Qu P oe t ry : s ong P oe m s o F tHe y uan Dy na s t y 347marketplaces, and entertainment quarters. The following song poem is about a
big butterfly.
C 1 6. 1 0
To the Tune “Heaven in a Drunkard’s Eye” [xianlü key]:
On the Big ButterflyHaving emerged from Zhuangzi’s dream,
2 With its two wings mounting on the spring wind,
It empties three hundred gardens in one gulp.
4 Can this be the gallant breed?
How it scares away the flower-chaser bees!
6 With a gentle flap of its wings
It blows the flower vendors to the east side of the bridge.
[QYSQ 1:41]
【仙呂】醉中天 詠大蝴蝶
([xiān lǚ] zuì zhōng tiān yŏng dà hú dié)
cicada break Zhuang Zhou dream 蟬破莊周夢
(chán pò zhuāng zhōu mèng)
two wing ride east wind 兩翅架東風 △
(liăng chì jià dōng fēng)
three hundred [measure] famous garden 三百座名園 △
(sān băi zuò míng yuán)
one pluck one [measure] empty 一採一箇空 △
(yì căi yí gè kōng)
hard speak wind flow breed 難道風流種 ▲
(nán dào fēng liú zhŏng)
scare death search flower ’s honey bee 嚇殺尋芳的蜜蜂 △
(xià shà xún fāng de mì fēng)
light light -ly fly move 輕輕的飛動 ▲
(qīng qīng de fēi dòng)
have sell flower person fan across bridge east 把賣花人搧過橋東 △
(bă mài huā rén shān guò qiáo dōng)
The song is a parody of the yongwu (poetry on things). Anecdote has it that in
the early 1260s there appeared in the grand capital Dadu (present-day Beijing) a
gigantic butterfly, and it is believed that the insect gave the poet an excuse to write
this song.
Since the poet tells us unmistakably that his butterfly flies directly from Zhuan-
gzi’s famous dream, this is a good place to examine how a seemingly simple sanqu
ditty, in the plain language of everyday speech and on a flippant subject that ap-
peals more to the unlettered, can also be charged, or riddled, with allusions, a
game any lettered practitioner of traditional classical poetry was good at.