166 t He tang Dy na s t y
The second couplet performs its expected function of cheng: to continue by focus-
ing on a set of paralleled images. Turning away from the external scene, the poet
here begins his mental engagement with the images of “flower” and “bird.” The
fixing of his inward gaze on these two images eventually leads him into a reverie-
like experience. Instead of giving a discursive account of this experience, however,
Du Fu lets us directly experience it through a masterful play of syntactic ambigui-
ties. The omission of the subject in the disyllabic segment allows us to infer dif-
ferent subjects and therefore have five different readings of the couplet (the fifth
reading is discussed in chap. 18). First, we can take the poet himself to be the im-
plied subject of both the disyllabic and trisyllabic segments, and give this reading
of the couplet:I feel about this wretched time so badly
that even flowers make me shed tears.
I hate separation so much
that a bird[’s call] startles my heart.In this reading, the verbs “shed” and “startle” are taken in the causative sense. The
poet is the real subject, who sheds tears and gets startled, while the flowers and
the bird are merely nominal subjects or simply the cause of the poet’s emotional
response.
Then, with a slight stretch of the imagination, we may combine the word “time”
with “flower” and “separation” with “bird” to produce two binomes: seasonal flower
and straying bird. This leads to a second reading of the couplet:Feeling affected by the seasonal flowers,
I shed my tears.
Hating to see the straying bird,
My heart is startled [by its call].This reading entails a change of semantic rhythm to 3 + 2, or (1 + 2) + 2. The 2 + 3
rhythm of a pentasyllabic line generally could not be altered, but Du Fu is known
to have deliberately violated established semantic rhythms to achieve a special
effect (a more detailed discussion of this issue appears in chap. 9). Thus this sec-
ond reading is quite plausible.
Next, we can take the flowers and bird to be the subjects of the trisyllabic seg-
ments and come up with a third reading of the couplet:As I feel the wretched time, flowers shed tears,
As I hate separation, birds are startled in their hearts.Finally, we can take the flowers and the bird to be the subjects of both the disyllabic
and trisyllabic segments. This allows for the fourth reading:Feeling the wretched time, flowers shed tears,
Hating separation, birds are startled in their hearts.