Ambiguous and Amiss: Li Shangyin's Poetry and Its Interpretations (Critical Essay‪)‬

One striking feature of Li Shangyin's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (ca. 812-58) poetry is its ambiguity, which has fascinated and frustrated generations of critics and scholars, giving rise to widely divergent interpretations. Through an analysis of Li Shangyin's famous poem "Jin se" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (The ornamented zither) and a survey of representative interpretations of his poetry by different schools in history, this article describes some of Li Shangyin's ambiguous characteristics and points out the inappropriateness and harmfulness of the interpretations that have resulted from misuse of certain criteria derived from the Chinese tradition of canonical exegesis. Believing that Li Shangyin's creation of highly ambiguous semantic structures in his poems was more for aesthetic than for political considerations, the author suggests that, in reading Li Shangyin's ambiguous poems, one should allow flexibility in terms of their topical references so as properly to grasp and appreciate the ambiguous significance. The Poetry of Li Shangyin: Allusive & Enigmatic