Guan ju

[2] The poem has subsequently been alluded to repeatedly in Chinese literature and continues to be quoted on occasion in the modern written language and in speech.

The stanza then rehearses formulaic lines, drawn from the human context: The beautiful and good young lady Is a fine mate for the noble.

(17-18) This usage of natural images in juxtaposition to human situations was given the term xing (興) by early commentators, and was regarded as one of the three rhetorical devices of the Shi Jing.

[3] Although there is no historical evidence to prove that the composer of "Guan ju" were intentionally employing such a rhetorical device, there have been a myriad of interpretations as to the purpose of the xing.

The Confucians were responsible for the tendency of much orthodox criticism to regard not only the Shi Jing but all literature in general as morally edifying or didactic in some way.

[5] One legend held that Confucius himself had selected the songs in the Shi Jing from an original pool of three thousand based on their moral import.

Although the Guan ju itself offers no hint of a satirical intent, commentators from the Lu school explain that the poem criticises the improper behaviour of King Kang of Zhou and his wife (eleventh century BCE) by presenting contrasting, positive images of male-female decorum.

The poet of "Guan ju" perceived the germ of disorder and wrote.The Lu school reading evolved further towards the end of the Han dynasty.

According to Zhang Chao's version of the Lu tradition, the Duke of Bi's purpose was "to prevent degeneracy and reproach its progress, / Tactfully criticised and admonished the lord, his father."

"[7] However, as Wang Chong and modern scholars have pointed out, this appears to conflict with Sima's own account of King Kang's reign, which records no deficiencies or evidence of decline.

[9] It persisted well into the fifth century, even appearing in Fan Ye's Hou Han Shu (completed before CE 445), but was eventually eclipsed by the Mao school.

The second interpretive tradition, and the one which became dominant, chose to read "Guan ju" as a poem of praise, and specifically of the queen of the founder of the Zhou dynasty, King Wen.

The Mao School explains the poem as a purposeful analogy, and identifies the young lady as King Wen's queen Tai Si.

[10]The prefaces to the remaining ten poems in the "Zhou nan", the first section of the Shi Jing, all describe the songs as referring to one or another aspect of the queen's virtuous influence.

[11] The influential Song dynasty Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi largely agreed with the Mao school, but added a remark that the poem was composed not by some unknown poet but by the ladies of the royal palace.

He also differs with the Mao school by reading the scenes depicting the picking of water grasses not as literal, but as juxtaposed, analogical images like the opening couplet.

The excavation in 1973 of the text known as Wuxingpian (五行篇) at the Mawangdui revealed a style of Confucian thinking which focused more on the moral and emotional messages evoked by the everyday human situations found in the lyrics.

While some of the first, including the Jesuit Seraphin Couvreur, the first translator of the text into French, persisted with readings based on the Mao school’s interpretation, the majority of Western scholarship has sought novel hermeneutic approaches.

[14] The late twentieth century scholar Qu Wanli (屈萬里) takes "Guan ju" as expressing the emotional anxiety and excitement of a man about to be married, whose wife is greeted at the end of the poem with the ceremonial rites of the wedding as signified by the musical instruments.

In his 1911 study Fêtes et Chansons anciennes de la Chine, Granet declared that he excluded "all interpretations which are symbolic or which imply subtlety in the poet.

The final sections of the poem, describing musical instruments are, in Granet’s schema, elements of a feast at the end of the festival - a ceremonial conclusion to the rural gathering.

Arthur Waley agreed with Granet that traditional readings distort the "true nature" of the poems, but he did point out that it was facilitated by the multivalent meanings of words and social practices.

C. H. Wang has been vehemently critical of what he calls "a manifest distortion of this classic anthology" and argues that the earliest definition of poetry in Chinese tradition (in Shang Shu) links it with song rather than ethics.

Edward L. Shaughnessy argues that "Guan ju" is an example of "correlative thought" in traditional Chinese thinking: Strange though it may seem that the crying of an osprey could evoke the image of a nubile girl, we can begin to see in it something of the intellectual consciousness of the time.