Now we are in condition to appreciate the full splendor of certain lines of Chinese verse. Poetry surpasses prose especially in that the poet selects for juxtaposition those words whose overtones blend into a delicate and lucid harmony. All arts follow the same law; refined harmony lies in the delicate balance of overtones. In music the whole possibility and theory of harmony is based on the overtones. In this sense poetry seems a more difficult art.
How shall we determine the metaphorical overtones of neighboring words? We can avoid flagrant breaches like mixed metaphor. We can find the concord or harmonizing at its intensest, as in Romeo's speech over the dead Juliet.
Here also the Chinese ideography has its advantage, in even a simple line, for example, "The sun rises in the east."
The overtones vibrate against the eye. The wealth of composition in characters makes possible a choice of words in which a single dominant overtone colors every plane of meaning. That is perhaps the most conspicuous quality of Chinese poetry. Let us examine our line.
[Illustration: Chinese ideograms. Sun Rises (in the) East]
The sun, the shining, on one side, on the other the sign of the east, which is the sun entangled in the branches of a tree. And in the middle sign, the verb "rise," we have further homology; the sun is above the horizon, but beyond that the single upright line is like the growing trunk-line of the tree sign. This is but a beginning, but it points a way to the method, and to the method of intelligent reading.
[1] The apology was unnecessary, but Professor Fenollosa saw fit to make it, and I therefore transcribe his words.--E.P.
[2] Style, that is to say, limpidity, as opposed to rhetoric.--E.P.
[3] Even Latin, living Latin had not the network of rules they foist upon unfortunate school-children. These are borrowed sometimes from Greek grammarians, even as I have seen English grammars borrowing oblique cases from Latin grammars. Sometimes they sprang from the grammatizing or categorizing passion of pedants. Living Latin had only the feel of the cases: the ablative and dative emotion.--E.P.
[4] A good writer would use "shine" (i.e., to shine), shining, and "the shine" or "sheen", possibly thinking of the German "_schöne_" and "_Schönheit_"; but this does not invalidate Prof. Fenollosa's next contention.--E.P.