User:Momo 318/Nine Changes

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"Nine Changes," also known as "Nine Variations," "Chiu pien" or "Jiu Bian" (traditional Chinese: 九辯; simplified Chinese: 九辩; pinyin: Jiǔ biàn) is one of the 17 poems in the ancient Chinese poetry collection Chu ci, also known as The Songs of the South, or The Verses of Chu, compiled in the 2nd century A.D. Along with Shi Jing, Chu ci is one of the two essential Classical Chinese anthologies of poetry. The authorship, date, division, title significance, and composition intention of "Nine Changes" are controversial. However, it is still vital in the development process of Chinese poetry: as a poem in Chu ci, "Nine Changes" is written in a new style: “Sao Style,” which allows each line to contain a good deal of narrative; moreover, starting from "Nine Changes," "be grieved by autumn" (悲秋) has been a motif of traditional Chinese literature.

Authorship
Song Yu is a purported author of the "Nine Changes." He was a supposedly 3rd century B.C. disciple of a 4th century B.C. poet called Qu Yuan at the Chu court. A 2nd century A.D. compiler Wang Yi, who collected all poems and compiled this anthology, first attributed the poem to Song Yu. Zhu Xi (12th—13th century, A.D.) agreed with Yi and claimed that this poem was composed by Song Yu, who grieved his teacher Qu Yuan's exile and thus wrote this poem to proclaim his integrity.

However, there is scant reliable information about this purported author. Although a notable historian Sima Qian (c. 2nd—1st century, B.C.), in his Historical Records, listed Song Yu among the great poets of the Chu who lived after Qu Yuan, Sima Qian did not mention the authorship of "Nine Changes." In addition, Jiao Hong (16th century—17th century, A.D.) believes that this poem was composed by Qu Yuan rather than Song Yu. Thus, the authorship is still controversial. The same situation also happens in other poems: "the date and authorship of the poems in the anthology (Chu ci) are in many cases the subject of fierce controversy."

Title
"Nine Changes" is a title borrowed from myth (another example of such borrowing is "Nine Songs," a phrase that occurs in more than one Chinese myth ). Wang Fuzhi (1619–1692) clarifies that this poem uses the same title of another "Jiu Bian" composed by the son of the founder of the Xia dynasty. Modern scholar Gopal Sukhu agrees that this title "refers to music said to have been brought back to earth by Qi, the son of the founder of the Xia dynasty, after one of his visits to heaven."

The Chinese characters are "九辩" (which Pinyin is "Jiǔ Biàn"), in which "九" literally means "Nine," and "辩" literally means "arguments." "Nine" in antiquity was often used as a synonym for "many." According to Wang Yi, "Nine" is the number of "Yang" (masculine principle); "Nine" indicates the Way ("the Way" is the fundamental reality; a constant Way in which the diverse ways of living and relating are essentially balanced ) of ordering principles, such as the nine stars of the heaven, and the nine "isles (province)" of the earth.

The word "biàn" (辩) has multiple explanations. In ancient China, two different characters sharing the same pronunciation could be interchangeable, while the modern Pinyin may reflect the Classical Chinese pronunciation. In other words, "biàn" (辩) could be interchangeable with another or even dozens of Chinese characters with the same pronunciation. The word "biàn" (辩) may literally be translated as "arguments," "disputations," or "debate." The first compiler Wang Yi deems that the word "biàn" (辩) is interchangeable with "biàn," "Change" (变). Wang Fuzhi claims that "jiǔ biàn" is "jiǔ biàn (nine times)" (九遍) and which indicates that the poem is composed of nine parts. Sukhu claims that "Nine Variations are variations on themes that belong very much to court life: falling out of favor with one’s sovereign and the concomitant demotion and exile." Thus, he suggests that "biàn" is also interchangeable with "biǎn (demotion)" (贬).

Structure
"Nine Changes" is a long poem (with 129 sentences, as two lines compose a full sentence, there are 258 lines) without individual subtitles and subheadings or clear division; moreover, rather than consisting of rhymed couplets, lines tend to be characterized by run-on rhyming. Thus, the "Nine Changes" verses are not characterized by clear division into separate parts. Though Wang Fuzhi claims that "Jiǔ Biàn" is "Jiǔ biàn (nine times)" and which indicates that the poem is composed of nine parts, the "Nine Changes" verses are not characterized by clear division into separate parts. In fact, different critics have different ways of division. Wang Fuzhi divides the poem into nine parts; Hong Xingzu (c. 1090—1155, in his Chu ci Buzhu ) and Zhu Xi (in his Chu ci Jizhu ) divide the poem into ten parts; Gopal Sukhu divides it into eleven parts.

