Lu You. Ode to the Plum, to the tune of "The Diviner"
It blooms without a master.
Already in twilight, in sorrow alone,
Still it suffers the wind and rain.
It had no intent to compete for spring--
Yet always the many flowers envy it.
Scattered, fallen to become muck, crushed into dust,
Only its fragrance will be as before.
陸游 卜算子
詠梅
驛外斷橋邊，寂寞開無主。已是黃昏獨自愁，更着風和雨。無意苦爭春，一任群芳妒。零落成泥碾作土，只有香如故。
Burton Watson said that Lu You (1125-1210) was a “great poet” without any “great poems.” He's left us with an enormous oeuvre, with tens of thousands of works. By poems Wastson, I believed, meant specifically his shi poetry. His ci lyrics are of even less renown, but this one in particular, The Ode to the Plum, is of particular interest.
The character for plum, mei,does not represent that sour-sweet purple fruit we find in our grocery stores, but refers to a tree called the Asian plum, known in Japanese as ume. It is actually more closely related to the apricot. The mei has acquired particular significance in Chinese literature as a symbol virtue. It is one of the “four gentleman” (四君子 sijunzi), a group that comprises the bamboo (竹 zhu), the plum (梅 mei), the orchid (蘭 lan), and the chrysanthemum (菊 ju). These four plants each represent a season: winter, spring, summer, and autumn respectively. The mei, being one of the earlier flowers to bloom is the herald of spring, one who challenges the winter cold ahead of others. So, the mei has come to represent a moral avant-garde, a single, heroic effort to hearken a new beginning.
Moving back to Lu You the poet. Lu You, unlike Liu Yong, lived during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) Chinese historiography divides the Song Dynasty (960-1279) into two periods, the Northern Song (960-1127), when Liu Yong was active, and the Southern Song. The north-south distinction came about because of the Jurchen invasion that overran the Northern Song capital, Kaifeng, taking hostages two emperors and most of the royal family, and conquering most of northern China in the process. Lu You's reputation is esteemed quite high not only for his literary accomplishment, but for also for his patriotism. He has left a significant body of work that dealt with the restoration of Song rule in northern China, and even on his deathbed, he did not give up hope that one day the Song would reclaim its lost territories. Unfortunately for his wishes, both the Jurchen Empire in northern China and the Song would find themselves unable to resist the Mongols.
Another interesting point about Lu You is, his “style.” By style, I do not mean his literary style, but his hao (號), a pen name of sorts. Burton Watson translates it, fangweng (放翁 lit. free old man) as “the old man who does as he pleases.” By doing as he pleases, Lu You, I do not believe is playing to anything akin to our modern conception of “freedom” in the general sense. However, I do think there is some commensurability between Lu You's idea and ours. They have in common the idea of “flouting conventions.” But, for Lu You, the flouting of conventions was a means for him to express a moral dignity and autonomy that went beyond the confines and perceptions of society at large. With that in mind, let us look at “Ode to the Plum.”
Why do I insist that it is “Ode to the Plum” and not, “a plum?” I want to start now, that while Lu You maybe describing a real plum tree and its blossoms, it is really the idea and concept of the mei as a symbol that he is really writing about.
The poem opens with a bleak, lonely sort of image. A way-station (驛 yi) can be thought of as a pre-modern service area on a major road. It was where a traveller might lodge for the night, change his horses, or buy provisions. They were government run, and were, in times of peace, relatively safe. The appreance of a way-station tells us the poet-speaker is on his way somewhere-- he is travelling. He finds, not far from the way-station, out on the road, a broken bridge. A broken bridge is an easy metaphor: a path broken, an journey perturbed and obstructed. And, it is here, by this broken bridge, that we find something "[blooming] without a master." The poem's title presumes to have us think it is a mei.
But, what does it mean to have a master? Who is master of this mei? An easy answer would be say that he simply means the tree blooms in the wild; no one is cultivating it, it belongs to no garden. No one is taking care of it-- it is alone. The poet-speaker continues to say, "already in twilight, in sorrow alone / still it bears the wind and rain." So it is twilight, the sun is setting and the scene is certainly bleak and sorrowful. Yes, the delicate blossoms are lonely because they have no master and have to suffer through wind and rain-- but where is the sorrow? The plum tree might be solitary, but where comes this loneliness, where comes this sorrow? Can a mei, a flower tree, know solitude?
