304 t He F i v e Dy na s t i e s anD t He s ong Dy na s t y
The second strophe brings in the power of a memento (a handkerchief ) to con-
jure up thoughts of the person associated with it. The traces of “tears of parting”
and “playful spit” correspond to the themes of lament at parting and joy of meet-
ing described in the second and third stanzas, respectively. Wu Wenying uses an
allusion to Fan Tai’s “Poem on a Simurgh” as a metaphor for his debilitating lone-
liness.31 In the third strophe, the poet writes that he has no way of expressing his
“everlasting sorrow in a letter” to his dead beloved, so he channels all his powerful
feelings into a zither tune instead. This great song lyric concludes with an allu-
sion to lines in the poem “Summoning the Soul” (Zhao hun), in the Chuci: “The
eye travels on a thousand li, and the heart breaks for sorrow. / O soul, come back!
Alas for the Southern Land!”32 The allusion expresses the poet’s deep grief over
the death of the woman he loved. Since Wu Wenying alludes to “Summoning the
Soul” in other works, the allusion here may well refer to both the Chuci and his
own works. This simultaneous reference to two sources operates like the allusion
to the story of Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao in the second stanza. The early Republican
scholar Chen Xun (1870–1942) was perceptive in noting that the last strophe of
the fourth stanza parallels the ending of the first stanza.33 The closing of the song
lyric—the poet’s moods, the mournful tune he is playing, and the wandering soul
of his dead love—are like “weightless catkins” drifting in the wind. The implied
parallel between the conclusions of the first and last stanzas is important because
it leaves the reader with a strong sense of tragic helplessness.
We can see from this short analysis that “Prelude to the Oriole’s Song” has a
tightly knit structure. It is divided into four large sections, each with a central
theme and each, in turn, subdivided into four strophes with their own specific fo-
cuses. In the arrangement of the major themes of lament for spring’s passing, joy
of meeting, pangs at separation, and mourning for the dead, the work can be said
to have a temporal development. It begins with the poet’s present thoughts and
actions, continues to depict his recollections of meeting with and parting from his
love, and returns to the present moment at the very end. But the image fragments
that depict his present actions and thoughts are also found in song lyrics that he
wrote about previous occasions. Further, the themes and subthemes are not orga-
nized into a chronological whole but are spread out as if across a canvas, and the
unity of the work is maintained through the parallelism, juxtaposition, and cor-
respondence among these themes and subthemes. “Prelude to the Oriole’s Song”
presents a vast spatial design for Wu Wenying’s remembrance of a woman whom
he very much loved. Even though it is not regarded as a bona fide yongwu ci, it is
clearly not cast in the traditional mode of direct self-expression but in the artistic
mode characterizing Jiang Kui’s “Dappled Shadows.” In terms of its structure, Wu
Wenying’s “Prelude to the Oriole’s Song” is a song lyric on a kind of object, the
complex processes of remembrance, that constituted his inner state as he wrote
this masterpiece.
Shuen-fu Lin