Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Guan ju
Guan ju (traditional Chinese: 關雎; simplified Chinese: 关雎; pinyin: Guān jū; Wade–Giles: Kuan1 chü1: "Guan guan cry the ospreys", often mistakenly written with the unrelated but similar-looking character 睢, suī) is the first 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 BC, making it also one of China's oldest poems, though not the oldest in the Shi Jing. 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, offer different interpretations.
The poem has been culturally important since antiquity. According to the Analects, Confucius remarked that it displayed both joy and sorrow but neither to an excessive degree. 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. In particular, the lines 窈窕淑女 "fair and good lady", 求之不得 "seeking and not getting", and 辗转反侧 "to toss and turn in bed" have become well-known four-character classical idioms or set phrases (chengyu).
"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.
A translation of the Guan ju poem to English by Chinese master translator Xu Yuanchong is below:
Cooing And Wooing
By riverside are cooing
A pair of turtledoves;
A good young man is wooing
A fair maiden he loves.
Water flows left and right
Of cress long here, short there;
The youth yearns day and night
For the good maiden fair.
His yearning grows so strong,
He can not fall asleep,
But tosses all night long,
So deep in love, so deep!
Now gather left and right
Cress long or short and tender!
O lute, play music bright
For the bride sweet and slender!
Feast friends at left and right
On cress cooked till tender!
O bells and drums, delight
The bride so sweet and slender!
An interpretation of another translation of the poem is as follows. 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.
Hub AI
Guan ju AI simulator
(@Guan ju_simulator)
Guan ju
Guan ju (traditional Chinese: 關雎; simplified Chinese: 关雎; pinyin: Guān jū; Wade–Giles: Kuan1 chü1: "Guan guan cry the ospreys", often mistakenly written with the unrelated but similar-looking character 睢, suī) is the first 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 BC, making it also one of China's oldest poems, though not the oldest in the Shi Jing. 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, offer different interpretations.
The poem has been culturally important since antiquity. According to the Analects, Confucius remarked that it displayed both joy and sorrow but neither to an excessive degree. 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. In particular, the lines 窈窕淑女 "fair and good lady", 求之不得 "seeking and not getting", and 辗转反侧 "to toss and turn in bed" have become well-known four-character classical idioms or set phrases (chengyu).
"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.
A translation of the Guan ju poem to English by Chinese master translator Xu Yuanchong is below:
Cooing And Wooing
By riverside are cooing
A pair of turtledoves;
A good young man is wooing
A fair maiden he loves.
Water flows left and right
Of cress long here, short there;
The youth yearns day and night
For the good maiden fair.
His yearning grows so strong,
He can not fall asleep,
But tosses all night long,
So deep in love, so deep!
Now gather left and right
Cress long or short and tender!
O lute, play music bright
For the bride sweet and slender!
Feast friends at left and right
On cress cooked till tender!
O bells and drums, delight
The bride so sweet and slender!
An interpretation of another translation of the poem is as follows. 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.