270 t He F i v e Dy na s t i e s anD t He s ong Dy na s t y
carried not so much by the question itself as by the yearning posture of one indi-
vidual in the middle of the night facing the infinite openness of the sky, wishing to
reach to the bottom of the cosmic truth.
The tension created at the very beginning between inquisitive humankind and
the mysterious universe continues in the interaction between the poet and the
moon. The moon of mid-autumn is generally believed to be the brightest of the
year, and on that night it has such a great allure for the poet that he hopes to
“return” to it (line 5), as though his origin were in the otherworldliness of that
heavenly body. (The Daoist implication is detectable in the wind-riding image bor-
rowed from two Daoist texts, the Zhuangzi and the Liezi.) However, he instantly
hesitates, fearing that the palaces high up there might be too cold for him (lines
6–7). His uncertainty about where he belongs is expressed in the ambiguity of the
last two lines of the first stanza. When he dances with his own shadow in a half-
drunken state under the ethereal moonlight, he feels suspended above the human
world; hence his uttered question “How does this compare to the human world!”
(line 9). But a totally different reading is also possible: he gives up his thoughts of
flying to the moon and finds satisfaction in pleasing himself on earth: How can
anything compare with this human world? The ambiguity seems to be deliberate;
it suggests the mumbling of someone who is completely drunk and fits the pattern
of the poet’s oscillating thinking that we have seen so far.
The communication between the poet and the moon is actually a one-man
show. The poet thinks out loud, reasoning with himself, yet he stages his mono-
logue in a dramatic situation in which he reaches out to the moon and tries to en-
gage it in a dialogue. The fact that the moon appears to be a reluctant interlocutor
only adds to the dramatic effect. Its silence prompts further questions, reflections,
and doubts from the poet and gives him an excuse to continue his philosophical
rambling. This small drama continues in the second stanza. While what really hap-
pens is that the sleepless poet watches the moon and follows its slow movement
(lines 10–12), he describes the situation in such a way that it appears as though the
moon has come to disturb him and caused his sleeplessness. Instead of admitting
his oversensitivity to the subtle changes in nature, the poet accuses the moon of
always making him feel the pain of separation (lines 13–14). Then he changes his
mind. He forgives the moon and uses the occasion to theorize his new understand-
ing of the inevitability of the human situation (lines 15–16). The originally pensive
mood changes. The song ends on a positive, even optimistic note.
This second song lyric by Su Shi is a good example of how the poet adapted the
conventional subjects of classical poetry to the manci form:C 1 3. 3
To the Tune “The Charm of Niannu”:
Meditation on the Past at Red CliffThe Great Yangtze runs east,
2 Its waves have swept away heroes of past ages.