This poem is a sacrificial song for mountain ghosts. It tells the story of a passionate mountain ghost, his tryst with his sweetheart in the mountains, and his emotions of waiting for his sweetheart again and his future. It depicts a magnificent and bizarre story. The image of gods and ghosts.
"Nine Songs: Mountain Ghost" is a work by Qu Yuan, a poet of Chu State during the Warring States Period. This poem is a sacrificial song for mountain ghosts. It describes a passionate mountain ghost's tryst with his sweetheart in the mountains and his emotions of waiting for his sweetheart again and his future. It depicts a magnificent and bizarre image of gods and ghosts.
The whole poem depicts the mountain ghost's ups and downs of emotional changes and the twists and turns of his inner world in a very detailed, real and moving way.
"Nine Songs: Mountain Ghost" is an ode to worship the mountain god. There is controversy as to whether the "mountain ghost" in the poem is a goddess or a male god. According to "Guoyu" and "Zuo Zhuan", most Chu Ci writers before the Song and Yuan Dynasties regarded Dingshan ghosts as "monsters of wood and stone" and "demon monsters", and regarded them as male mountain monsters.
However, painters in the Yuan and Ming dynasties often painted "graceful" and moving goddesses based on the descriptions in poems. Gu Chengtian of the Qing Dynasty first advocated the theory of mountain ghosts as "Wushan goddesses" in his "Jiuge Jie". After further elucidation by You Guoen and Guo Moruo, the opinion that "mountain ghosts" should be regarded as "female ghosts" or "goddesses" has been widely accepted.
Guo Moruo concluded that Yushan is Wushan based on the ancient pronunciation of "Yu" and believed that the mountain ghost was the goddess of Wushan. There is a legend about the Wushan goddess in Chu mythology. This poem may describe the image of the goddess that was circulated in the early days.
Since Su Xuelin put forward the theory that "Nine Songs" expresses "the love between humans and gods", most researchers have interpreted this poem in terms of the lovelorn relationship between the "mountain ghost" and the "gongzi". This statement seems inappropriate.
According to the sacrificial customs of the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, shamans who wish to seduce gods must first dress themselves up to resemble the gods in appearance and clothing before the gods are willing to "possess" them and be sacrificed. However, since mountain ghosts belong to the "gods of mountains and rivers", the ancients adopted the "looking at sacrifice" method of "looking at the sacrifices from a distance", so mountain ghosts do not come to the sacrifice site.
This poem is based on this characteristic, using a witch dressed as a mountain ghost to enter the mountain to welcome the gods but not meet them, to express the world's longing for the gods sincerely in order to seek blessings. The "jun", "gongzi" and "lingxiu" in the poem all refer to mountain ghosts; the first person pronouns such as "yu", "I" and "yu" refer to the witches who enter the mountains to welcome the gods. ?
Reference for the above content: Baidu Encyclopedia - "Nine Songs·Mountain Ghost".