20 Pr e - q i n t i m e s
This kind of progression in the Book of Poetry has come to be called incremental
repetition. In “I Beg of You, Zhong Zi,” there are two such repetitions: Zhong Zi
physically crashing through barriers and tree branches to reach his beloved, juxta-
posed to the singer’s widening mental picture of those who will object to his woo-
ing. The result is a chiasmatic (the inversion of word order of similar phrases in
an a-b-b-a pattern) tension: Zhong Zi approaching in increments, and the effects
thereof distancing themselves beyond the singer’s control—or so she imagines it,
her emotions crossing in parallel to the chiasmatic repetitions in her song.
If we assume that, as with any oral song, this one would have been performed
differently each time it was sung, we can also imagine that there may have been
much longer versions of “I Beg of You, Zhong Zi,” in which Zhong Zi might have
forded small streams or stepped through thresholds. Moreover, we can imagine
the singer redesigning the imagistic furniture (what was jumped or crossed and the
breakable foliage one had to be careful with) to fit local conditions and audiences.
Any discussion of “I Beg of You, Zhong Zi” would be incomplete without some
comparison with “Ru fen” (The Banks of the Ru [Mao no. 10]), which also invokes
the awe and respect most young lovers showed their parents:C 1. 5
The Banks of the Ru 汝墳 (rŭ fén)Walking along the banks of the Ru, 遵彼汝墳 (zūn bĭ rŭ fén)
2 Cutting the slender stems; 伐其條枚 (fá qí tiáo méi)
Not yet seeing my lord, 未見君子 (wèi jiàn jūn zĭ )
4 My desire is like morning hunger. 惄如調飢 (nì rú zhāo jī)
Walking along the banks of the Ru, 遵彼汝墳 (zūn bĭ rŭ fén)
6 Cutting the slender sprouts; 伐其條肄 (fá qí tiáo yì)
Having seen my lord, 既見君子 (jì j iàn jūn zĭ )
8 He did not desert me after all. 不我遐棄 (bù wŏ xiá qì)The bream has a reddened tail, 魴魚赬尾 (fáng yú chēng wěi)
10 The royal chamber as if ablaze. 王室如燬 (wáng shì rú huĭ )
But even though it is as if ablaze, 雖則如燬 (suī zé rú huĭ )
12 Father and mother are very near. 父母孔邇 (fù mŭ kŏng ěr)
[MSZJ 1.8b.–9b]“Ru fen” has traditionally been read with the final couplet developing from the xing
of the reddened bream in line 9. Wang shi, which is here rendered literally as “royal
chamber,” is normally understood pars pro toto (a part for the whole) as referring to
the royal court, which is “as if ablaze” in some sort of crisis. The final two lines are
then read as the wife urging her husband, who is serving at court, to return home
because of his parents (which would mean he would also return to her). There is
another line of commentary that reads the poem in just the opposite way, of urging
her husband to serve an oppressive court so that his parents could be well cared
for. But as an air, the poem might easily be read as a love poem sung by a wife