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Chu Ci · Li Sao (离骚)

When the World Has No Place for One’s Ideals

“What remains of a person’s convictions when loyalty is misunderstood, integrity brings no reward, and the world refuses to recognize the values by which that person has chosen to live? Must one eventually surrender those ideals, or is the search for a different possibility itself worth continuing?”

More than 2,300 years ago, the ancient kingdom of Chu became the setting for one of the most extraordinary journeys in Chinese literature. In Li Sao (离骚), traditionally attributed to Qu Yuan, political disappointment develops into a vast exploration of identity, moral conviction, and the desire to find a world in which ideals might be realized. The poem begins with the speaker’s ancestry and personal cultivation, moves through the conflicts of court politics, and eventually carries him beyond the human realm into a mythological universe of celestial gates, divine beings, dragons, and phoenixes. Yet the greater the distances he travels, the more difficult it becomes to escape the questions that first drove him away.

At the heart of Li Sao lies the relationship between moral integrity and political reality. The speaker believes in virtuous government, the recognition of capable individuals, and the responsibility of rulers to follow righteous principles. He imagines himself as someone prepared to serve these ideals through loyalty and continuous self-cultivation. But the political world around him is shaped by suspicion, competing interests, and the influence of slander. His sincerity fails to secure trust, and his refusal to accommodate prevailing expectations increasingly isolates him from those whose recognition he seeks.

In the summer of 2025, I transformed Li Sao into four AI-generated musical works, completing the sequence on July 10. During the winter of 2026, I returned to the poem through literary interpretation rather than musical production. What had initially been an experiment in giving ancient Chinese words a contemporary voice became a deeper inquiry into the poem’s enduring significance. Why does a work born from the political frustrations of ancient Chu continue to speak to readers living in entirely different historical circumstances? And why does its most celebrated declaration of determination remain meaningful even when the search itself offers no guarantee of success?

I. From Fragrant Plants to the Nine Heavens | The Search for a World Worth Belonging To

“Why would someone travel beyond the limits of the human world rather than abandon the principles that have made life within it so difficult?”

Li Sao begins with a declaration of identity. The speaker introduces his ancestry, recalls the names given to him, and describes the qualities he believes himself to possess. Yet inherited distinction is not sufficient. Inner beauty must be strengthened through cultivation, and natural gifts must be accompanied by conscious effort. This relationship between moral endowment and self-development becomes visible through one of the poem’s most distinctive symbolic systems: fragrant plants.

Orchids, angelica, and other aromatic herbs appear repeatedly as objects gathered, worn, and cherished. Their fragrance suggests the moral qualities that the speaker seeks to preserve, while their cultivation reflects his belief that character requires continuing attention. The plants are not simply ornaments added to a noble appearance. They express a form of self-definition. By surrounding himself with fragrance, the speaker gives an outward form to convictions that cannot be measured through political position or public approval.

The same moral vocabulary shapes his understanding of government. He invokes exemplary rulers such as Yao and Shun, contrasting their conduct with the destructive examples of tyrants. Political authority, in this vision, carries an obligation to recognize virtue and employ worthy individuals. Yet the court he describes operates according to very different principles. Personal alliances, jealousy, and slander obstruct the recognition of ability, while conformity becomes safer than independent judgment. The speaker’s disappointment is therefore not merely that he has lost influence. It is that the political order has failed to live according to the standards that would justify its authority.

This conflict becomes especially apparent when Nüxu enters the poem. Her warning introduces a practical perspective that the speaker cannot easily dismiss. If the world refuses to appreciate his convictions, why continue exposing himself to danger by maintaining them? Her concern is not necessarily a rejection of integrity; it reflects the human desire to protect someone from the consequences of an uncompromising position. The speaker nevertheless turns towards the legendary ruler Chonghua, or Shun, seeking a figure before whom his ideals might still be understood. The contrast reveals two competing necessities: the preservation of life and the preservation of the principles that give life its meaning.

When the human world offers no satisfactory answer, the poem expands into mythology. The speaker travels through extraordinary landscapes, commands celestial figures to guide his journey, and approaches the gates of heaven. Xihe, associated with the sun, and Wangshu, associated with the moon, become part of a procession in which familiar limitations of time and geography seem to disappear. Phoenixes and dragons carry the journey beyond ordinary experience, while divine women and supernatural messengers offer the possibility of encounters unavailable in the political world.

Yet these mythological encounters repeatedly reproduce the disappointments of earthly life. The celestial gatekeeper refuses admission. The search for Fufei, the goddess associated with the Luo River, fails to produce the desired union. Divine beauty does not guarantee mutual understanding, and access to the heavens does not ensure that the speaker’s aspirations will be recognized. The journey becomes an increasingly elaborate demonstration that changing one’s surroundings does not necessarily resolve the deeper problem of finding a place where one’s values can belong.

