c i P oe t ry : long s ong ly riC s on ob j eC t s 295
The daughter of Song Wudi (r. 420–423), Princess Shouyang, lay down under
the eaves of Hanzhang Palace on the Seventh Day of the First Moon. A plum
blossom fell onto her forehead and became a five-petaled flower. She brushed
at it but it would not come off.... Three days later, she washed [her face] and
the flower then fell off. The palace ladies marveled at this and began to imitate
her. It became what is called today a “plum blossom ornament.”15The opening strophe of the second stanza continues the association of a plum
blossom and a woman made in the first stanza. As the story indicates, the blos-
som became firmly attached to Princess Shouyang’s forehead; thus the blossom
and the woman merged into one entity. By alluding to Princess Shouyang, Jiang
Kui is perhaps suggesting that the blossom reminds him of the ornament on the
forehead of some woman in his private life. So there may be a remote metaphori-
cal relation between this strophe and a private experience of the poet’s. But as it
stands in the song lyric, the textual allusion works more like a remembered his-
torical experience, resembling the allusion to Wang Zhaojun in the third strophe
of the first stanza.
Apart from suggesting the idea of a life of frivolity in the palace, the allusion to
Princess Shouyang also introduces the image of a falling plum blossom, which is
immediately taken up by the next strophe, where “But early prepare a gold cham-
ber for it” alludes to another palace tale. When Han Wudi (r. 140–87 b.C.e.) was a
child, an aunt asked him how he felt about having his cousin A Jiao become his
wife. He replied, “If I had A Jiao, I would keep her in a golden chamber.”16 This
story and the accounts of Princess Shouyang, Wang Zhaojun, and Emperor Hui-
zong are “old palace tales” (shen’gong jiushi). The upshot of the allusion here is that
a person in a position of power should always carefully protect the blossom—his
beautiful lady—so that she will not be left to suffer. Indeed, if he allows the petals
to drift off, he will surely have cause for regret, captured in the painful recogni-
tion of a sad melody (“Jade Dragon” is the name of a flute, and the old tune “Plum
Blossoms Are Falling” was composed especially for this instrument).17 Moreover,
as the very last strophe suggests, he will be left to look for the blossom’s subtle
fragrance not in the real object but in a facsimile, a painting hung above a win-
dow. What the ending strophes of “Dappled Shadows” suggest is what happened
to Wang Zhaojun: Emperor Han Yuandi’s failure to protect her, the most beautiful
woman in his palace, became the source of her everlasting grief, solitude, home-
sickness, and suffering.
A number of images are common to both “Secret Fragrance” and “Dappled
Shadows”: the blossoming plum, bamboos, beautiful women, the moon, the Yang-
tze River, and the spring wind that blows away the petals of the plum blossoms.
These images certainly enhance the complementarity of the pieces. Obviously, the
“moonlight of the old days,” which begins “Secret Fragrance,” includes the moon-
light on the nights in which Wang Zhaojun’s spirit returns to the south. And the
image of the plum blossoms’ being blown away that ends “Secret Fragrance” makes
the picture of the petals carried off by the current toward the end of “Dappled