ABSTRACT
Ever since Lu Ji's 陸機 (261–303) Rhyme-Prose on Literature (Wenfu 文賦), Liu Xie's 劉勰 (ca. 465–523) The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龍) and, even more, Wang Fuzhi's 王夫之 (1619–1692) Notes on Poetry from the Ginger Studio (Jianzhai shihua 薑齋詩話), the interconnectedness between 情 qing (feeling) and 竟jing (scenery) has all along been used to express, among other things, the linkage between inner feelings (nei內) and the external world (wai 外). Fei Ming's 廢名 (penname of Feng Wenbing 馮文炳1901–1967) masterpiece Bridge 橋 (1932) is an almost plotless novel in which “descriptions of natural and mental landscapes” (Shih 193) alternate with passages that describe the budding emotional relationship between Xiao Lin, his fiancée Qinzi and her female cousin Xizhu. This study highlights Fei Ming's indebtedness to classical Chinese landscape poetry and describes the interconnectedness between the protagonists' inner feelings and the natural world.
