Jia Yi's Rhapsody on an Owl : An Exercise in Daoist Self-Consolation

Abstract: Jia Yi's Rhapsody on an Owl was written during his banishment to Changsha and is a beautiful example of Daoist self-consolation in a world of uncertainty and change. This paper argues the Rhapsody has three objectives: to disprove the Confucian linking of human fate and fortune, to explicate the Daoist philosophy of change, and to illustrate how the sage exemplifies the Daoist ideal of spiritual freedom. Despite the therapeutic words he imputes to the owl, Jia Yi's suicide just a few years after penning the Rhapsody shows the difficulty of disassociating variations in one's fate from life itself, a challenge we all face at one time or another.