Chinese Literature

CHINESE LITERATURE CONTENTS KUO MO-JO—Chu Yuan: Great Patriotic Poet CHU YUAN—Li Sao CHOU YANG—^The Reform and Development of Chinese Opera TING Yl & HO CHING-CHIH—'The White-haired Girl HO CHING-CHIH—How "The White-haired Girl" Was Written and Produced WEI WEI—Get Them Down! SHIH KUO—Happy Day I «fW W-i* > 4 .'T : 1953 /c CHINESE LITERATURE CONTENTS KJJO MO-JO—Chu Yuan; Great Patriotic Poet 5 CHU YUAN—IA Sao 12 CHOU YANG—^The Reform and Development of Chinese Opera 23 TING YIi& HO CHING-CHIH—The White-haired Giv\ ... 38 HO CHING-CHIH—How "The White-haired Girl" Was Written and Produced 110 WEI WEI—Get Them Down! 115 SHIH KUO—Kslvw Day 132 Plates YU FEI-AN—The Return of Spring CHIN CHENG & TUNG PO—^Peasants Working for Industrialisation YEN HAN—I Will Defend Peace Printed in China CHINESE LITERATURE Editor: MAO TUN ADDRESS: "Chinese Literature," 1 I Nan Ho Yen, Peking Published by the Foreign Languages Press 26 Kuo Hui Chieh, Peking, China Chu Yuan: Great Patriotic Poet by Kuo Mo'jo June 15th this year (the 5th day of the 5th moon by the lunar calendar) ia the 2,2S0th anniver- eary of the death of Chu Yuan, great patriotic poet and statesman of China. Chu Yuan was a digni tary of the kingdom of Ch'u during the Warring States period, but he steadfastly opposed the cor rupt government of the king of Ch'u and stood up staunchly for his own honourable policy. His im mortal "Li Sao"—a poem so eminently of the people—is an impassioned expression of his patriot ism. Chu Yuan is one of the four cultural giants the World Peace Council has called on all peoples to commemorate this September. Chu Yuan is one of the great poets produced by the Chinese people. Passionate love for his i)eople and his country, for truth and justice, pervades his poetry. He was bom 2,292 years ago, in 340 B.C., during the Warring States period in the kingdom of Ch'u, and belonged to the same clan as the king of Ch'u. The Chu clan were descended from Chu Hsia, son of King Wu of Ch'u of the early Spring-and-Autumn period (the 7th century B.C.). Chu was Chu Hsia's fief. But in one of his poems Chu Yuan says that he was poor. This was because, according to the law of Ch'u, feudal princes' fiefs were granted them only for two generations, after which they reverted to the crown. Hence, although Chu Yuan was related to the king of Ch'u, he was in actual fact just like any other common citizen of the realm. Because of this, he knew all the people's difficulties. He saw all the disasters that befell them, and often sighed and shed tears for them. Later, when he fell from favour and was banished from court, he considered several times whether he should go to some other kingdom— this was a common practice among intellectuals of the Warring States period—^but when he thought of his countrymen's sufferings he could not bring himself to go. He seems to have had a special sympathy for the peasantry/ In The Soothsayer Chu Yuan asks the diviner: Shall I still drive the plough and wield the hoe, Or to the great to curry favour go? He raised eight alternative questions like this, the first alternative always indicating what he had done or wanted to do. If The Soothsayer can be believed, Chu Yuan must have been willing to till the fields, but unwilling to call on the princes of different states to beg for some official post. Sympathy and love for the people were fundamental qualities with Chu Yuan. And because of this he was able to win the sympathy of the people, and his poems, which are filled with life, started a revolution in Chinese poetry and have exercised a great and lasting influence on the development of Chinese literature. This is why the Chinese people are commemorating him more than 2,000 years after his death. According to the official Han history, Chu Yuan left only twenty-five poems. By great good fortune none of these has been lost. They comprise the eleven Odes, nine Elegies, Li Sao, Riddles, Requiem, The Soothsayer and The Fisherman. Wang Yi of the later Han dynasty ascribed Requiem to Sung Yu, and included the doubtful poem Wandering as one of the twenty-five. But, judging by Ssuma Chien's biography of Chu Yuan and the internal evidence of the poem, we may claim that Requiem is undoubtedly Chu Yuan's work, while Wandering may well be the first draft of the poem Ta Jen Fu by Ssuma Hsiang-ju. The Soothsayer and The Fisherman (especially the latter) are generally believed not to have been written by Chu