Lisao of the Lyrics of Chu - Essay Example

LISAO OF THE LYRICS OF CHU The poem, "Encountering Sorrow Lisao encapsulates a ritual formula of an all-too-brief or unsuccessful meeting with the divine being is later self-consciously invoked for allegorical purposes to express other kinds of longing and unfulfillment.(David Schulman and Guy Stroumsa 36). There are about 372 lines, 2400 words, and they are divided into 15 sections. The lyrical expression of emotion in Lisao shows its allegorical meaning. The poem is a literary representative of Qu Yuan's high moral conduct and patriotism. The poem also expresses his strong love for the state and its future. It has a lofty ideal and contains his determination to fight for its realization. His poem aims to discuss the various historical themes combined with legends and myths. (Stephen Owen). In terms of form, the Lisao is a first person monologue which is rich in imagery and skillful metaphor. The Lisao is a long lyrical poem permeated with romanticism and moving fairy tales. Lisao deals with calumny and slander of a sordid political reality, and the more general burden of the constraints of human existence, prompt the poet to undertake an "upward journey" (shangzheng). In Lisao, the enactment of other realms is self-conscious, almost self-reflexive: it is an extension of the poet's "declaration of intent." Summoned through an act of sheer will, the other world can be a precarious illusion-hence the poet's disappointments, doubts, and hesitations during his aerial journeys in "Encountering Sorrow."(David Schulman and Guy Stroumsa 37). In terms of content, the poem deals with search, sorrow and disappointments of an exiled prince. The poem also represents stages in Quan's life. It also laments his misfortunes and declares his virtue. In this poem, Qu Yuan attacks those who have defamed him and goes on a cosmic quest for a worthy lord. Moreover, the Lisao counterchange at poetic peaks; chiastic rhetoric highlights and fulfills central cultural and literary values. It shows the reciprocal relations between lord-vassal, heaven-human. Reciprocity pervades and underpins so ourselves to illuminating the dual nature of Chinese songs: requital and retribution. Qu Yuan's life reveals the paradigmatic of the double-edged relation of the Confucian intellectual to the structures of state power. 1 He is part of China's tradition literary martyrdom. To claim to be witness to a higher moral truth while remaining subject to those holding absolute power, is the kind of situation particularly conducive to producing martyrs. Chiastic genealogy marks Qu Yuan as a noble hero of a poem that will repeatedly counterbalance misunderstood nobility against blind depravity. "Encountering Sorrow" deploys counterchange distinctively; throughout, Qu Yuan consistently uses chiasmus not to bind together and suggest but to deny it and enforce separation. He laments that none at court can appreciate true nobility, usually metaphorized as "beauty" or fragrance, as in this upside-down counterchange (36): They gather dung and muck to stuff their sachets; Claim ginger and pepper have no fragrance! Jiu Ge ("Nine Songs"), also attributed to Qu Yuan, is the first example of what could be called shamanic literature in China. Qu Yuan fights against olfactory oppression by marshalling a shaman's arts and lore to undertake a magic itinerary seeking divine powers, divine aid, divine love. His "shaman's way" metaphor enlivens Lisao, e.g. at 16: Regretting I had scanned my path inexactly, After long pause I turned about. I turned my chariot round to retrace the road, Before my path had strayed too far." Here a transition from direct lament to metaphoric presentation spins another binding thread; not only do "not deep" and "shallow" form a frame for quickly and rapids, they sound similar: dzivm and tsien (tsien). Our shamanic poet then continues with a metaphor that inverts things from their proper places (62): I've tried to pluck creeping ficus in the waters, Pick lotus-blossoms in the treetops. The poet laments looking for love in the wrong places; associations evoked by clinging creepers and "love". (Chinese "lotus" sounded like "love"-both lian) strengthen counterchange's emotional effect. The Lisao is part of the Chuci (literally, "words of Chu") tradition, a diverse corpus dominated by the quest for and encounter with deities, visions of other worlds, aerial journeys, transformations, and transcendence of mundane reality on the one hand, and lament over political disappointments, exile, persecution, misunderstanding, and mortality on the other. These two dimensions are inextricably linked. Visions of other worlds may allegorize political aspirations. Fickle deities shade into undiscerning rulers; both inspire a rhetoric of despair and plaint.