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111<br />
argues that Cen Shen's frontier environment was not entirely restricted to the role <strong>of</strong> expressive<br />
apparatus for the poet-narrator's own emotional and intellectual responses to frontier service; rather, the<br />
poet-narrator <strong>of</strong>ten de-emphasized his presence within the setting and wrote <strong>of</strong> its fierce, yet<br />
magnificent, natural phenomena out <strong>of</strong> fondness and curiosity in addition to using such imagery as a<br />
foil for bitter homesickness, personal disappointment and exuberant panegyrics to Tang military<br />
might. 10 “Song <strong>of</strong> Hot Lake 11 : Sending Off Censor Cui On His Return to the Capital” (“Rehaixing song<br />
Cui Shiyu huanjing” 热 海 行 送 崔 侍 御 还 京 ) typifies the predilection <strong>of</strong> Cen Shen's poet-narrator for<br />
exploring the landscape without an overriding need to contort its colour, temperature, and inanimate<br />
inhabitants, be they terrestrial or <strong>of</strong> the hanging celestial kind, into a dramatization <strong>of</strong> personal feelings:<br />
侧 闻 阴 山 胡 儿 语<br />
西 头 热 海 水 如 煮<br />
海 上 众 鸟 不 敢 飞<br />
中 有 鲤 鱼 长 且 肥<br />
I overheard the Hu people <strong>of</strong> Yin mountain 12 say<br />
That at the end <strong>of</strong> the Western frontier lies Hot Lake;<br />
its waters seem to boil.<br />
Flocks <strong>of</strong> birds don't dare fly overhead,<br />
In the lake carp are long and fat.<br />
岸 旁 青 草 常 不 歇 Green grasses on the shore grow for a long time<br />
and don't wither,<br />
空 中 白 雪 遥 旋 灭 Snow at a distance overhead swirls and then melts.<br />
蒸 沙 烁 石 燃 虏 云 Steaming sands and shining rocks burn the Lu clouds, 13<br />
沸 浪 炎 波 煎 汉 月 Boiling billows and heated waves scorch the Han moon.<br />
“Romanticism” in Cen Shen's frontier poetry despite the frequency <strong>of</strong> the term in other writings on Cen Shen's frontier<br />
poetry, one example being the opening and second to last paragraph <strong>of</strong> an essay by Chen Yixin's 陈 贻 焮 where the<br />
appeal <strong>of</strong> Cen Shen's frontier poetry is ascribed in part to its “spirit <strong>of</strong> Romanticism” (langmanzhuyi jingshen 浪 漫 主 义<br />
精 神 ) and “Romantic affect” (langman qingdiao 浪 漫 情 调 ). See Chen Yixin 陈 贻 焮 “Tan Censhen de biansaishi 谈 岑<br />
参 的 边 塞 诗 ”in Tangshi luncong 唐 诗 论 丛 (Changsha: Renminchubanshe 人 民 出 版 社 , 1980), pp. 189-196.<br />
10 Yu summarizes the major distinction between Gao Shi and Cen Shen's frontier landscapes as a difference between a<br />
place containing the first-person subject (youwozhijing 有 我 之 境 ) and a place not containing the first-person subject<br />
(wuwozhijing 无 我 之 境 ) with the former situation ascribed to Gao Shi and the latter to Cen Shen, the suggestion being<br />
that Cen Shen's poet-narrator, unlike Gao Shi's, could minimize his emotional imprint on the poem's frontier<br />
environment.<br />
11 “Hot Lake” is Issyk Kul, a lake in eastern Kyrgyzstan. During the Tang, the area was under the jurisdiction <strong>of</strong> the Anxi<br />
Military Commissioner (Anxi jiedushi 安 西 节 度 使 ).<br />
12 Zhang Hui 张 辉 notes that Yin Mountain (Yinshan 阴 山 ) actually refers to the Tian Mountain (Tianshan 天 山 ) range in<br />
the border region <strong>of</strong> today's Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and not the Yin<br />
mountain range traversing parts <strong>of</strong> Inner Mongolia. See Zhang Hui, ed., Cen Shen Biansai shixuan, p. 56).<br />
13 Meaning “frontier clouds”.