r e C e n t-s t y l e Sh i P oe t ry : quat ra i n s 203詠池上梨花詩 (yŏng chí shàng lí huā shī)
overturn steps cover fine grass 翻階沒細草 (fān jiē mò xì căo)
accumulate water divide sparse duckweed 集水間疏萍 (jí shuĭ jiàn shū píng)
fragrant spring shine flowing snow 芳春照流雪 (fāng chūn zhào liú xuĕ)
deep night reflect many star 深夕映繁星 (shēn xī yìng fán xīng)
The transformation of the pear blossom petals floating in the wind to snow and
stars is both striking and beautiful. The lines in each couplet are strictly parallel,
but the language evokes an element of dynamism due to the use of strong verbs
in the third position in every line—such key words were termed juyan (verse eyes)
by later critics.
The same literati poets who wrote shi quatrains were also a major audience for
the yuefu songs. Cross-fertilization was both natural and inevitable. Yuefu quatrain
songs by named authors incorporate descriptive language (including parallelism)
more than do most of the anonymous songs. And as time went on, shi quatrains in-
creasingly exhibited elements derived from the subjective voice of the yuefu singer.
In particular, Yu Xin (513–581) did much to transform the literati pentasyllabic
quatrain into a medium for personal statement; his works can be considered pre-
cursors of many Tang wujue. 8
Both of the two proposed styles of Tang wujue build on Six Dynasties anteced-
ents, but in different ways. Colloquial-style quatrains hark back directly to the Six
Dynasties songs by presenting archetypal yuefu characters in dramatic situations
using a first-person colloquial voice to express fundamental emotions. Often such
Tang quatrains are “ancient jueju” (gujue), a term applied by commentators such
as Wang Li to the minority of jueju that do not follow the rules of tonal prosody or
use oblique-tone rhymes.9 The reason for bypassing the tonal patterns appears to
have been a conscious attempt by poets to evoke an archaic flavor in their verse. Yet
the colloquial style is reflected in many proper wujue poems as well—it is theme
and voice that dictate their inclusion. Two colloquial-style quatrains are presented,
given pride of place at the outset. It should be noted, however, that it is unlikely
that these poems were actually sung in the Tang. The musical tradition of Six Dy-
nasties pentasyllabic quatrains—and that of the old Han yuefu as well—had all
but died out by the Early Tang dynasty. Poets were making use of the ready-made
resonance of old yuefu as source material for new kinds of poetry.
The descriptive style in fact is more prevalent in Tang wujue composition. It can
be explained as a hybrid that merges the descriptive and visual power of shi with
the emotional voice of the yuefu singer. One compositional method dominates: the
first couplet is devoted to a description of images and often demonstrates paral-
lelism; the second couplet is a continuous syntactic proposition and frequently
exhibits deixis and modality. The first couplet is generally in the declarative mode
and provides the setting or necessary background information for the second cou-
plet. In the second couplet, the emphasis is on the subjective evaluation of all of the
poem’s imagery. The voice of the singer is internalized by the poet and becomes