Fu (lyric)
Fu ( Chinese 賦 , Pinyin fù - "Ode") are poems that were written in China during the Han Dynasty . They are called " prose poems ", "poetic descriptions" or "rhapsodies".
The origin of the Fu is unclear; it is derived from the rhetoric schools of the political advisors of the time, the riddles of the philosopher Xunzi , which were called Fu, and the Chuci . The meter of the Fu is derived from the Chuci, from which the so-called Sao style (騷, sāo ) of the Fu comes: The verses are divided into three and two syllables, between which a connecting link ér而 forms a caesura; the first verse ends with the exclamation particle xī兮. Compared to the songs of the Chuci, however, the Fu have an unusually long form, which is explained by the fact that a process of secularization of the religious elements of the Chuci poetry had taken place. Instead of shamans and goddesses , the early Fu is about an epiphany of the ruler and the praise of his deeds.
The Fu are written in rhyme , a verse can consist of three to seven (sometimes more) characters and often a foreword in prose , sometimes an epilogue in verse. In addition to the ending rhymes, there are also frequent alliterations and assonances .
In terms of content, the Fu are characterized by the fact that they contain long catalogs of plants, animals, people and events, which are interpreted as a kind of word magic . Likewise, the constant repetition and variation of onomatopoeia , synonyms , parallelisms , hyperbolas and antitheses is interpreted as a kind of incantation that is supposed to give the secular ruler the aura of the sacred . The transfer of the magical journey, which is still reserved for the shaman in the Chuci, to the ruler dubbed as superman ( Chinese 大人 , Pinyin dàrén ) also points to this fact and some Fu were even used for magical purposes, for example to cure diseases or drive away spirits .
Popular motifs of the Fu also indicate a quasi-religious character of these seals: the imperial sacrifices to heaven and earth to achieve harmony and fertility, the capital as the center of imperial power and the hunt (also for the procurement of sacrificial animals) in the imperial park, which is known as microcosmic image of the macrocosm was valid. Despite the strongly pronounced element of the ruler's epiphany, many Fu have been passed down who have an educational appeal to the ruler and reject the pomp and waste of the imperial courts. Fu were often composed and recited at court by imperial officials who were employed as court poets. Famous Fu poets were for example Sima Xiangru , Jia Yi and Yang Xiong .
Later the literary class began to write Fu on other subjects that expressed private subjects and their own feelings. Jia Yi's “Fu over the owl”, which is in the melancholy tradition of Lisao (see Chuci ), expresses, for example, personal feelings in exile and in view of imminent death. Other topics of a personal character are, for example, grief and worries at the sight of the capital, unsatisfied passions and the encounter with a goddess , as already described in the shamanistic tradition of the Chuci.
The Fu are the most important poetry genre of the Han period, but until the Tang period the Fu was still considered an expression of artistic and learned poetry and the poets repeatedly took up this form and described in the Fu, for example, palaces, cities, parks or Objects like the zither or the flute and feelings like grief, loneliness and separation.
Most of the Fu have not survived.
See also: Yuefu
literature
- Wolfgang Kubin: History of Chinese Literature; Volume 1 The Chinese Poetry. KG Saur, Munich 2002 ISBN 3-598-24541-6
- Gong Kechang: Studies on the Han Fu. American Oriental Society, New Haven, Connecticut 1997
- Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer: History of Chinese Literature , Bern 1990.