c i P oe t ry : long s ong ly riC s 283the favor of her lord is dashed by the slander from her jealous rivals. How deep her
disappointment and how keen her heart’s pains are can be read from the carefully
chosen words zhunni (well planned) and another you (again, once more) (line 12).
Such careful planning and breathtaking anticipation are frustrated once again, and
despair ensues. She seems to suggest that she would rather give up, since, even
if she could have a moving letter written, there seems no way for her to find its
recipient. Her heart, so tender, has no one to pour (su) itself out to (line 15).
The tender female voice speaks throughout (or almost throughout) the song.
The disquieting late-spring scene—fallen petals, spiders’ webs under eaves, set-
ting sun—is seen through the sensitive female eye. The allusion that links the two
parts of the song lyric delineates the distress of a tender heart wounded by neglect.
All these elements seem to work together to sustain a coherent story line.
The almost flawless story line of the song and the consistent voice scheme are
disrupted, however, by the discordance created by the middle segment of the sec-
ond stanza (lines 16–17). The segment consists of an imperative (line 16) and a
negative interrogative (line 17). Both are bluntly directed at a second person, a jun
(you or sir). Usually used as a form of polite, honorific address, jun here functions
specifically as the target of the poet’s contempt and hatred. “Sir,” commands the
poet, “do not dance!” The contrast between the apparently polite and respectful
form of address and the content of this imperative is so great that it not only re-
veals the poet’s anger but also carries a threat. To make sure that the threat is not
taken lightly, the poet launches yet another round of attack: “[Sir,] have you not
seen how those favored beauties fall to dust?” The emphatic power of the negative
interrogative is so forceful and aggressive that it can be taken only as an unforget-
table follow-up to the foregoing threat.
If we read this sudden outburst of emotion in context, we see that it could never
be expressed by the voice of the fair lady, gentle though sometimes grumbling,
with which we have become familiar. Although the persona’s tone gets bitter at
the beginning of the second stanza, it is still restrained. Her bitterness comes not
so much from her hatred of those who envy her as from her regret that there is no
way to make her tender feelings known. The word zong (even if [ line 14]) reveals
the helplessness and resignation implied in the rhetorical question in line 15. The
lady does not show any sign of anger even at the end of the song. It seems that she
prefers to keep all the suffering to herself; sorrow and bitterness are carefully held
at the tip of a well-trained tongue.
Then suddenly, a new voice, forceful and aggressive, breaks out from the plane
of this story line and claims a new level of meaning of its own. The tension be-
tween the two planes has its merits. It is not that it helps bring out the allegorical
meaning of the poem, which is already clear enough. Rather, the true self of the
poet intrudes into the allegorical process of the song he so carefully presents, and
speaks in a different voice, appealing to his readers with the immediacy and inten-
sity of his message. Here perhaps lies another merit of the juxtaposition of the two
planes of meaning. By displaying the evident conflict between the two voices, the
poet deliberately shows how hard he tries, although in vain, to restrain his pent-