P e n ta s y l l a biC Sh i P oe t ry : ne w t o P i C s 147is seen by the bodily eye and what is seen by the mind’s eye becomes blurred.
“Willows on the bank” of a river, a distant scene, are juxtaposed with the “peach
blossoms by the window,” a scene close at hand. Indeed, the poet is so close to the
peach blossoms that he can see the shedding of their delicate calyxes. This also
reminds the reader that, just as the day is advancing, springtime is also coming to
an end.
The third couplet again sets side by side an image grounded in empirical ex-
perience and a semi-imaginary scene. According to the Bowu zhi (A Comprehensive
Account of Things), a work by the Western Jin writer Zhang Hua (232–300) that
records many fantastic phenomena: “On the fifth day of the fifth month [that is,
mid- to late June], if one buries the head of a dragonfly under a west-facing win-
dow, after three days of not eating anything, it will turn into a green pearl.” Now,
if a butterfly indeed has powder on its wings and may leave it on the flower petals,
“dragonfly pearls” are no more than a figment of the poet’s imagination. Moreover,
he claims that they are concealed by the growing bamboo, so that this fantastic
image is negated as soon as it is evoked, and the reader is left wondering if that
which is being concealed is actually there.
But even if it might be empirically true that a butterfly stains a flower with its
powder, is it visible to even the most perceptive human eyes? Much of what is de-
picted in this poem seems more the product of the poetic imagination than of even
the most careful observation. In this poem, the act of looking and seeing is also the
act of visualizing and creating. Perception becomes indistinguishable from repre-
sentation. Precisely for this reason, it is difficult to find an appreciative friend to
share the scene with, for the scene is as much real as imagined, and visualization
is always a private, individual act. Sitting alone in the late afternoon—with time
flying away in the shifting shadows of the sun, darkness approaching, and spring-
time ending—Xiao Gang finds that the only enjoyable activity is to write.
Xie Lingyun, the great landscape poet of the fifth century, had once famously
said that a fine hour, beautiful scenery, an appreciative friend (shangxin), and an
enjoyable activity were four things hard to come by all at once. Indeed, the desire
for an appreciative friend is so prominent in Xie Lingyun’s poetry that it became
his hallmark. Xiao Gang’s poem both pays tribute to the earlier master and dem-
onstrates the immense difference that separates the two: while Xie Lingyun’s
poetry often attempts to offer a panoramic view of the landscape and creates an
impression of all-inclusiveness and a cosmic vision, Xiao Gang’s intense gaze is
focused on a much smaller sphere, and he resorts to the mind’s eye no less than to
his physical vision to detect and construct the complex relations existing among
the myriad things of the world apparently all standing alone. As Stephen Owen
has said, “His was a poetry of beautiful, enigmatic patterns, often drawing the eye
closely to some detail.”1
Beginning in the Qi dynasty, yongwu shi (poetry on things) became increasingly
popular. It gradually developed into an important subgenre of classical Chinese
poetry, continually practiced throughout history and, in fact, enjoying a place in
modern poetry as well. Of Xiao Gang’s extant poetic collection, which contains