Poem Style
"Nine Changes" is written in a new poem style: "Sao Style." There are two types of poem styles in Chu ci. One is "Sao Style," and another is "Song style." According to David Hawkes, "Sao-style verse" is an evolution from the "Song style" (widely used between 11th century B.C. to 6th century B.C.) and is designed for the recitation of long narrative poems." In Chu ci, the poems composed in the "Sao" style, such as "Nine Changes," "The Fisherman" (Yu Fu), and "Divining the Abode" (Bu Ju), "likely dating from the third and early second centuries BC," "aim to capture Qu Yuan's poetic spirit and sentiment of desolation."

As Hawkes points out that "(Sao-style verse) must have been nearer to speech than song, because it resembles the first of the two kinds of verse mentioned above in employing the contrast of stressed and unstressed syllables for its rhythmic effects." Hawkes uses the carrier-sound "hsi" and unstressed particles "tee" to demonstrate the sentence structure, while "tum" represents a content character. To be specific, the prosodic unit of Sao-style verse is a double-line sentence separated midway by the carrier-sound "hsi," and the "tee" in the Sao-style line represents unstressed particles. The differences between the two styles become apparent when Hawkes compares two lines of Song-style poem with one double line of the Sao style:

"Song style

tum tum tum hsi tum tum

tum tum tum hsi tum tum

Sao style

tum tum tum tee tum tum hsi

tum tum tum tee tum tum."

Thus, the Sao-style line "contains on the average three times as many meaningful syllables as the tetrasyllabic line of the Shih Ching songs," and the Sao-style poems "are very long and contain a good deal of narrative. " Undoubtedly, the longer lines and more meaningful syllables allow poets to describe complicated things. Likewise, "Nine Changes" contains an abundant narrative of the depiction of nature and emotional expressions. In "Nine Changes," we can also see such a pattern:

"顏(tum) 淫(tum) 溢(tum) 而(tee) 將(tum) 罷(tum) 兮(hsi)，

柯(tum) 彷(tum) 佛(tum) 而(tee) 萎(tum) 黃(tum)；

萷(tum) 櫹(tum) 槮(tum) 之(tee) 可(tum) 哀(tum) 兮(hsi)，

形(tum) 銷(tum) 鑠(tum) 而(tee) 瘀(tum) 傷(tum). "

("Things creep in hue towards their coming and;

The boughs are thin and withered-looking;

The tapering twigs are sad to see;

The whole appearance wasted away and sick." )

Nature Poetry
"Nine Changes," as a nature poem or a poem about a journey, can be compared with other poems in Chu ci. Similar to "Yuan You" (also known as "Yuan Yu" or "Distant Journey"), which is "a Taoist re-casting of "Encountering Sorrow" (Li Sao), tracing the path of an adept from worldly frustrations to the attainment of mystical union," "Nine Changes" also contains "a quest journey for a Fair One prompted both by frustrations at court and by grief over the passing of time." Besides that, similar to "Yu Fu" (The Fisherman) and "Bu Ju" (Divining the Abode”), "Nine Changes" also "develops a new depiction of nature far beyond the brief and simple images known from the 'Airs of the States' (Guo Feng)." In other words, it describes the bleak environment in a long and intense way of description. The "Nine Changes" is an interesting early example of nature poetry. David Hawkes says that in terms of the development of poetry, the "Nine Changes" shows, "perhaps for the first time, a fully developed sense of what the Japanese call mono no aware, the pathos of natural objects, which was to be the theme of so much Chinese poetry through the ages."

Moreover, "Nine Changes" starts a lyrical tradition that autumn is associated with sadness. "Nine Changes" is filled with descriptions of autumn scenery; besides, the speaker of this poem frequently expresses his sorrow in this poem by using "sadness"(悲), "gloomy" (凄), and "lonely" (独) directly, such as the first four sentences:

"悲哉秋之为气也！萧瑟兮草木摇落而变衰.

憭栗兮若远行；登山临水兮送将归.

泬寥兮天高而气清；寂漻兮收潦而水清.

憯凄增欷兮，薄寒之中人. "

("Alas for the breath of autumn! Wan and drear! flower and leaf fluttering fall and turn to decay.

Sad and lorn! As when on journey far one climbs a hill and looks down on the water to speed a returning friend.

Empty and vast! The skies are high and the air is cold.

Still and deep! The streams have drunk full and the waters are clear.

Heartsick and sighing sore! For the cold draws on and strikes into a man." )

As Sukhu relates this poem to "demotion and exile," he says that this poem depicts the exile’s landscape, which is the wilderness and the season is autumn, and sadness that is peculiar to autumn is associated with this work. "Nine Changes" has been canonical to subsequent poets. "Be grieved by autumn" has been a motif of traditional Chinese literature.