258 t He F i v e Dy na s t i e s anD t He s ong Dy na s t y
without strategy retain spring stop 無計留春住 ▲ (wú jì liú chūn zhù)
tear eye ask flower flower not speak 淚眼問花花不語 ▲ (lèi yăn wèn huā huā bù yŭ)
mess red fly enter swings swings go 亂紅飛入秋千去 ▲ (luàn hóng fēi rù qiū qiān qù)The first stanza piles up images of blocked vision and seclusion, multiplied
indefinitely by the question “how deep?” and the adjective “uncountable.” The ref-
erence to the absent lover’s bridle and saddle in the entertainment district clearly
marks the poem as an abandonment complaint. The poem moves from scene to
feeling, in a typical progression known as “entering the emotion through the scene”
(you jing ru qing), but then it closes with a particularly memorable natural image,
for which the poem has been prized. Unlike Li Yu’s speaker in “Beautiful Lady
Yu,” the speaker in “Butterflies Lingering over Flowers” does not make explicit
her closing question; the dynamic response of the flowers, rather than answering
the speaker’s unspoken question, seems to embody her chaos of swirling emo-
tion. Wang Guowei (1877–1927), a late Qing critic strongly influenced by Western
aesthetics and philosophy, cited these last two lines as an example of a “personal”
scene or state, a you wo zhi jing, as opposed to what he regarded as the superior
impersonal, or literally “selfless,” scene or state, the wu wo zhi jing (chap. 6). These
lines are also a masterful example of the fusion of feeling and scene and an in-
genious variation on the image of fallen blossoms (signifying the end of spring and
the passage of time). Even while the blossoms mirror the speaker’s emotions, they
also refuse to serve as her interlocutor; she asks, but they do not speak, leaving
her alone with her grief. While male speakers in shi poems tend to find commu-
nion and consolation in nature, in this and other female-voiced ci poems, nature
is more often unfeeling, adding to the speaker’s grief, or at least failing to provide
the comfort she seeks.
Our final poet, Yan Shu (991–1055), was another Northern Song statesman
whose ci poetry followed in the tradition of Feng Yansi and the Huajian ji poets.
With Ouyang Xiu, he is considered a master of the xiaoling. These poets’ song
lyrics remain largely within the “delicate and restrained” wanyue school, as op-
posed to the “bold and unrestrained” or heroic haofang school, which developed as
the thematic range of the ci broadened even further during the Song. The following
poem is acclaimed for its subtle and implicit expression of separation grief. This
degree of implicitness, in which there is no explicit reference to the object of the
speaker’s complaint, has traditionally been praised by critics with the phrase “not
a word verbalizes complaint” (wu yi zi yan yuan).C 1 2. 9
To the Tune “Sand in Silk-Washing Stream”A new song, a cup of wine;
2 Last year’s weather at the old pond terrace.
The setting sun sinks in the west—when to return?