How to Read Chinese Poetry A Guided Anthology

r e C e n t-s t y l e Sh i P oe t ry : quat ra i n s 205

allude to poem no. 131 in the Shijing (The Book of Poetry), in which the song of the
oriole is a harbinger of the death of warriors for their lord. Thus the bird not only
keeps the lonely woman from dreams of happiness but also represents her worst
fears.
Wang Wei (701–761) is universally recognized as a master of wujue, particularly
for his limpid landscape descriptions, which often contain Buddhist allegories. Yet
the few colloquial-style quatrains he composed are also justly famous. He writes
of lovers’ separation, this time from the man’s point of view, in the second of three
“Miscellaneous Poems”:

C 1 0. 4

Miscellaneous Poems, No. 2

You’ve come from our hometown

And must know what’s happening there

The day you left, by the patterned window

Was the cold plum tree in bloom?

[QTS 4:128.1304; QSTRJJ, 107–108]

雜詩^ (zá shī)

you from old hometown come 君自故鄉來 (jūn zì gù xiāng lái)
should know old hometown affairs 應知故鄉事 (yīng zhī gù xiāng shì)
come day patterned window front 來日綺窗前 (lái rì qĭ chuāng qián)
cold plum blossom flower not 寒梅著花未 (hán méi zhuó huā wèi)

By addressing the poem to the second-person pronoun jun, a dramatic situation
with two actors is created, with the poet taking the speaking role. An impression
of direct and natural speech is given by the strong syntax used throughout and the
use of grammatical function words—the preposition zi (from) and the negative
question word wei. The repetition of guxiang (hometown) in lines 1 and 2 and lai
(to come) in lines 1 and 3 imparts a sense of informality to the speaker’s words and
emphasizes the linguistic continuity. The words jun, guxiang, and lairi (come day;
that is, the day of departure) are examples of deixis (person deixis, place deixis, and
time deixis, respectively), as their exact referents require knowledge of the speech
context. The inference in line 2 and the question in line 4 are modal statements
that imply a speaker as point of reference.
The subtle emotion of the second couplet is what makes this poem memorable.
In line 3, the word qichuang (patterned window; that is, a window with delicately
carved or latticed decoration that makes it resemble qi [patterned silk]) almost cer-
tainly refers to a woman’s boudoir. We assume that the occupant is the speaker’s
wife or lover, from whom he is separated. The question in line 4 is thus projected
onto the personal level. The “cold plum” becomes a symbol of the couple’s love,
which has endured separation the way plum trees endure the cold of winter. The