Peony Pavilion - Fragrant Letters

Author: Tang Xianzu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-07-01
Features:▼Complete Content▼Sandalwood Aroma▼Compact and Portable▼Original Illustrations▼Easy to Carry
The Peony Pavilion is the masterpiece of the great Ming Dynasty composer Tang Xianzu, at which point the author's thoughts and art had fully matured. The Ming Dynasty storytelling novel Du Liangni's Love and Rebirth provided the basic plot for The Peony Pavilion. In the play's scenes The Dream, The Search for the Dream, and The Mournful Death, certain original lines from the novel are preserved. In the novel, after Du Liangni is reborn, a marriage based on social status is successfully arranged. However, in the opera, Tang Xianzu undertook a transformative creative effort, blending the legendary story from the novel with the realities of Ming Dynasty society, giving it a strong anti-feudal and anti-traditionalist tone and embodying the radiant ideal of pursuing individual freedom.
The heroine, Du Liangni, is one of the most beloved young female characters in classical opera. Her birth and social status dictate that she should become a virtuous wife and mother who adheres to the "Three Obediences and Four Virtues." Her life lesson is the first poem of the Book of Songs, Guajiu. Traditional interpretations view it as a praise of the virtues of empresses and consorts, making it an exemplary text for women. Yet she intuitively recognizes it as a love song. Encouraged by her maid Chunxiang, she secretly leaves her inner quarters. "Without visiting the gardens, how would one know the splendor of spring?" The beauty of spring awakens her youthful vitality. She lives in an environment shrouded in feudal etiquette, almost isolated from the world, helplessly watching her youth fade as she is unable to resist. She can only suppress her passionate feelings within.
Tang Xianzu did not follow the conventional approach of earlier novels and plays, where lovers meet in secret in the garden after a first encounter and pledge their love. Instead, he arranges for Du Liangni to meet her lover in a dream after her garden visit, followed by a scene where she searches for the dream in the garden again. The Dream and The Search for the Dream are the outpouring of the passion that has long been accumulating in Du Liangni's heart, as well as her practical act of resisting the real world. The emotional power of The Peony Pavilion lies in its strong romantic ideal of pursuing individual freedom and opposing feudal etiquette. This ideal emerges as the antithesis of the feudal system. All that is good and kind belongs to Du Liangni. Tang Xianzu successfully portrays her beauty, but the passages that depict her emotions and ideals are even more captivating. The Peony Pavilion shows that she dies not because of love being thwarted, but because of her futile yearning for love.
Through Du Liangni's character, The Peony Pavilion expresses the cries of the vast majority of young men and women at the time for individual liberation, freedom of love, and the autonomy of marriage. It also exposes how feudal etiquette crushes people's happiness and beautiful ideals.