View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
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98<br />
白 草 胡 沙 寒 飒 飒<br />
翻 身 入 破 如 有 神<br />
White grasses, Hu sands and cold soughing winds.<br />
Turning as the melody becomes rapid, nimble as if<br />
aided by some god,<br />
前 见 后 见 回 回 新 Glancing forward, glancing back, every turn so new. 235<br />
始 知 诸 曲 不 可 比 Only now I know that other songs can't compare,<br />
“ 菜 莲 ”, “ 落 梅 ” 徒 聒 耳 “Plucking Lotus Flowers” and “Falling Plum Blossoms”<br />
do nothing but grate the ears. 236<br />
世 人 学 舞 只 是 舞 People learn to dance and it's just a dance<br />
姿 态 岂 能 得 如 此 How could their movements ever be like this<br />
(lines 7-20)<br />
The preceding tour de force highlighted Cen Shen's multifaceted observations <strong>of</strong> frontier<br />
interior decor, cuisine, music and dance. Though less sensually inspiring as an object <strong>of</strong> contemplation,<br />
Cen Shen's poet-narrator , as noted earlier, also devoted attention to the local linguistic character <strong>of</strong> the<br />
border region, further decoupling non-Chinese peoples from the frequently encountered “enemy”<br />
association found throughout the subgenre. To convey the intricacies <strong>of</strong> how local languages were<br />
presented in Cen Shen's frontier poetry, a brief return needs to be made to an excerpt from an already<br />
<strong>of</strong>t-cited poem in this thesis, “Impromptu About Luntai” (“Luntai jishi” 轮 台 即 事 ):<br />
蕃 书 文 字 别 Fan documents and characters are different,<br />
胡 俗 语 音 殊 Hu customs and pronunciations are unfamiliar.<br />
The poet-narrator <strong>of</strong> “Impromptu About Luntai” is only capable <strong>of</strong> addressing the local linguistic<br />
environment as a matter <strong>of</strong> a clinical, binary relation in which “Chinese” is the node against which the<br />
235<br />
A noticeable intratextual action is underway between this line and the earlier “ 左 旋 右 旋 生 旋 风 ”where sequences <strong>of</strong><br />
locative words (left...right...front...back) are used to describe the dancer's movements.<br />
236<br />
The first <strong>of</strong> these titles is <strong>of</strong> “one poem among a group <strong>of</strong> poems in the Yuefushiji collected under the general<br />
designation “South <strong>of</strong> the Yangtze Performances” (“Jiangnan nong” 江 南 弄 ). The earliest models for this poetry are<br />
associated with southern areas, considered anonymous, and attributed to female singers...The “Plucking Lotus” title is<br />
associated with a whole tradition <strong>of</strong> “plucking” poems with similar feminine and sexual implications” . See Joseph R.<br />
Allen, In the Voices <strong>of</strong> Others, pp. 124, 126 and 129. The second title is also <strong>of</strong> Yuefu origin, and was still very popular<br />
during the Tang. With some background awareness to these Yuefu works, a hypothesis can be made that the poetnarrator<br />
has a preference for the violent sorrow and heroism (beizhuang 悲 壮 ) <strong>of</strong> the frontier (a conjecture securely<br />
based on reference to the “ 出 塞 ”and “ 入 塞 ”cycles <strong>of</strong> the yuefu and the dancer's own dizzying, cyclonic routine where<br />
she herself partially becomes the frontier much to the poet-narrator's delight) over the somewhat calm and effete south as<br />
represented by the second Yuefu allusion.