r e C e n t-s t y l e Sh i P oe t ry : P e n ta s y l l a biC r e gul at eD v e r s e 167The four readings of the second couplet present three distinct perspectives on
human suffering. In the first two readings, human suffering is regarded from a
purely human point of view. From such a perspective, nature appears separate
from man and hence indifferent to his suffering. Worse still, nature’s indestruc-
tibility and perpetual renewal, and its springtime luxuriance, only serve to pain-
fully remind man of his frailty and misery. This unsympathetic contrast of man
with nature is a time-honored theme in Chinese poetry and is unambiguously
employed in the first couplet of this poem. Although this contrast is sustained by
the first two readings, it is subverted in the third and fourth readings. In the third
reading, human suffering is viewed from the broader perspective of man and na-
ture as a whole. When so viewed, man’s suffering is none other than nature’s, and
vice versa. For this reason, there is a touching resonance between man’s lamenting
his wretched time and flowers’ shedding their tears. In the fourth reading, human
suffering is viewed from the perspective of an empathetic nature. Here, it is not
man but nature that gives expression to human sorrow.
The succession of these three perspectives reveals a radical change of realities as
perceived by the poet: from a disheartening juxtaposition of suffering man and in-
different nature, to the mutual resonance between man and nature, and finally to a
complete empathy between man and nature. As we follow this change of perceived
realities, we can vicariously relive the poet’s innermost experience as he deepens
his observation into a reverie.
beacon fire span◦ three month 烽火連三月 (fēng huŏ lián sān yuè)
home letter equal◦ ten thousand gold tael 家書抵萬金 (jiā shū dĭ wàn jīn)
This third couplet faithfully performs the function of zhuan: to engineer a turning
by introducing a contrasting set of parallel images. The turning in this particular
case is a shift from nature to the human world. In contrast to the flowers and bird,
we have now things of the human world: “beacon fire” (fenghuo) and “home letter.”
At first glance, these two seem to make an odd pair, as there is no apparent simi-
larity between beacon fire and letter. But once we learn of the ancient practice of
lighting a fire atop a watchtower to relay the message of an invasion by nomads, we
can see that the two binomes make a perfect pair. Du Fu’s exploitation of the double
entendre of fenghuo is indisputable. While using this meaning of “beacon fire” to
produce an ingenious parallelism with “home letter,” he taps its other meaning as
“flames of war” to reveal the causes of the country’s ruin and the separation of his
family. The verbs “span” and “equal” are also perfectly paired, as they each denote a
linkage in space or time. The lighting of a beacon fire normally signifies a linkage
of two or more points in space, and so does the delivery of a family letter. However,
the “beacon fire” and “home letter” are instead perceived to span time. “Three
months” explicitly marks a long duration. In Chinese, the word san can function
as either a cardinal number (three) or an ordinal number (third), depending on the
context in which it occurs. According to many scholars, it works both ways here
in the binome sanyue. First, “three months” furnishes a nice parallelism with “ten