The poem’s final movement brings this contradiction to its most powerful expression. The speaker imagines a magnificent departure in a chariot drawn by dragons, accompanied by phoenixes and celestial banners. He seems ready to leave behind the world that has rejected him. But at the height of this extraordinary journey, he looks down and sees his homeland. His attendants are overcome with sorrow, and even the horses hesitate to continue. The spectacle of celestial freedom gives way to the intimate reality of attachment.

This moment transforms the meaning of the entire journey. The speaker can imagine travelling beyond mountains, rivers, and the boundaries of the human realm, but he cannot simply erase the emotional bond connecting him to Chu. His homeland is both the place where his ideals have been frustrated and the place he cannot bear to abandon. The final backward glance reveals that the search for moral freedom is not the same as freedom from memory, responsibility, or belonging. The mythical journey reaches extraordinary heights, yet its deepest conflict remains profoundly human.

II. Giving Li Sao a New Voice | Four Songs and the Limits of Artificial Intelligence

“Can a machine give an ancient poem a new voice without fully understanding the language, emotions, and cultural world from which that poem emerged?”

On July 10, 2025, I completed a four-part musical interpretation of Li Sao using SUNO AI. The project followed the sequence of the classical text, dividing the poem into four musical sections rather than adapting it into a conventional song with a newly written chorus. Each section required the preparation of Hanyu Pinyin, repeated musical generation, and careful listening to identify pronunciation errors, missing passages, and other difficulties. The objective was not to reconstruct the lost music of ancient Chu, but to explore how a classical literary work might become accessible through a contemporary form of musical listening.

The first song, Inner Beauty and Self-Cultivation: Upholding Ancient Ideals, covers lines 1–83 and lasts approximately eight minutes and eleven seconds. It introduces the speaker’s ancestry, personal cultivation, and commitment to moral principles. Unexpectedly, the third generated version proved usable, with no major pronunciation errors identified. For a poem containing unfamiliar classical expressions and characters, such an early result was unusually fortunate. It also created an expectation that the remaining sections would be similarly manageable—an expectation that subsequent attempts quickly overturned.

Video: Chu Ci · Li Sao I — Inner Beauty and Self-Cultivation | 8:11

The second song, The Elusive Ideal Ruler: Virtuous Government Obstructed, covers lines 84–178 and lasts approximately eight minutes and ten seconds. Here the musical narrative enters the speaker’s political disappointment, the failure of sincere counsel to gain recognition, and the tension between personal integrity and the demands of survival. Nüxu’s warning and the appeal to Chonghua become part of a sustained emotional movement in which the desire to be understood repeatedly confronts the impossibility of securing that understanding.

Video: Chu Ci · Li Sao II — The Elusive Ideal Ruler | 8:10

The third song, Shattered Dreams: A Search Without an Answer, covers lines 179–291 and lasts approximately six minutes and thirty-seven seconds. This section presented the greatest technical difficulties. SUNO repeatedly failed to generate complete musical passages, sometimes producing recordings of only approximately 0.3 seconds. Other attempts unexpectedly resembled Cantonese singing rather than the intended Mandarin pronunciation. Repeated trials were necessary before a comparatively acceptable version could be selected, and the accompanying Pinyin subtitles remained important for following the classical text.

There was a curious parallel between the literary subject and the creative process. In Li Sao, the speaker travels through the heavens in search of understanding, only to encounter closed gates and unsuccessful meetings. In the AI experiment, I repeatedly attempted to give those same verses a musical voice, only to receive incomplete recordings or unexpected pronunciations. The machine could generate sound, but its ability to produce sound did not imply an understanding of the poem. At times, its 0.3 seconds of near-silence seemed almost like an accidental musical expression of the very frustration described in the text.

Video: Chu Ci · Li Sao III — Shattered Dreams and Unanswered Seeking | 6:37

The fourth song, The Final Adornment: Farewell on a Dragon-Drawn Chariot, covers lines 292–352 and lasts approximately five minutes and fifty seconds. The poem moves towards its final imagined departure, where the speaker’s determination to leave a corrupted world culminates in a magnificent celestial procession. Yet the music also carries the unexpected emotional reversal of the final backward glance. The journey that began with the cultivation of personal virtue ends not in a simple triumph over adversity, but in the recognition that the homeland remains inseparable from the speaker’s identity.

Video: Chu Ci · Li Sao IV — The Final Adornment and Farewell | 5:50

Together, the four recordings last approximately twenty-nine minutes. They trace the poem’s movement from self-cultivation through political disappointment and mythical exploration to the unresolved attachment to home. The experience also illustrates a broader distinction between technological capability and cultural interpretation. Artificial intelligence can generate increasingly sophisticated musical performances, but the preservation of classical language, the identification of errors, and the interpretation of literary meaning still require human decisions. The experiment did not eliminate the distance between an ancient text and a modern listener. It created another way of crossing that distance.

Epilogue | When Understanding Arrives in Another Age

“An ideal may remain unrealized, and a voice may remain unheard in its own time. Does that mean the search was without meaning?”