(David Schulman and Guy Stroumsa 35). In his long narrative poem Lisao (Encountering Sorrow), the theme is expressed through a journey motif, during which the poet-subject moves toward a magical, supernatural realm while in quest of an ideal mate. But the journey ends in failure and despair, implying that he is an immortal exiled into an unworthy world. As Sima Qian put it in his biography of the poet some three centuries later, "It was the sense of wrong (yuan) that inspired Qu Yuan's composition of the Lisao." 2 In pointing out that historical examples are given in the poem "in order to criticize [or satirize] (ci) contemporary affairs (shi shi)," Sima Qian is, of course, referring to his own parallel practice of seeing the situation of the present self mirrored in the models of the past. The emotional affinity he felt with Qu Yuan is expressed in the "Historian's Comment" that follows the biography, in which he describes his tears both in reading the Lisao and when traveling to where the poet drowned himself. It is shown in the Lisao, that the poet at times adopts a female voice in lamenting the separation from his ruler or expressing his longing for recognition. The tradition of female impersonation was established early in the Shijing (The Book of Songs), most often in poems expressing the sorrow and longing of a neglected or abandoned woman. In twentieth-century literature, the figure of Qu Yuan remains an abiding presence 3 most particularly he has appeared and reappeared in various guises as allegories of the tortuous relationship between Chinese intellectuals and the state, of the struggle of moral integrity against official power. Qu Yuan's recurrent motifs unite his supposed biography and the poetry attributed to him: fervent and uncompromising political idealism, longing for escape, loyal counsel unheeded, experiences of being maligned and misunderstood, exile, despair, suicide. The problem of interpretation begins with journeys to other worlds inhabited by hosts of divine beings and the poet's self-representation of his own powers and frustrations in these realms. It is almost impossible to draw the line between the magical-religious dimension and possible political-allegorical significance, especially since so little is actually known about the religions of Chu culture. The poet laments looking for love in the wrong places; associations evoked by clinging creepers and "love". Our speaker laments looking for love in the wrong places; associations evoked by clinging creepers and "love blossoms" (Chinese "lotus" sounded like "love"-both lian) strengthen counterchange's emotional effect. Qu Yuan is known as the Chinese poet and loyal minister of King Chu who wrote the 374 lines of the Lisao when he was rewarded with slander and banishment. He ultimately drowned himself in the Miluo River. (Peter Lee, 15). It is the figure of Qu Yuan, one of the names on Sima Qian's list and China's first named poet that has been most frequently celebrated as the writer/martyr par excellence. The poetry attributed to him and supposedly produced when he was wandering in exile after his banishment from the court of King Huai of Chu (r. 328-299 B.C.), contains the self-portrait of a loyal, upright, high-minded official who has remained steadfast to his ideals, refusing to compromise even when suffering persecution. 4 WORKS CITED PAGE Feuerwerker, Yi Tsi Mei. Ideology, Power, Text: Self-Representation and the Peasant "Other" in Modern Chinese Literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Hawkes David. Ch'u Tz'u: The Songs of the South: An Ancient Chinese Anthology. London: Oxford University Press, 1959. Lee, Peter H. A History of Korean Literature. Cambridge, England. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, England, 2003. Owen Stephen. An Anthology of Chinese Literature. New York: Norton, 1996. Shulman, David and Guy G. Stroumsa. Self and Self-Transformation in the History of Religions. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Wedell-Wedellsborg Anne. "Chinese Modernism" In Cologne Workshop 1984 on Contemporary Chinese Literature, 96-126. Read More