Quick Answer: What Is Li Shangyin’s Untitled Poem About?
Untitled (无题, Wútí) by Li Shangyin (李商隐, Lǐ Shāngyǐn) begins with two difficulties. A meeting is hard to arrange, and parting is hard to bear. The poem then uses silk and wax to show what longing can take out of a person.[1][2]
- Silk: The silkworm’s thread lasts until its life runs out.
- Wax: A candle sheds tears until it burns to ash.
- Messenger: The speaker asks a blue bird (青鸟, qīngniǎo) to look in on someone he cannot reach.[1][2]
The poem makes separation vivid while leaving the people and circumstances unnamed.[1]
The first line uses the same word twice for things that are hard in different ways. By the end, the road to the other person sounds almost short. The problem is how to get across it. Between those two moments, silk and wax give the reader a measure of how long longing can last.
The Poem in Chinese, Pinyin and English
The poem has eight seven-character lines arranged in four couplets. This version uses 蜡炬 for the candle. The edition also records 蜡烛 as a variant.[1][2]
| Chinese | Pinyin | English sense |
|---|---|---|
| 相见时难别亦难 | Xiāngjiàn shí nán bié yì nán | It is hard to find a time to meet. It is hard to part as well. |
| 东风无力百花残 | Dōngfēng wúlì bǎihuā cán | The east wind has lost its force, and all the flowers fade. |
| 春蚕到死丝方尽 | Chūncán dào sǐ sī fāng jìn | The spring silkworm’s thread runs out only at death. |
| 蜡炬成灰泪始干 | Làjù chéng huī lèi shǐ gān | The candle’s tears dry only when it has burned to ash. |
| 晓镜但愁云鬓改 | Xiǎo jìng dàn chóu yúnbìn gǎi | At the dawn mirror, the worry is that cloud-like hair has changed. |
| 夜吟应觉月光寒 | Yè yín yīng jué yuèguāng hán | Reciting at night, one must feel the cold of moonlight. |
| 蓬山此去无多路 | Péngshān cǐ qù wú duō lù | The way from here to Mount Peng (蓬山, Péngshān) is not long. |
| 青鸟殷勤为探看 | Qīngniǎo yīnqín wèi tànkàn | Blue bird, please go and look in on them for me. |
Why Meeting and Parting Are Both Hard
The first 难 names an obstacle. Two people can scarcely find a chance to be together. The second 难 names the pain of ending a meeting that was difficult to arrange. Repeating the character lets the two kinds of difficulty touch. What the speaker has wanted is also what makes the farewell painful.[1][2]
The weakening east wind and fading flowers place the problem at the end of spring. The season has its own ending. That gives the rest of the poem a physical world in which beautiful things continue for a time and then run out.[1][2]
The Silkworm, the Candle and the Cost of Longing
The silkworm spins until its thread is exhausted. The candle gives off drops of wax until it is spent. The couplet matches the two images by holding back each ending until the source can give no more. The emphasis falls on the duration and cost of what they produce.[1][2]
In Chinese, the word for silk thread, 丝, and the word for thinking or longing, 思, are both pronounced sī. The sound lets the worm’s silk suggest an attachment that keeps being drawn out. In The Brocade Zither, tears appear in pearls. Here they are something familiar that a candle leaves as it burns, so the image joins feeling to a process the reader can picture.[1][2]
What the Blue Bird Can Do
The dawn mirror and the night recitation give separated people things to do while the other is absent. The Chinese leaves the subjects unstated, and a translation can give both scenes to one speaker or imagine the two people on opposite sides of the separation. The worry over changing hair and the cold of moonlight let time and absence register in different ways.[1][2]
Mount Peng recalls a place of immortals. The bird is a messenger associated with the Queen Mother of the West. Asking it to look on the speaker’s behalf creates an opening after several lines of loss. The poem ends with the request still unanswered.[1][2]
Li Shangyin gives the hope of contact a different form in Night Rain Sent North. That poem imagines a future conversation. This one needs a messenger to make even indirect contact possible.
FAQs About Li Shangyin’s Untitled Poem
Why is the poem called Untitled?
The transmitted heading is Wuti, which means Untitled. The opening line about the difficulty of meeting and parting distinguishes it from other poems under that heading.[1][2]
Is the poem about a specific lover?
It can be read as a poem of love and separation. It gives the reader no name or event that confirms a particular lover’s identity.[1][2]
Sources
[1] Li Shangyin. Untitled: It Is Hard to Meet and Part
[2] Stephen Owen. The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century