A Special Course by Ben Wang:
Dark Victory of Su Shi: A Poet for All Ages
Part II: His Ci (词) Poetry
Spring 2026 Registration is Now Open!
Classes Starts the Week of April 13, 2026.
Register by March 10, 2026 to receive $30 off tuition!
Su Shi; aka Su Dong-po (1037-1101 Northern Song dynasty), was born in Mei Shan County (Mt. Brow), Si-chuan province, to a family of scholarly distinction. Su Shi, his father Su Xun, and his younger brother Su Che, were 3 among the “Eight Greatest Essayists of the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) Dynasties”, one of the most honorary titles in the history of Chinese culture. Su Shi was one of the few literati in Chinese culture who mastered 5 poetic and artistic genres: the Tang Shi poetry (both pentasyllabic and heptasyllabic styles), the Song Ci poetry, the Han Fu poetic essay, calligraphy, and painting. Each of the 5 genres/parts, in which Su Shi excelled, must and will be studied separately and specifically for their respective splendor.
Though Su Shi composed a large number of poems in Tang Shi style: poems that glow in carrying the finest tradition on existence and humanity from great poets and men of letters before him, it is his 350 Ci style poems that cemented Su Shi’s name in Chinese literature. Selected Shi poems were studied in detail this past semester in Part 1 Su Shi. In Part 2 of our study of Su Shi, we now shift our focus onto another of his timeless contributions to poetry in Chinese culture, which is the Ci poetry, of which Su Shi is one of the founding masters that helped make the new poetic genre as a major form of lyrical song in Chinese literature.
Joining his precedents, the distinguished Ci poets Li Yu (937-978), the latter emperor of the Southern Tang period, and Liu Yong (984-1053) of the Northern Song dynasty, Su Shi helped elevate the literary status of the Ci poetry to equal that of the glorious Tang Shi poetry. The Ci poetry had started during the dawning years of Tang dynasty in the early 7th century as a frivolous song/poetry composed to express tender, sweet, or heartbreaking personal emotions, often dedicated to popular sing-song girls of the time, or for letting out romantic yearning. The three masters of Ci poetry Li, Liu and Su liberated the genre by widening its scope and gave it a new life marked by vehemence, feelings rising high above the maudlin and over sentimentality of its earlier themes. Many of Su Shi’s Ci poems are composed with what is favorably known as “heroic abandon 豪放” in Chinese, and compassion. But his Ci poems on delicate and romantic themes are unique and memorable in their art and beauty.
Accused of slandering and offensive criticisms against the emperor and other court officials with high standing, Su Shi was repeatedly demoted and exiled throughout his life to remote cities of little consequence, such as Huang County in Hubei province and Hui County in Guang-dong province, and to the Hai-nan Island off the most southern coast of China. His sufferings from these sad experiences, however, provided him with recalcitrance, courage, and a philosophical attitude fostered by his belief in the creed of detachment of Daoism, which enriched his literary achievement, as he advocated that life should be blended with a flow, like water, into whatever the writer composed. His setbacks inspired him to a wide variety of central themes of his poetry on life, not only his own, but the lives of the people he encountered on his dark journeys. It is indeed this love and the ultimate pursuit of inner peace that made it possible for Su Shi to be optimistic even in his sown-and-out years.
All the masterworks in 5 different literary and artistic genres are the epitome of the bravura and transcendental spirit of Su Shi. In Parts 3 and 4 of the following semesters, we’ll go on exploring more of his exclusive and unique magic in composing poetic essays, calligraphy, and brush-painting. – Ben Wang
Fees
10 sessions (20 hours)
$550 member / $590 non-member
(plus a $30 non-refundable registration fee)
This class will be taught in English.
Instructor
Ben Wang
Ben Wang: Senior Lecturer in Language and Humanities at China Institute, Co-Chair of Renwen Society of China Institute, retired Instructor of Chinese at the United Nations Language Program. A published writer on classical Chinese poetry and others, Ben Wang is an award winning translator both from Chinese into English and vice versa; He taught Chinese and translation at Columbia University, New York University, Pace University and City University of New York between 1969 and 1991.
Ben Wang teaches and lectures on the Chinese language, calligraphy, and classical Chinese literature, including the Book of Songs, the Songs of the South; Han, Tang and Song poetry; Yuan and Ming poetic dramas; Story of the Stone of the Qing; classical Kunqu Drama and Beijing Opera; Literati Painting. Ben Wang’s lectures on and translations of Kunqu dramas have been reviewed and acclaimed three times in the New York Times by the Times’ music and drama critic James Oestreich as “magnificent,” “captivating,” and “colorful.”
Since 1989, Ben Wang has lectured (extensively on the above-mentioned subjects）at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Barnard, Williams, U.C. Berkeley, New York University, Bates, Colby, Hamilton, Middlebury, Rutgers, Seton Hall, St. Mary’s College in California, the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Art, United Nations, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts of Boston, ABC Nightline, the BBC, among other academic and cultural institutions.
Latest publications in English:
- Forlorn in the Rain: Translation and Annotation of Selected Classical Chinese Poetry and Others; Published by Foreign Languages Publishing Bureau, Beijing, China: Oct. 2018
- A series of 4 books on the Forbidden City in Beijing, China:
- We All Live in the Forbidden City
- This Is the Greatest Place!
- Bowls of Happiness
- What Was It Like, Mr. Emperor?
(Published by China Institute and Released by Tuttle Publishing; 2014, 2015, the series has garnered 9 US book awards, as of September 2016.)
- Laughter and Tears: Libretti from Highlight Scenes of 26 Classical Poetic Kunqu Dramas; Published by Foreign Languages Publishing Bureau, Beijing, China: 2009.
(January 2019)
