阮籍の詠懷詩について(下)

Abstract

As explained in Part I of this study, the poetry of Juan Chi exhibits a broader viewpoint than that of the Han or early Wei poets. A second difference setting off the five-word poetry of Juan Chi is his pessimistic view of the world as compounded of ill will, betrayals and treachery. In his opinion these ills arise naturally as the consequence of excess-excessive pursuit of material possessions, of fame, or excess of emotion itself. Juan endeavors to discover a way to eternal life that shall be free from such excess and frustration. Worldly pleasures, which the Han poets had often esteemed as a means of forgetting the anxieties of human existence, are condemned by Juan, for pleasure itself is an excess. Thus though in actual life Juan was reputedly a heavy drinker, one finds scarcely any mention of wine in the "Lyrics". The ideal life, according to Juan, must be one of simplicity and poverty, the life of a so-called "immortal" (Shen-hsien 神仙). In concluding this description of Juan Chi's thought the writer would like to point out a number of contradictions in the ideas expressed in the "Lyrics". Though Juan advocates a life of seclusion free from worldly ambition, at the same time he expresses doubt that it can be attained. He seems often to despair of the very ideals he proclaims. Such contradictions are in marked contrast to Juan's prose works, the "Biography of a Master" (Ta-jen hsien-sheng chuan 大人先生傅) and his "Essay Advocating Chuang Tzu" (Ta-Chuang-tun 達莊論), where his exposition of Taoist thought proceeds logically and consistently. The writer assumes that Juan regarded the five-word poem as a less weighty and formal medium than prose, a medium in which one might reveal his inner feelings without regard to consistency. Thus Juan not only made the fiveword poem, which had earlier been looked down upon as a popular ballad measure, a respectable part of the literature of the intelligensia, but also established the precedent that it should be used to convey one's freest and most intimate thought.