The Rationality and Limitations of Qian Zhongshu’s Lecture "Poetry as an Art of Complaint"

There has been a dubious consensus among Chinese scholars ever since the May Fourth New Culture Movement that there is neither a literary form as in Chinese literature nor the Dionysian spirit on which tragedy subsists.However,Qian Zhongshu launched a strong counter-argument in his lecture Poetry as an Art of Complaint, in which he contends that there does exist a flourish of the Dionysian spirit in Chinese poetics as in the West.It should be noted that the orthodox Chinese poetry has always been immersed in a tragic ambiance of sentimental springs and lamentable autumns,while literary genres such as fiction and drama in the category of Chinese folk literature are mainly characterized with a happy denouement.Thus,in Poetry as an Art of Complaint, Qian pointed out the sentimentalism in orthodox Chinese poetics and redressed the misconception of the lack of the Dionysian in Chinese literature.Nevertheless,it would be a fallacy to perceive the vein of tragedy running in the whole of Chinese literature,and neglect the predominant presence of the happy denouement complex in almost all Chinese fiction and dramas.It would be equally fallacious to neglect the reconciliatory nature in Chinese culture of polar sentimentalities between the tragic and the comic.Therefore,there is equal measure of rationality and limitations in both Qian's theory and the argument of other scholars who saw a lack of the tragic in Chinese literature.