THE BOOK OF SONGS AND CHINA'S LITERARY TRADITION Allusion to Nature |
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Robert Oxnam :: Throughout the Book of Songs**, there are references to nature, and allusion to nature becomes a major motif in later Chinese poetry. Marcia Wagner :: One of the most common techniques in the Book of Poems or the Book of Songs** is to juxtapose a couple of lines describing a human situation with a couple of lines describing something that happens in nature. So a young bride who is, we hope, going to soon bear children is compared to a young peach tree that first has beautiful blossoms and then bears fruit. Stephen Owen :: Sometimes it seems like there's an opposition, where it will be stormy outside and the person will be content within. But I think the important thing here is again putting an image of the natural world side by side with an image of the human world, and forcing the reader to draw some sort of connection, to think about the two as in some way being in parallel or related to one another. Marcia Wagner :: This is the essence of the lyric tradition throughout the next two and a half millennia in China, where natural imagery, metaphors of natural phenomena, are frequently used to illustrate human emotion or a human situation. |
** The Book of Songs is also known as the Book of Poetry, the Classic of Poetry, and sometimes the Book of Odes. These are all possible translations of the Chinese title, Shi jing [Shih-ching in Wade-Giles romanization]. |
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