How to Read Chinese Poetry A Guided Anthology

206 t He tang Dy na s t y

rest of the question reveals the speaker’s anxiety about the continuing strength

of this love: his asking whether the flowers bloom is an indirect way of asking

whether his wife’s or lover’s feelings are as strong as before.

A representative example of quatrains in the descriptive style is Wang Zhihuan’s

(688–742) famous “Climbing Crane Tower”:

C 1 0. 5

Climbing Crane Tower

White sun rests on mountains—and is gone

Yellow River enters sea—and flows on

If you want to see a further thousand miles:

Climb another story in the tower

[QTS 8:253.2849; QSTRJJ, 54–56]

登鸛雀樓^ (dēng guàn què lóu)

white sun rest mountain extinguish 白日依山盡 (bái rì yī shān jìn)

yellow river enter ocean flow 黃河入海流 (huáng hé rù hăi liú)

want exhaust thousand mile sight 欲窮千里目 (yù qióng qiān lĭ mù)

again ascend one story tower 更上一層樓 (gèng shàng yì céng lóu)

[Tonal pattern I, see p. 170]

Crane Tower commanded a vista from a bend in the Yellow River, at a site in

present-day Yongji, Shanxi Province. On one level, this is a simple landscape

poem, in praise of the view. Yet when we analyze the relationships between the

images in the parallel first couplet in the light of the modal conditional proposition

in the second couplet, our thoughts may shift to the metaphysical realm.11 The per-

manence of mountains is paired with the transience of water, the light of day with

the dark of night, and the termination of movement (resting, disappearing) with

continuing movement (entering, flowing). A cosmological cycle of yin and yang is

described. Indeed, we might go further: we are exactly at the midpoint in the cycle

when yang yields to yin—the point of balance. The first couplet thereby creates a

seemingly complete conception of the world, but then the second couplet asserts

that there is an even greater view open to those who climb higher in the tower.

Implicit is that there is a truth about the cosmos that is beyond our normal under-

standing. There is a Tang dynasty basis for this interpretation: Guifeng Zongmi

(780–841), both a patriarch of Huayan Buddhism and a major Chan (Zen) master,

uses the analogy of climbing a nine-story tower to describe the relationship be-

tween cultivation and enlightenment.12

Wang Wei shared with Tao Qian (Tao Yuanming, 365?–427) a love of nature

and a frequent tendency to use natural description as a springboard to philosophi-

cal and religious investigation. “Most mature nature poetry... would seem to

look upon the configurations of landscape as symbols charged with a mysterious

power.”13 While Tao Qian was a follower of the Daoist philosophers, Wang Wei was