View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
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the country's near abroad, a time when he experienced a creative phase that would produce what have<br />
become his most memorable, and anthologized, works, Cen Shen wrote <strong>of</strong> a frontier landscape which<br />
could scald, freeze and emotionally wrench apart interlopers from metropolitan China with a<br />
topography <strong>of</strong> burning mountains, biting winds and achingly endless distances. Although not the<br />
exclusive concern <strong>of</strong> his frontier verse, the sheer plethora <strong>of</strong> geographic and meteorological entities<br />
populating Cen Shen's contributions to the frontier school nonetheless easily accommodates analytical<br />
endeavours focusing on the poet's descriptions <strong>of</strong> and responses to the physical environment <strong>of</strong> China's<br />
peripheral regions.<br />
These borderland settings have long been regarded by critics as a defining trait <strong>of</strong> Cen Shen's<br />
frontier poems, as was noted in chapter three <strong>of</strong> this thesis through Hu Zhenheng's 胡 震 亨 observation<br />
that Cen Shen, in contradistinction to Gao Shi, stresses scene (jing 景 ) in his frontier poetry. The<br />
contemporary age as well has displayed an inclination towards discussing the scenic facet <strong>of</strong> Cen<br />
Shen's frontier poetry. In an essay centred on the stylistic differences between Gao Shi and Cen Shen's<br />
frontier poetry 3 , Yu Zhengsong 余 正 松 explains how Gao Shi's deep dedication to the human<br />
experience <strong>of</strong> the frontier, and not the frontier's geological being, was responsible for the paucity in his<br />
collected works <strong>of</strong> poems in which attention to the hinterlands as a geographic entity dominates a text's<br />
thematic thrust. Yu continues to claim that when the setting itself does have a noticeable presence in<br />
Gao Shi's frontier poems, the intellectual and emotional concerns <strong>of</strong> the poet-narrator overpowers the<br />
imagery <strong>of</strong> the landscape. This adoption <strong>of</strong> setting as a means <strong>of</strong> self-expression then leads to<br />
geographic descriptions fraught with generalities and imprecision, descriptions that otherwise might<br />
have been meticulously rendered had they not been mere vehicles pronouncing the poet's sentiments. 4<br />
109<br />
3 Yu Zhengsong 余 正 松 “Gao Cen shu huan bu, Shen Bao de tong xing: Gaoshi yu Cen Shen shifeng zhi yitong 高 岑 殊<br />
缓 步 , 沈 鲍 得 同 行 : 高 适 与 参 岑 诗 风 之 异 同 ”in Yu Zhengsong 余 正 松 , Gaoshi yanjiu 高 适 研 究 (Chengdu: Ba<br />
Shushushe chuban 巴 蜀 书 社 出 版 ,1992), pp. 227-242.<br />
4 Yu Zhengsong, “Gaoshi yu Cen Shen shifeng zhi yitong”, p. 235. Of course, one also needs to bear in mind that for Tang<br />
poets in their “choice <strong>of</strong> nature images...the highly specific [was] generally avoided [so that] the natural world