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the object of the verb of perception, Fire Mountain and Puchang.
The poet-narrator, as already noted, focalizes the focalized in a particular manner, that is he
“sees” and then “focuses” particular aspects of an object. The means by which this is undertaken can be
divided into two facets: the perceptual and psychological. 67 The perceptual facet of focalization is
concerned with the use of the senses, such as sight, hearing, touch, and the spacial coordinates of the
focalizer and/or focalized during acts of focalization. 68 The following sentences, and their analysis,
illustrate the perceptual facet: “While in the kitchen, Henry looked at the piece of toast which had
fallen on the floor ”. In this statement, sight is the activated aspect of the perceptual facet; however, in
the similar sentence, “Henry salivated while gazing upon the piece of toast which had fallen on the
kitchen floor”, the perceptual facet has expanded to include the gastronomical (“seeing with the
stomach”) as evidenced by the focalizer salivating in anticipation of not merely seeing but also
consuming the focalized (the piece of toast). These aspects of the perceptual facet of focalization can be
referred to as “lenses”. Thus, in the first sentence, Henry, the focalizer, uses an ocular lens (sight) to
focalize (“see”) the focalized (the piece of toast), and in the second sentence uses a combination of
ocular and gastronomical (stomach) lenses in the act of focalization.
Rimmon-Kenan categorizes spatial coordinates as either being a bird's eye view of the focalized
or that of a limited observer whose focalization lacks fluidity and is restricted by physical laws. 69
However, since focalization in Cen Shen's frontier poems, like many lyrics, often moves between
disparate spatial coordinates, Rimmon-Kenan's second division is not of any importance for this thesis;
yet reference to a purely panoramic or omniscient spatial coordinate is too inexact for purposes
hereafter. In order to avoid the limitations of Rimmon-Kenan's system, the spatial coordinates of
67 Ibid., pp. 77-81. A third facet introduced by Rimmon-Kenan, the ideological, will not be considered in this thesis.
68 Ibid., p. 77. Rimmon-Kenan also discusses the temporal coordinates of the perceptual facet. But since these coordinates
are not very pronounced in the poetry under analysis, this aspect of the perceptual facet will not be introduced here.
69 Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction, p. 77.