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“carp” (liyu 鲤 鱼 ) within “waters that seem to boil” (shui ru zhu 水 如 煮 ); it also causes snow to “melt”<br />
or evaporate (mie 灭 ) yet does not wither the “green grasses” (qingcao 青 草 ) on its shore. This aspect<br />
<strong>of</strong> Hot Lake's heat, one that sustains rather than destroying the surrounding environment, is focalized<br />
through a lens <strong>of</strong> contradictions, an imaginary mode <strong>of</strong> focalization which presents the image <strong>of</strong> a heat<br />
that seems to “defy human comprehension” through fantastic and “incompatible statements”. 25<br />
Intertextually more relevant, however, is how this sub-thematic heat radiating from the depths<br />
<strong>of</strong> the Fire Mountain and Hot Lake themes, a heat which is invisible to body's senses, is focalized by<br />
the poet-narrators <strong>of</strong> “Passing Fire Mountain”, “Mission to Jiaohe” and “Song <strong>of</strong> Hot Lake” in a<br />
similar manner. Faced with the limitations <strong>of</strong> ordinary perceptual lenses in focalizing this sub-theme <strong>of</strong><br />
the thermal landscape, the poet-narrators shift to the imaginary mode <strong>of</strong> focalization to focalize this<br />
heat which exists beyond the threshold <strong>of</strong> bodily senses. To accomplish this act <strong>of</strong> extraordinary<br />
focalization, the thermal themes <strong>of</strong> the landscape, Fire Mountain and Hot Lake, are “seen” through an<br />
allusive lens, a way <strong>of</strong> “seeing” which “allusifies” the supra-sensory heat thereby causing it to be<br />
“seen” as the images <strong>of</strong> a particular, and perceivable, allusion. And although on the surface level there<br />
are some variations in what the poet-narrators emphasize within the allusion, this allusive lens remains<br />
consistent throughout all three poems as a reference to a short excerpt from Jia Yi's 26 贾 谊 (210-169<br />
BCE) “Rhyme-Prose on the Owl” 27 (“Funiao fu” 鵩 鸟 赋 ). The applicable quotation is as follows:<br />
且 夫 天 地 为 炉 兮<br />
造 化 为 工<br />
阴 阳 为 炭 兮<br />
Heaven and earth are the furnace,<br />
The workman, the Creator;<br />
His coal is the yin and yang,<br />
25 Marie Chan, Cen Shen, p. 93.<br />
26 “Jia Yi was a political thinker and poet whose productive years fell during the reign <strong>of</strong> Emperor Wen 文 帝 (r. 179-157<br />
BCE) <strong>of</strong> the Han dynasty”. See Robert Joe Cutter's entry in William N. Nienhauser, ed., The Indiana Companion to<br />
Traditional Chinese Literature, p. 254.<br />
27 “A rhapsody (fu 赋 ) dating from 174 BCE wherein an owl, traditionally a bird <strong>of</strong> evil omens, flies into the poet's room<br />
[during his banishment to a minor post in Changsha in the south]. More philosophical than most early fu, the piece uses<br />
the presence <strong>of</strong> the owl to speculate on the mutability <strong>of</strong> things, especially the transience <strong>of</strong> success and the nature <strong>of</strong> life<br />
and death . Filled with Daoist ideas, the fu takes the stance that life is nothing to cling to, and death is nothing to fear”.<br />
See William N. Nienhauser, ed., The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, p. 254.