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Since it is early and Henry is rather groggy, Wang Wei will step in to demonstrate ambient focalization
with the poem “Arriving at the Frontier on a Mission” (“Shi zhi saishang” 使 至 塞 上 ):
单 车 欲 问 边
With a single coach I'll visit the frontier,
属 国 过 居 延 And of client kingdoms, pass by Juyan. 74
征 蓬 出 汉 塞
Voyaging tumbleweed 75 leaves the passes of Han,
归 雁 入 胡 天 A home bound goose enters Tartar skies. 76
大 漠 孤 烟 直
Great desert: one column of smoke stands straight;
长 江 落 日 圆
Long river: the setting sun hangs round.
77
萧 关 逢 侯 吏 At Xiao ramparts 78 I met a mounted messenger –
79
都 护 在 燕 然 “The Grand Marshall is now at Mount Yanran”. 80
124
The middle couplets of Wang Wei's poem exhibit two directions of focalization functioning in contrast
with one another. In the second couplet, the poet-narrator focalizes frontier existents from a horizontal
spacial coordinate, which in line three follows the level ground (the path of the tumbleweed) and in line
four traverses across the sky (the goose). As for the third couplet, focalization of the frontier shifts to a
vertical pole whose fifth line focalized rises (the smoke) and sixth line falls (the setting sun).
Furthermore, the existents of lines three and four occupy a space nearer the poet-narrator than those of
five and six, adding a dichotomy of closeness and distance to the horizontal-vertical opposition.
Despite their brevity, these two lines are unhooked from a single, stable focalization; the spatial
coordinates of their existents are focalized from multiple angles on a scale of ambient, rather than strict,
focalization. 81
single coordinate.
74 “Juyan refers to both a river and a client state, but the term is used here less for geographical accuracy than to echo the
exploits of the great Han general Huo Qubing 霍 去 病 who passed Juyan when he achieved a great victory”. See
Stephen Owen, The Great Age of Chinese Poetry, p. 336.
75 “A set metaphor for the traveller, torn from his 'roots' and carried here and there by the vagaries of chance”. Ibid., p. 336.
76 Meaning “frontier sky”.
77 The QTS notes that 吏 (li, petty official) has the textual variant 骑 (ji, rider of a horse).
78 South-east of today's Guyuan county 固 源 县 , Ningxia 宁 夏 province.
79 QTS 126.1279.
80 Stephen Owen, tr., The Great of Chinese Poetry, p. 33.
81 The remaining two stations on Jahn's scale of focalization, weak and zero focalization, do not occur in Cen Shen's
frontier poems. Briefly, weak focalization is of an object without a focalizer, a perceived without any noticeable perceiver.
In zero focalization, object and subject disappear. A random string of clauses might suffice as an example. See Manfred