Yuan. However, the rhymes are those of the Chin dynasty, and I believe they must be the work of Sung Yu, Tang Lo, Ching Tso or some other of Chu Yuan's followers, who sympathized with the poet and was familiar with his life and thought. Hence these two poems, although probably not by Chu Yuan himself, afford valuable material for our study of the poet. It is clear from those poems which are undoubtedly Chu Yuan's that his poetry is characterized by .its close affinity to the people. The first thing to note is that he used the folk-song form, greatly enlarging its scope. Before Chu Yuan, the aristocratic poetry of ancient China of the Book of Songs and the rhymed inscriptions on bronzes after the Spring- and-Autumn period, whether belonging to the north or the south, all used the four-character-line and had little in common with the language of the people. But although Chu Yuan still makes large use of the four- character-line in Riddles, Requiem and the Ode to the Orange, in his other poems he breaks away from this style completely. A great use of local dialect and colloquialisms is a striking characteristic of Chu Yuan's poetry, of which one could give many examples. The best instance is the repeated use of the character "hsi," a character which often appears in ancient folk songs, occurring fre quently in the folk-song section of the Book of Songs. This character •* ' •' <v *' ' ' ' .; iv'kVS-,--. •ivTj.r- . Portrait of Chu Yuan Painted by an unknown artist in the early 17th century was formerly pronounced "ah," and when we read it like this the true folk quality of his poems is apparent. Chu Yuan created a new form in ancient Chinese poetry, a new form exactly in keeping with his love and sympathy for the people. Hence the form and content of his work are ideally integrated. Chu Yuan was not only a poet who loved the people, he was also a far-sighted statesman. Since he was a native of Ch'u, he loved his motherland. But his love for his country extended beyond Ch*u. Let us look at his Riddles. The majority of the 170-odd questions posed describe the whole history of China, mentioning in comparative detail events during the Yu, Hsia, Shang and Chou dynasties. Only a few lines refer to the kingdom of Ch'u. Or let us look at Li Sao. In that poem he also praises Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Kao Yao, Yi Yin, Wu Ting, Fu Yueh, King Wen of Chou and Duke Huan of Chi. Nowhere, however, does he allude to the early kings of Ch'u. From this his wide vision is clear. Chu Yuan loved not only Ch'u but all China. Although ancient Chinese society appears to have been united before the Spring-and-Autumn period, the territory then inhabited was small, and was actually occupied by a collection of clans (known as the "myriad states") loosely linked together. Even while these clans were allied, and much more so after their alliance was broken, each had its own govern ment and developed more or less independently of the rest. However, it is important to realize that their language and customs developed along fundamentally the same line. During a long period of independent development of these different groups, Chinese territory was gi*adually extended, until by the end of the Spring-and-Autumn period there was a widespread, urgent desire for unity. The many clans of the Shang and Chou dynasties had amalgamated to form twelve states in the Spring-and-Autumn period and seven states in the Warring States period. The path of historical development was clearly approaching unification of the country. This was the common desire of the Chinese peoples, almost without exception, which is reflected in the various schools of thought from the Chou to the Chin dynasty. Naturally, Chu Yuan was aware of this trend and general desire. This gave rise to his hope that the kingdom of Ch'u might unite all China. Forward and back I hastened in my quest, Followed the former kings and took no rest. (Li Sao) He was all impatience to help the king of Ch'u to follow the example of Yu, Tang, Wen and Wu in unifying China. Let us see to what extent the kingdom of Ch'u at that time was in a position to unify China. For this was not simply wishful thinking on the part of Chu Yuan. The kingdom of Ch'u had originally been an ally of the royal house of Shang, and after the fall of Shang, during the several hundred years of the Chou dynasty, it developed independently in the south.

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