Lament in Love
The prodigious aristocrat Qu Yuan was a minister of Chu, a major power during the Warring States. Pressing for Vertical Alliance but not listened to, he was twice exiled. Bewailing affliction, he wrote verses in the Chu dialect, and liberated poetry from the four-syllable metre. Qu Yuan’s vers libre, like his suicide, has been immortalised in East Asia, as one honours the Romantic poet and a wounded statesman, ill-treated and loyal to the end. This book is part of the Erstwhile Series.
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The prodigious aristocrat Qu Yuan was a minister of Chu, a major power during the Warring States. Pressing for Vertical Alliance but not listened to, he was twice exiled. Bewailing affliction, he wrote verses in the Chu dialect, and liberated poetry from the four-syllable metre. Qu Yuan’s vers libre, like his suicide, has been immortalised in East Asia, as one honours the Romantic poet and a wounded statesman, ill-treated and loyal to the end.
Attribution to Qu Yuan has at times been disputed; some opuses stand emblematic. ‘The Fisherman’ and ‘Divining Demeanour’ – prose pieces – and ‘Lamenting Homeland’ and ‘Traversing the River’ – two poems – are offered in a new translation by Mingyuan Hu.
This book is part of the Erstwhile Series.