How to Read Chinese Poetry A Guided Anthology

r e C e n t-s t y l e Sh i P oe t ry : quat ra i n s 213

an invention of the High Tang poets, most notably Wang Changling (698–ca. 755)
and Li Bai. Qijue developed along with Tang popular music, for which it was the
major song form. Thus initially the thematic scope was narrow: qijue lyrics were
generally limited to popular yuefu themes (which, for the Tang, can be roughly
divided into frontier songs about homesick soldiers and boudoir songs about
abandoned ladies) and those describing parting from friends and loved ones. Only
gradually did the scope of qijue themes expand, until by the Middle and Late Tang,
the form had become a flexible tool for personal expression.
Let us look at one of Wang Changling’s frontier poems, from a set called “Fol-
lowing the Army”:

C 1 0. 1 1

Following the Army

Signal fires west of the wall, hundred-foot watchtowers

Climbing alone at dusk—an autumn of desert wind

What’s more—“Mountain Pass Moon” plays on a nomad flute

No way to reach the golden chamber, past ten thousand miles of sadness

[QTS 4:143.1443–1444; QSTRJJ, 77–80]

從軍行 (cóng jūn xíng)

signal fire city/wall west hundred foot tower 烽火城西百尺樓 (fēng huŏ chéng xī băi chĭ lóu)
yellow dusk alone sit ocean wind autumn 黃昏獨上海風秋 (huáng hūn dú shàng hăi fēng qiū)
again blow nomad flute pass mountain moon 更吹羌笛關山月 (gèng chuī qiāng dí guān shān yuè)
no way gold chamber ten thousand mile sadness 無那金閨萬里愁 (wú nà jīn guī wàn lĭ chóu)
[Tonal pattern IIa, see p. 171]

Typically, the poem presents no actual warfare; qijue poets were more interested
in the emotions of the soldiers when in moments of rest between battles. A second-
ary interest was the great desert itself, which had a strangely romantic attraction
for the city dwellers of Chang’an. Wang Changling liberally spices his qijue with
Central Asian geographic names, nomadic accoutrements, and bleak vistas. In this
poem, a soldier climbs a tower to look back toward his home in China; when he
hears “Mountain Pass Moon” (a song associated with homesickness), he despairs
of the distance to the “golden chamber” where his wife or lover waits. The huge
landscape between them is suddenly suffused with their mutual pain.
One of Wang Changling’s innovations was the qijue poem series, a useful means
to overcome the brevity of the form. Each stanza is a complete qijue, but when
all are read together, there is an exponential buildup of emotional resonance.
Whereas the total length is similar to that of heptasyllabic ancient poetry (qigu),
the effect of the presentation is quite different: the qijue series comprises multiple
moments of great intensity. A fine example is Wang Changling’s five-poem series
“Autumn Songs of the Hall of Abiding Faith,” which is his version of the Ban Jieyu
theme: