How to Read Chinese Poetry A Guided Anthology

r Hy tHm, s y n taX , anD v ision oF C H i ne s e P oe t ry 395

search search seek seek 尋尋覓覓 ▲ (xún xún mì mì)
cold cold lonely lonely 冷冷清清 (lĕng lĕng qīng qīng)
miserable miserable sad sad sorrowful sorrowful 悽悽慘慘戚戚 ▲ (qī qī cǎn cǎn qì qì)

The poem begins with a doubling of reduplicatives with long vowels—xu xu, mi
mi (line 1) and leng leng, qing qing (line 2)—immediately followed by a tripling
of reduplicatives in line 3 (qi qi, can can, qi qi). This creates an unprecedentedly
prolonged rhythm of 2 + 2; 2 + 2 / 2 + 2 + 2 or simply 2 +2 +2 +2 +2 +2 + 2. This
drawn-out rhythm effectively translates the poet’s unending sorrow and yearning
into an intense aural experience. The tripling of reduplicatives in line 3 is particu-
larly noteworthy. Such a tripling of reduplicatives, and, for that matter, any seman-
tic or syntactic unit, was rarely seen in earlier poetry. A sudden, prodigious use of
it in ci poetry seems to have been calculated to challenge the doubling tendency
prominent in all earlier poetic genres.

Qu Poetry
The Yuan sanqu corpus has about 160 established tunes, of which 50 or so are
frequently used. Many of these tunes display semantic rhythms similar to those of
short ci poems (xiaoling). It seems no coincidence that all stand-alone sanqu tunes
(as opposed to those in a song suite [santao]) are called xiaoling as well. Working
with similar semantic rhythms, sanqu poets nevertheless created new syntactic
constructions of their own. The following two examples show how two radically
different topic + comment constructions were fashioned out of the same tune.

C 1 8. 4

To the Tune “Sky-Clear Sand” [yuediao key]: Autumn Thoughts

Withered vines, old trees, crows at dusk,
2 A small bridge, flowing water, people’s homes,
An ancient road, the west wind, a lean horse.
4 The evening sun goes down in the west.
One heartbroken man at the end of the earth.
[QYSQ 1:242]

【越調】天淨沙^ 秋思 ([yuè diào] tiān jìng shā qiū sī)

withered vine old tree dusk crow 枯藤老樹昏鴉 △ (kū téng lăo shù hūn yā)
small bridge flowing water people home 小橋流水人家 △ (xiăo qiáo liú shuĭ rén jiā)
ancient road west wind lean horse 古道西風瘦馬 ▲ (gŭ dào xī fēng shòu mă)
evening sun west down 夕陽西下 (xī yáng xī xià)
broken intestines◦ man at◦ heaven end 斷腸人在天涯 △ (duàn cháng rén zài tiān yá)

As shown by the word-for-word translation, this poem by Ma Zhiyuan (1250?–1323?)
bears much formal resemblance to the excerpt of Li Qingzhao’s poem “To the Tune
‘One Beat Followed by Another, a Long Tune’” (C13.4). It also makes an extensive