THE TWO MAJOR forms of Chinese poetry,shi 詩 and fu 賦, grew to resemble one another in the Southern Dynasties; and this trend was fully realized by Wang Bo 王勃 (650–676) in the early Tang. Before the two forms became fully “regulated,” respectively as lüshi 律詩 and lüfu 律賦, Wang wrote a new form of poetry in his “Rhapsody on Spring Longings” (Chunsi fu 春思賦). This long poem, a full translation of which is appended to this essay, comprises predominantly verses in the shi—mainly pentasyllabic—meter and marks a continuation of the reciprocal influence between the two forms that was initiated mainly in the Liang dynasty (502–557). Wang's innovation is achieved by his personalization of the traditional topics of “spring” and frontier-related matters, especially the sentiments of the campaigning soldier and those of his forlorn wife, as well as his techniques of fu writing with shi skills. Through an analysis of this aspect of Wang's aesthetics and prosody, this chapter examines the relevant literary and historical backgrounds of his creation and evaluates his innovation in this experiment that further blurred the demarcation of the two poetic genres by combining the shi form, content, and style.

One main source of inspiration for this achievement was yuefu 樂府 (music bureau) poetry. In the history of fu prior to the Liang, the genre had little to do with frontier-related matters in its thematic circle. The genre of fu had an “innate” repertoire of themes on capital, hunting, travel, etc.Although the genre had undergone some evolution since the Eastern Han whereby the thematic circle was expanded, frontier-related matters had almost no place in the fu repertoire, reserved mainly for the yuefu tradition. Despite the efforts of some Qi-Liang poets who sporadically wrote about “grievances of the boudoir” in the form of fu, the genre never became a vehicle for this kind of sentiment.In the early Tang, Wang Bo and Luo Binwang 駱賓王 (ca. 627–ca. 684) continued this practice of writing about the campaigner and his lone wife in fu form. However, Wang's writing differs from Luo's in the crucial way that the yuefu tradition plays a much more important role in his “Fu on Spring Longings.”