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Part Two : Focalization in Cen Shen's Frontier Landscapes
Chapter Five: Underlying Perceptual Facets of the Thermal and Hibernal Frontiers
5.1. Cen Shen's Thermal Landscape: Patterns in Perceiving Heat
Although few in number, poems in which a northwestern environment of intense, even
supernatural, heat demands the full attention of the poet-narrator have nonetheless long been
considered some of Cen Shen's “most striking pieces about the frontier”. 1 In the centuries preceding the
poet's own lifetime, such extraordinary desert scenes were rarely ever evoked. 2 On the few occasions
they were, China's burning vistas became topographies of hyperbole, places of imagination and fear
incarnate. One early formulation is found in this excerpt from “Calling Back the Soul” 3 (“Zhao hun” 招
魂 ) of the Lyrics of Chu (Chu Ci 楚 辞 ):
魂 兮 归 来
西 方 之 害
流 沙 千 里 些
旋 入 雷 渊
爢 散 而 不 可 止 些
幸 而 得 脱
其 外 旷 宇 些
赤 蚁 若 象
玄 蜂 若 壶
五 毂 不 生
藂 菅 是 食 些
其 土 烂 人
求 水 无 所 得 些
Soul! Turn back!
There is harm for you in the west,
Where the sand flows for a thousand miles,
You whirl into the Thunder Pit,
You are ground to powder and may not rest.
If luck lets you escape,
Beyond are boundless barrens.
With red ants like elephants
and black wasps like gourds.
Not one of the five grains grows,
clumps of straw-grass is the food.
The soil there grills a man,
He seeks water with none to be found.
1 Marie Chan, Cen Shen, p. 81. These poems are herein referred to as Cen Shen's “thermal landscape poems”, a term
meaning those poems where the “hot” landscape is prominent and not mere background to the events of the poem.
2 Marie Chan, Kao Shih, p. 116.
3 “Calling Back the Soul” is the “literary version...of a religious ritual in which the shaman calls back the soul of someone
dead, dying, or otherwise not in full possession of the senses (comatose, wandering). The shaman first describes the
terrors that lie in wait for the soul in all directions, then the pleasures that the soul can enjoy if only it comes back to the
palace or great house at the centre...In the soul-calling, the major division is between the description of terrors, intended
to frighten the soul into returning, and the descriptions of delights, intended to lure the soul back”. See Stephen Owen,
An Anthology of Chinese Literature, p. 204.