Gao Qi is often regarded as the most outstanding poet of his time, and many literary critics of later generations have elected him as the first poet of the Ming Dynasty.
In 1374, only seven years after the founding of the Ming Dynasty, Gao Qi was executed by Zhu Yuanzhang. On the surface, Gao Qi's death was due to his suspicion of rebellion, but in fact it was caused by some other reasons. Gao Qi was only thirty-eight years old when he died. Literary critics believe that Gao Qi's extraordinary talent did not allow him to achieve corresponding achievements.
Despite his high status in the history of Chinese literature, few people know about him now, and he is even more unknown in the Western world. The Ming Dynasty was not a time of poetry in the traditional view of Chinese scholars, and this traditional view in the West developed into an extreme prejudice (and many similar) – the great poets of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties were almost unknown to the West. If we try to understand those great poets, then Gao Qi may be able to bring us more than others.
However, we still need to put in some effort to understand Gao Qi. Regardless of the greatness of his poetry, as the most outstanding poet of his time, Gao Qi barely gained any fame during his lifetime, and in the nearly two hundred and fifty years after his death, the cause of his death also caused some unnatural obstacles to the circulation of his poetry. To some extent, it was not permissible to discuss or praise Gao Qi's actions at the time. Therefore, compared with the normal situation, Gao Qi's life deeds are very sparsely recorded in the literature, which adds a lot of undue obscurity to Gao Qi's poems.
However, our interest in Gao Qi is not limited to his poetry. We will try to reconstruct as much as possible the life of Gao Qi, whose poetry is seen primarily as source material for historians rather than as independent works of art. Our aim is not to restore the title of the poem to its rightful name. We see Gao Qi as a man with extraordinary artistic talent, and his life tells us about the importance of that era. Through Gao Qi, we can better understand the era, region, society and civilization in which he lived.
In Gao Qi's poems, we find a surprisingly sensitive record of the events and trivialities of his daily life, and how the larger historical events of that era influenced ordinary literati like him. This may allow us to better understand the meaning of Gao Qi's life and the significance of that era. As a work of historians, this is what this biography strives to pursue.
Gao Qi's life reflects some interesting and important things in the study of Chinese history. In the official historical biography of the Ming Dynasty, Gao Qi is only one page (History of the Ming Dynasty, vol. 285, p. 21b), less than 200 words long. Considering the epitaphs, lamentations, and the background in which the early biographical material was written, the era did not allow anyone else to provide Gao Qi with a comprehensive and objective account of his life. Thus, although historians have to rely on such documents, they are not really substantiated. However, as an important poet of that era, as a person who played an important role in many events at that time, Gao Qi's life does have special historical significance. If it is based on only a small number of restricted biographical materials and historical archives, Gao Qi's life can hardly be reconstructed.
The purpose of this book is to reconstruct a more complete biography of Gao Qi, not only from the conventional documents that exist, but also from material that is often not noticed by historians, or at least not carefully or exhaustively used – and I am mainly referring to the poems written by Gao Qi, his friends, and colleagues, as well as their other literary works. These works from Gao Qi's social circle will be used as the main historical materials in this book, in order to show the strange and close connection between Chinese history and literature.
There is a proverb in Chinese academic circles that "literature and history are not separated", and although this insight and necessity are widely accepted, they have not been fully practiced. The purpose of this book's study of Gao Qi's life and the era in which he lived is to try to put this precept into practice as comprehensively as possible, and at least in part is intended to open up the path of this historical research.
For Chinese students studying ancient Chinese culture, the importance of Gao Qi is mainly reflected in the field of literature. I am afraid that only students of Chinese literature will regard Gao Qi as a poet, unless we (Westerners) can also read Gao Qi's original poems, or read the few translations that are faithful to the poems themselves. However, even a good translator can only open a small door to the world of Chinese literature. Although Gao Qi's poems are exciting material for historians, they have always strongly enticed historians to forget history and see it as a purely work of art. Ideally, historians would be Arthur Waley, Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, and the like.
In this book, I have been very cautious in translating some of the poems that should have been handled by a poet-translator of a higher level, and the translation here is only used as a historical document, which obviously undermines the artistry of Gao Qi's poetry. In many cases, however, poet-translators inevitably choose other poems, while historion-translators or biographer-translators inevitably choose works with specific content. The poems that reveal the most interesting facts are often not the ones that concretize the greatest artistic achievements – great works may be difficult to translate successfully. But in terms of the original Chinese, I think that among all of Gao Qi's works, only a small number of works do not quite match the title of his poem. Through this book, I also hope that Gao Qi can get the attention of other poets and translators, which may be able to redeem some of my damage to the artistry of Gao Qi's poetry. One day, the West may be able to truly understand the importance of Gao Qi in the field of literature.
The interest in Gao Qiqi in this book is mainly triggered by the "poet Gao Qi". In the process of reconstructing Chinese civilization in the 14th century, the lives and thoughts of figures like Gao Qi are very important. Although he yearns for officialdom and has already entered the official career, he does not have a long and glorious career as an eunuch - the choice Gao Qi made and the motivation behind it are very intriguing. At the same time, Gao Qi was not a thinker with original achievements, but among the literati of modern China, Gao Qi was a model of an important literati genre. The reason why we are able to reconstruct Gao Qi's life is because his attitude towards life interests us and inspires us at the same time.
It is worth mentioning that Gao Qi exudes a unique Chinese concept of "heroism", and he has a strong attachment to this concept. This is a Confucian heroic virtue, which is very different from the heroism commonly expressed in the West. This heroism reflects the cosmology of the Chinese and concretizes the humanistic values in the Chinese cultural tradition.
So, for example, while the book's chapter titles are literally the same as Thomas Carlyle's Hero as Poet or Hero as Man of Letters, this does not constitute a direct analogy. Gao Qi's concept of heroism is very implicit in his life and works, which may be worth trying to explain and understand. What is at stake here is a series of concepts: a good society, the responsibility of the individual to make it real, the expressive function of poetry (how the individual hero expresses these values when confronted with them) and the practical function (how the individual hero puts these values into practice). Once we understand these concepts, we will be able to explain the role that poetry plays in various aspects of traditional Chinese culture, which we may not be able to observe if we simply draw a simple analogy between Chinese civilization and our Western civilization.
As for Gao Qi, although he was the greatest poet of his time, this was not the concept of a "professional poet" as understood in the West. Great poets are always very rare and cherished, but that doesn't mean you have to be a maverick and behave unusually as a poet. Although Gao Qi's astonishing poetic attainments did show his great personality potential, in the hearts of the people of the time, Gao Qi was not recognized because of his poetic career. When Gao Qi encountered ups and downs in his career, poetry probably took the place of a grander ideal, and when his career was smooth, poetry itself was not the goal that Gao Qi was pursuing. Therefore, whether deliberate or unavoidable, this book is not enough to be a literary biography of Gao Qi, and the book merely attempts to examine Gao Qi's poetry as a mirror. This should not bring much harm to the values that Gao Qi originally expected.
(This article is excerpted from the introduction to Gao Qi: The Poet's Poor Path)