As I had mentioned before, the mei is a vanguard of spring, blooming before many of the other flowers. However, poet-speaker tells us, it "did not intend to compete for spring." The mei does not arrive early with blossoms becuase it seeks, because it "wants" to be better, but, well it simply does as it does. It blooms early because it is natural for it to do so. Yet, despite not wanting to "compete," "yet always the many flowers envy it." None of the others seem to understand that, the mei never wanted to be better than them, it was simply being itself. Because the mei cannot help being the first in spring, one can imagine the spiteful and envious feelings it must arouse in those inferior to it. Now we wonder. It may be that the mei comes first, but how can flower be jealous?
By now, it should be obvious that the poet-speaker, while ostensibly is speaking of the mei as a flower, it is also personifying it, fusing it with the associations that we had mentioned earlier. (In fact, it may be safe to say, this poem may have helped the mei acquire the reputation it does now). Trees, flowers, rocks, water and all natural objects live in oblivion of the human word. It is pathetic fallacy to ascribe to them human emotions, a farcical act of self-importance to think that they really care about how we feel. Nature is nature and will do as it will do. The mei could care less about who its master is.
The poet-speaker, in the desolate, broken, itinerant and twilight scene described, has superimposed and vicariously inscribed his own emotions and thoughts onto the plum. The object receptaclizes these feelings. Going back to the question of "without a master," might it be that the poet-speaker feels alone because there is none to recognize his abilties, none to hold him in esteem, none whom he might serve? Seeing the mei, the poet imagines his own feelings embodied in this natural object. Perhaps finding this sympathetic representation of one's emotional self in nature really does have a power to assuage?
Understanding the mei as a sympathetic symbol, we find the poet-speaker imagining more that he has in common with the flower. Is it not he that feels the pain and loneliness that must when on others understand or could sympathize with his own high moral standards or good natural inclinations? He tells us, through the ostensible description of the plant that, he never wanted to be necessarily "better" than others, and that there was no reason for others to feel envious. He only wanted to do what was natural to him-- and he is better for that, for being better naturally, not for being better in order to best others. Just as its fellow flowers still find reason enough to harbor envy, those around him fail to understand, and remain spiteful.
Now we're left with the last two lines. He imagines the petals fallen, scattered, on to the ground, pulverized into the earth, decayed, gone, becoming one with the dust. Yet he claims that its "fragrance will be as before." What fragrance from a flower can live beyond the petals that give it off? It cannot be a physical sensation that is described. Any kind of lingering fragrance has lead to conventional readings that understand it as a type of lasting influence. When Pan Yue (潘岳）, a Jin Dynasty (晉 265-420) poet, mourned the death of his most beloved wife, he wrote, "Your flowing fragrance has yet to disappear/ the things you left still hang upon the walls" (流芳未及歇，遺掛猶在壁) There, the "fragrance" that remains behind might refer to the perfume and incense that his wife had used in her life. Although the poet insists on the persistence of fragrance in this case, when one considers his declaration earlier that "Now that she returns to the underground springs/ layers of earth will forever hide her away," (之子歸窮泉，重壤永幽隔) the evanescence of that fragrance cannot be avoided. In other words, the insistent memory of a "lingering fragrance" then highlights the finality and irreversibility of death.
In Lu You's poem, "fragrance" that is described is not the literal, olfactory sensation, but the symbolic and moral fragrance of the mei flower. The decaying petals, while produce physical fragrance, are not the source of the kind of fragrance that lasts, that always remains. The fragrance spoken of here, is the moral virtue and courageous character that the mei flower embodies and can outlasts its blossoms. In other words, the moral substance of the mei is what endures despite its physical transience.
When we consider the symbolic power of "fragrance" with the poet-speaker's finding manifest in the mei his own emotions and perspective, we can understand the last line as a declaration of virtue that withstands vicissitude and temporality, a sort of moral condition that outlasts time and circumstance. The image of a decaying petals pulverized into the muck, of a desolate plum flower denuded of its beauty, points again to the sympathetic vision of the mei that has persisted in the poem. In other words, even though the poet-speaker has imagined the mei as a tragic perspective of the rendered self, it is done so in light of its virtues, reflected in its solitary courage, daring avant-gardism, and its persistence in doing what is natural to it despite the snide ignorance of its peers. But, more importantly, it is the perpetuation of its moral fragrance or influence that really mitigates the tragic image of desolation and doomed impermanence. In other words, the final lines are both a sorrowful lamentation and a act of self-consolation. Like the mei that, though, will decay, would be remembered for its virtues, so will he, the poet-speaker be one day acknowledged for his sufferings for the sake of his integrity.
