Historical Love Songs: Volume 1 and 2

Author: Liu Qi, Guo Changhai (Editor-in-Chief)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: The Chinese Love Songs are an extremely rich literary treasure. To readers who admire aristocratic refinement, they may not seem as elegant as court literature or so-called pure literature. However, their genuine emotions, straightforward language, and witty, spicy charm transport people into a candid and pure artistic realm. Even the confessions of courtesans avoid pretense, expressing their natural and intense inner feelings. This is the outstanding feature of Love Songs in terms of content. From another perspective, amidst the rich Love Songs, there lies a quality that overshadows pure literature—revealing intense sexual desires with extreme candor and powerful language, achieving a natural perfection that is even more noble than nobility and more elegant than elegance. While folk songs and ballads unrestrainedly express the desire for life, they also freely unleash sexual passion. The excessive development of anything will bring side effects. The oppression of normal sexual desires brought by feudal consciousness and hypocritical Confucianism is undoubtedly a cruel devastation of humanity, inevitably leading to pathological sexual expression, even transforming the poetic celebration of normal love into vulgar and lewd behavior. In folk songs and ballads, inferior creations are not uncommon. This book is a collection of historical folk love poetry and lyrics, carefully selected from masterpieces spanning from the Han, Wei, and Six Dynasties to the Qing Dynasty. It includes more than ten precious ancient texts, such as Mountain Songs, Gui Zhi Er, White Snow Remains, Nirvana Melody, and others. Brief annotations are provided.