Chu Yuan And His Li Sao

DR. S. V. JOGA RAO
Visiting Professor of Telugu, Leningrad University

Men lived in China too, where sacred sermons were also heard. More than two thousand years ago, there lived in China, Chu Yuan, a great poet, who gave the world the ‘Li Sao’¹ a poetic soliloquy of his soul, a marvel of its kind in the world of poetry. The poem, as observed byMr. Yang Hsien-yi and Mr. Gladys Yang, “is not only one of the most remarkable works of Chu Yuan, it ranks as one of the greatest poems in Chinese or old poetry.”

Born in 340 B. C., in a nobles’ family in the State of Chu, Chu Yuan soon became a statesman, held high offices, endeared himself to the king, rose to the position of a ‘left minister’ and for sometime moved with the king very closely in matters of counsel and policy. At a time when the safety of Chu was threatened by Chin, another State, Chu Yuan in a spirit of sheer patriotism to the occasion and offered to save his country from the impending peril. But the political jackals that surrounded the king in the disguise of councillors restrained him from accepting Chu Yuan’s proposals. They succeeded in alienating one from the other and ultimately brought about the fall of the king himself and the kingdom too which was sacked by the enemy and never recovered.

An eventful time it was when Chu Yuan, the forlorn statesman, turned into a blooming poet at the age of sixty-two. During twenty more years of his life’s sojourn as an at-home exile, he made his score as a poet, but he no longer could see any future for his native land and one day on the fifth month of the lunar calendar he drowned himself in the Milo River in Hunan. The tragic day of the great man’s departure is annually commemorated with all ceremony by the people of China throughout the land. “This tradition” says Kuo Mo jo “has spread to Korea, Japan, Viet-Nam and Malaya.”

Chu Yuan was a great patriot and philanthropist. He loved deep his motherland, and deeper the people, the common folk, though being a Nobleman. He struggled for them and suffered for them. So naturally they loved him, adored him and grieved for the man who grieved for them. He lodged his soul for them in fine poems which are still green in the memory of his people and are sure to perpetuate his name. Great poets will never die. They always live in their poetry.

Men with heart usually do not prove themselves to be successful statesmen. The same is true of Chu Yuan. But as poet he leaves behind him a great legacy of about twenty-five poems and ranks amongst the galaxy of the great poets of the world. He draws material for his poems from his own surroundings and circumstances and eventful experiences, poetic forms from folk poetry, and his language from the speech of the common people and kindles the whole with the spirit from within. All his poems have a lyrical flavour and folk vitality about them. He is considered to be a literary revolutionist of his times and his influence on Chinese literature has been felt for the last two thousand years.

Some of his poems are odes dedicated to the gods, dealing with matters of sacrifice and courtship, some of them in dramatic and some in narrative form. Some poems are elegies which voice the extreme anguish of the author at the bitter experiences that befell him and show the Confucian, the Taoist and the Legalist thoughts, all in a happy combination. His ‘Sooth Sayer’ portrays him as a rationalist and his ‘Requiem’ proves him to a patriot of the first order. The most extraordinary of his poems is the ‘Tien Wen’ meaning the riddles. In this, like in the Nasadiya Sukta, the famous Hymn of Creation in our Rigveda, Chu Yuan dives deep into his imagination in quest of the Absolute Truth that has been existing since times immemorial even before the creation of the universe. He rallies round scores of his doubts and advances a series of questions such as: ‘Who built the sky? Where does it end? What supports it? Why the division into twelve Zodiac signs? How are the stars and planets suspended in space?  How many miles does the sun travel in one day? What makes the moon wax and wane? Where does sun hide before dawn? Enough, undoubtedly, these reveal the mind of an aspirant at the portals of Absolute Knowledge.

The ‘Li Sao’, meaning the Lament, is Chu Yuan’s master- piece, and an immortal one in world’s poetry. In this, the poet sinks into the soul of his feeling and flies into the skies of imagination. This is almost an autobiography of his soul. It begins like this:

“A prince am I of ancestry renowned
Illustrious name my royal sire hath found
When Sirius did in spring its light display,
A child was born, and tiger marked the day.”
So moves on the theme of his career behind a transparent veil of poetry. He narrates further that his father gave an auspicious name to him ‘denoting the Heaven’s divine marks should combine with the virtues of earth in him’. ‘With lavished innate qualities indeed’, Chu Yuan ‘renewed his talents by art and skill’. He lived in pomp ‘till creeping time, like flowing water, stole away his prime.’ ‘Spring and Autumn passed in swift succession and the fallen flowers lay scattered on the ground.’ That means his hopes did not bear fruit. He fears and says, ‘the dusk might fall before my dream was found’. What was his dream?–the well being of his country. He proclaims that his sole design was to guide the king. How has he made his approach? “My chariot drawn by steeds of race divine I urged,” he says. We infer his plans are sound and noble. He compares the greatness of the ancient kings with the pettiness of the kings of his time and laments the peril of an invasion by a foreign power. He never cares for himself but fears for the fall of his king, whatever his attitude to him might be. Forward and ward he hastens in an incessant quest. The prince defames his integrity, gives ear to slander and flames with anger. Yet still he endures and vows, “My Lord, I would not fail, celestial spheres my witness be on high; I strove but for His Sacred Majesty’. ‘For me departure could arouse no pain; I grieved to see his royal purpose vain.” he declares. Such was his loyalty.

He describes the toil of his service, comparing the hopes he cherished and the plans he designed for the good of the king and the people, with crops and gardens which failed to yield on account of the pests of the evil counsels of others. He says, ‘I did not grieve to see them die away, but grieved because midst weeds they did decay.’ Then the saint in him comes out announcing:

“Life I adapted to the ancient way,
Leaving the manners of the present day;
Thus unconforming to the modern age,
The path I followed of a bygone sage.”

Once again he is amidst his people. He whispers to himself:

“Long did I sigh and wipe away my tears,
To see my people bowed with griefs and fears.”

In another couplet, he reveals his heart:

“I marvel at the folly of the king
So heedless of his people’s suffering”

Even in his “Stray Thoughts”, he voices his feelings:

“The people’s sufferings move my heart,
Our land I cannot leave.”

He is human to the core, a lover of not only his motherland but mankind. It is interesting to note that these sentiments were expressed over two thousand years ago. The modern Chinese Golliath should remember it.

When antagonists mocked at his simple Melilotusdemeanour, he affirms his stand:

“But since my heart did love such purity,
I’d not regret a thousand deaths to die.
“In sadness plunged and sunk in deepest gloom
Alone I drove on to my dreary doom.
In exile rather would I meet my end,
Than to the baseness of their ways descend.”
“Todie for righteousness alone I sought
For this was what the ancient sages taught”

He considers himself to be a misfit in their company, like a circle in a square design.

In his moments of solitude, he murmurs to himself in plaintive lines:

“Rejected now and in disgrace,
I would retire to cultivate my grace.
Why should I grieve to go unrecognised,
Since, in my heart fragrance was truly prized?
My innocence is proof against abuse.
All men had pleasures in their various ways
My pleasure was to cultivate my grace.”

May the noble heart behind these lines sprout in China once again!

Chu Yuan was a man of illuminated insight. Once when lentils and weeds fill the prince’s chamber, his inner voice whom he calls ‘My handmaid fair’ asks him why he holds himself aloof with stubborn will and advises him to ‘Persuade the crowd’. Had he done so, it would have been the first people’s revolution in the history of mankind against despotic autocracy. He is a staunch advocate of the people’s cause, a believer in the freedom of the individual and cannot brook any kind of foreign rule or oppression. But he never designs a revolt against the king. He wanders in wilderness at will. He makes an adventurous journey from earth to heaven, of course, in his own poetic fancy, invoking the spirits of the great kings of the bygone ages. He gives the reader a vivid pen-picture of his fantastic journey during which he feels life everywhere in Nature and employs wind, rain, thunder and lightning, clouds and moon to be his attendants and charioteers and the Dragon and the Phoenix to be the steeds. He urges the Prince Divine to wake up but to no use. He cries out in anguish and disappointment, “How could I bear this harsh eternity?” Thus having been tired of his quest and fed up with life, he finally mutters in the low ebb of his voice:

“Wide though the world, no wisdom can be found,
I’ll seek the stream where once the sage was drowned.”

So ends the epilogue of his poem and his life as well. The great soul has departed unhonoured, unwept and unsung. But he lives in his poetry. May his spirit once again hover on the Chinese horizon!

Mr. Kuo Mo-jo observes. “Few poets indeed in the world can rival him in his sincerity, imaginative power and brilliance, nor in the wealth of imagery, lyrical qualities and the diversity of forms of his poems.”

¹ Li Sao and other poems of Chu Yuan, published by the Foreign Languages Press, 1953 (with a sketch of Chu Yuan by Kuo Mo-jo); translated into English by Mr. Yang Hsien-Yi and Gladys Yang.