4
Q - Qiu Jin
This was a hard letter, I could hardly find some famous female author whose name starts with Q, until I thought of China, and here I was reading about Qiu Jin.
A Chinese
poet and a revolutionary, Qiu Jin was born in 1875 into a moderately wealthy
family.
In 1906 she
started publishing a women's magazine in which she encouraged women to gain
financial independence through education and training in various prefessions.
While Qiu
Jin (秋瑾) is mainly remembered in the West as
revolutionary and feminist, one aspect of her life that gets overlooked is her
poetry and essays. Having received an exceptional education in classical
literature, reflected in her writing of more traditional poetry (shi and ci)
Qiu composed verse with a wide range of metaphors and allusions; mixing
classical mythology along with revolutionary rhetoric.
An example of her wonderful words:
Don't tell
me women
are not the
stuff of heroes,
I alone
rode over the East Sea's
winds for
ten thousand leagues.
My poetic
thoughts ever expand,
like a sail
between ocean and heaven.
I dreamed
of your three islands,
all gems,
all dazzling with moonlight.
I grieve to
think of the bronze camels,
guardians
of China, lost in thorns.
Ashamed, I
have done nothing;
not one
victory to my name.
I simply
make my war horse sweat.
Grieving
over my native land
hurts my
heart. So tell me;
how can I
spend these days here?
A guest
enjoying your spring winds?
More information here
Picture from here
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