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ABSTRACT: The article is devoted to the story of Yu Boya, the grand official of the state of Chu, and the wood cutter Zhong Ziqi, his soul friend or 'the one who understood the tones' which focuses on versions appearing in the Lüshi Chunqiu (...) (239 BC) or Annals of Lü Buwei (...) and the other in the Daoist text of Lie Zi (...) (4th? century AD).
KEYWORDS: Yu Boya; Zhong Ziqi; Qin; Lüshi Chunqiu; Lie Zi
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Many versions of the story of Yu Boya, the grand official of the state of Chu, and the wood cutter Zhong Ziqi, his soul friend or 'the one who understood the tones' (zhiyin ...) were written before the elaborate 17th century version of Feng Menglong's (1574-1645), "The Minister, the Lute and the Woodcutter"1, which appears in the third volume of his San Yan (...) collection2.
Despite the many versions of the story [17 or so] , I'll attend here to only two - the oldest, skeletal story appearing in the Lüshi Chunqiu (...) (239 BC) or Annals of Lü Buwei (...) and the other in the Daoist text of Lie Zi (...) (4th? century AD). I'll introduce the San Yan story first by quoting a few lines of these two versions, first, those of the later text, the Lie Zi:
(1) Boya was a good lute-player, and Zhong Ziqi was a good listener. Boya strummed his lute with his mind on climbing high mountains; and Zhong Ziqi said:"Good! Lofty, like Mount Tai!"When Boya's mind was on flowing waters, Zhong Ziqi said:"Good !
Boundless, like the Yellow River and the Yangzi!"Whatever came into Boya's thoughts, Zhung Ziqi always grasped it...3:
...
And so it goes on with more examples. I will come back to the ending of this short text later in my essay.
In the older text of the 3rd century B.C., we are provided with further detail. After giving two examples of Zhong Ziqi's profound understanding of Yu Boya's pondering the lofty mountains and rushing river, the story goes on. The first lines are almost identical with the previous quotation:
(2)...
But then the story continues [enhancing the drama] :
When Zhong Ziqi died, Boya smashed the qin...