Heavenly Questions
The Heavenly Questions or Questions to Heaven (
According to legend, Qu Yuan wrote this series of questions in verse after viewing various scenes depicted on temple murals;[2][3] specifically, it is said that following his exile from the royal court of Chu, Qu Yuan looked upon the depictions of the ancestors and the gods painted upon the walls of the ancestral temple of Chu; and, then, in response, wrote his questions to Heaven, upon these same walls.[4]
Description
The Heavenly Questions consists of a series of verses, in question format, addressed to Tian, or Heaven. The 172[5] questions asked revolve around Chinese mythology and ancient Chinese religious beliefs, and perceived contradictions or conundrums existing therein. That the Tianwen consists in questions rather than answers is somewhat of a problem for mythographers. Nevertheless, the questions themselves open up informative windows into a world of ancient mythology. The informational questions raised by Tianwen are a factor that contributes to the description of Tianwen as "the written treasure of Chinese mythology",[6] or as "the most valuable document in Chinese mythology" (Birrell 1993, 26).
Style
The poetic style of the Heavenly Question is markedly different from the other sections of the Chuci collection, with the exception of the "Nine Songs" ("
Content
The content of the Tianwen includes questions regarding various myths, which today are often important informational sources on the historical development of these myths, with the Tianwen representing some of the earliest textual bases of information regarding these myths.
Influence
The Heavenly Questions was an influence on the later works of the Chuci. David Hinton sees the Heavenly Questions and the "Nine Songs" as introducing a "shamanistic world from the folk tradition" into the literary tradition of Chinese poetry: appearing in form close to the older, oral tradition in Heavenly Questions and the "Nine Songs", these voices from the shamanic world were transformed into poetry of "self-conscious individual authorship" with a personal voice in the "Li Sao".[9]
Other examples of the influence of the Heavenly Questions include the poem written by
American poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg used the title Heavenly Questions for her elegy of six linked poems on the death of her husband Robert Nozick in 2002. The work won the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2011. The title was taken from the Chinese poem.
China's interplanetary exploration program is named after Heavenly Questions (Tianwen). The first mission, Tianwen-1, was launched on July 23, 2020, and reached Mars on February 10, 2021. On Mar 14, 2021, the lander and rover successfully landed on the surface of Mars.
See also
- Bashe
- Chu ci
- List of Chuci contents
- Liu An
- Liu Xiang (scholar)
- Qu Yuan
- Song Yu
- Tian
- Tianwen-1
- Wang Yi (librarian)
- Wu (shaman)
- Yinglong
- Zhulong (mythology)
Notes
References
- ISBN 0-8018-6183-7
- ISBN 978-1-59017-257-5
- ISBN 978-0-14-044375-2
- ISBN 978-0-374-10536-5.
- Mair, Victor H. “Heavenly Questions”, in The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair (Columbia University Press), pp. 371-386, also in The Shorter Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair (Columbia University Press), pp. 192–208.
- Yang, Lihui, et al. (2005). Handbook of Chinese Mythology. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-533263-6
External links
https://www.coursesidekick.com/english/3294266 text in English