises like billows among the words. Like soft Hidden Grace and the Visible Flower I 149 hands and the exquisite voice it is there or almost there: the distant mountain with the haze or cloud on its top, the maiden painted and powdered - except the haze or cloud must be heaven-made, the maiden's face not man-modelled. Light or dark, light or heavy, perfection is the theme. So exuberant you cannot give all of it away; so rare you will always wish for more. Writers are often under the temptation to sound surprising and so drive mentally to the outer limits ofsilence; they also wish to attain the visually bright and so linger in the country ofbeauties. The pouring out ofthe heart and adjacent organs does not adequately describe their effort, and long years' furnace-like discipline is no metaphor for their persistence. Therefore are they able to conceal their sharp blades among their words away from the staring of the common eye, or displaying their edge on the surface oftheir text to win the admiration of the judicious. Writers who are by nature reserved feel the delight of cultivating the hidden; those with a sharper wit would sooner be embracing the visible flower. But in art they are equally consummate: the designing and tailoring of clouds by the one is divine, the cutting and carving of flowers by the other is no less above the mortal. A composition without some hidden grace is like an eminent scholar without learning, always reducible to silence at the onset ofthe easiest question. A collection of sentences with few flowers among them is like a noble house unprovided with treasures, quite liable to be interrogated until everybody grows pale. Both situations are symptomatic of not only an insufficiency of talent but also an inadequacy ofbasic writing skills. To demonstrate what is meant by the hidden grace we can do worse than refer to particular instances. "Separation" in the "Nineteen Old Poems" and the "Great Wall" among the Yuefu poems are touchingly plaintive and deep in meaning, using the devices of both hi and xing metaphors. Cao Zhi's "Yellow bird" and Liu Zhen's "Green pine" are strongly masculine and know how to go about offering advice to social and political superiors. Ji Kang's ... and Ruan Ji's ... are singularly leisurely in their unworldly thought and metaphysical mood. Lu Ji's ... and Tao Yuanming's ... are carefully reasoned and clearly expressed, both living up to the requirements of ... Even if the desire is to identify the more visibly beautiful, we cannot do better than put on the show-piece lines. "I dread the arrival of autumn/and the breeze that blows away summer's heat" are given in a language of restraint, although the misery is considerable: they convey the sense of an inability to act that an ordinary woman can feel. "By the river 1 wash the long hat-ribbon,/ thinking of you my grief stays on "sound lofty...

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