Chia Yi (201–169 B.C.E.)
Chia Yi had been Tutor to the Prince of Ch’ang-sha1 for three years when one day an owl flew into his house and perched in a corner of his room. (In Ch’u the word for owl is fu; it is a bird of ill omen.)2 This was after he had been banished to Ch’ang-sha (Ch’ang-sha is a low, damp place), and he was greatly depressed at what he took to be a sign that he had not much longer to live. On this occasion he wrote a rhapsody to console himself. It reads as follows:
The fu (rhapsody, rhymeprose, or prose-poem) stands at the very beginning of the most important anthology of traditional Chinese literature, Literary Selections (see selection 12) and fully one-quarter of the large volume is devoted to this genre. The prominence awarded to fu by the editor of Literary Selections is not accidental, for this is the first genre to have afforded Chinese authors broad scope in which to display their narrative, descriptive, and lyrical talents. It is highly significant that both the elegy (see selection 122) and the rhapsody, which constitute the earliest forms of imaginative and expressive belles-lettres in China, were invented and matured in the peripheral southern state of Ch’u, which was fundamentally of non-Sinitic origins and, in any event, culturally and ecologically quite dissimilar from the northern homeland of the Chinese people.
“The Owl” by Chia Yi is the earliest work in the rhapsody form whose authorship and date of composition are reasonably certain. The text is recorded in the biography of the poet in chapter 84 of the Records of the Grand Historian by Ssu-ma Ch’ien, compiled around 100 B.C.E. The prefatory note accompanying “The Owl” is based upon Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s description of the circumstances under which the work was composed. The position of tutor to the Prince of Ch’ang-sha, in a remote region (modern Hunan) of the Yangtze Valley, was actually a form of banishment. This fact, along with the poet’s failing health, accounts for the air of gloom that pervades the work. Using the owl as his mouthpiece, Chia Yi preaches himself a fervently Taoist sermon on the equality of life and death. His poem, far more personal and overtly philosophical than most of the other early rhapsodies, stands apart from the mainstream of literary development, its tone too somber for the social uses to which the rhapsody form was customarily put, its intense conviction inimitable by anyone not afflicted as its author was. One of the most intriguing aspects of this rhapsody on “The Owl” is its uncanny resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” a work which it predates by more than two millennia.
The year was tan-wo,3 it was the fourth month, summer’s first,
The thirty-seventh day of the cycle,4 at sunset, when an owl alighted in my house.
On the corner of my seat it perched, completely at ease.
I marveled at the reason for this uncanny visitation
5 And opened a book to discover the omen. The oracle yielded the maxim:
“When a wild bird enters a house, the master is about to leave.”
I should have liked to ask the owl: Where am I to go?
If lucky, let me know; if bad, tell me the worst.
Be it swift or slow, tell me when it is to be.
10 The owl sighed; it raised its head and flapped its wings
But could not speak.—Let me say what it might reply:
All things are a flux, with never any rest
Whirling, rising, advancing, retreating;
Body and breath do a turn together—change form and slough off,
15 Infinitely subtle, beyond words to express.
From disaster fortune comes, in fortune lurks disaster5
Grief and joy gather at the same gate, good luck and bad share the same abode.
Though Wu was great and strong, Fu-ch’ai met with defeat;
Yüeh was driven to refuge on K’uai-chi, but Kou-chien became hegemon.6
20 Li Ssu emigrated to become minister, but in the end he suffered the Five Punishments.7
Fu Yüeh was once in bonds, before he was minister to Wu-ting.8
So
Disaster is to fortune as strands of a single rope,
Fate is past understanding—who comprehends its bounds?9
Force water and it spurts, force an arrow and it goes far.10
25 All things are propelled in circles, undulating and revolving—
Clouds rise and rain falls, tangled in contingent alternation.
On the Great Potter’s wheel creatures are shaped in all their infinite variety.
Heaven cannot be predicted, the Way cannot be foretold,
Late or early, it is predetermined; who knows when his time will be?
Consider then:
30 Heaven and Earth are a crucible, the Creator is the smith;11
Yin and yang are the charcoal, living creatures are the bronze:
Combining, scattering, waning, waxing—where is any pattern?
A thousand changes, a myriad transformations with never any end.
If by chance one becomes a man, it is not a state to cling to.
35 If one be instead another creature, what cause is that for regret?
A merely clever man is partial to self, despising other, vaunting ego;
The man of understanding adopts the larger view: nothing exists to take exception to.
The miser will do anything for his hoard, the hero for his repute;
The vainglorious is ready to die for power, the common man clings to life.
40 Driven by aversions and lured by desires, men dash madly west or east;
The Great Man is not biased, the million changes are all one to him.
The stupid man is bound by custom, confined as though in fetters;
The Perfect Man is above circumstance, Tao is his only friend.
The mass man vacillates, his mind replete with likes and dislikes;
45 The True Man is tranquil, he takes his stand with Tao.
Divest yourself of knowledge and ignore your body, until, transported, you lose self;
Be detached, remote, and soar with Tao.
Float with the flowing stream, or rest against the isle,
Surrender to the workings of fate, unconcerned for self,
50 Let your life be like a floating, your death like a rest.
Placid as the peaceful waters of a deep pool, buoyant as an unfastened boat,
Find no cause for complacency in life, but cultivate emptiness and drift.
The Man of Virtue is unattached; recognizing fate, he does not worry.
Be not dismayed by petty pricks and checks!
Translated by James Robert Hightower
______________
1. In Hunan.
2. This is quite obviously an aside which introduces both a linguistic fact and a relevant custom from the far southern setting of the work. The following parenthetical sentence is of a similar nature.
3. There are varying opinions—175, 174, and 173 B.C.E.—as to which year this is meant to indicate.
4. This corresponds to the twenty-eighth day of the fourth lunar month, 173 B.C.E., and to the twenty-third day of the fourth lunar month, 174 B.C.E. The fourth lunar month of 175 B.C.E. had no such cyclical date.
5. Shortened from Tao te ching (selection 9), chapter 58.
6. The rivalry between Wu (Ngwa) and Yüeh (Viet) provides one of the most dramatic examples of the reversals of fortune that Chia Yi is illustrating. Fu-ch’ai, the last ruler of Wu, failed to take advantage of his opportunity to destroy Yüeh when Kou-chien’s army was surrounded on top of Mount K’uai-chi (or Kuei-chi). Years later the situation was reversed and Yüeh destroyed Wu. Under King Kou-chien, Yüeh became the leading state among those contending for supremacy during the breakup of the Eastern Chou dynasty.
7. Li Ssu was instrumental in preparing the way for the establishment of the Ch’in dynasty which succeeded in establishing a unified state.
8. Fu Yüeh spent time as a convict, but he became a star in the sky after being adviser to the Shang ruler Wu-ting.
9. In the Tao te ching, this question follows immediately after the line about fortune and calamity (compare with note 5).
10. This proverbial expression occurs in the Huai-nan Tzu and in The Springs and Autumns of Mr. Lü (Lü shih ch’un-ch’iu). In the former it is used to emphasize the need for effort at the right time: the best arrow needs a bow to send it far, etc. In the latter it is a warning against attempting to cope with that which is “stirred up,” in particular a ruler. In the present context the arrow and water are examples of things at the mercy of an outside force: even so all of creation, man included, is driven by the impersonal workings of the Way.
11. This line and lines 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 50, and 51 are all based on sentences from the Chuang Tzu. It is clear that Chia Yi was inspired by the ideas and images of Master Chuang in creating this rhapsody.