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Prior to mentioning issues surrounding the spatial coordinates of focalization, matters
surrounding the “lenses” of focalization were introduced. Returning to this aspect, the lenses of the
perceptual facet can be understood as operating within one of two “modes of perception”, the ordinary
and the imaginary. 82 As a way of focalizing, the ordinary mode of perception encompasses all types of
real-life focalization, such as vision, audition, touch, smell, taste, and bodily sensation; 83 as for the
focalized itself, the ordinary-mode is inclusive of objects which, within the world of the poem, exist
outside the focalizer's mind and in the real, shared world. A poetic example of the ordinary mode of
focalization is Li Bai's “Holding a Drink and Asking Questions of the Moon” (“Bajiuwenyue” 把 酒 问
月 ), a poem in which the main focalized object, the moon, is focalized through an ocular lens within
the ordinary mode of focalization:
青 天 有 月 来 几 时
我 今 停 杯 一 问 之
人 攀 明 月 不 可 得
月 行 却 与 人 相 随
皎 如 飞 镜 临 丹 阙
绿 烟 灭 尽 清 辉 发
但 见 宵 从 海 上 来
84
宁 知 晓 向 云 间 没
How long has there been a moon in the blue sky?
Today I put down my cup and ask this question.
People want to climb the bright moon but they
can't succeed,
It is the moon, however, which moves and follows
the people.
Shining like a flying mirror down upon the cinnabar
palace gate;
Green mists dissipate, a clear sheen radiates.
Only seeing it at night rise up from the ocean,
How can one know of it hiding between
the morning clouds?
In these initial eight lines, focalization is undertaken entirely within the ordinary mode, one where the
poet-narrator relies on ordinary sight to focalize an existent (the moon) which can hover and fly within
Jahn, “More Aspects on Focalization”, pp. 98-100.
82 The first mode refers to objects perceived by the senses while the focalizer is conscious and immediately in the world;
the second to objects perceived by the focalizer in recollection, dreams or the imagination. However, I am using the
“ordinary-imaginary” dichotomy to also differentiate “how” a focalizer perceives an object, meaning that a focalizer
might not be dreaming or hallucinating yet still perceive the world as if he were dreaming or hallucinating. See
Manfred Jahn, “More Aspects on Focalization”, p. 89.
83 Ibid., p. 89. In a different essay, Jahn refers to the ordinary mode as “online perception” and the imaginary as “offline
perception” . See Manfred Jahn, “Focalization” in David Herman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Narrative
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 94-108, especially pp. 99-100.
84 QTS 179.1827