An introductory yet trenchant exploration of select Chinese classic texts that cover the domains of classical literature, history, philosophy, and fine arts.
Part 1
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Do curso por The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Classics of Chinese Humanities: Guided Readings
24 classificações
Conheça os instrutores
Prof. Ou Fan Leo Lee 李歐梵Sin Wai Kin Professor of Chinese Culture
Faculty of Arts
Welcome to my third lecture, which is titled Landscape of Immortality.
I'm using this opportunity to share with you my thoughts on some of the works
of perhaps the most famous of all Chinese poets in history of Chinese literature.
His name is Su Tungpo.
His days are 1037 and 1101 AD.
Luckily for English readers,
we have a very interesting book published in the late
40s by the famous Chinese lit writer, Lin Yutang.
That book is still available in print.
It's titled, The Gay Genius.
Lin Yutang is on record saying that of all the poets and
writers in Chinese literature, his own favorite is Su Tungpo, in fact.
More than Li Bo or Du Fu, more than Bai Di or quite a few others,
he really singles out Su Tungpo for a long biographical treatment.
Now, why Su Tungpo?
We all have our reasons, of course.
In Lin Yutang's case, he considers Su to be the most free flowing poet of all ages.
So the key term in his book is free spirit.
Su Tungpo is a free person, although he is a Confucianist.
He attained high office, and he's frustrated several times.
And still he maintains a sense of freedom, naturalness,
a sense of humor, and he enjoys food.
In fact, he makes the best of life in all his vicissitudes.
That's why Su Tungpo, perhaps more than Li Bai and Du Fu,
happens to be my favorite as well.
But I may have a different reason for this because I think Su's works,
particularly his poetry in a broad sense, epitomizes what
I will call the lyrical tradition of Chinese literature.
And I'll try to explain that later on in my lecture.
Su, of course, is very famous down to the present day.
If you ask people who are educated with high school or
university education, they could probably recite one or two Su's favorite poems.
The three poems I pick up today are probably the most famous, so
I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on these three poems.
They all focus on one site,
a very famous historical site called Red Cliff.
This is the site where, in the famous Romance of the Three Kingdoms,
the fleet of the famous general from the north, Cao Cao,
was defeated by a 30 year old general from the south, Zhou Yu.
This incident has been celebrated in countless Chinese novels,
poems, popular lyrics, as well as movies.
Recently, in fact, some of you may have seen a famous movie called Red Cliff.
So Red Cliff is a kind of a sign of historical memory.
And that historic memory is still with us precisely because of
the three poems dedicated to Red Cliff by Su Tungpo.
Now, just a few words about Su's own lifestyle.
Some would say that he is a Confucianist only on the outside,
in a sense that he, like everybody else, studied art,
attained high office, passed a civil service examination in his early 20s.
And yet, we all know that his heart was not really in civil service.
In other words, he didn't really want to be a high official,
although he was very good at it, as mayor in several important Chinese cities.
But more often than not, he was frustrated.
He was the victim of imperial gossip, of chicanery among the bureaucrats.
And since he was known as a conservative, politically,
he was opposed to the reforms of the famous Prime Minister Wang Anshi.
And yet, Wang and Su remained friends, down to the end of their lives.
When Su was frustrated,
he took on another role, if you like, that of a recluse, a Taoist recluse.
He befriended quite a few Taoist monks and Buddhist monks.
He roamed the landscapes of Chinese nature, and
he really enjoyed every single minute of that carefree life.
So this is the Su Tungpo that we all celebrate today.
So between that of official, or the scarlet official,
on the one hand and a poet, writer, literatus on the other,
I think the majority of the Chinese readers will prefer the latter.
There is something about philosophers lurking within Su's work,
although he's not unlike Han Yu,
a sort of a orthodox philosopher in a Confucian sense.
That is to say, he very seldom elaborates on the Confucian way.
Although he does have his Confucian side, some would suspect that,
as Lin Yutang will say, that metaphysically, Su may have been a Hindu
because he believed in some kind of artistic transcendence, but deep at heart,
he's a combination of Buddhism and Taoism, especially Taoism.
So one might argue that these sort of secondary strains of Chinese thought,
Buddhism, Taoism, the kind of ideal of the recluse,
the non-official side of the intellectual life,
all embodied in one person, Su Tungpo.
Since we are really talking about his most famous poems on Red Cliff,
so let's zero in on the site itself.
Su was cashiered actually.
He lost his office.
The emperor punished him to become a minor official
in this rather barren place along the Yangtze River.
Actually scholars have discovered that there are at least three
historical sites associated with Red Cliff.
And Su Tungpo actually doesn't really care which is the real site
where Cao Cao's fleet was defeated.
So he simply uses the historical site as a way of conjuring up a sense of history,
or historical memory, in the service of his lyrical ideals.
So in that sense, it is a sort of a complicated effort,
it is not unlike the works of the grand historian,
a straight historical account fueled with drama and perhaps a moral verdict.
But rather, it is a representation, shall we say,
a literary representation, a literary re-evocation of that memory,
that particular moment in history of early China.
In fact, Su wrote three variations of the same theme.
The most popular, the one that is recited by a lot of school children in
fact, actually is written in a si form.
Si is a kind of a regulated poetry with rather free cadences.
In other words, it does not closely rhyme, as in five word or seven word poetry.
It is more emotional in general.
It is a vehicle that can express personal feelings a little bit more.
So that famous poem can serve us what I would call
a prelude to his philosophical heart.
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