Guan Ju - Synopsis and Structure

Synopsis and Structure

Original Chinese text at Chinese Wikisource (維基文庫) : 關雎

"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.
...
The beautiful and good young lady
Waking and sleeping he wished for her.
...
The beautiful and good young lady
Zithers and lutes greet her as friend.
...
The beautiful and good young lady
Bells and drums delight her.

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.
...
Varied in length are the water plants;
Left and right we gather them.
...
Varied in length are the water plants;
Left and right we cull them as vegetable.

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". 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.