The world of Li Sao is shaped by a persistent failure of understanding. The speaker seeks recognition from his ruler, encounters warnings from those concerned for his survival, appeals to legendary moral authority, and searches among divine beings for a response that the human world cannot provide. Each movement extends the geographical and imaginative scope of the poem, but none offers an uncomplicated solution. The inability to find a sympathetic listener remains present even when the speaker has travelled beyond the boundaries of ordinary existence.

This is one reason Li Sao cannot be reduced to a celebration of perseverance. It does not demonstrate that unwavering conviction necessarily produces success, nor does it establish that every refusal to compromise is automatically wise. Instead, it exposes the cost of sustaining ideals in circumstances where their realization may be impossible. The speaker’s determination is inseparable from his suffering, and his attachment to Chu makes the possibility of departure as painful as the prospect of remaining.

The poem’s imagery also suggests that human beings do not live by principles alone. Memory, belonging, and emotional attachment complicate the choices that might otherwise appear straightforward. The speaker can condemn the political failures of his world without ceasing to love his homeland. He can imagine freedom elsewhere without finding himself capable of accepting permanent separation. His final hesitation reminds readers that the relationship between identity and place cannot always be resolved through reason or determination.

More than 2,300 years later, the circumstances in which people pursue their ideals have changed dramatically. Political institutions, cultural expectations, and technologies of communication bear little resemblance to those of ancient Chu. Yet the difficulty of being understood has not disappeared. People may still discover that sincerity is interpreted as weakness, independent judgment is mistaken for disloyalty, or commitment to a long-term purpose receives little immediate recognition.

The enduring value of Li Sao lies partly in its refusal to resolve these contradictions too easily. Qu Yuan’s literary voice does not offer a shortcut to recognition or a promise that the world will eventually reward integrity. What survives is the expression of a person who continues to ask where his ideals might belong, even after the available answers have repeatedly failed him.

My musical experiment in 2025 and my return to the text in 2026 form a small contemporary encounter with that long history of seeking. The four songs do not resolve the poem’s ancient questions, and they do not claim to reproduce its original performance. They allow its words to be heard again through another medium, in another historical moment, by listeners who may bring entirely different experiences to them.

Perhaps understanding does not always arrive when it is most urgently needed. Some voices must travel across centuries before another generation becomes willing to listen. The road described in Li Sao remains long not because every traveller will reach an ideal destination, but because the questions of integrity, belonging, and recognition continue to accompany human lives.

Across Civilizations

King Kaolie, Huang Xie, and Lady Lingyin | Qu Yuan Was Difficult Enough, but SUNO Was Even Harder!

In the winter of 2026, I opened my computer and invited King Kaolie of Chu and Huang Xie, Lord Chunshen, to watch the four-part musical interpretation of Li Sao. On the screen, Qu Yuan travelled through the heavens, searched for divine women, consulted supernatural powers, and eventually departed in a chariot drawn by eight dragons. King Kaolie watched with fascination before turning to Huang Xie. “Lord Chunshen, Qu Yuan was quite extraordinary! He could not find anyone who understood him on earth, so he went searching in heaven. But after visiting divine women and supernatural beings, why did he still find no answer?”

Huang Xie smiled. “Your Majesty, when hearts cannot understand one another, even searching through the nine heavens may not bring two people together.” I immediately interrupted. “Your Majesty, Qu Yuan was difficult enough, but SUNO was even harder! I tried to teach it to sing these verses dozens of times, and sometimes it gave me only 0.3 seconds of sound. Occasionally, it even started singing in something resembling Cantonese!” King Kaolie burst into laughter. “Now I understand! In his own time, nobody wanted to listen to Qu Yuan. Today, someone finally wants to sing his words, but the machine refuses to open its mouth!”

Huang Xie looked thoughtfully at the four recordings. “Lady Lingyin, if the work was so exhausting, and you could not even be certain that anyone would listen, why did you insist on finishing it?” I smiled. “Have you forgotten? Qu Yuan gave us the answer long ago: he would remain faithful to what he believed was right, even if he had to face death nine times.” King Kaolie shook his head with amusement. “After more than 2,300 years, Chu has produced another person just as stubborn as Qu Yuan!”

Qu Yuan sought virtuous government, while I seek the echoes of a civilization. Our roads are different, and so are our times, but some things are worth doing without waiting for applause. Qu Yuan carried his search into the heavens; Lady Lingyin carried hers into the world of artificial intelligence. More than two millennia have passed, and the people undertaking the search have changed, but the determination to continue has not. Outside, the river wind continued to blow. The songs on the screen had ended, yet the long road of seeking still stretched ahead.

Historical and literary note: This dialogue is an imaginative encounter across time, not a historical record. King Kaolie of Chu and Huang Xie lived in a later period than Qu Yuan. Their conversations with Lady Lingyin are fictional reflections inspired by the poem and the author’s contemporary musical project.