248 t He F i v e Dy na s t i e s anD t He s ong Dy na s t y
(│)(─)│▲
(│)(─)│▲
│──△
(│)│(│)─(─)││──△The strict tonal alternation of regulated verse is absent, and in its place is a tonal
patterning that presumably followed the contours of the poem’s musical setting in
some fashion. Since the music of these tunes has been lost, it is not clear exactly
what form this relationship took—whether the tonal category corresponded to a
melodic contour, for example, or to the length of notes (oblique tones are more
abrupt, while level tones are more drawn out). As time went on, poets began to
differentiate not only the two tonal categories of ping and ze but also the specific
five tones themselves.
Note that rhyme occurs in each line of this poem, while in regulated verse it
occurs only at the end of a couplet. This corresponds to the fact that in the song
lyric, the couplet gives way to the strophe as the basic structural building block of
the poem.4 A strophe is a unit of one to four lines ending in a rhyme. In English
translations of ci poems, a strophe often corresponds to a sentence, since strophes
tend to function as semantic units.
In the ci, the stanza break comes to serve an important aesthetic function, with
the expectation that it will introduce a change in meter, rhyme, setting, or mood,
in a practice known as huan tou. The form this transition takes in any particular
song lyric is a unique and important element of the poem’s aesthetic effect. In this
sense, the ci is both similar to and different from Tang regulated verse; the third
couplet of a regulated shi poem was also expected to introduce a thematic shift or
change (chap. 8). But in regulated verse, a strong metrical and tonal equivalence
unites the second and third couplets, thus in effect subordinating the thematic
shift to the tight unity of the poem. This is replaced in the ci with variation of both
line length and tonal patterning.
In Li Yu’s poem, the thematic transition is marked metrically by the three short
lines and by a change in rhyme. The setting shifts from the external surroundings
of the lonely speaker to internal musings on his or her own emotions. In the first
stanza, the speaker’s loneliness, confinement, and aging are reflected in the lonely
wutong trees and the lateness of an autumn locked deep in the garden. The second
stanza is an immediate, self-reflexive consideration of the speaker’s grief, prized
by generations of readers for the remarkable imagery of the first two lines and for
the enigmatic gesturing toward a characterization of that grief in the highly collo-
quial concluding line. But to really appreciate the literary achievement that a poem
like this one by Li Yu represents (and to which this brief reading does not begin to
do justice), we should look first at the development of the genre before his time.
There are two major sources of early ci poetry. The first is the extensive trove of
manuscripts unearthed in the first decades of the twentieth century in the Bud-
dhist caves at Dunhuang in Gansu Province. Along with paintings and manu-
scripts of various religious and nonreligious genres, the find unearthed numerous