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''Guan ju'' (: "''Guan'' cry the ospreys") is a poem from the ancient anthology ''Shi Jing'' (''Classic of Poetry''), and is one of the best known poems in Chinese literature. It has been dated to the seventh century BCE,〔W. A. C. H. Dobson, ''The Language of the Book of Songs'' (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968) p. 21.〕 making it also one of China's oldest poems. The title of the poem comes from its first line (''Guan Guan ju jiu''), which evokes a scene of ospreys calling on a river islet. Fundamentally the poem is about finding a good and fair maiden as a match for a young noble. ''Guan ju'' boasts a long tradition of commentaries. Traditional Chinese commentators, represented by the "Three Schools" and the Mao School, hold that the poem contains a moral pertinent to the relationship between genders. However, modern commentators, and some Western sinologists, offers different interpretation. The poem has been commonly alluded to in later Chinese literature and sometimes even in everyday speech. == Synopsis and structure == "Guan ju" is part of the first section of the ''Shi Jing'' entitled "Zhou nan" (周南), itself a part of "Airs of the States" (國風), which make up 160 out of the 305 poems of the anthology. It is fairly typical of the other poems of the Airs of the States, being made up of three tetrasyllabic stanzas of four to eight lines each. Each stanza begins with a natural image, which is juxtaposed without comment to the human situation around which the poem centres. The first stanza begins with the onomatopoeic cry of ospreys: "Guan guan" cry the ospreys On the islet in the river. The stanza then rehearses formulaic lines, drawn from the human context: The beautiful and good young lady Is a fine mate for the lord. The entire poem consists of a series of isolated episodes which can be linked into a continuous narrative. It alternates between natural images and human situations, two literally unrelated frames of reference. One set of formulaic lines refers to a male-female relationship: The beautiful and good young lady Is a fine mate for the lord. (3-4) ... The beautiful and good young lady Waking and sleeping he wished for her. (7-8) ... The beautiful and good young lady Zithers and lutes greet her as friend. (15-16) ... The beautiful and good young lady Bells and drums delight her. (19-20) Lines 9-12 intrude upon the formulaic scheme, making the poem asymmetrical: He wished for her without getting her. Waking and sleeping he thought of her: Longingly, longlingly, He tossed and turned from side to side. The human elements of the poem (lines 3-4, 7-12, 15-16, 19-20) can read as either a first or third person narrative. If such a reading is taken, the poem begins with a statement of the male persona's longing for an ideal beloved in the first stanza, depicts the withholding of fulfillment in the second, and concludes with an eventual realisation of these desires in the third stanza. The other set of formulaic lines describe, in vividly physical and tangible action, the rustic world of harvesting plants, incrementally varying the key verb of physical activity: Varied in length are the water plants; Left and right we catch them. (5-6) ... Varied in length are the water plants; Left and right we gather them. (13-14) ... Varied in length are the water plants; Left and right we cull them as vegetable. (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''. It is not easy to find an equivalent in Western literature, but ''xing'' can be explained as a method of creating the mood, atmosphere or context within which the remainder of the poem takes place, and which exerts influence over the possible meanings of the rest of the poem’s action. It has variously been translated as "stimulus", "stimulates", and "motif".〔See for example Pauline Yu, ''The Reading of Imagery in the Chinese Poetic Tradition'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 49-50, 56-67, 74.〕 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''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Guan ju」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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