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solely from the poet’s lyrics, without any corroboration from other, more reliable
materials. One can at best say that on the basis of their shared language, images,
and mood, these many song lyrics, including “Prelude to the Oriole’s Song,” are
powerful expressions of Wu Wenying’s remembrance of lost love.
The modern scholar Liu Yongji suggests that the poem may have been written
late in Wu Wenying’s life when the poet revisited alone the places where he had
lived with his beloved.22 Some of the phrases and events depicted in this poem can
be found in many of his works about love, presumably written at different times
in his life. It is conceivable that “Prelude to the Oriole’s Song” is an attempt by Wu
Wenying late in his life to integrate into a grander artistic design the images and
expressions referring to his most memorable experiences.
This great long poem consists of a series of recollections arranged in accor-
dance with the logic of a spatial design. Its four stanzas focus on the following
four themes, respectively: (1) lament for spring’s passing, (2) joy of union, (3) pain
of separation, and (4) mourning for the dead.23 It moves from the beginning to its
end by way of a tortuous path, revealing the poet’s complex inner state.
The time at the opening is late spring. Already “sick from wine,” the lyric speaker
suffers from the “lingering chill” and shuts his door. This image of a person suf-
fering from the effects of wine and a spring chill can be found in a poem set to the
tune “Feng ru song” (The Wind Comes Through the Pines) that begins with the
line “Listening to the wind and rain as I pass this Qingming Festival.”24 The idea of
staying indoors to reminisce about the past in the opening strophe is also a theme
in “Feng ru song,” in “Xi qiuhua” (Lamenting Autumn’s Glory), which begins,
“The delicate noise of the remaining crickets,”25 and in another poem, also set to
“Prelude to the Oriole’s Song,” that begins, “Across the pond, the boat penetrates
a lavish brocade.”26 The first strophe thus presents images depicting recurrent be-
havior rather than a unique event.
The second strophe speaks of the late-coming swallows, as though to announce
that spring is almost over. On the surface, this may be a description of what the
lyric speaker sees outside his house after he has shut the door. But there is per-
haps a deeper level of meaning here. Wu Wenying has used the word “swallow”
elsewhere to symbolize the woman he loved; for instance, in the preface to a poem
written to the tune “Jiangdu chun” (Spring in the Crimson City) is the line “The
swallow has been dead for a long time,” and the poem itself begins, “The swallow
falls from the south mansion.”27 The strophe may also mean that, in recalling his
first meeting with the woman, the poet laments that he had not met her earlier,
and, as a result, their romantic affair (“matters of spring”) was over all too soon.
In fact, without this deeper meaning, the lament for spring seems quite pointless.
Similarly, the third strophe also carries two levels of meaning. To be sure, these
lines can probably be read as descriptive of the immediate experience of boating
on West Lake, but this interpretation alone ignores their depth. Wu Wenying may
be remembering his probably numerous journeys in a boat from Hangzhou to
Suzhou with his beloved. In any case, the line “In the clearing mist, trailing are the
Wu Palace trees” does not seem to describe the scenery on West Lake. Rather, it