The Mystery of the Book of Songs

Author: Qu Xiaoqiang
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2001-12-01
Features: The Book of Songs is said to be an encyclopedia of life education (to be precise, this is judged by Confucian standards and feudal moral standards), rather than an encyclopedia of various humanistic and natural conditions from the Western Zhou to the Spring and Autumn Period over 500 years. However, pointing out this fact does not mean to completely deny Confucius's contribution to the exploration of the connotation of the Book of Songs and Song Studies. Confucius had unique insight to first recognize from a theoretical level the significant function of literary works in reflecting and serving society, and left us invaluable and precious experience in practice. This is undoubtedly commendable. The linguistic art of the Book of Songs also demonstrated multiple pioneering achievements in the history of Chinese poetry, such as the invention of bi, xing, and fu, the creation of quatrains, the origin of repeated chapters and stanzas, reduplicated words (i.e., chongyan), repeated lines, and the emergence of alliterative and reduplicated rhymes. In December 1949, Soviet sinologist N. Fyodorin once listened to Mao Zedong's evaluation of the linguistic art of the Book of Songs and its status in the history of Chinese poetry on Mao Zedong's special train to Moscow.