To Cite Poems to Express Aspiration: A Comparative Study of the Zuo's Commentary

In the frame of Confucian classics the Zuo's Commentary and the Book of Songs are two masterpieces which interact profoundly upon each other, and both of them have undergone a process of canonization. As two canons of Confucian thoughts, they have been exerting an influence on the thinking of the Chinese people. In the Zuo's Commentary there are many materials of how to cite poems to express aspiration. This is a rhetorical means, which is highly effective. This is a discourse mode, which is highly orientated. The dramatic nature is conspicuously a stylistic feature of the Zuo's Commentary. In the Zuo's Commentary are recorded two occasions on which people cited poems to express their aspirations. One is that the six lords of the Zheng State saw off Han Qi, a minister of Zheng. The other is that Gongzi Zha of Wu observed how the Zhou music was performed in the Lu State. These two occasions are highly dramatic, and the latter is especially so in that it dwells on the relationship between poetry and music. Right here the harmonious beauty is ascertained preliminarily in the aesthetic conception of the Chinese people, therefore it may be regarded as a document proper to the history of Chinese literary criticism. To cite poems to judge the music is an enlarged form of citing poems to express aspirations in that it pushes greatly the history of Chinese literary criticism to develop.