南朝の戀歌 : 「西洲曲」を中心として

Abstract

Popular ballads differ from lyrical poetry in that lyrical poetry depends on the beauty of its self-regulating language while the ballads make the emotions of everyday life their base. Most ballads of Southern Dynasties have love as their theme. Fundamentally they symbolize in an exalted manner the emotions of everyday life of the townspeople of the Yangtze region. The strong-willed women, the use of the puns and hidden meanings appearing in "Tzu-yeh ko" 子夜歌 and "Tu-ch'ü ko" 讀曲歌, works belonging to the early period of Southern Dynasties love songs, can be viewed as the crystallization of the young spirit of the newly established townspeople. However, in such works as "Tzu-yeh ssu-shih ko" 子夜四時歌, this feature was altered. Women were regarded as weak things and the use of play on words became less marked. Nature as encountered in excursions became the important element. There appeared representation of beauty separated from reality and the glorification of order controlling appeared. Moreover in one group of ballads, including "Pi-yü ko" 碧玉歌, "T'ao-yeh ko" 桃葉歌, and others, the concubines and female attendants of rulers appear as heroines of the songs. These heroines strive to become favorites of the men. They differ very much from the women appearing in the earlier ballads "Tzu-yeh ko". Southern ballads thus become altered with the passage of time. The ballads that once belonged to townsfolk gradually became influenced by interests of the ruling class and came to be mainly their concern. Finally in the Liang and Ch'en dynasties they became court poetry. The townspeople were neither able to preserve their ballads nor able to see them to maturity. The fundamental reason why the townspeople as it were handed their ballads over to the ruling class lies in the fact that their economic strength had not yet reached full maturity. "Hsi-chou ch'ü" 西洲曲 was written at a time not far removed from the period of court poetry. Yet it was not influenced by the over-refined tastes of the ruling class. Basic to this ballad are various kinds of plays on words, but these are only discernible with careful reading of the text. It represents an accomplished form of ballads of the Southern Dynasties. The spirit of general affirmation of life in towns that was the background of this ballad later gave birth to Li Po of the T'ang.