The Poem 'Guan Ju': The Book Of Songs

The poem, “Guan Ju” is the famous first poem of the classic The Book of Songs, which dates from the 543's B.C.E. and the first part of which is a collection of songs from each of the areas of China. This poem is one of the songs from Southern Zhou. It appears to be a simple love song of pure and simple, but is closely associated with the marital morality and values and altitudes toward romance and marriage, emphasized and propagated in Confucian society.

The poem shows the literary importance associated within the literary tradition as it not only contains the expressions of human emotions of love and desire, but also serves as moral guidelines associated with Confucius ideology. The poem employs two literary techniques Bi () and Xing ()

In ancient China, 'Guan-guan' is considered to be the mating sound of ospreys. Instead of describing how the noble man chases around the lady he desires, the narrator uses the imagery of male osprey pursuing the female osprey as a metaphorical allusion to the noble man’s pursuit. The osprey is not any ordinary bird, it is said that mated ospreys cannot be separated, if one dies, the other would die too. Therefore, ospreys symbolize the faithfulness in love and loyalty in marriage. Following the second line, “窈窕淑女, 君子好逑”, which is used repeatedly throughout the poem, the narrator describes the qualities of the lady to be “modest”, “retiring”, and “virtuous” and because of these outstanding qualities, she can be a perfect wife for the noble man. From here, we can observe the moral code imposed on the women in Confucius society echoing throughout the poem. In order to attract men, women need to be reserved with dignity and not to act on their feelings. Because of this, the noble man feels uneasy and tortured by his fascination for the lady, as the lady, just like the short and long duckweeds she collects move in every which way, is hard to know her true feelings and thus hard to pursuit. The imagery of swaying duckweed in the water described in second stanza can also be interpreted as the enchanting figure of the lady as she is working and this is associated with the virtue she possesses. In the third stanza, the narrator describes the love this noble man has for the lady has intensified to a point that his mind and thought are all evolve around the lady. Because of this emotional turmoil hidden in his heart, he cannot even fall asleep as he “輾轉反側” on the bed at night as his desire of getting the lady become stronger and