推移の悲哀(中) : 古詩十九首の主題

Abstract

Sorrow at the passing of time, which is the principal theme throughout the Nineteen Old Poems in the Wen hsüan, is expressed in group II of the poems as the sorrow of one who once had happiness in the past and has now lost it in the stream of time. Lines depicting the happiness of the past are paralleled by those complaining of the unhappiness of the present. While group I of the poems treats the sorrow which occurs from the fact of time itself passing, as the author has pointed out in Part I of this study, this is the sorrow for the time which has passed. Nos. 2, 7 and 16 are good examples. No. 8, being a variant case, expresses the fear of frustration in the future. No. 5 is rather exceptional; though it laments the fate of a widow, the lamentation arises merely as a reaction to the present situation, and is unconcerned with time either passing or passed. In addition the author has provided, in connection with the legend of Ch'i-liang's widow 杞梁妻 which appears in No. 5, some material which may have been neglected by previous scholars. In the above mentioned poems, both those in group I and those in group II, sincerity and good will between human beings is often regarded as a hoped-for remedy to sorrow, constituting a secondary theme of these poems. Such expectancy of relief, however, is seldom found in the poems in group III, which the author will analyze in the third part of this study as dealing with the sorrow of death.