THE POETICS OF THE PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING MOTIF IN CHINESE LITERATURE

Abstract

Background. The story of a fisherman's journey to the Peach Blossom Spring, where he discovers a strange and different world, has been present in Chinese literature for over 1,500 years and has not lost its appeal to literary creators. This lasting fascination calls for deeper scholarly attention, yet in Ukraine, such studies remain scarce. The aim of this article is to help fill this gap by exploring the poetics of the Peach Blossom Spring motif. The analysis is based on three literary works from different historical periods and genres: Tao Yuanming's prose tale "The Record of the Peach Blossom Spring", Wang Wei's poetic adaptation "Journey to the Peach Blossom Spring", and the stage play "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land" by Stan Lai (Lai Shengchuan).

Methods. Since the study of motif poetics involves examining both formal and semantic aspects, a wide range of methods was employed. To assess the applicability of European literary terms to Chinese texts, methods of definition validation and conceptual analysis were used. To identify the invariant core of the Peach Blossom Spring motif, functional and distributional analyses were applied. The functional approach helped to clarify the roles of various symbols (such as the peach, river, etc.) and highlight the key ones, while distributional analysis revealed the placement and recurrence of these elements across the selected texts. Additionally, a structural-poetological approach was used to identify genre and narrative characteristics, chronotopes, and compositional-speech forms specific to each version of the motif. An interpretative method was also employed to uncover the meanings embedded by each author. Furthermore, content analysis was used to identify key ideas and concepts in the texts, and a comparative method was applied to determine similarities and differences in their poetics.

Results. Among the most studied aspects of Peach Blossom Spring poetics is the genre of Tao Yuanming's work. In Chinese literary taxonomy, it is typically classified as a xiaoshuo about immortals, and in European terms, as a utopia or pastoral. However, this article suggests revisiting this categorization and viewing it as a narrative tale in light of the genre marker ji (记) in the title.
The article outlines the invariant core of the Peach Blossom Spring motif, which includes: a waterway journey, a peach grove, a spring and a cracked cliff, a mysterious settlement beyond the crack, a return path marked with notches, and the subsequent loss of the way back. This journey is interpreted as a symbolic escape from everyday life.
Differences among the motif's versions are shown to depend both on the literary genre (prose, poetry, or drama) and on the authors' worldviews (Daoism, Buddhism, or modern psychological science). Genre choice influenced the compositional-speech form (narrative, description, or reflection), while worldview affected the motif's meaning: a brush with the extraordinary, a chance to rise above the mundane, or the search for one's true self in a world of ideal aspirations.

Сonclusions. The study identifies an invariant structure and three genre-based variants of the Peach Blossom Spring motif, each shaped by different socio-historical contexts. The motif is noted to be conceptually close to the Ukrainian notion of vyriy (a mythical paradise-like land). The article demonstrates how transferring the motif into another literary genre affects its compositional-speech form, which in turn determines key poetic parameters such as chronotope and narration. On the semantic level, the central idea of transcending the ordinary proves capable of resonating with audiences across different historical periods, which likely explains the motif's enduring popularity.