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彷 徉 无 所 倚
He roams aimlessly with no shelter
4
广 大 无 所 极 些 In vast spaces that have no limit. 5
Hundreds of years later, a similar horror seeps out from the malarial haze of Bao Zhao's “The Song of
Suffering from Heat” (“Dai kure xing” 代 苦 热 行 ). The first sixteen lines of the poem describe a
fantastically foreboding southwest 6 thermal landscape teeming with strange and familiar 7 beasts
tormenting the poet-narrator with venomous, Stygian terrors culled from a marriage of imagination and
scorching geography:
赤 阪 横 西 阻
Chiban 8 in the west stretches forbiddingly across,
火 山 赫 南 威
Fiery mountains in the south blaze with awesome force.
身 热 头 且 痛
One suffers from a throbbing headache and burning fever,
鸟 坠 魂 未 归
While birds above fall, wandering souls have yet to return.
汤 泉 发 云 潭
Hot wells spurt out from the lake of vapour,
焦 烟 起 石 矶
Scorching smoke rises from rocky cliffs by the water.
日 月 有 恒 昏
It has perpetually obscured sun and moon,
雨 露 未 尝 晞
And has never dried from the dew or rain.
丹 蛇 逾 百 尺
There are red serpents exceeding one hundred feet
in length,
9
玄 蜂 盈 十 围
And black hornets with a ten-arm-span girth.
含 沙 射 流 影
One's floating reflection is shot by a sand-spitting demon,
吹 蛊 病 行 晖
One's travelling shadow is diseased by virus-spreading
vermin.
瘴 气 昼 熏 体
One's body is fumigated by miasmal vapour in the daylight
菵 露 夜 沾 衣
One's clothes are soaked with dew on toxic grass at night.
饥 猿 莫 下 食
The hungry monkeys do not take it as a feeding ground,
10
晨 禽 不 敢 飞 The morning birds dare not flutter or hover around. 11
While neither noxious nor infested with creatures of unworldly origin, the overpowering heat
4 Wang Fuzhi 王 夫 之 ed., Chuci tongshi 楚 辞 通 释 (Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe 人 民 出 版 社 , 1975), p. 142.
5 Stephen Owen, tr., An Anthology of Chinese Literature, p. 205.
6 Ding Fulin 丁 福 林 ed., Xie Lingyun Bao Zhao ji 谢 灵 运 鲍 照 集 (Nanjing: Fenghuang chubanshe 凤 凰 出 版 社 ,
2009), p. 143.
7 Lost souls and giant “black wasps” (xuanfeng 玄 蜂 ) have migrated from the western region of “Calling Back the Soul”
to Bao Zhao's nightmarish land.
8 Literally “red hot hills”. Chiban itself is located in Yang county 洋 县 , Shaanxi 陕 西 province.
9 玄 蜂 (xuanfeng) may also refer to a “black hornet nest” (Dr. Tsung-Cheng Lin, personal correspondence, May 2013).
10 YFSJ 65.937.
11 Modified version of Robert Shanmu Chen, tr., A Study of Bao Zhao and His Poetry, pp. 306-307.